Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One year ago.

Nathaniel Wesninski is a sharper weapon than the knives he brandishes. Having been born and raised for bloodshed, everything about him was designed to pierce like a blade. To cut things, to make them bleed, and beg for mercy; this is what he knows best.

But he hadn't started out that way. During his first eight years of life, when he was abandoned in Poland with nannies who detested him and a helpless girl who had been taken and tethered to him for the foreseeable future, he had not used knives very often. He'd wanted to, though.

When he was younger, Nathaniel frequently daydreamed about the stunning scene that would ensue if he were to suddenly lunge out from under a table or desk with a knife in hand. He pictured the nanny's shocked expression as they realised who their assailant was, and imagined the relief of having overcome someone who'd pushed him past his breaking point.

He eventually let that fantasy go, though, in between being thrashed, forced into awkward positions, and having heavy plates broken over his frail limbs. He stopped looking for chances to win and started learning which stair was the least likely to creak when he and Vanya, his self-declared sister, wandered the home in the middle of the night in search of food scraps. He figured out how to keep silent and speak only when he saw it necessary, acquiring his harsh tongue in the fight for peace.

In a sense, that battle went on forever. But when one nanny caught him instructing Vanya and himself in clumsy English, he could have sworn he'd lost for good. And maybe he did, because once all of their books containing English were burned--along with some of his skin--he was on a plane back to Baltimore. Eyes blackened and fingers bent out of place.

This should have been his first clue. The turning point in his life where he finally flipped the switch to illuminate the sign in front of him that stated, in large, bolded letters, "This isn't normal!"

But this was not the eye-opening experience it needed to be. Not for him, at least. At the time, Nathaniel was still a child. A child who was told that he was to be seen, not heard. A child who, when bored, counted the freckles littering his skin and smiled brightly at the bunnies he observed scurrying up and down his driveway.

One might question how in the hell this boy, who could keep quiet as he wept but couldn't tell his left from his right, was supposed to recognise that this was the easiest thing he would get out of life.

It's true that hindsight is 20/20, he supposes, for there are many things he would do differently with the information he has now.

For instance, he probably would have cared more for his nanny's advice and been a little more appreciative if he had known that verbal degradation and minor mutilation were the easiest things in the cards for him. Perhaps he might not have imagined his mother to be some kind of saint who would welcome him with open arms if he knew that the first time they would meet would be the evening she was shot in front of him. Hell, maybe he would have stepped in front of that bullet and gotten rid of the main problem right then and there if he knew what his father had planned for him.

But he didn’t. Instead of inching his feet forwards and meeting a gruesome end, he watched the copper-plated bullet fly through his mother’s forehead and take the quickest route out the back. He listened to the deafening pop of it escaping the chamber, barely even a full second beforehand. He flinched as he felt the splatter of her warm blood that had since turned to a pink mist paint his face. And slowly, the odour of potassium nitrate, coal, and saltpeter reached his nose, mingling with the lingering scent of iron-filled blood and quick death.

Without a doubt, the thing that got him the most was that overpowering stench.

Yes, the blood was disgusting, but it could be washed off. And hours later, it was, using water that had caused his skin to steam.

And sure, the sound of the shot itself nearly deafened him permanently, and maybe he still despises loud noises with a fervor that could bring a grown man to his knees.

But the smell? That had lingered in the small basement for days afterwards. Even while strapped to a metal table, blinded by pain and being dissected like a frog in science class, it was all he could notice. That stench had clung to him everywhere he went, buried in his clothes and fusing with the chemical makeup of his brassy-red hair.

If asked, Nathaniel would not say that it’s something he continues to struggle with, but there is a reason that he has a tendency to opt for knives rather than guns when specially withdrawn from his protection assignment at the Nest; and it’s not because they are easier to hide.

Nathaniel imagines, as his father crumples to the soiled ground and joins the stiff corpses of the rest of his inner circle, that there is a joke to be told here. Something in regards to the boy he raised to be a knife using a gun to do away with him, certainly. Nathaniel doesn’t dwell on it.

No, instead, he hands the revolver back to Kengo with skillfully careful hands. Nathaniel watches as the man evaluates the scene before him, then passes the weapon off to a nearby guard, who wipes it clean and swiftly tucks it into his jacket, never to be seen again.

"This was a substantial job, Nathaniel, " Kengo says in tight Japanese. "Getting rid of waste may be common practice for us, but it is rare to do so much in one day. You have done well."

Nathaniel’s manners may be questionable at best, but he likes to think that he’s still capable of having some decorum. "Thank you, Lord."

Nathaniel’s thick, Polish accent bleeds into every language he speaks. Yet another part of his father that will remain forever ingrained in him. He fought it for years, going as long as he could without speaking in his native tongue, smothering it with the likes of another mask he wore. But it never worked. All it took was some mumbling in hushed Polish as he thought aloud but not openly for it to come tumbling back.

Kengo has never commented on it, though. Always noting it, accepting it, and moving forward.

"There is no need to thank," Kengo’s guards form a path as the man turns to leave. The door is opened for him, but he pauses in mid-step. "I trust you will see fit to change the title your father has given you into something more productive."

The comment is tossed over his shoulder as though it were a casual remark, but everyone present knows just how much weight that sentence carries.

Heavy doors swing shut just as the last of the guards trickle out. Nathaniel hadn’t gotten another word in, but he doesn’t mind. He had nothing more to say.

He spares a glance at the pile of bodies littering the floor, rigor mortis having set in already as they lay pale in the pools of blood that steadily dry around them.

He looks at Vanya beside him. Standing strong with her chin held high, meeting his eyes with her ever steady gaze and daring him to say a word about the nearly inconspicuous tremble in her hands as they rest at her side.

It’s familiar.

All of it. The gun used, the vicious odour, the spray of blood, his sister at his side.

so much like that day in his father’s dreary basement. And yet, so vastly different, all because of one change.

Nathaniel is now the one to imprison the power in his iron hold.

What was once a butcher examining the cold slab of his newest victim and the fresh, warm bodies of those to come, is now something else. Something new.

One might even go as far to say something promising.

Nathaniel probably wouldn’t take that leap. Not yet, at least. But he will take his new title, and he will manipulate every part of it until it functions like the well-oiled machine he’s envisioned, fitting into the changed form he has already set out to create.

Even if, on bad days, it gives him the creeps or makes his breath stutter. Even if it brings back memories of the scars he claims to still be able to feel because they were etched into his skin so deeply.

"The Butcher" will hold a new meaning in Nathaniel’s desperate grasp.

Present day.

Kevin tosses back another shot. He’s not even sure what it is. Vodka? Probably. Water? Maybe. He wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anymore.

He’s vaguely aware of the judgmental looks both of the Minyard twins subtly send his way, but Kevin stopped caring about their opinions after the first round of drinks.

"You’re going to get alcohol poisoning," Aaron shouts over the music.

Kevin doesn’t bother with a reply. Reveling in the burn left in his throat from the drink he couldn't taste, he feels fairly certain that he would have already gotten alcohol poisoning if it were really in the cards for him. Still, he finds himself biting the inside of his cheek as a reminder to let the last shot settle before reaching for another.

The funny thing is--to Kevin, at least--is that he’s not even on a self-destructive warpath tonight. Anyone at the table would say otherwise, but Kevin had followed the cousins to Eden’s with no real goal in mind.

Really, he doesn’t have much of anything in mind. His brain has been a fuzzy field of complete and utter nothingness since this afternoon, when Coach called to tell him about Janie’s suicide attempt.

A phone call that had abruptly ended when Kevin went for more details and was quickly accused of being an asshole with a one-track mind.

At the time, it felt only normal to be concerned about what this would mean for the upcoming season. Even now, Kevin still thinks he has the right to be worried about that. The Foxes, however, disagree. A fact that has been made abundantly clear by their attempts to draw pity out of him via recounting the gory details of how Janie was found. Kevin wasn't aware how much hearing about her blood-soaked clothes and slit wrists would change his feelings towards her, so he was wildly unprepared when what was once a promising striker sub turned into a cause for nausea and deep-seated discomfort.

He’s not proud of how easily his view of Janie changed. He's not even sure why it did; nothing his brother has told him about his job or what he does to people who need to be "dealt with" has changed his opinion of him. And the things he’s been told in regards to that specific topic are far worse than anything the Foxes have said concerning Janie.

But Kevin has been advised on multiple occasions that he lacks a spine, so it’s probably not surprising to anyone that he would rather eat glass than have to face Janie again.

It’s not a good thing that he won’t, though. With Janie gone, the Foxes are one player away from being disqualified from the season as a whole. To Kevin, this is a chilling thought. One more down and they’re out. One. Anything could take someone out. An allergic reaction, a bad fall, an axe-fucking-murderer for fuck’s sake. It’s just too risky. And yet, not one person seems to be batting an eye besides him.

Kevin's hand falls from where it had been slung over the back of his seat and hits the table with more force than he had anticipated.

He takes a moment to watch liquor splash around in the glasses that were left with him, then observes the empty table. He doesn't remember seeing the twins or Nicky leave, but when he flicks his eyes to the crowd of people dancing lazily before him, he notices Aaron’s blond hair bobbing wildly. He finds Nicky’s mop of dark curls not long after. There’s a brief moment in which he entertains the idea of joining them, but he decides against it. He doesn’t know where the hell Andrew went, and he’s not about to test the tiny terror’s patience tonight.

Kevin blinks heavy eyelids and lets his head fall back, grateful they sat in a booth when his skull meets a leather cushion rather than a hard wall.

The song playing switches to a faster one, with a loud guitar riff starting it off before descending into a flurry of drums. Kevin’s brows furrow and his heart speeds up in his chest, seemingly affected by the rapid rise and fall of the pace in the song. 

He turns his head, ready to complain to the closest person about the music, but stops when he remembers that he’s alone. 

His sudden isolation sinks in with a shuddering breath. It’s not that there’s a problem with him being left alone--he’s gotten used to it now--it’s more a problem with the inexplicable panic perched in his throat taking this fine opportunity to rear its ugly head after lurking over his shoulder since the minute his phone rang with Coach’s name flashing across the screen.

He can handle this, though. He’s had a thousand moments like this since coming to the Foxes, there’s no reason for now to be any different.

Kevin tips his head to the side, cracking his neck, and begins his process of calming down the same way he usually does.

He reaches for one of the few full shot glasses left on the table. 

And another. 

And another.

When the fourth and final glass makes contact with the wood of the table and Kevin doesn't even feel the heat of the vodka rush to his cheeks, he is forced to accept that this particular course of action is not going to work tonight.

That's fine.

He has other tricks up his sleeve. His brother’s walked him through enough panic attacks for him to have a vague idea of what to do now that plan A has failed him. He's only had to use plan B once or twice since coming to Palmetto, and his results have not been fantastic, but Kevin is sitting alone in a packed bar with no other options and a steadily rising pulse.

He lines the empty cups up with each other and slowly grinds his teeth together as tries to gauge how he feels.

He has to put a number on it. His brother usually has him rank it on a scale of 1–10, so Kevin sorts through the few brain cells that are willing to work with him and asks for a number. When sweaty palms and blurred surroundings tell him it's 6, he asks again. The answer, this time, is 9, accompanied by mild chest pain, chills, and tightness in his throat.

Shit, that escalated quickly. That's not unusual for Kevin, though. And he'd put money on the fact that the fast and loud music mixed with the crowded atmosphere is severely not fucking helping right now.

Ah, agitation too, then.

Alright. Step one.

"Just tell me what you feel," His brother said, sitting opposite Kevin. "It’s alright if there’s nothing, Kev, but I need you to try here."

Kevin listened to his brother’s wonderfully accented voice and let his hands grope everything around him. Not one thing registered on his sweat-slicked skin.

"It’s not working, Neil," Kevin said, on the verge of tears as he broke down on the floor beside his bed.

"That’s okay," The answer came quickly. "Do you want to try again or move on?"

Kevin didn’t want to fail at doing something so simple. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Try again,"

Neil didn’t respond verbally, but he did take Kevin's hand and raise it to his head, placing it on top and letting go. Kevin’s fingers began to wander instantly. Neil never let anyone touch his hair; he always swatted them away when they tried. This was a gift. Kevin's eyes opened reluctantly to watch as his hand disrupted the meticulously styled curls, and he felt the silky locks tangle around him.

He nodded. Stiff and awkward. "I feel that,"

Kevin wiggles his fingers where they sit under the circle table. He doesn’t feel them.

He tries again.

When the results remain the same, he flips his hands over and digs his nails into his thigh. But he doesn’t feel the sting of the caving skin, and he doesn’t get the pressure on his fingertips either.

He scratches at his palm and does a test of trailing his fingers higher when there’s still nothing. Under the table, he pries his foot off the grimy floor and brings it down roughly on the other. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, knocking his knees together a few times for good measure.

In a movement small enough that none of the club-goers will notice, Kevin lifts his head up and doesn't catch it when it quickly drops back onto the seat. Still nothing.

He tries his hands again, tapping his thumb to each finger twice in a rhythm and choking on his breath slightly when no progress is made.

"It's alright if there's nothing, Kev,"

Kevin makes a fist, still numb to himself. There is no one for him to reach out and touch here, in the corner of Eden’s Twilight. He tugs his lower lip between his teeth and decides to move on.

Step two, then.

"I know you can see, Kev. Tell me what you see."

Kevin nearly laughed as his brother whispered that. Only for the sheer irony that the one wearing an eyepatch was asking Kevin what he could see. But he humoured it anyway, taking only a moment to look over the boy crouched in front of him. The silver studs in his ears that he put in after letting Kevin pierce him with a sewing needle. The small hoop they managed to get through his septum after Jean declared he felt left out. A thousand freckles splattered across his face. Those absolutely ridiculous red curls.

Actually, those seem to stand out the most, tightly wound and framing Neil's face perfectly. He must have used the product he mentioned his sister bought him.

"I see you. Your hair looks brighter today, and it’s getting pretty long. The pattern is a little different, too, like, more defined. I also see the shit on your eye. The stupid sticker Jean put on it."

Neil smiled at his answer. "Why is it stupid, Kev? You don’t like sparkly owls?" 

Tilting his head up a little from the cushion it rests on, Kevin tries to take in his surroundings.

Leather. So much leather. Pretty much everyone is wearing at least one article of leather; accessories, tops, bottoms, and boots. Kevin isn’t sure if a leash counts as an accessory or if it falls into a different category, but he sees at least two of those.

Anyone who isn’t wearing leather is positively bathed in glitter. Nicky is a prime example of this, as he is currently prancing around with glitter on his face, in his hair, and wearing a glittery top that he talked about for hours before they got here.

"This has to be dry cleaned, Kevin. Look at this material; you can’t put this in the washing machine." Everything he’d said about the cropped shirt upon buying it was mostly ignored by Kevin, but that had stuck. He can’t pinpoint why, but he’s thankful when he catches sight of the purple shimmer from where he sits.

Okay, glitter and leather. He can see that. He knows why he can see that. Moving on to step three.

Neil arched a brow at him. "You can hear me, right?"

He waited for Kevin’s slow nod.

"What else can you hear?"

People. People in the hall, people talking in the locker rooms, thankfully out of sight from where Kevin had curled in on himself against his own locker, tucked safely behind the black bench in front of him and Neil’s warm and small body.

"Ravens," He answered, keeping his voice low to match Neil’s. He took another moment to listen. "The showers."

"I hear the Ravens, too." Neil shook his head. "They’re awfully loud, huh?"

"You’re usually louder," Kevin shot back, not even thinking about the response before it slipped off his tongue. He was answered by Neil’s wicked grin.

Kevin doesn’t hear much now. The conversations around him are muffled by the loud music blasting through the speakers placed strategically throughout the club.

It’s a different song playing now than the one that may or may not have kick-started this entire thing. Kevin can pick out a strong base paired with lyrics that are questionably rhymed and don't make a whole lot of sense to him. He kind of hates it. Much like most of the songs that get played in Eden's, really. He thinks that he would rather listen to a cat puke out a lovely little hairball than whatever this is.

But he can hear it, and that’s all he needs to go on to step four.

"Do you smell that?" Neil asked, cracking open the tinted window of the car he and Kevin haphazardly piled into.

Kevin panted, panic clawing at his throat. He shook his head.

"I think it’s flowers," Neil mused, leaning closer towards the small opening he made.

Kevin didn’t smell flowers. He smelled antiseptics and blood.

Neil grabbed his arm in a way far too forceful to be casual. "Sniff." He ordered, practically shoving Kevin’s head into the warm glass.

Kevin inhaled, shaky and small. "Again," Neil said.

Kevin nodded and tried again. He got it that time. A distant floral scent wafting through the late spring air. Probably pansies; the scent was similar to the shampoo Neil used, and that one was a rose and pansy blend. It’s strange, in a way, that someone like Neil had the nerve to partake in such small pleasures like picking out a frilly shampoo or foamy soap, while Kevin doesn’t even get to pick the meals he eats.

But it also makes sense. Too much sense. Only someone like Neil would be able to prioritise something like having a new hand lotion every month while feigning ignorance in the face of his brutal life.

Kevin would probably laugh if he didn't feel like he was actively dying in the backseat of what was probably a Porsche.

"Pansies, right?" He asked Neil, his voice ragged and cracked.

Neil tilted his head to the side in consideration. "I think so,"

Eden’s does not smell like pansies. You’d be lucky to get a whiff of anything that isn’t cheap perfume or raw body odour here. Even the stench of spilled liquor on the cement floor is overruled by everything else brought in by the swarm of people.

Kevin bounces his numb legs and has to put effort into separating the rubber sole of his shoe from the half-dried booze beneath him. He supposes he's grateful, in a way, that someone's questionable cherry blossom perfume is the only thing hitting his nose right now. He, perhaps, would have preferred to have a less off-putting smell around him as he heads into his least favourite step, but he won't complain. Not when he feels like a rotted log housing a million tiny fire ants, crawling in crevasses and skulking around the plains of his flushed skin like it's their job.

Kevin wishes that the odour would grow stronger, if only so he could taste it and run through step five faster. It doesn't.

"Tell me what you taste, Kevin." Nathaniel whispered, looking just as off-balance as Kevin felt.

Kevin's eyes betrayed him as they dipped to the knife Nathaniel still held tightly in his shaky hand. He blinked manually for a moment, trying to ward off the dryness in his eyes, before raising his left hand to his stomach. The pain that flared violently through his nerves was immediate and unbearable, pushing the air out of him in one forceful huff as he touched the bloodied and lacerated skin.

"Kevin." Nathaniel dropped his knife and backed up; the blood on the blade rapidly seeped into the carpet.

He bumped into the edge of Riko's empty bed and stumbled before landing on his ass. Two terrifically blue eyes blinked at Kevin.

Kevin stared back, unsettled by the emotions he could see swim through the deep pools of azure.

Nathaniel's eyepatch had only just come off. Kevin was excited, until he saw Nathaniel trip over his own feet after a pass during practice.

Evidently, his vision had healed after taking an exy ball to the eye, but his balance had not. It rattled him more than most things, leaving him vulnerable in a way he'd clearly never known before.

Kevin hadn’t realised the extent of his unease; if he had, he probably wouldn’t have tried to wake Nathaniel from his nap in Kevin’s bed.

"Kevin," Nathaniel tried again. "One thing you taste."

Kevin should probably be running through the steps with Nathaniel, too. It's not fair for only one of them to get a helping hand. But instead, he shook his head wildly.

Taste? One taste? He couldn't feel anything other than pain; how was he supposed to pick a damn taste?

He breathed, a sharp ache shooting through him after the movement. Oh. A taste.

"Blood," He answered.

Andrew drops a full tray of drinks onto the table. It lands with a clatter, and the liquid in the glasses crawls up the sides to reach dangerous heights before splashing back down. Kevin grabs the closest one.

He doesn’t swallow it at first, letting the alcohol linger in his mouth and sink into his tongue. It doesn’t taste very good, though. Nothing he ever drinks does.

When he does swallow, it's more of a gulp than anything else. The shot burns like vodka typically does, and leaves behind a taste of hand sanitizer in his mouth as it travels down his throat.

One taste?

Vodka. There. Step five is done.

But it’s not enough. It never is when he’s alone, is it?

Kevin is good at many things; playing exy, analysing exy, giving people helpful tips so they can play exy too, and definitely a few other things he’s not exactly capable of adding to the list right now.

One thing he is not good at, though, is comprehending what's happening in his mind. It has never been a strength of his, and it probably never will be. Don't get him wrong, he can tell when something is off easily; he's just not good at fixing it.

But Neil is. The steps work with Neil because it’s Neil going through them with him. Kevin doesn’t usually try to use them on his own because they leave him feeling like a pot of water on a heated stove top. Add salt to make it boil faster, turn the heat up a little bit, and watch as it sits at the point where there are bubbles accumulating on the bottom of the pot. They’ll try their hardest to climb their way to the top, taking the steel walls as a supported shortcut, but they’ll cease their journey right before they hit the surface and turn the tides in a rolling boil.

Kevin reaches that point with prickly skin and hazy hearing. He's fairly certain that someone would have to speak above a normal volume for him to understand now, as he tries desperately to keep himself away from taking laboured breaths and fighting off traitorous tears.

Toeing the line of snapping should be considered a hobby of his, given how often he does it. Getting closer and closer each time.

And when he sees that blinking red line now, it's nearer than it was when he last went through the steps. There's a twisted part of him that wants to tap dance his ass on over it and say a generous "fuck you" to everyone as he sinks into the darkness that waits just beyond the edge. But he can’t. Not here, at least. He can’t reach the end of that frayed rope now--when the only person around is Andrew. Lord knows that he would take one look at the pathetic splinters Kevin is fracturing into and set them ablaze with glee.

As Kevin feels himself drift further and further from the point of caring about that, he decides he needs out. Or to get away. Neil’s always been such a fast runner, why couldn’t he have given Kevin a lesson or two before he left that night? Was the job so important that he couldn’t have spared another moment in the day to grace Kevin with a skill they both should have seen him needing? Obviously, or else he wouldn’t have gone. Wouldn’t have left Kevin in the Nest with Riko, unattended. Wouldn’t have let Riko get drunk, and he certainly would not have let Riko take that uninterrupted swing at Kevin’s hand and ruin whatever career he'd been trying to build in Riko’s shadow.

Out. He needs to get out of here right now.

Out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out out-

"Can we go?"

Kevin doesn’t notice he's spoken until his voice cracks under the pressure of his forced composure. He swallows once. Twice. Dutifully ignores the pain that blooms in the strained muscles of his jaw when he goes for a third.

Andrew tilts his head condescendingly. "Done already?"

Kevin drums shaky fingers against tingling thighs under the table. "It’s loud, and I’m tired."

A lazily sharp grin tugs at Andrew’s whiskey-slicked lips. "Are you?" He asks lightly.

No. He’s not tired. He could run a marathon and still crave more active release. But he meets Andrew’s narrowed eyes and nods, sluggish and unsure. Two words that do not often apply to Kevin.

He says a silent prayer that Andrew blames the small doses of cracker dust and alcohol swimming through his system for the sudden change in demeanor.

Andrew raises his eyebrows and shrugs one shoulder, grin twisting into a dull version of his usual manic smile. "Go find the others, then."

Kevin doesn’t need to be told twice, bracing his hands on the table and sliding out of his seat the moment the order settles between them.

His knees are weak after the first few steps towards the daunting crowd. Kevin, too proud to support himself on the nearby wall, keeps walking, taking a deep breath.

A mistake.

Stale air slips through his nose and travels down into his lungs in one slow, painful move. He blinks as the stinging sensation passes through him, and is greeted by swarming black dots when his eyes peel open again.

But he doesn’t stop. Moving on muscle memory alone across Eden’s loaded dance floor and feeling more like a puppet with each step.

He isn’t sure when exactly it happened, but as he pushes past yet another sweaty man, Kevin Day is no longer the one behind the steering wheel of his body. Not even present in the meat suit labelled as second best for life.

He watches from an unknown third-person perspective as Kevin stumbles, narrowly avoiding crashing into a group of girls.

Just as he thinks that Kevin is going to be left wandering aimlessly for eternity, a familiar form decked out in glitter and purple emerges from the crowd.

Kevin says something. Nicky replies. Whoever is pulling Kevin’s strings decides that he should follow Nicky when he turns and goes back into the crowd. It makes a little more sense to him as he sees a head of bright blonde come bouncing over to Kevin and Nicky, but his position in spectating only allows him to sit back miserably as the group trickles off the dance floor, leaving whatever words that are tossed around unheard by him.

But that nearly inconsequential complaint doesn't last long. All too quickly, the spectator is tossed back into the perpetually messy mind he belongs in, like a worn ragdoll discarded for the trash to pick up when they come around every second Tuesday.

And it’s too much. Everything. Too warm, too close, too loud, too bright. His wobbly legs simply endure this gruelling journey as he travels throughout the club.

Kevin thinks of it as a relief, really, when his hearing leaves him all together, revealing a track of ringing static playing steadily in his mind as the world turns black and he begins falling.

Kevin’s spine hurts.

Well, more accurately, everything hurts. His entire body is engulfed by the sort of dull ache that builds over time.

Without opening his eyes, he arches his back and listens to the loud pops that follow the series of relieving cracks. He groans at the release, rolling his neck across his shoulders to try and ease more tension. The vaguely gross sounds that come from that particular effort are less satisfying than the ones from his back, but with his posture slouched and marginally more comfortable than before, he won't complain.

However, when he flops back, fully expecting to meet his mattress, he becomes acquainted with what feels like the seat of a car instead. He hits the headrest behind him hard, his eyes snapping open at the sudden and rough contact. With all previous traces of sleep now entirely absent from his mind, Kevin looks at his surroundings with wide eyes.

A car. Why is he in a car? He doesn’t own a fucking car. Who’s car is this?

Okay, no, that’s not helping.

He rubs his eyes with the heel of his palms and tries to look around him again. Peering through the immaculately cleaned windshield, he squints to make out the shapes before him. A house? The cousin's house? In Columbia?

Oh.

Right.

That’s how the night ended. With a group of half-drunk people dragging him to Andrew’s car and throwing him in the passenger seat after he passed out on his way to the door.

The cousins must not have been able to carry him into the house on their own, considering he’s still here, with the doors locked and a window cracked open like he’s a toddler who fell asleep on a car ride and was left strapped to their seat while everyone else fled in fear of waking him up.

Rude.

Kevin sighs. In theory, he should go into the house and try to squeeze in a few more desperate hours of rest before he inevitably returns to the court tomorrow. He traces the path he would take to get from the car to the couch that awaits him inside and tries to count how long it would take him to get there. The answer is not even a full minute if he can get through the front door.

Too long, Kevin decides.

He fumbles blindly at the side of his seat until he finds the lever that’ll adjust it. Once he's got a good grip, he pulls and leans back, the seat going with him until he lays almost flat, staring up at the polyurethane foam coating of the roof above him.

With the almost deafening silence and uncomfortably warm air circling the car, it takes no time for Kevin to realise how truly miserable he feels all over again; a result of not having resolved his panic back at the club. He turns his head to the side and looks at a streetlight just down the road. Staring into the yellow glow it produces, he weighs the pros and cons of folding in on himself and never seeing the light of day again, or calling someone to keep him from being as totally alone as he is right now.

Kevin has never been the type of person who enjoys the company of others--most people have one conversation with him then write him off as an infuriating asshole who’s to be avoided--but dammit, he does not want to be alone now. Not anymore. He's been left to his own devices too many times today.

But what options does he even have? He can’t stand the belittling weight of Andrew’s presence; he won’t be able to stomach Nicky’s constant string of sexual chatter; and Aaron isn’t going to surrender his sleep for the sole purpose of keeping Kevin company.

Kevin looks away from the light, shoulders sagging into the reclined seat he lies on.

He’s upset, and he’s alone, and he is so very fucking close to throwing every remaining ounce of his dignity out the inch-wide gap in the window and sobbing his eyes out right here.

He won't, though, because it really isn't all that often that he'll allow himself to cry. He has enough self-control to be pretty good with that. When the black cat circling the platinum property of his mind starts to tread too close to the iron gates, he seeks out every distraction he can find so he won’t have to feel sharp, cold claws sink into his scorching skin. Won't have to start running away and not notice the leash around his neck until it pulls and drags him under unforgiving waters.

Exy is his favourite distraction. Challenging plays and demanding drills that gain control of his tangled brain and unplug him from the ruthless world he remains unfortunately present in. It's good. It's familiar. It works.

Usually.

It doesn't now, right when he needs it to. That seems to be a common theme for him tonight.

But as Kevin rolls around awkwardly, hindered by his exhaustion, he inevitably lets his thoughts stray to exy when nothing else presents itself as a welcomed intrusion.

He can't say he's surprised, really, when he comes up with a reminder of his and the Foxes' looming fate instead of his usual vision of the red glow of a goal or the sound of balls slamming off court walls. But it's still unfortunate. He would have much preferred the latter, especially when his other option consists of him thinking about how the Foxes are now at the minimum number of players allowed, how Andrew is one skipped dose away from being dragged off to prison, and the simple fact that the entire team hates him.

Coming to Palmetto had felt like a decent-ish idea at first. There would be a star goalkeeper who could stand between him and his fast approaching demons, a team of fuck-ups he could work with, and a completely untapped goldmine of potential hidden behind pointless brawls.

He wasn't completely wrong, but he was also nowhere near correct.

All of his efforts to fix the team are met with a cold assessment before being discarded without a second thought, and Andrew's protection comes with stipulations. Half the time, that tiny fucker won't even set foot on the damn court.

So yes, Kevin was wildly unprepared when he faced much more resistance than he'd been expecting, but he has yet to give up on his goal: to put the Foxes back together and create a team that could rival the Ravens. Kevin's bone-deep urge to be on the court at any given point during the day won't let him give up. A blessing or a curse? He couldn't tell. Not that he cares too much, though. He's been a little busy navigating the phase of reworking that has him trying to come to terms with the fact that this is going to be much harder than he'd assumed. Which is very possibly part of why he's here now, laying in Andrew's car, practically mourning the loss of something that isn’t even gone when he was supposed to be distracting himself.

With the same combination of helplessness, dread, and unnecessary amounts of homesickness, Kevin has somehow managed to land himself back at square one in record time.

It's pathetic, truly. If Riko could see him now, he would laugh.

For fuck’s sake, he probably can see Kevin now. Kevin wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if there were cameras hidden everywhere he went at this point. Riko’s already taken to having someone leave dead foxes around the stadium and Abby’s house; full-blown stalking feels like a natural progression, really.

Kevin groans quietly and readjusts in his lying-down seat.

Splitting his attention between Riko and trying to look over his shoulder for any sign of the main branch after arriving at Palmetto had been weakening for him, mentally and physically. Things only got worse when the first battered fox corpse came, splayed across Abby’s bannister like a decoration while its blood stained the pastel flowers below like some sort of fucked up watercolour paint.

At no point did it get better. Dismembered foxes popped up more frequently, each worse off than the last. Kevin specifically remembers the one draped over the handle of the stadium doors, tiny eyes bugging cartoonishly out of its head while its mouth sat wider open than Kevin had thought possible. There was no blood with that one; all of it was drained and disposed of in a way Kevin won't try to make sense of. But even now, a full month later, his stomach still twists with the mental image of the small animal being brutalised in such a way.

He lets out a dejected, hopeless sigh into the thick air that moves steadily through Andrew’s car. This needs to stop.

The selfish urge of wanting a singular moment of peace tonight has him moving around so he can go dig through his back pocket to pull out his phone. He eases back into his original position once he frees it, and with slow fingers, he scrolls through his limited list of contacts to stop at the one person who will understand the total disarray of his mind.

Baby Red flashes across the screen as the contact name when his phone begins to dial Neil’s number. Kevin puts the small device to his ear and listens to the low ringing that echoes over the speaker.

Neil doesn’t always pick up his phone. In fact, most of the time, the boy doesn’t even have his phone on him, let alone have it charged. Kevin could probably count the number of times Neil answered his phone after the first try on his hands, and he could count the times Neil was the one to call him on one lone finger.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad call, taking place a few measly weeks after his departure from the Nest. Basically, it was just Neil recounting the minimal details regarding the quick death of his father and his inheritance of power. That call had been 15 minutes at best, but Kevin had hung up with a smile tugging at his lips.

His speaker begins to play the fourth ring when the line clicks as it connects. There must be one forsaken scrap of luck on his side today.

He doesn’t dare say a word, taking in the near-silent puffs of air that get picked up by the microphone instead. There’s a faint sniffle, and then-

"Kevin?"

Hearing Neil’s smooth voice feels like a warm blanket being draped over frigid shoulders. Kevin blinks with the shudder that runs up and down his spine.

"You answered," He whispers slowly, preparing to savour whatever length of time his brother will give him now.

There’s some shuffling over the line.

"Kevin," Neil says again. "Do you know what time it is?"

Kevin shrugs, even if he knows Neil can’t see him. "No," He answers simply.

Neil snorts softly. "I won’t tell you, then."

His voice sounds tired, but that's not a surprise to Kevin anymore. Neil’s forever crowded brain has been making sleep a difficult task since the two of them first met.

It was alarming at first, finding his brother curled up in a storage closet or watching him teeter on the edge of consciousness. Though quickly, Neil’s abject hatred of the seemingly simple act of rest developed into yet another complex aspect of his personality, and Kevin had no choice but to endure it.

"That’s probably a good idea," He agrees, catching the notes of exhaustion that creep into his own voice.

There’s another shuffle that’s nearly drowned out by Neil’s fatigued sigh. "Call me crazy, Kev," Neil starts, and Kevin can practically see a lazy smirk pulling on his mouth like it always does when he knows he’s right. "But you sound rather rattled."

Isn’t Neil just so observant?

Kevin rolls his eyes, only slightly annoyed by how easily he was read. "A little," He admits, bringing one of his arms up to rest above his head. He tips his head to the side again, just enough to look at the dark sky through the passenger window.

"Care to explain?" Neil prompts.

Three undemanding words that have Kevin spilling his guts like a teenager who was just given unlimited access to alcohol for the first time.

"Everything's gone wrong," He says. The drip that welcomes the storm. "A player got herself admitted to the psych ward, and now she won’t be here for the new season, which means we only have nine people. And everyone thinks I’m being an asshole about it, but I’m not; I’m just worried about how the hell we’re going to do this. The Foxes only have one more player to spare, and then we’re fucking out, Baby Red. Out."

Kevin takes a moment to breathe, then continues with, "Do you know how risky that shit is? We’re, like, one strong gust of wind away from not having a defence line. They’re all so tiny. The twins are barely even five feet flat, Neil, it’s ridiculous. I could punt one of them out a window if I wanted to. Actually, no, not Andrew. He’s kind of scary. But Aaron’s not that bad, so yeah, I could punt Aaron out of a window and we would be over."

"Isn’t there a verb for that?"

Kevin blinks into the darkness, not following Neil’s train of thought at all. "A verb for what?"

"Throwing someone out a window." Neil clarifies, making a slight clicking noise with his tongue as he thinks.

"I don’t know; is there?" Kevin asks, stifling a yawn.

"Yeah," Neil answers, sounding relatively unsure. "That’s defenestration, right?"

Kevin has never heard that word in his life. "Is it?"

"Fuck’s sake, Kevin," Exasperation creeps into Neil’s voice easily, tucking itself between the lilting patterns of his tongue and fitting perfectly.

Kevin scoffs. "Sorry, I didn’t know there was a fancy word for throwing people out of windows. I didn’t call you for an English lesson; excuse me if I wasn’t prepared."

Instead of quipping back with the same energy Kevin has grown to expect, Neil falls silent. Taking a moment to do what Kevin guesses is thinking over his words before breaking the startling stillness that's surrounded them.

"Why did you call?" Neil ends up asking.

There are a few answers to that question; Kevin wanted the company of someone who would see his side of the Foxes' current mess; he missed his brother; he'd already had a shit night, and it was about to get a whole lot worse if he let his mind keep spiralling about Riko and hidden cameras and dead foxes.

Kevin bites the bullet, deciding there’s no better way to sum up all of his reasons than by saying exactly that. Just, perhaps, in fewer words.

"Life sucks, and I miss you."

Maybe it was his blunt delivery of the sentiment, or possibly even just the tone of his voice, but Kevin managed to startle a genuine laugh out of Neil with his confession. The kind that only he and Vanya--and possibly Ichirou--have heard. A beautiful sound from the pit of Neil’s stomach that rings through Kevin’s ears like music. It’s unfortunate, really, how so few people have been able to hear it.

Kevin listens closely as Neil tries to regain his composure, taking a few deep breaths for good measure. After the third one that Kevin counts, Neil clears his throat.

"What do you need, Kev?" He asks, hints of laughter still trapped in his throat.

A plane flies overhead, green and white lights blinking down from the sky as it stands out amongst the stars, and Kevin hesitates.

What does he need? Kind of a lot, actually. Probably too much to get off his chest all at once, even if purging himself of that much would feel like a dream. He needs Riko gone, he needs another player, he needs someone to see his side of things, and he needs someone to help him make the Foxes function.

Oh.

It's not a coincidence that all of that can be traced back to one person, right?

"I think I just... need my brother," He says, voice coarse enough that it scratches at his throat. A touch too honest for the deafening silence of Andrew’s car; he cringes a little bit when the words settle. That didn’t explain fucking anything, huh?

Kevin shakes his head, about to expand on his ominous point, when Neil beats him to it. "Why?" He asks, enough emphasis on that one word, that Kevin knows Neil already has all the answers.

He won't question how Neil got them, or why he chose to let Kevin talk around the real cause of this call, but he'll take the way Neil continues to play this game into account as he weighs what he wants to say.

Watching a distant satellite blink slowly from where it hides behind the clouds, Kevin bites at his lower lip and hopes his confession will come out of him easily. "I don't know what to do anymore, Neil," He starts slowly, widening his eyes and pretending it doesn't physically pain him to say that he's lost here. "I already told you, we're doomed for the season. Riko breathing down our necks probably isn't helping, either. I think the team blames me for letting him get so close to us; they don't listen to a word I say, and none of them give even half a shit for what happens anymore. They won't even try, because what's the point? At the rate we're going, we won't make it past the first round. And then what? Riko comes knocking on our door, ready to take me back, and I have no ground to stand on?"

He squeezes his eyes shut until there's a rumbling sound in his ears. "I don’t want to go back, Neil."

When he does finally open his eyes, it’s only to see the stars twinkling back tauntingly at him while he waits for Neil’s response. His heart hammers in his chest, and his stomach turns like the tides of an active child’s bathwater.

"What- hmm…" Neil starts and stops, searching for words as Kevin chokes on the anticipation.

"What exactly has Riko been doing that you qualify as ‘breathing down your neck’?" Kevin can almost feel Neil’s brain starting to work as his question cracks over the line.

Kevin looks away from the shimmering stars, turning his head a bit to stare at the roof. "Does it matter?"

"Good lord," Neil mumbles to himself in a suffering tone. "Yes."

It’s a declaration that Kevin really shouldn’t argue with, but maybe he’s more similar to Neil than he’d like to admit, because he does in the form of asking, "Why?"

"Christ, Kevin," There’s some movement as Neil answers. "If Riko becomes a threat to the family name, necessary measures need to be taken."

"Oh," Kevin says dumbly, not understanding what Neil means by that.

"Kevin, there's no need for this to be hard; just tell me." Neil interrupts his questioning thoughts before they can go too far. "I know it might feel like it, but we do not have all night."

"Yeah, right, uh," He flounders a little bit, picturing the limp body of a tiny animal being picked up with a trash bag like a rotting jack-o’-lantern after the holidays pass. "Foxes. They’re turning up dead at the stadium, and there's been a few at the place I’m staying. Also some vandalism, but that could be anyone, really."

Neil tsks quietly. "Dead foxes," He muses. "Gross. If it’s happening where you’re staying, neighbours are sure to notice it soon, too. That won’t end well when you have to explain why your front lawn looks like an occult meeting."

Kevin snorts at Neil’s comment. "If someone asks, I sure as fuck won’t tell the truth."

"Careful, Kevin, there’s only enough room for one habitual liar here."

Well, at least he’s self-aware.

"Yes, trust me, Neil, I know," Kevin concedes, huffing a bitter laugh. "Don’t worry, though. I’m sure everyone else around here will point the finger at Riko the first chance they get."

"Oh, probably," Neil says, sounding only half annoyed by that truth. "Which appears to be where this becomes a problem, then."

Kevin scoffs. "It wasn’t a problem when a bunch of random foxes died?"

"Well, that's kind of foul, yeah, but it wasn't exactly the obstacle I was looking for."

His brother’s business-like approach is so obnoxious that Kevin has to hold back the puff of laughter threatening to escape. It's not too hard, in the end, and he's able to control himself enough to ask, "And that obstacle is the truth coming out?"

Neil’s grin is audible as he replies. "Riko’s antics getting outed to the public would make him a liability. And I do remember telling you that threats need to be dealt with accordingly."

Kevin's previous confusion about that statement is brushed away like dust from a high shelf. He isn't sure why it took so long for everything to click, but his mouth drops open slightly when he remembers that, when Riko is being problematic, Neil is the one who's supposed to deal with him. And currently, Riko is running the risk of becoming very problematic.

His stomach lurches into his throat with the conclusions he jumps to. "So, you’re gonna go back to the Nest?" He asks quietly. Slowly. Unsure how to feel about Neil putting himself in that situation again. He can't do that, right? He has other things to worry about now.

Neil hums disapprovingly, and it’s just as much a dangerous sound as it is melodic. Much like everything else about Neil. For all that he is Kevin’s baby brother, his Baby Red, he is also someone who learned how to skin a body before he learned how to tell his left from his right.

That hasn’t stopped him from being a bouncy ball of radiant light and Kevin’s personal source of joy, but it’s made watching him do things like flip sophomore Ravens on their asses seem more logical.

"Try again," Neil offers.

Kevin does. "You're... coming to Palmetto?" There’s a heavy layer of doubt shrouding his question.

"I was supposed to follow you and Riko through the pros since the beginning," Neil says simply, completely ignoring Kevin’s uncertainty. "Kengo called it off when you left, assuming Riko wouldn’t reach out."

"But he did," Kevin fills in at Neil’s slight pause.

"He did," The agreement tumbles out of Neil’s mouth lightly, as though they were discussing the weather right now and not one of Kevin’s waking nightmares. "So now we’re back at square one."

"What happens at square one?" Kevin asks.

"You were there eight years ago. What happened then?"

Unprepared for that question, Kevin falters, running through the years of his life in search of an answer. Eight years ago, Neil would have been about ten; Kevin and Riko were twelve. The only notable thing from that year was Neil’s sudden change of assignments from the main branch, where he went from reporting what happened in the Nest to being Kevin’s personal protection.

Square one. Neil’s new position.

"You became my security detail."

Neil yawns. "Yup,"

"But you can’t do that again," Kevin says, connecting the dots in his head. If they're back to when Neil's job changed, then that means Kevin was right. Neil has to come to Palmetto. Even as Kevin plays their conversation in his head again, he still comes to the same conclusion; but there's just no fucking way. He drops his voice to a whisper as he finishes, not caring that no one is around to hear him. "You’re the fucking butcher now, Neil. They won’t just let you go."

Neil sighs sufferingly. "See, that doesn’t really mean what it used to, though."

What.

"The fuck?" Kevin uses one elbow to prop himself up in the reclined seat, a crinkle forming between his brows.

"It’s more like a group now, I guess. Not just one person." Neil roughly explains. "If I left tomorrow, there would be someone to take over my workload."

"If it’s a group, wouldn’t that make you the leader?" Kevin asks, trying and failing to navigate the messy path Neil has led them down now.

Kevin can almost see Neil’s one-shouldered shrug as he answers with a simple, "Yeah,"

"Then that’s just more incentive to stay." Kevin argues, grasping at the straws he can't believe Neil is ignoring.

Neil tuts. "Not really. I come and go pretty often as is, so something like this wouldn’t be new to them."

"But it would be," Kevin says, stressing his point by shaking his head in the darkness around him. "Because you wouldn’t be coming back."

"Says who?"

Jesus Christ, Kevin forgot how talking to Neil can be like talking to a brick wall sometimes. "You can’t just be taking days off to go back home for business, Neil. That won't work here."

"Weekends are a lovely thing." Neil says, through another yawn.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"Neil."

"Kevin."

Kevin opens and closes his mouth a few times, stuttering as he searches for something to say. There has to be something that can explain why this won't work, even if Kevin desperately wants it to. "It can’t be that easy," He ends up saying.

"Why not?"

It used to be a bit off-putting how easily Neil could shut him up. Now, though, Kevin likes to think he's gotten pretty used to the way his mind comes to a screeching halt and forces him to weigh out a reply Neil would accept.

Why not?

Kevin's shoulder starts to ache, and he moves his elbow so he can sink back down while he considers what to say here.

But truth be told, he doesn’t have an answer. Why can’t it be that easy? Why can’t Neil point a finger at the problem, say ‘I’ll figure it out,’ and do just that? What’s stopping him? Apparently, not his new position; that much has been made decently clear.

Maybe Kevin just doesn’t want to admit that Neil has that kind of authority now. Maybe he's just incapable of letting himself believe his baby brother’s grown so much in their time apart that he has the power to leave whatever the fuck he’s got going on in New York for Kevin’s sake.

It's a scary image, truthfully. Neil, fighting tooth and nail as he climbs up the rickety and untrustworthy latter of the Moriyama family. Perhaps it's that image that has Kevin refusing Neil's help. He doesn't know who, or even what, his brother is right now.

Well, realistically, he knows that Neil is still Neil, with stupid red curls that bounce when he runs and a tongue that works like a knife. And he also knows that Neil is still the Neil who lies down in the middle of abandoned backroads when he can't bear the thought of being around people anymore, and he's still the boy who could stumble off a roof if you left him unsupervised.

What he doesn't know is exactly how much of himself Neil has had to sacrifice to be where he is without Kevin. He doesn't know if Neil forced himself to harden his already sharp edges so he could survive full-time with the main branch, and it kills him that there is an unknown factor about his brother when there's never been one before. Kevin has always known the ins and outs of Neil's life, and now that he doesn't, he's fucking terrified.

Current Neil has a whole world at his fingertips that Kevin couldn't even dream of knowing intimately. Hushed stories shared between boys in the dead of night provided him with a map of all the salient details, but the tight-lipped and labyrinthine plots that really pulled the strings were hidden behind impenetrable walls of trepidation. Kevin never asked about those factors; Neil assured him he didn’t want to know. However, Neil didn't even have all the answers then. He does now.

Kevin thinks of Neil once more, biting his tongue as he walks through the snake's den he was thrown into following Kevin's leave, and tells himself again, it can't be that easy.

Denial does not suit Kevin very well.

"I don’t know." He answers at last. He doesn’t know why there can’t be a simple solution. He doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He doesn't know why the prospect of seeing Neil again feels like a reward and a punishment. "I don't... I just don't know what to do here."

"Well, I do," Neil says, sounding every bit the hopeful and confident young man he was when Kevin saw him last. Kevin compares the foggy mirage of Neil he has now with the one he left behind. Is there really that big a difference between the two? He supposes that even if there is, Neil is at least so sure of himself, still, that it's hard to argue with what he says. Another similarity he can add to the list he holds onto like a lifeline right now.

He tips his head back, feeling the skin of his neck stretch as he swallows, and decides the 5 parallels he can draw are enough for him.

"Kevin," Neil prompts when the waiting silence stretches on for too long.

He wants an answer now, and Kevin will give it to him. He puts what little pride he still has aside and accepts the fact that he is about to start grovelling for the help he just spent a good few minutes denying, all because he's managed to convince himself that the unknowns that lurk within Neil don't outweigh the truths he still has.

"I need you," He confesses, caving so easily to Neil that it should be frightening. He's fairly certain someone would call him out for his lack of spine right now if this little exchange had any witnesses. "Here, at Palmetto," He clarifies needlessly. "I need you on this dreadful team, and I need you to stand at my back the same way you did in the fucking Nest."

It’s Neil’s turn to pause, taking one deep breath before leaving Kevin to marinate in his admission.

Fuck. He said too much. Revealed his desperation too early. He shouldn’t have just jumped in like that, he should have let Neil explain what his plan is. Neil never said exactly that he was coming to Palmetto, what if Kevin made that leap all on his own? Sure, it was implied, but implications don't mean shit in the grand scheme of things.

Christ, Neil probably thinks he’s so fucking lame now. He probably heard Kevin say, ‘I need you,’ and stopped listening. What if-

"Very dramatic of you, Kevin." Neil says, laughter snagging at the edges of his words. "It’s good to see Palmetto hasn’t changed that."

"Fuck you," Kevin says, as he welcomes the startling clarity of knowing that Neil does not, in fact, despise him now. But his stomach continues to roll with unease at the lack of real answers as to what the fuck Neil has in mind. A certain anxiety sits on his chest like a fat cat in the middle of the night who has no other plans than to disturb your sleep and stare into your soul.

Kevin can hear Neil's steady breathing, and when Neil makes to move to say anything else, Kevin takes another turn, carving just a little more out of his stinging chest. "Neil, just... just tell me what the fuck you’re planning so I don’t get my hopes up here."

He's done talking now. Whether that's due to the fact that he has nothing else to add or the warning wobble in his voice he felt as he finished relaying his request, who's to say? Not Kevin, that's for sure.

"Kengo," Neil says, catching Kevin off guard. "I have to run it all by him first. He’ll sign off, though. It was his idea to have a fail-safe in the form of a team; it'd be pretty hypocritical if he said no now."

Kevin nods slowly, then hums when he realises Neil is waiting for confirmation that Kevin heard him.

"With what you've told me, I can probably kickstart the operation to protect you from the second son again. I have Vanya in a safe house about half an hour away from campus, so I’ll have her verify everything. We’ll take the same route we did when we were at the Nest, but I would only be following you until Riko is dealt with, whether that be the end of the first semester or all the way to the pros, I can't say."

Kevin raises his eyebrows, surprised by the news that Vanya is only half an hour away from campus. But Neil doesn't give him the time to dwell on it, barreling on like he didn't just tell Kevin that he's had eyes on him for some undisclosed amount of time.

"There’s no record of me ever having a connection to either you or Riko, so Kengo will most likely want to stick to his original method of no alias. After that, he'll probably hand over the reins to Ichirou, Vanya, and I, and we'll get the rest of the technical stuff sorted out." Neil stifles a yawn before continuing. "I can pull off the switch to striker pretty easily, so I’ll try out as a sub and bet on your coach's desperation and perpetually bleeding heart. Then I’ll be on the team, and everything else will be the same as it was back in the Nest. Oh, and don't start worrying about my other job, Kev, I can handle it."

Neil adds the last part like he expected Kevin to argue about it again. Fair judgement, considering Kevin opens his mouth, preparing to do just that because he refuses to believe Neil's comment of ‘weekends are a lovely thing,' is the real solution here.

"You trust me, Kev." Neil reminds him, obviously sensing that he was about to say something.

Kevin does trust Neil. With his life, and they both know it. He would walk across a broken rope bridge blindfolded if Neil was the one leading him, so his saying that Kevin trusts him is not a question in the slightest. And yet, the small confirmation of, "I do," slips free from Kevin's mouth and travels across the line for Neil to hear.

"Good," Neil says, quietly, as if his acknowledgement is a secret for only them to share. "Now go the fuck to sleep and trust that I’ll have everything on my end dealt with by the time you wake up."

The low and gentle tone of Neil’s voice remains present as he reprimands and simultaneously assures Kevin. It’s a strange mix that Neil has mastered, and a familiar, tired smile creeps onto Kevin’s face as his eyes fall closed.

"Is sleeping in a car bad?" He asks, already adjusting slightly to relieve the tension in his thighs and back.

Neil scoffs. "I would usually say yes, but this is you we're talking about."

Kevin’s smile widens. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means you’re a freak with freaky habits. Like sleeping in cars and calling your brother at four in the morning and continuing to talk until it’s nearly five."

Kevin's eyes fly open, and he just barely resists the urge to sit up. "Shit. It’s almost five?"

"Yes." Neil confirms, making no attempt to hide his amusement. "Hence why I told you to go the fuck to sleep,"

"You first," Kevin argues on instinct.

"A child. You are a child."

"I refuse to take that criticism from you,"

"For fuck’s sake," Neil grumbles to himself, going so far to move the phone away from him so Kevin is left listening to the echoey and muffled version. "It’s too early for this shit."

"Rude," Kevin says, knowing Neil can still hear him.

"Mm-hmm," Neil must have moved his phone back, because his voice is clear and slightly louder when it comes through. "Go to bed, Kevin. You have shit to do."

"So do you."

"Irrelevant; I always have shit to do."

"A problem on its own,"

"I'm aware. Now goodnight, Kev," Neil says in an animated voice, leaving no room for further argument.

Kevin rolls his eyes and really hopes that Vanya isn't watching him, and that his earlier thoughts about Riko's hidden cameras are total bullshit, because no one needs to see the ridiculously fond look that spreads across his face as he gives up on trying to stay awake. Sorting through all your insecurities and current life issues is a very tiring activity, okay? "Yeah, fine, whatever. Goodnight, Neil."

Kevin stretches his legs out further in the footwell until he physically can't, letting Neil end their call with a sigh.

Whatever thin layer of anxiety and pure fear that had adapted to him like a second skin when he finally rejoined the land of the living in Andrew’s car feels dimmed now, overcome by a low thrum of giddiness.

The sky looks dangerously light as Kevin drops his phone onto his stomach and closes his eyes for what is hopefully the final time that night, but he can’t be bothered to care about exactly how little rest he'll be getting. He's too busy picturing Neil, the best exy player he's ever met, at Palmetto with him. Wearing the uniforms Kevin already knows will clash with his hair as he makes his way onto the court. Kevin sees Neil, and he sees the goal, and he sees the number on the scoreboard tick up by one, and he lets these images of the now promising season before him take his scarred hand, guiding him into a sleep that will leave his back sore and his muscles stiff when he inevitably wakes up and is forced to face the mess his life has been left in.

Chapter Text

"You sneaky bastard."

Neil adjusts the strap of the bag on his shoulder again, climbing up the stairs to Ichirou’s top-floor apartment because the elevator broke down last week and has yet to be fixed.

"I did nothing," He says casually, electing to ignore the slight panting tone in his heavy breaths as he passes the seventh floor.

"You talked to Kengo," Vanya argues over the phone. "That was a sneaky move."

"It was not," Neil pauses at the landing for a moment, one hand braced on the railing wrapping around the wall with the other on his hip as he shakes his feet out, cursing himself for not bringing a change of clothes for after the meeting. "It was the plan."

"No," Vanya says. "There was no real plan; you made that shit up. We had a rough outline, okay, but not a real plan."

"And the rough outline involves me figuring out the Kevin situation," Neil comments, rolling his eyes before begrudgingly resuming his journey up the stairs. "We want to tie up the loose ends in a pretty bow so we can be more prepared when Kengo passes everything off to Ichirou. This is me doing that."

"This is you being impulsive," Vanya counters. "We were supposed to have a clearer image of what needed to be done before we started actually doing said things."

"Kevin called me on the verge of crumbling like an old statue," Neil starts, taking a deep breath so he can get his words out without needing to pause for more air. "And you’re trying to tell me I should have passed on the chance to get down to Palmetto and figure shit out, simply because we don’t have a more concrete game plan?"

There’s a heavy sigh that rumbles Neil’s speakers from Vanya’s side. "No, what I’m trying to say is that you could have, perhaps, been a bit neater in the way you went about this whole thing."

Neil closes his eyes and tilts his head towards the roof as he passes the 10th floor. "How could I have made this neater, Vee? Enlighten me."

"You could have consulted Itch and I before telling Kevin you would be there for him."

"But we’ve had this conversation before," Neil points out, dropping his head and letting his hair flop down in front of his eyes. "You said it was a good idea, and so did Itch, so why are we here now?"

Vanya tuts. "Because giving people appropriate warnings is important. For instance, I would have preferred it if my morning coffee was not rudely interrupted by a text from Ichirou’s assistant telling me that my brother had decided to come down to the world’s blandest college on a protection order."

Neil’s footsteps stutter.

She makes a valid point.

"Okay," Neil admits. "Yeah, that maybe could have been handled better."

"Maybe?"

"Fuck, fine, yes, I should have told you myself." The half groan Neil tacks onto the end of his sentence is not necessary, but it feels right.

"There we go," Vanya agrees, sounding pleased with herself. "While we’re here, I think you could also do to apologize for logging into my servers and searching through all of my files."

Neil hums. "No, I think I’m good there. I was a man on a mission; I won’t apologize for that."

"Yes, a mission to find dead foxes, it seems." There’s an air of humour surrounding Vanya’s voice, even if she clearly is not happy.

"Exactly," Shaking his head sagely, even though Vanya can’t see him, Neil strolls past the sign for the 14th floor. "Very important stuff."

"It never occurred to you that asking me would have worked just as well?"

A bead of sweat rolls down Neil’s forehead, trailing down his nose bridge before teetering precariously at the tip. Neil wipes it away with his polyester sleeve, removing the perspiration forming above his top lip in one swift motion as well.

On the phone the other night, he had told Kevin he would check with Vanya to confirm his story. Almost immediately after that call, Neil had retrieved his laptop from his kitchen counter and began his search for anything even remotely close to what Kevin had told him, bypassing Vanya as a whole while he hunched over the hunk of junk he continues to use as a computer in the dark, sipping on a lukewarm cup of black coffee the entire time.

A silent prayer had been said in that echoey kitchen to whatever god was listening when Neil had discovered how cut and dry Vanya’s titles were; a small thank you for whatever had influenced her to make a folder entitled ‘Vandalism and foxes’.

Neil supposes, in a strange and rather convoluted way, that he did check the information with Vanya.

"No," He answers. "My way was faster."

"Oh, yeah, I bet guessing all of my passwords and sorting through the alphabetized titles was much faster than asking me whatever question you were trying to answer."

Well, it sounds kind of bad when it’s put like that.

"Gross," Neil complains. "I don’t care about your details."

"You should. It’s my details that will get you into PSU and onto that god awful team." Vanya laughs as she reminds Neil exactly how much of his operation will hinge on her.

Evil, evil woman.

"Speaking of," Vanya continues, her voice getting lighter as her previous rage drains out of her slowly. "When am I to expect you to join this merry group of delinquents?"

"Oh," Neil stalls, thinking back to an hour ago, when Kengo had signed off on the mission with a ridiculously fancy pen. "June twenty-fourth."

Ichirou’s apartment number is written in loopy copper letters above his door, greeting Neil with their usual dull look when he arrives on the final floor.

"Just before the start of the season," Vanya observes, clicking a pen aimlessly. Neil has to strain a little bit to hear the sound, but once he catches it, he can’t let go. Imagining Vanya’s intricately painted fingernails as her hand wraps loosely around the small item, but not loose enough that she can’t grip it to toy with the top of it, evidently. Neil listens, and his mind goes numbingly blank for not even a full five seconds while he focuses. But what exactly is he focusing on? The sounds? The slight static that follows each click while it carries over the speaker?

Vanya must notice Neil’s sudden silence and deduce the reason on her own, because the small noise stops, replaced quickly by Vanya’s naturally sharp voice. "Is that enough time for you to prepare yourself? I’m assuming you know the Foxes are in need of a striker, and you are not that."

Neil blinks and shakes his head, shedding the weight from his shoulders that he hadn't noticed settle there. "Believe it or not, I am aware of what I've signed myself up for."

Vanya hums, long and low, showing just how little she believes him. "Dodging the question, are we?"

Neil groans, inserting his key into the small hole on Ichirou’s handle and twisting. "I’ll be fine. I have a decent amount of faith that Kevin will kick my ass back into shape if I really am that bad after almost a year of not playing."

"Let’s hope that’s not the case," Vanya says smoothly. "Years of training with the top exy team should be good for at least one thing."

"You’d think so, wouldn’t you?" Neil pulls his key out of the silver handle and leans against the door as it opens into Ichirou’s apartment.

Vanya shifts the phone slightly when she answers next, sending a small amount of crackling over the line. "I’d certainly like to,"

Ichirou sits up from his place on the couch, sipping on a glass of scotch as he observes Neil shutting the door and sliding the lock closed again.

"Agreed." Neil says, toeing off his shoes happily. "I should probably go now, I just got to Itch’s place."

Vanya snorts lightly to herself, probably putting together the pieces that Neil had just climbed many flights of stairs and was not running some sort of marathon while on the phone. "Oh," She says, a smile audible in her voice. "That’s why you sounded so winded, then. Tell Ichirou I said hello,"

Neil slips his jacket off next, tossing it in the general direction of the coat rack but making no effort to actually hang it up. "Will do," He agrees, not having the energy to question what Vanya had thought he was doing in the first place. He sways slightly in place before turning and making his way over to Ichirou’s living room. "Bye, Vee,"

"Goodbye, Neil," Vanya says, taking it upon herself to end the call.

"Vanya says hi," Is the first thing out of Neil’s mouth when he’s finally in range of Ichirou. He bypasses the plush couches creating a square around the coffee table and settles on the ground, raking his fingers through the soft material of the carpet as he stretches out his legs.

Ichirou doesn’t pause in his furious typing, tossing a reply over the screen of his laptop while he leans around it haphazardly to place his glass on the coffee table. "I take it she’s not pissed anymore?"

Neil chuckles.

If Vanya had been angry with him when she had first called, she would have been positively furious with Ichirou this morning.

Neil lies back and supposes Vanya insisting he’s younger than her even though they have the same birthday isn’t too bad if it gets him some leniency.

"No," He answers at last. "Not at me, at least." He grins and rolls over onto his side, peering into the darkness under Ichirou’s couch.

"You fuck," Ichirou groans, adjusting on the velvet cushion and cracking his back. Neil frowns at the sound, mildly disgusted, and rolls his eyes when Ichirou settles back down, sitting so low in his seat that he starts slowly sliding down, making no effort to catch himself.

Ichirou leans over to place his laptop on the ground beside Neil’s legs and lets himself flop off the sofa fully, nearly sitting on Neil’s feet in the process.

"Graceful," Neal comments, eyes snagging on a familiar shape under the couch.

"Mm-hmm," Ichirou reclaims his laptop and resumes his work. Neil is about to embrace the silence and let the man focus, but then he realises he has no clue what exactly Ichirou is doing. It's not a huge deal, but Neil has made a habit of knowing what the people around him work on throughout the day.

He leans forward a little bit, extending his arm beneath the couch and fumbling around on the dusty ground. "What are you doing?"

"Hmm?" Ichirou yawns and sinks impossibly lower, settling into a position that has him almost lying down.

Neil’s fingers strain and wrap around the cool exterior of an exy ball. He slowly leans away from the couch and brings the ball out with him. "What are you working on?" He specifies, rolling onto his back once more.

"Oh," Ichirou’s eyes flicker away from his screen briefly, scanning Neil to check what he's retrieved from under the couch before landing back on whatever has his attention in such a tight grasp. "Plotting."

"Very ominous," Neil says, tossing the worn ball into the air and watching casually as it comes tumbling back down and drops soundlessly into his waiting hand. "Unfortunately, I’m gonna need a better answer than that."

Ichirou sighs, rolling his head across his shoulder. "I still have to get you into PSU, and then I have to find a way to get Baby to South Carolina because I already know there’s no way in hell you’re gonna part with your stupid car. On top of that, I still have to sort some logistic shit out for what we’ll do with you gone."

Neil throws the bull up again and tracks its pattern of flight with his eyes as it spins at the peak of his throw before careening back down. "Gross," He says, a very elegant summary of his feelings.

"I’m aware," Ichirou agrees flatly, and Neil lets go of the ball again.

He doesn’t feel bad for Ichirou. Combing through the fine details to make everything look uniform is the man’s current job.

That simple fact has not, in fact, stopped Neil from wanting to grab a hold of the puppet strings Ichirou pulls and join in on conducting that specific part of the show.

He won’t, though. He knows what his place is in the three-pronged fork that Vanya, Ichirou, and himself have prepared to stab into the meat of the Moriyama empire when they inherit the reigns.

Neil sends the ball higher on the next round of tossing it lazily into the air. It falls back into his palm with a smack loud enough to reach his ears and twitch the corner of Ichirou’s eyes.

"Is Vanya aware you’ll be staying with her until you can get into the dorms?" Ichirou asks, breaking the sudden silence that follows as Neil stops throwing the ball and starts rolling it around his stomach.

Neil hums. "She’ll figure it out. Basic connecting the dots stuff."

Ichirou huffs a pathetic excuse for a laugh. "Your confidence in her is baffling."

"But not misplaced," Neil reminds, bringing the ball up to the hollow of his chest before bringing it back down.

"Sure, sure," Ichirou says lightly, tilting his laptop screen down so he can reach forward and snag the glass of scotch on the coffee table. "And we’re positive we’re not gonna use an alias here?" He asks, toying with the cup for a moment to watch the liquid held inside dance around.

Neil sits up, rolling the ball down into his lap as he does so. "There’s no point," He admits shallowly, bringing the ball up one side of his leg slowly and then leaning into the natural momentum it gains when it goes back down the other way.

"I could find one if you wanted me to," Ichirou offers, lifting the detailed and stained glass to his lips. "It wouldn’t be too hard." He adds quickly, then takes a small sip of the amber liquid.

"Oh, yes, you probably could," Neil says, continuing his pattern with the ball. "But you won’t."

Ichirou lowers his drink slowly, turning to look at Neil with an arched brow. "Why not?" He asks, placing it on the unsteady ground beside him. On instinct, Neil reaches out and grabs it by its wide mouth, holding it on top of his thigh for safety.

"Because," Neil reasons lamely.

Because he doesn’t want to be a burden; because he doesn’t want to add to Ichirou’s workload; because he hasn’t needed to come up with an alias for years now and he doesn’t even know where to start anymore.

"Your dad said it would be fine."

Rolling his eyes, Ichirou adjusts the screen of his laptop again. "And since when do you care what he says?"

Neil drags his finger around the rim of the glass and raises it to his mouth, resting it just a breath away from his lips. With a shrug, he says, "I don’t," then drinks.

Ichirou watches intently as Neil sips, brows furrowed in a mix of concern and judgement. "So you won’t use an alias... why?"

"Do I need a real reason?" Neil deflects, knowing full well he has several.

Tipping his head from side to side carefully, Ichirou sighs. "I guess not, no,"

Neil takes another pull from the burning liquid before reaching over to return it to the coffee table, the exy ball and its pointless rhythm forgotten about just for the moment. "Cool," He says, feeling only slightly awkward.

Ichirou goes back to typing, slower this time though. Neil is just about to lie back down when the urge to explain hits him.

Well, maybe not explain, but to expand.

All good liars add small shavings of the truth into their lies, but Neil hadn't done that when answering Ichirou. A coarse whisper sounds in the back of his mind. Telling him sharply that it's not enough. Ichirou doesn't believe him.

It’s not true, of course, Neil is a very good liar. If he said the sky was green with enough confidence, someone would believe him.

But again, all good liars include shadows of the truth.

"It would give him leverage," The ominous conversation had only been left to hang for a few moments before Neil’s back grabbing at it again with greedy hands. "Riko." Neil specifies further. "He knows me. If I went into this with a fake name, he would pull that rug out from under me in a heartbeat."

A half-truth of sorts. Riko definitely would do that to Neil if he were to use an alias for this.

It's a reason, just not Neil's.

He scoots closer to Ichirou, exy ball now forgotten completely and cast aside as Neil spins his carefully crafted excuse. "There’s no way for him to prove that I was a Raven, but he can prove a fake identity easily. And he will if he gets mad enough."

"If he gets mad enough," Ichirou echoes, a small smile creasing the corner of his mouth. "Did you manage to forget in your time away from the Nest that he lives his life in a constant and overflowing state of rage?"

"No," Neil says breezily, acting as though his mind didn’t supply him with the exact pitch of Jean’s anguished howls when Riko needed an outlet for his unbridled rage. Jean had always seemed to be more of the swan writhing in agony rather than the raven cawing for undeserved attention to Neil. "I’m aware of his unfortunate temper." A nearly laughable understatement.

"Fancy words to say the kid’s a dick," Ichirou observes. "The Wesninski charm. Such wordy people, your family."

In Neil's humble opinion, that characterization of Nathan Wesninski is impressively flawed. He nods along anyway, though, knowing that Ichirou is acutely aware of how far away from "wordy" Neil's father really was too.

"I'd rather my family legacy be a string of pretentious douchebags than the world’s most morally questionable exy team." Neil says, letting his lips split in a hollow smile.

"Careful, boy," Ichirou says, turning his full attention to Neil. "You were a player on that exy team."

"Was I?" Neil asks, blinking innocently at Ichirou. "What’s your proof?" A subtle nudge to bring them back to the original topic of the conversation.

Ichirou picks up on it quickly, his eyes falling to Neil’s cheek for a brief second before peering back into the depths of Neil’s soul. He grins, an expression almost as sharp as Neil’s but not quite. "Forever grateful you never got that damn tattoo."

Neil hums. "Yes, I skipped out on one group tattoo just to get another one a year later. How lucky I am."

Ichirou leans forward to the coffee table and grabs the first pen he makes contact with. He uses the momentum he gains as he falls backwards to gently stab Neil’s throat while he reaches over. He hits the general area of Neil's tattoo placement but misses the nape of his neck by just a few centimeters. "You helped me design it; you don’t get to bitch." He points out.

Neil slides back, freeing himself from Ichirou’s impromptu pen attack, and accidentally knocks the exy ball away with the side of his hand while he grabs at the carpet for stability. "I was not complaining," He says in his own defence. "I was just pointing out the beautiful irony there. You know, you very subtly shitting on your brother’s cult with me while also having one of your own. Must run in the family, I guess."

"Mm-hmm, sure," Ichirou says, his head lolling back until it rests on the couch cushion behind him. "But it’s not my cult; it’s our cult."

Neil tips his head lazily and snorts. "Still a cult," He reminds.

"A cult with willing members, though." There’s an amused lilt to Ichirou’s voice as he attempts to defend the empire they’ve managed to build off of the Butcher’s name. "There’s a difference. Even bigger difference, our tattoo is actually cool."

"I suppose the numbered face brands are a bit tired," Neil says, relaxing to the point where he starts trying to thread the ball on the end of his tongue piercing through the small ring of his smiley after answering. The shallow click-clack sounds it produces are muffled enough by his closed mouth that they can go unheard by Ichirou.

"He supposes," Ichirou muses, sucking his teeth as he turns his dwindling attention back to his overheating laptop.

Neil continues to toy with his piercings as he leans back, balancing his weight on his hands while he lets his head fall so he’s looking at the opposite wall.

"You’ll come back, right?"

Eyes that are suddenly so very tired blink blankly at Ichirou’s door. "For what?" Neil asks, his voice rumbling against the stretched skin of his throat.

"Meetings, if we need you to." Ichirou clarifies. "Big events, those sorts of things."

"Oh," Neil bends his elbows and the rest of his body drops down to the floor silently. "Sure," He says, now staring up at the chandelier on the ceiling. The yellow-ish light twinkles off the small glass rods that hang from the silver hoops like stars.

"Good," Ichirou adds needlessly.

Dragging his gaze away from the light, Neil peers at the sliver of Ichirou’s head he can see. "Are you worried or something?"

"Hmm," Ichirou's typing stutters for a beat before coming to a halt. Neil listens to the buzz of electricity spreading through the large apartment as he waits in the silence, picking at the carpet slowly.

"Not particularly," Ichirou finishes, after thinking over his words. "My father is, though."

"Why?" Neil asks quickly. "He allowed it."

Caving to some greater force than Neil is unaware of, Ichirou closes his laptop with an air of finality and sets it aside. "Well, yeah, obviously, there was no way he could turn your proposition down." Ichirou pushes the coffee table away from them with his slippered feet and lies down in the now vacant space beside Neil. "Day’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up eventually-"

"-Rude."

"-And you offered. You even had all the details in Baltimore sorted out. In no world would he have said no." Ichirou reaches out beside Neil and his hand returns with an exy ball resting in his open palm.

"So why is he worried?" Neil prods, tracking the small movements with his eyes as Ichirou starts tossing the ball up and down.

"I think it’s pretty normal to have any level of stress when you’re losing your right hand. Even if you’ll come back eventually, and if you have a whole group of people hand-chosen by yourself to take over for you." Ichirou says casually.

He turns his head until he’s facing Neil, managing to not drop the ball with his eyes off of it. "I mean, technically, no one was really planning on this happening so soon."

Neil meets Ichirou’s eyes head-on, one ear pressed to the floor as his hair tangles while rubbing against the ground. "No one planned on Riko getting bad enough to need direct correction," Neil says flatly.

"You know," Ichirou starts, catching the ball and holding it still instead of releasing it. "You like to downplay yourself a lot. I don’t get it."

Neil furrows his brows, searching Ichirou’s face for any signs of what he means. "What?"

Ichirou shakes his head. "Anyone with two brain cells to rub together could have seen this coming, Neil; hell, you were running around warning us about it since day one. This isn’t necessarily a shock. But this?" He gestures loosely at Neil’s relaxed frame, scanning him from head to toe. "Losing you? One of the most important people in the branch? It doesn’t matter how long we've had to prepare, it’s always gonna feel like too soon. We’re always going to feel unprepared. There’s nothing you can do to change that."

Neil opens his mouth, a retort already poised on the tip of his sharpened tongue, but Ichirou happily reaches over and shushes him by laying his palm flat across Neil’s mouth.

"Trust me, I’m ready for you to go," Ichirou says, grinning slightly. "I cannot wait for some peace and quiet with your overachieving ass gone. But my father has a weird connection to you now, and so does literally anyone who has worked under you. Don’t get me wrong, you little shit, you have enemies in this company, but my father is not one, so he’s bound to flounder for a bit now that he has to face the music and move forward without you."

"But it won’t be without me," Neil manages to add under the force of Ichirou’s hand. "He’ll still have access to me."

The scoff that comes from the back of Ichirou’s throat conveys more annoyance than the roll of his eyes. "Yes, Neil, we all know that. Just accept that some people will mourn your semi-loss and move forward."

"They shouldn’t, though," Neil argues, sitting up slightly to look more clearly at Ichirou.

"Ugh," The man groans before slapping around the top of the faraway coffee table aimlessly. "I’m not having this argument right now." He complains, squinting at the remote he managed to find in his blind search.

The screen of the TV flickers to life instantly, and the quiet sounds of chatter between the reporters on screen fills the spacious room.

"Don’t you have work to do?" Neil points out judgmentally, accepting his fate and flopping back down to the ground.

"Hush." Ichirou orders. "Go to sleep."

"It’s mid-day; I’m not going to sleep right now." Neil fights back the smile that starts making its way across his face.

Ichirou sighs dramatically. "Sleep. I’m not above killing you if it means I get sufficient rest."

Watching out of the corner of his eye as Ichirou fumbles for a blanket and a pillow from the couch, Neil feels his spine become one with the floor.

"You're a terrible excuse for a friend, but fine." He says, knowing there’s no changing Ichirou’s mind.

He inches closer to the couch and puts the solid piece of it at his back, leaving him laying on his right side, his head cushioned cautiously on the cool skin of his arm.

It’s calming, almost.

Well, not really, when he remembers that he’s only lying on Ichirou’s floor right now because he came here after being in meetings all morning. Meetings regarding him flying over to Palmetto to provide some semblance of protection to Kevin from Ichirou’s psychotic brother. But Neil chooses not to focus on that.

As he watches the light still pouring into Ichirou’s living room reflect off of the man’s shiny black hair, he doesn’t focus on much of anything. He doesn’t need to right now.

Of course, his brain still runs through random things, bringing up topics of old files from ages ago, but that’s Neil’s normal, really. His life, which he’s designed to surround him with a startling stillness, always has and always will act as a stunning contradiction to the constant chaos that unfurls in the thick folds of his brain.

It’s a low thrum of energy that keeps him going.

It keeps him running on the court; it keeps his eyes sharp, his mind calculating, and his knife moving.

Neil only functions because the finicky vibrations that pass through his veins and pulsate under his epidermis let him.

He pulls at those small shots of energy, craving them, needing to bask in the glory of their short-lived release that keeps him conscious, and they stretch infinitely, giving into his every move, letting him manipulate them however he sees fit.

If Neil were a more humble person, perhaps he would be more grateful. Perhaps he would do what everyone has told him to and thank his worn-out body for getting him this far without shrivelling up and dying on him just yet.

It’s a good thing Neil uses the word ‘perhaps’ loosely here, because the likelihood of that happening is not high. As he turns his head until it's hidden in the crook of his arm, Neil considers that the unfortunate truth is that those statistics are beyond impressively low, actually.

It’s not a great comment on his character, he’s not blind to that, but kicking the topic away as a whole, like an ice cube being ushered into the Narnia that lies in wait beneath the refrigerator, is significantly easier than the alternative of facing his building problems.

Which is why that’s exactly what Neil does every time his mind starts to drift down this particular path.

He uses his metaphorically socked foot to kick the metaphorically melting ice cube under the fridge, then turns around, ready to act like that never happened while he tackles an entirely different mess in the kitchen.

Except Neil takes inventory of his mind and finds that there are no messes he’s willing to unpack now, when he’s not in the mood to break his own rules. And yes, there are rules for how Neil is to approach the activity of deconstructing plot points in his brain and turning them inside out to polish every nook and cranny. Those rules specifically state that he is not allowed to do such a strenuous job when others are in the immediate area, and as Neil listens very closely, under the flow of electricity, he hears the soft snores of Ichirou.

A single chill runs the length of Neil’s spine in the cold atmosphere of the room.

"It’s easier to warm up than it is to cool down." His mind recites, a rather pointless piece of insight provided by Vanya many years ago as she shivered in the unruly cold while defending her hatred for warm temperatures.

Neil replays the phrase every once in a while, with no real rhyme or reason to this action.

As the words finish playing this time, Neil is left weighing how much he wants to go searching for a blanket in their wake.

His answer is not enough, because he runs the ball on his tongue quietly against the back of his closed teeth and decides that he’ll endure the crisp conditions he’s found himself in.

South Carolina is warm, right? Neil tends to run cold. Maybe the change of environment will be good for him. Not just in that aspect, but also the change of pace.

He’s sure to be busy there, the life of a college athlete is probably one with a cluttered schedule. But away from New York and his main office, and out of direct reach of the people who pack his day to the brim, he should be able to find some breathing room.

The myriad of fox corpses and practices that are bound to be painstakingly boring might make that mildly more challenging, but Vanya has been at PSU, lingering in the thick of it all, and she still found the time to shorten the parole of one Andrew Joseph Minyard just because she wanted to.

Down-time is nearly a foreign concept in Neil’s life—nearly, because he’s currently on his friend's floor partaking in an impromptu sleepover—but he supposes it could be an interesting notion to explore.

Just two months until he’ll have the ability to do so.

Two months until he’s out of the world’s sketchiest city; until he’s with Kevin; and until he’ll be on the court again.

Two months.

That’s not too long.

Two months is, in fact, a very long time, Neil finds.

Especially when there's something waiting at the end of that countdown that was tracked on the calendar that Neil still refuses to buy.

Apparently, though, two months is still not enough time for Neil to get his shit together and start packing some sort of bag for his upcoming trip, because he’s standing at the edge of his bedroom door with a cup of hot black coffee in hand, watching in unhinged awe as Ichirou tosses every item of clothing stored in his closet across his room carelessly.

An obnoxiously yellow sweater gets thrown over the man’s shoulder next. Neil watches, slightly puzzled, as the garment reaches the opposite end of his room and smacks against the side of his mattress gracelessly. It sits there for only a moment before it begins to lamely tumble to the ground, crawling away from Neil’s tangle of sheets at a snail's pace. When it does hit the floor, it’s with a slightly metallic sound caused by the rusted zipper colliding with the dulled hardwood floor installed in Neil’s apartment.

His eyes take one quick scan at the rest of his dirty floor, nearly every inch covered by things Neil has never worn. A small sheen of dust floats steadily through the air, no doubt from the particular pieces Neil has managed to blissfully forget about after stowing them away in the deepest corner of the small hole in his wall that he has the nerve to call a closet.

Neil shakes his head to himself, suddenly incapable of forming words.

He takes a small sip of his coffee and adjusts his feet, readying himself to simply walk away from the horror show he just walked into.

"Walk away, and I kill you."

Damnit.

Neil finds Ichirou’s sharp eyes with his own somewhat unwillingly. Judgment crinkles in the slightly aged corners of Ichriou’s otherwise blank face, and Neil becomes painfully aware of the fact that he will not be able to skip out of whatever the hell this is.

Sighing, he slouches his posture. "Something wrong?" He asks, breaking the thick silence with his rough voice.

"You tell me," Ichirou answers quickly, disappearing into the sketchy depths of Neil’s closet once more, emerging with Neil’s suitcase this time.

Correction: Neil’s empty suitcase.

Realization dawns on Neil with clammy hands, gripping his shoulders tight and releasing one hot breath into his face as it delivers its message.

"Your flight leaves tomorrow morning," Ichirou says, unzipping the suitcase while holding it in the air, and then he tosses the hard-shell bag down. It skids a little bit, having less friction to fight off with the impressive layers of clothing separating it from the real floor. "And there is not one thing in that damn bag."

Neil hums, long and low. The tiny workers in his brain scramble from place to place, searching for some sort of lie to tell that would make this situation seem less like what Ichirou and Neil both know it is.

"Don’t you dare," Ichirou says, as though reading Neil’s mind. He takes one step forward, and any person who’s not Neil would probably crumble under the pressure. As it stands, Neil watches Ichirou’s angry approach with his spine of steel and digs the small spike in his tongue into the roof of his mouth to keep from smiling at Ichirou's attempt at being intimidating.

Ichirou strides confidently over the jumble of miscellaneous fabrics, stopping about a foot away from Neil. "You did it again." There’s a certain strain to his voice that Neil quickly recognises as worry.

Write it off, he wants to think. Just ignore it. Concern is a basic human emotion; it’s not something to get all fucked up about, so stop the small amounts of guilty bile turning in your stomach right fucking now.

Ichirou’s tense shoulders drop, and Neil’s scripted apology dies in his throat, falling back down the walls of his closing esophagus with sharpened nails that fight to keep it there.

"Why?" The question tumbles from Ichriou's mouth so simply, plopping down into the pile of old blue jeans that rest between them.

Neil shrugs.

Shallow tides turn behind Ichirou’s deep eyes as whatever storm he had planned to throw Neil into dissipates. "The next time you do this shit," He says, pointing at the mess of Neil's room. "Take the damn meds. They'll make you sleep. That's it. They won't kill you."

Oh, dear, Neil’s mind sings slowly, in the mocking tone of an off-pitch children's choir. He’s disappointed.

"Yeah," Neil agrees shortly as Ichirou backs up, kicking his way through the laundry.

He’s mad at you. Why did you let it get so far? Again? You made a mess all because you couldn’t take a few measly sleeping pills, how cowardly, Junior.

Instantly, Neil wants to pretend he didn't run himself into the ground because of the lurking anticipation. Wants to pretend that this is still in the range of perfectly normal for him, but not even he would be able to buy that haphazard lie.

The spiral had started slow this time. It had grabbed Neil’s hand with a tenderness he'd never known. There was no force behind the gentle tug it gave that had Neil caving, tripping and falling into the dark that waited for him below.

He fell right into the sharpened jaws of the beast and hardly even noticed.

When its wet and constricting tongue wrapped around Neil’s bony hips, it felt more like an awkward hug than the damnation waiting to be delivered.

Neil tumbled in without a working flashlight or sharpened knife, and he was left to wander the turning belly of that beast with half a flicker of pale light and a pointless rod of steel.

The twists and turns in the fleshy maze hindered him for two months, until spitting him back up just last week, leaving him to flounder amongst piles of paperwork and a fast approaching deadline hanging overhead and blinking in the same obnoxious shade of orange that Palmetto State University decided to paint itself in.

Though really, Neil's brief stint in the monster's intestines could have been worse. And it has been worse. Many times. Three or four days without sleep is pretty typical for him, so does the weeks he was pushing through without putting his head to his flattened pillow really mean anything?

Not in Neil’s world, it doesn't.

"Whatever we don’t pack in the next forty minutes gets thrown away." Ichirou says, his voice carrying sharply over to Neil’s ringing ears.

Neil takes a deep breath.

For some reason, the handful of people he let penetrate his icy exterior actively want to be around him. So he may have fallen, but there’s still at least one person to pick him up right now. That has to count for something.

"Right," He agrees quietly, nodding his head. The souls of his feet ache from how heavily he’d planted them on the floor, and the first step he takes into the muggy and dusty room feels like a soft slap across the face.

Ichirou glances over his shoulder at the movement, then raises his index finger and points between Neil and his bed. "Sit," He orders, lowering himself onto the ground until he’s kneeling amongst the clothes.

Neil does as he’s told, stepping over the mounds scattered across the ground with minimal fuss.

"Are you gonna let me pick any of the clothes?" He asks, lowering himself onto his mattress and raising an eyebrow as he glances at Ichirou. "Or is this you commandeering my entire wardrobe?"

Ichirou, unimpressed, continues to glare. "You have the most money out of everyone else in the company, and you dress like you live in a dumpster. It would be mean of me to let you go to PSU without one decent outfit."

Transferring his coffee from his hand to his cluttered and rickety bedside table, Neil scoffs. "And you’re capable of finding that for me?"

"Probably not," Ichirou admits easily, flinging a faded green t-shirt away from him. "But I’m better than nothing."

"I see," Neil says, leaning back on his elbows and tipping his head back, staring out of the window beside his bed. "So I’m here because…?"

"Because," Something lands on his stomach as Ichirou begins talking. Neil lays down fully, and he doesn’t look as he grabs what he knows is a sweater and balls it back up, sending it flying back over to the fucker that threw it. He grins slightly when he hears Ichirou’s mildly annoyed huff. "These are your fucking clothes." He continues, sounding put-off. "It would be morally wrong of me to throw all of them away while you weren’t here."

"Ah yes," Neil starts, dipping his voice in sarcasm. "And your morals are just so clear. Mm-hmm, super strong. You just have the spine of the righteous or something. It’s insane."

Biting at his bottom lip, Neil holds his breath, fighting the odd laughter that takes the place of bile as it bubbles in his chest and starts climbing up to his mouth.

He lets slow, controlled breaths out of his nose as the silence following his response stretches on. He wavers slightly when not even a small amount of Ichirou shifting positions can be heard in the otherwise empty apartment.

Finally, fucking finally, Ichirou sighs. "Are you done?"

The shallow breath on its way out of Neil’s nose turns into a snort at the very last minute. Neil’s shoulders shake just a bit while he tries desperately to hold the rest of his sleep-deprived laughter in.

"Yeah," He says, his voice strained and unsteady. "I’m fine."

"Clearly." Ichirou deadpans.

Effectively giving up on laying down, Neil uses his tired core muscles to pull himself upright. He brings his dangling legs onto the bed and crosses them, resting his elbows on his knees, then lets his head fall into the palm of his right hand.

"I’m supposed to just sit here and watch you pack for me, then?" Neil asks, his mouth upturned in a grin.

Ichirou looks less than thrilled as he nods solemnly.

Neil’s grin stretches into something sharp, and he watches closely while Ichirou folds a pair of black sweatpants and places them in the old suitcase. "Amazing."

"You could try to look less happy," Ichirou says, blowing a strand of silky black hair out of his eyes.

"I could, couldn’t I?"

The pair of slacks that get pushed down beside the sweatpants go in with more force than necessary. "I pity the people on this terrible exy team."

"Why?" Neil asks, slumping his shoulders dramatically. "I’m a delight."

"You are one step away from being clinically insane." Ichirou argues. "Actually, I’m pretty sure we could get you some sort of diagnosis if we went to a psychiatrist right now."

Neil wrinkles his nose. Running on fourteen minutes of sleep or not, he’s still in his right mind enough to know that that is the last thing he wants to do today. "I’ll pass," He says, the corners of his mouth drooping down into a frown.

"You can’t just pass on being insane, Neil, that’s not how that works." Ichirou practically looks through the jacket he grabs, trying to process Neil’s words.

"A bit rich coming from you."

"I’m not insane, Neil."

Ichirou’s eyes flicker up to Neil’s. With an arched brow, Neil uses his head, still resting in his warm palm, to gesture to the clothing-cluttered room, making his point as clear as he can without words.

"This needed to be done," Ichirou defends, going back to reaching for different wrinkled garments without glancing back at Neil.

"Yeah, you would think that." Neil says with a sigh.

Ichirou huffs a weak laugh, rearranging some of the things stuffed into the suitcase so he can fit more. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Neil shrugs one shoulder and makes a so-so gesture with the hand that's not holding his face. "Means you’re neurotic, that’s all."

"Christ," Ichirou proudly pats the pair of socks he stuffs into a small crack between a pair of pants and a crewneck sweater. "Says the poster child for neurosis."

"Sure," Neil drops his head and surrenders with his hands. "We’re both neurotic, then. Glad we could reach that conclusion."

Ichirou presses his lips together, clearly trying to fend off the small uptick in the corner of his mouth. "Okay, you know what?" A baby blue sweater is slipped under a pair of plaid pyjama pants quickly; Ichirou’s attempt to keep it out of sight. "You’re sleep deprived and on the brink of malnutrition; talk to me when you can form one coherent thought not born out of pure panic."

Neil fakes an offended gasp. He’s perfectly capable of forming coherent thoughts, thank you very much. Sure, he was a little less than conscious when he strolled through his front door with a coffee in hand—a coffee he has since forgotten about—and yes, he may have gone from guilt to mental reflection worryingly fast, but he’s perfectly fine. He may not be as sharp as he usually is, but Neil at his worst is still some people at their best.

"You are no fun." He declares.

Fuck, he really is in a strange mood now, huh?

"I am sane ," Ichirou scans Neil’s seated form with his all-knowing eyes. "Are we even sure that you should have been allowed to drive and get that coffee?" He uses his chin to point at the lonely cup while his hands are occupied folding a pair of socks with small trees printed on them. Neil almost comments on it when they get tucked into his bag.

Almost.

"Oh, my fucking God," He says instead, expressing his exasperation over the comment about his driving.

"I’m serious, Neil," Ichirou says, even though a Cheshire smile has spread across his face. "You look like an old carrot’s corpse."

"Was the specification of old carrot absolutely necessary?" Neil asks, blinking in disbelief at the man in front of him, throwing brightly coloured socks into his suitcase.

"Oh," Ichirou lowers his brows as he feigns being serious and nods. "Absolutely."

Neil closes his eyes and slowly lowers himself back onto his old mattress. "Wonderful," He says, mostly to himself.

"Are you gonna fall asleep right now?" Ichirou’s voice takes on a wary tone. As if he can’t tell whether or not he's managed to cross an invisible line.

"Maybe I will," Neil responds, hoping his voice is light enough to erase Ichirou’s questionable feelings of unease. He may have been willing to apologize earlier, when Ichirou had gotten somewhat upset about his recent dabble in the land of the sleepless and hungry as he lost himself to his counting down mind, but he’s not anymore.

Does he feel bad about that? Possibly no.

"Maybe I won’t." He adds after a pregnant pause. Neil has a reputation of the resident cryptid to keep up here, he won’t let that slip now, just because he’s running on fumes and his mental stability is balancing on a thin sheet of stained glass.

The harsh lighting in the room shines down mercilessly on his face. He brings his forearm up to his head and blocks the sharp glow, the fleece of his sweater pressing against his eyelids in a way Neil finds strangely comforting.

Well, no, maybe not comforting. Because only moments later, Neil moves his arm so it’s resting on his forehead instead, suddenly put-off by the complete loss of vision.

Comfortable. That’s the word he was looking for. Because comforting and comfortable are not two in the same. They may have that identical root word, and they may be synonymous in some people's eyes, but they couldn't be farther from each other in Neil's.

How strange the English language is.

Neil speaks fifteen languages in total, and of those fifteen, English is arguably his least favourite.

Speaking tongues in smooth French or conversing with the few he considers his family in bright polish is not always comforting. But it is comfortable. It’s easy and Neil’s version of normal, and so are the memories of moaning in pain and biting through his lip for the sake of ignoring tears.

Comfortable, not comforting.

Very few things in life are allowed the privilege of being both.

As Neil thinks about it, he’s fairly certain he would give that privilege to Kevin. Vanya, too. Perhaps Ichirou and Jean as well, though Neil could also discredit that idea if he wanted to.

But he really doesn’t.

Neil turns his head to the side and ignores the sound of his coarse hair rubbing against his cotton sheets, and he weighs the pros and cons of debating where Jean and Ichirou stand in his world.

He can’t say he’s particularly in the quizzical mood that would make such an internal conversation flow very well. And Ichirou’s gentle tuts of disapproval and tired sighs can be heard over the steady and deep breaths Neil takes through his nose, with his mouth remaining parted just slightly.

Figuring out if you’ll put the title of dual meaning on someone while they’re only a few feet away feels wrong. It probably is, on some level. There’s most certainly some kind of god out there who disagrees with this train of thought as a whole, too.

To piss off some random higher power Neil has no knowledge of tonight just because his tired and nutrient deprived brain wants to have this very odd conversation? Well, he’s had worse ideas, but he has also most definitely had better ones.

It’s a dead pig not worth dissecting right now, Neil decides as he takes the small spike in his mouth between his front teeth.

Ichirou’s here now, Neil is fine with that, and that’s all that matters. Jean isn’t here, and Neil is a little less fine with that, but he’ll survive.

"Neil," Ichirou says, mercifully grabbing Neil from the iron cell of his mind. "Why do you have a sweater with a penguin on it?"

Neil furrows the brows that remain hidden under the pilling fabric of his sleeve. "What?"

"Look,"

He moves his arm at Ichirou’s request and grimaces as the now stiff joint makes a shallow crack when it unbends. "Huh?" He yawns, bending at the hip and using his relaxed core muscles to drag himself up. "Oh,"

In Ichirou's unflexed hands sits a royal blue sweater with a Christmas penguin playing joyously in the cartoon snow that falls artfully around it.

"That’s Kevin’s," Neil recognizes the shitty design immediately. Kevin had forced it over Neil’s aching head after a rough practice in the dead of winter, when Neil had been packing his bag to head back to Baltimore and hiding the shivers running up and down his spine. If he tries hard enough, he can still recall what the fuzzy liner inside feels like. An absurdly soft and snug hug against freshly lacerated skin.

Comfortable.

Ichirou frowns at the pullover sweatshirt. "Why the hell did Kevin have this?"

"Uh," Neil stalls, sorting through images of Kevin wandering into crowded stores after demanding they go out; a field trip of sorts held while Riko had been grossly sick. "I think it was a joke." He says, vaguely picturing Kevin’s taunting smile as he snuck the awful thing into his bag, looking like a damn fool as he clumsily evaded the security cameras. "He stole it."

The ghost of his old boyish smile plays uselessly on Neil’s lips.

Kevin had been so nervous when he straightened his back and lifted his chin while he waltzed out of the small store with a stunning facade of confidence, both Jean and Neil at his heels.

Many cameras had been avoided by pure luck that day. Kevin had said he’d felt like a ghost, Neil had happily argued that being a ghost wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

"Kevin stole it?" Disbelief intertwines itself with Ichirou’s voice blatantly. "Your Kevin?"

Neil rolls his eyes and flops back down onto the mattress. "Not without some pushing."

Pushing, meaning Neil staring blankly at Kevin until Jean joined in and they silently peer pressured him together.

"He had fun," Neil adds after a prolonged moment of silence.

The wind picks up outside for a moment. Branches rustle with the sudden breeze, and a small leaf loses its fight in holding onto its home, and it tinks against the thick glass of Neil’s bedroom window before it flitters away, pulled by the strong draft into the darkness of the night.

"Oh, I bet he did," Ichirou replies sarcastically.

Neil scoffs. "I’m sure he’s fine."

The unsure tune Ichirou hums in response wavers in strategically held back laughter. "Your definition of fine, or a normal person's?"

The copper brow Neil raises is only seen by the pale moonlight streaming into his room, hidden by the sickly overhead lights beaming down on Neil’s relaxed form. "Normal," He answers, even though he’s not blind to the subtle dig.

Ichirou snickers to himself quietly. Neil likes to think that the image of an evil witch that appears in the front of his mind is entirely reasonable.

When no further smart ass response comes, Neil brings his arm back up to his forehead.

He adjusts, and his back clicks while his spine morphs with the mattress beneath him.

He’s about to go with it. Sink impossibly further down and maybe tiptoe closer to the alluring line of sleep that he could lazily slump over. But just as he sucks in a slow breath through his opened mouth, he remembers, rather bluntly, that he has no fucking clue what time he’s supposed to go to the airport tomorrow.

Tomorrow? Technically today? Wait, no, it’s not past midnight, is it? The last time he looked at a clock, it was... what? 11:27? Oh, but when was that? Recently?

"Hey," Neil says, keeping his voice even to hide his genuine levels of curiosity. "How much longer until my flight?"

"You don't know what time it is right now, do you?"

Ichirou’s accusation is immediate and accurate. Neil just barely manages to hold in the huff of air the sharp point nearly knocks out of him.

He pulls himself together quickly and doesn’t fight the slight smirk that comes. "Just answer the question,"

"Oh, for fuck’s sake, Neil," Ichirou’s "disappointed voice" blends messily with a thin veil of humour.

"The question, Itch, answer it,"

"I do believe I’ve told you how much I hate that nickname,"

"You have, yes, but your name is too long for me right now, so just answer my question."

A sigh, the sound of rough fabrics rustling, and then an answer. "You have about half an hour before I’m gonna start shoving you out of this shitbox of an apartment."

Half an hour…?

"I may not know the time, but that doesn’t feel right." Neil observes, lifting his arm a bit so he can squint up at the window. A deep shade of blue loiters peacefully behind plush clouds. Stars try desperately to twinkle through the pollution of New York, and not a single sliver of sun can be seen. "It can’t be past four,"

"It’s not," Ichirou answers. Somehow, the confirmation manages to confuse Neil more than what would have happened if Ichirou hadn’t responded at all.

"Who the fuck books a flight for before four in the morning?" Neil voices his confusion aloud slowly, turning over the words on his accented tongue to see if he could answer his own question.

He cannot. At least not right now.

"I do,"

Motherfucker.

Moving his arm back to his face, Neil closes his eyes, shaking his head. "But why?"

"Because you wouldn’t be awake past four." Ichirou reasons. "If I need to get a flight for you in the first place, I might as well get it for when you’ll be awake."

Rude, Neil thinks, scoffing softly to himself. He would have been awake past four if he needed to be. He wouldn’t have enjoyed it, not in the slightest, but it could be done.

"I would be awake," Neil says, a lazy argument born from tired thoughts.

"Barely," Is what gets shot back at him. "Believe it or not, this is probably gonna be your peak of energy for the day."

A little coffee and some laps around his living room could change that.

"Okay," The bland tone in Neil’s voice should be enough to convey exactly how much he disagrees with Ichirou’s claim.

"It’s a private flight?" Ichirou tries to amend, a humoured ring to his tone as he continues packing for Neil. If Neil were looking at him right now, he’s fairly certain he would see the shallow wrinkles Ichirou gets around his eyes and mouth when he holds back a devious smile.

Neil tuts, adding a dramatic flair simply because he can. "I’d hope so,"

"I’m sure you’d survive if it wasn’t,"

"Are you willing to put money on that?"

The following pause stretches on longer than Neil anticipated. He lifts his head, his arm hovering nearby awkwardly, and peers across the room at Ichirou as the man fights with Neil’s suitcase to fit a black button-up shirt in. Ichirou's eyes are fixed on the action, but his brows crease in thought. Eventually, he tips his head to the side and shrugs one shoulder to himself. "Not really, no."

"It took you all that time to come up with that answer?"

The light fabric of Ichirou’s shirt creases with yet another shrug, this one involving both shoulders. "Well, if I’d said yes, you probably would have done some stupid shit like reschedule just to prove me wrong, and as much as I tolerate your presence, the sooner you get over to Palmetto, the better."

Neil’s fairly certain that the look on his face as he stares forward is nothing short of bemused. "You’re just so kind to me sometimes, it’s crazy."

"I try very hard, yes." Ichirou scoots back on the less cluttered floor to admire the work he’s done with Neil’s raggedy suitcase.

What's left scattered across the room is not a lot. Ichirou managed to fit quite a bunch of clothes into the bag. It probably helps that Neil doesn’t really own a whole lot of anything. His day-to-day wardrobe is recycled constantly, and the other abundance of clothes were questionable gifts from other people. It’s not surprising to anyone, really, that the clothes that have made their way into his closet were not his choice; he’s not known for his cupidity, after all.

"I can tell," Neil comments while Ichirou grabs one loaded half and starts trying to close the stuffed bag.

"Mm-hmm," Ichirou’s response is nearly lost in the noise the man makes as he adjusts himself so one of his slack-clad knees are on top of the hard-shell, acting as a decent weight to keep the top close enough to the bottom for him to zip it shut.

He fumbles blindly for a moment, searching for the smooth steel of the small zipper, and he finds it after slapping lightly at the side of the suitcase, listening for the tell-tale jingle of the metal.

His nose scrunches with a level of focus Neil finds nearly laughable considering the cause.

The small black teeth on the track come together slowly and forcefully with Ichirou’s strained hand trying to pinch them closer while his other follows steadily with the actual zipper. He bounces up and down once, seeing if he can get any more of his body weight onto the blown out walls of the bag without sacrificing his dignity and climbing on top fully.

It’s entertaining, almost, for Neil to look at how Ichirou struggles to get past the corners.

"One word." Ichirou warns after stealing a glance at Neil’s face.

Neil flattens his lips into a thin line and attempts to keep his composure. He nods sagely, even though he knows Ichirou has returned his attention back to the matter at hand.

There’s an air of grave relief when Ichirou stops zipping. Neil can’t tell if the relaxed aura is coming from the suitcase that looks like it ate three Thanksgiving meals or Ichirou, as the man slides off the suitcase and dramatically assumes his spot on the floor again.

Huffing, he pats the top of the suitcase, checking how much give it has to provide based on the sheer amount of stuff crammed inside.

"It’s seen better days." Neil concludes, patiently observing how the small amount of worn fabric attaching the dingy zipper to the dented plastic stretches to its fullest extent.

Ichirou runs a hand across the warped surface. "You know, you could always get a new one."

"It’s fine, it still holds stuff." Neil takes in the small scratches dancing across the entire bag and the loose wheel he has yet to fix. "Ish."

"Ish?" Ichirou echoes, arching a judgmental brow.

Squinting as he thinks out how to explain the sorry state of the bag without making it sound too bad, Neil eases the tension growing in his neck after holding it in such an awkward position for so long by lying back down. "The zippers break sometimes, and the handle also kinda breaks if you pull it too hard, but that’s, like, pretty normal, I think."

"Not for suitcases that have been bought this century,"

"Irrelevant."

"No, very relevant, actually."

"To you,"

"To people who value their belongings."

"Which is you,"

"It should be you."

"I value my belongings,"

"You value your car, your sibling, and your exy gear."

"My belongings, yes."

"You don’t own Kevin and Vanya," Ichirou argues steadily, sounding only slightly incredulous.

"Close enough," Neil says, carrying on before Ichirou can add on something else. "But I do own my car, courtesy of my father’s life insurance, and I don’t currently have any exy gear, so if you’re gonna accuse me, do it right."

"You’ll have gear in a week or so if I can get you out of your apartment and onto a plane in the next few minutes." Ichirou stands, bringing the top of his head into Neil’s field of view.

"How many minutes is a few?" Neil asks, looking at the light bouncing off of Ichirou’s hair.

"Depends," The suitcase makes a low scraping sound against the floor when Ichirou disappears from Neil’s line of sight, having bent down to grab it. "How early do you want to be?"

"How early do you want me to be?" Neil asks, because really, Neil’s opinion doesn’t exactly matter if Ichirou’s in the type of mood that has him breaking into Neil’s apartment and packing for him.

"Early enough," Ichirou’s head becomes visible again slowly. Neil thinks it’s a fair assumption to make that he’s currently fighting with the half-dead suitcase, facing the battle Neil knows intimately that is trying to keep it standing.

The mental image is enough to get Neil sitting up fully, and his new viewpoint gives him front row seats to watch Ichirou gripping the handle light enough that it won't snap off while he uses his foot to try and stabilize the bag.

"And what do you count as early enough?"

Neil’s unsubtle search for the answer they both know Neil won’t be the one to give seems to work, because Ichirou pauses his current fight to turn to Neil, eyes flattened as if to ask why it isn’t obvious. When Neil shakes his head, Ichirou rolls his eyes and gives up on the bag as a whole, lifting it off the ground by the handle.

Not even a full second later, Neil hears that sound he knows is the creaking of cheap and rusted metal, and he simply counts down the seconds until the handle snaps and his suitcase slips free from Ichirou’s tired hands, hitting the ground with a clatter that will have his downstairs neighbours thoroughly pissed.

Ichirou takes a deep breath, not letting his eyes stray to the heavy suitcase that just bounced off of his socked foot.

Neil swallows thickly and clears his expression. "Let’s go now, then?"

Chapter Text

The sun hates redheads.

There’s science behind that. UV rays have some sort of tendency to affect people with red hair more than people with any other hair type.

It’s awful, but it’s true. Neil would know.

The furious and pulsating ball of fire that hangs precariously in the sky looks down on Neil and his hair, and it laughs through a toothy smile.

"You motherfucker." Neil says to it, staring at it without any form of eyewear on because he’s a firm believer that being blinded by the sun is a myth.

"What in the fuck are you doing?" A familiar voice asks from the car window beside him.

Without looking away, Neil waves. "Hi, Vanya," He greets, furrowing his brows at the sun.

It’s only until he’s met with silence that he finally peels his slightly spotted eyes away, looking aimlessly at what he thinks might be the window Vanya’s speaking out of.

"Making enemies with the sun, gingie?" She asks, sounding as unsatisfied with his behaviour as usual.

"Maybe," He responds loftily, blinking until the world decides to grace him with its visual presence once more.

Vanya's thin blue and white braids tied back in a huge bun are the first thing he notices about her. The second being her calculating eyes and the way they’re set on him.

She takes a deep breath in through her nose, closing her eyes the way she always does when she doesn't want to see something anymore. "Get in the car."

Neil does. Kicking a rock away with the toe of his shoe before swinging his suitcase behind him and dragging it with two hands.

It goes in the back seat rather than the trunk. Not that there’s much of a trunk to put it in; the car Vanya heisted for this pick up mission is Neil’s sweet Baby. A 1967 Chevy Impala with about as little storage as his closet.

"Awfully demanding for someone driving my car." He comments, sliding into the front beside Vanya shortly after locking his suitcase behind them.

"I could have let you walk."

Endless stretches of hot concrete and dull-coloured cars start to roll past slowly with the small amounts of gas that flutter through the engine to make them move.

"I could have ran," Neil counters. "I would’ve enjoyed it, too."

Vanya’s stare is as blank as haired paper when she peels it away from the bending road of the parking lot and places it on him.

Five minutes with her and she already looks one poorly timed comment away from sending him back to New York in six pieces and a body bag.

New record? If it isn't, it's very close.

"Anyway," Neil starts, aiming for casualness and hitting awkward right on the head. Mildly embarrassing, but it’s not like he gets far. Vanya and her sharp turn of the steering wheel seem pretty keen on shutting him down.

"Silence suits you, you know."

Blue eyes search for some sort of god during Neil’s overly dramatic eye roll. "Most people try to be sweet to the family members they haven’t seen in a while."

"Oh, good for them." Vanya nods, the tiniest of smiles pulling at her full, shiny lips. "Most people’s family members don’t have the aura of a cracked-up Rumpelstiltskin, though, so your logic is flawed."

"Did you spend the car ride over here thinking of insults?"

There’s a moment of contemplative silence while Vanya rolls to a stop at the first barn-red traffic light.

"No."

"Uh-oh, I don’t believe you." Neil grins, tipping his head against his headrest and turning just his eyes to find his sister. "At all."

Vanya’s hum blends into the steady purr of Baby’s aged engine. "That checks out. Your skeptical nature is one of the only reliable things about you, really."

"Well, now you’re just lying to yourself."

One braid slips out of her intricate bun as Vanya shrugs. "Obviously, it’s a familial trait."

A snort is as close as Neil will get to laughing right now; he's too proud to give the witch beside him that satisfaction. "Yes, it is. For the family you don’t have blood relations to."

"Irrelevant." She argues.

"To who?"

"To you."

Smart girl.

"Okay," He says, surrendering far too easily. "Fair."

Vanya manages to ease into the flow of traffic without missing even half a beat. "Agreed." She says. "So I win, then?"

Red brows furrow with thinly veiled confusion. "This was a competition?"

"Hardly, but I win now."

"That’s not how that works," Neil finishes the "competition" with a sigh, turning his eyes away from how Vanya’s dark skin glows in the merciless sun and over to the slowly moving and packed traffic.

Broken headlights and scratched paint fit into the bleak surroundings like a puzzle piece you have to squish just a bit to get it in the hole.

Snug, and not quite right, but good enough to look over in a pinch.

That seems to be a pretty good descriptor for everything around here, really.

Leaning trees with leaves that are hardly green enough to pass for healthy, patchy grass that’s longer in some parts than others, all topped off with clouds that crack like the glass in a recycled mirror.

Calm. Still. Untouched and alluring. The stale forbidden fruit.

A rumbling energy of dread boils under the dry dirt and budding weeds. Steady as it waits for the world to fall through and disappear into an endless swallow of something Neil isn’t sure of yet.

So very drab that he doesn’t even want to try and burn the path into his expansive brain.

He’ll have to eventually; he’s not blind to that, even if he wishes he were.

He can look up a map for it. Something stripped down to just lines and road names, so he doesn't have to deal with the less-than-impressive visuals.

"You’re judging." Vanya states. Simple and true.

Well, it’s not like he was trying to hide it, actually. Half of a frown is tipping the edges of his mouth; small creases form out of disgust, causing shadows that hide the constellations etched into his face by red-toned freckles.

"Give me one reason not to." He suggests, watching the glare in the window interact with the passing scenery.

She can’t; they both know it. South Carolina is a dying ant compared to the black widow of New York.

"I bet it’s easy to start a forest fire here." She tries anyway, her voice rising like it’s a question.

"Oh," Neil entertains, matching her pitch. "I’ll keep that in mind next time I need a smoke after a run through the nearest haunted forest."

Vanya laughs, light and taunting. "Some of the Foxes aren’t going to appreciate that attitude."

"What attitude?" A pointless question rolling out the stained red carpet for the one he actually wants to ask.

"Yours." The answer comes out with a breezy scoff. "At least four of them won’t stand for the possibility of no longer being the biggest asshole on that orange court."

Ah, and there’s his opening.

"Four?" He starts easily enough. "They can’t all have that title, Vee, who’s the real winner?"

"For the love of God, tell me you’ll be more gentle with your blatant prying when you talk to them."

A wish? A demand? Maybe both. Neil wouldn’t know; he’s going to need more sleep before he can try to decipher that one.

"Yeah, sure," He amends. "If you tell me who it is, I’ll consider it."

Vanya sighs so deeply that Neil’s not sure how she has any air left. "Names will do you no good, bluey, you don’t know who they belong to."

Not even the return of a childhood nickname will soothe Neil’s sharp curiosity. "I know enough." He says. "Besides, I can fill in the rest later. Connect some dots."

One sharp and painted fingernail is tapped against Baby’s slender steering wheel. A thoughtful silence claws at the air and tries to suffocate the both of them.

"Andrew," She says at last.

Neil nods, mostly to himself. "I've heard about that one," He points out.

"His brother, Aaron." She continues. "Allison, too,"

Treading unfamiliar territory now. "Do all of these people have names that start with the letter A?"

Vanya tuts. "Seth."

"Oh, joy."

"There are your four names, curly," She reminds him, oh so sweetly. "Do with them what you will. Provoke them, befriend them, whatever. That's up to you."

"I'm so glad I have your blessing." A grin settles onto Neil’s face once more, accompanied by the tilt of his head while he continues to look out of the window. "Where would I be in life if I weren’t living in the sixties and needing to get permission for everything?"

"Probably a little happier." The admission comes easily from Vanya’s definitely smiling mouth. "Most likely in some sort of prison, too."

"Federal?" Neil asks.

Vanya’s following hum doesn’t fill him with a terrible amount of confidence. "You think too highly of yourself." She holds back a yawn that matches how Neil feels. "Impressive, considering your minimal height."

There’s a response to that rattling around in his head somewhere, Neil’s sure. Equally as witty and simple.

It's a shame he doesn’t have the energy to dig it out and say it, though.

"Sure," He says instead, slumping down in his seat like a child on a road trip they were forced into, his energy coming in waves now.

He didn’t sleep on the plane, even after receiving a soft punch in the head from Ichirou and the direct order to rest.

Not his wisest choice. That’s clear to him now, when his eyes are so tired they hurt, and he has to force himself into a state of being awake so he doesn’t pass out and fuck up his neck in this car.

"Don’t start." He advises at Vanya’s judgmental breath.

She listens.

Maybe.

Neil can’t tell if her lack of response is an act of watching her tongue or a moment’s hesitation while she searches for words.

He hopes it’s the former. Or, well, no, he doesn’t hope. Hope is fruitless; he’d prefer if it were the former.

The lecture he received in the car on the way to his flight could rival the typed argument of a lawyer who gets paid by the word. He doesn’t need another. Especially not one delivered by Vanya.

She’s sweet; his favorite—and only—sister, but she worries. Sometimes too much, sometimes not enough. As long as Neil doesn’t have to be on the receiving end of her cold but overwhelmingly warm care, all is well in the world of Nathaniel Wesninski.

"I have meds at the house."

Ah, fuck.

Neil bites the sensitive skin of his cheek. Bends his fingers into a fist and cracks his knuckles on his thigh. "I didn’t ask for that."

His eyes fall on a loose thread on his pants, and they stay there. Not daring to move in fear of releasing whatever emotion it is that’s hiding behind them that he’s incapable of naming.

"No," Vanya says steadily in agreement. "You never really do."

Remorse, shame, regret, liability, slip, lapse, dishonour. Pick a word, any word, they all have the same beast of guilt lying restlessly at their core.

Each of them could be printed on the nameplate waiting to be placed in front of the subtle nausea tapping away at Neil’s chest, too.

Wrinkling his nose and drawing one more salty drop of blood from his cheek, Neil caves. "That’s not your fault, though."

"Oh, I know." Vanya responds lightly. "I’ll blame Nathan or Lola before I blame myself for your rudimentary morals and distressing behaviour."

"Okay, both of those are fractionally your fault," Neil says, easing some pressure out of his jaw slowly. "How long is this drive?" He adds when a few of the beads on the ends of Vanya’s hair clack together at the violent turn of her head.

With her thoughts momentarily derailed, she hesitates. It's not something that happens often, but a fleeting sense of undeniable victory flitters through his stomach each time it does.

He doesn’t laugh, comes very close to it, but hums a questioning tone in prompting.

"About thirteen more minutes left." She offers, leaving him to add that number to the twenty-eight minutes they’ve already driven.

Groaning in a way he thinks Kevin might, Neil finishes off his painstaking process of completing the steps of basic math. "It’s too early for math, you fucking demon."

"A bit dramatic," A bright blue nail is the only thing he sees for a moment as Vanya promptly flicks his forehead. "It’s forty-one," is her excuse for the hit. "In case your tiny brain couldn’t think of that one."

She rubs her fingers on her skirt as though Neil's head is the grossest thing on earth and that exact hand hasn't been plunged into the slippery depths of someone's stomach.

There's a soft huff of air before she carries on, returning both hands to the wheel like nothing happened. "Oh well," She says. "I suppose you’re not wrong. Some people might consider seven o'clock early."

Neil’s brain jumps through hoops of fire to determine what time it will be when they get back to the house. In the minute and a half it took him to do that, the 07:57 displayed on the clock before him managed to burn itself into his eyes. "Vanya." He starts, one brow raised at the clock. "Be normal. Say it’s eight and move on."

"It’s not eight; you can’t round up on time."

The yawn Neil holds back brings water to the lines of his eyes. Stretches his jaw enough to bring the faraway whispers of an ache to it.

"Can, and did." He says.

A few intense blinks have the idea of sleep sounding rather decent. Finally getting rid of the burning dryness that lingers in his watering eyes? Having his fingers be able to sit relatively still on their own?

Sounds perfect.

Oh, but the dreams? Not even dreams anymore, that’s too nice of a term; closer to memories painted in bloody shades of the Devil’s spit at this point. Overly exaggerated, sometimes rightfully accurate, never a drop of sugar in the original bitter mixture, but that’s just fine. Neil’s gotten used to the lack of mental comfort he receives from himself.

There’s always the rare occasion where he’s under the influence of the newest street drug while trying to build up a tolerance to it, gone to the point that he’s hearing colours, so out of it that his brain can’t even begin to think up a funny pool of hell for him to live through.

Amazing while it lasts. But then he wakes up and starts the process again, taking a higher dose than the night before, and does so again and again until he's unaffected by the original amount. His moment of glory and peaceful sleep tossed out of the small crack in the busted window.

He finds it mildly upsetting that there hasn’t been a new one for him to try since the underwhelming birth of cracker dust.

That one didn’t take long to get used to. Though really, dust could be considered rather weak compared to some of the things floating around now.

So lacklustre that it did nothing but muffle the screams of his mind for about two hours.

It's good for a cheap and quick high, he’s decided, and that’s pretty much it. There are probably a million shady people out there who swear by it. Ex-addicts, the gross few who don’t see a problem with slipping a little something into someone’s drink, and, of course, the deadbeats that only deal to college kids and under.

Neil’s lack of research starts showing when he has to question how prevalent those types of people will be around the campus he's committed himself to.

Lack of research or a sleep-deprived brain, either works.

"Don’t close your eyes now," Vanya advises, her voice gently disturbing the quiet around them. "You’ll miss the part where I tell you we’re here."

"Oh," Neil fixes his sunken posture and peers forward, watching a two-story family home come into focus.

"Here?" He asks, looking over to Vanya.

"Decent excuse," She explains with a smile. "I’m sorry, officer," Her voice is pitched in a high American accent when she starts talking again, bringing a light of innocence to her lying eyes. "My parents are going through a divorce, and my mother’s out of town. It’s just me and my little brother here; we're all alone."

Nodding with a hum, Neil concedes. Well, sort of.

"If the cops are at your door, a shaky sob story is the least of your worries." He says, reaching over Vanya to unlock the car before stepping out so she can't argue his point.

The morning breeze combs through his hair with a frosty touch while he marches up their driveway with a tired limp. "Do I get a key, or am I supposed to come crawling to you whenever I need in?"

A slight rustle from behind him prompts Neil to turn around.

"Holy shit."

When he does, Vanya’s hand is already extended as she follows with his suitcase. Nearly a dozen silver and gold keys are bunched on one dying, rusted ring. "What the hell do we need so many keys for?"

Vanya shrugs, another braid falling loose and framing her face. "Safety." She explains, closing her hand with the keys in it and turning it over, leaving her tattoo of Orion to stare blankly back at Neil.

"From who?" His opened hand lays empty under Vanya’s for only a second before the keys fall into his palm with a metallic clatter. "The pregnant mothers and their cheating accountant husbands who live here?"

The other hand that once hung loosely at his side is forced to quickly grab the handle Vanya shoves into it. "Go to bed." She orders. "You’re doing that thing where you think you’re funny, and I’m the only one around to listen to this bullshit, which is just unfair."

Her polished shoes are loud on the singular wooden step that leads to an open front porch. "The basement is yours. I’ll have food ready by the time you wake up."

It’s a satisfying sound that comes from Vanya slipping her own key into the bronze lock. The teeth slide into place perfectly, staying secure enough in their positions to allow the mechanisms inside the small item of protection to twist and turn and grant them access to the dark abyss that lies in wait beyond the door.

Inside, things are hard to imagine with the lights off. Out of everything before him, the only thing that stands out to Neil is the smell of the whole place. Or lack thereof, really. Settling air and light brushes of dust give a sense of comfort so great it makes him uneasy.

"Jesus, do you know how to light candles?" He steps through the door after Vanya, tracking her movements to find that it takes her half a step and a slight stretch to reach the lightswitch.

She smiles at him under the yellow lighting. "I don’t own any candles, pretty boy. You want one, you can buy it yourself."

You’re too picky for me to buy something scented, she doesn’t say.

"Don’t tempt me."

A kitchen on the right, an open living room down two steps to the left, and a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. Neil doesn’t look for small details, doesn’t think about where the abundance of doors and hallways lead to; just nods in Vanya’s direction once more, taps two fingers against his temple in a lazy salute, and wanders towards the open door he can see out of the corner of his eye that has a set of carpeted stairs going down to what must be the basement.

"Night," He calls over his shoulder, dragging his decaying suitcase across the plush carpet.

"Morning." Vanya corrects, the echo of her voice carrying in the opposite direction.

There are only nine stairs separating Neil from the basement. Nine stairs that his bag soars down like a large wingless bird after Neil says a silent prayer that the handle stays on during the clumsy throw he uses to free his hands.

"Oh." The whisper of regret he says to the empty staircase is hidden entirely by the crash of plastic cracking and all of the contents of his suitcase skittering across the floor, which, unlike the living room, is made of hardwood.

The tone of his hum bounces with his body as he descends the stairs, both of his hands braced on the railings that go down the wall, supporting all of his weight because he decides to slide down each step instead of walking.

Much like the main floor, the basement has a surprisingly open floor plan. There is not one separating wall in sight across the spacious area, except the one with a thin wood door on it that blocks off what's probably the bathroom.

No closet either, but it’s not like Neil would need one anyway. There’s a very real possibility he's going to live out of the remains of his suitcase for the rest of his time at Palmetto, even once he’s supposed to head over to the dorms.

"Ah, fuck." He groans, realizing he has to buy a new suitcase to move into the dorms now that he’s successfully totaled his.

In a dream world, he could use some sort of cardboard box instead, but Vanya would probably cut his hands off before she let him do that. Hell, Kevin might do the same if he sees Neil with a box on move-in day. He's the type to grab him by the ear and tell him he has too much money to be pulling that type of shit.

A sweet man, truly.

Neil thinks aloud, pushing what was once his suitcase closer to the humongous bed with his foot, and asking the room, "Where the fuck do you get a suitcase?"

He didn’t buy the one he’s currently kicking around like an ancient soccer ball, and honestly, he doesn't know who did. It just appeared inside his door one day and he didn’t think to question it.

The damn thing doesn’t even have a tag to tell him what brand it is or where it might be from.

What does have a tag, though, is the pair of sweatpants Neil stares at for a few seconds, maybe a minute, questioning if he really cares enough to change out of his dirty clothes before he inevitably passes out.

Mouthing the name on the tag to himself, Neil backs up to the bed, keeping his eyes trained on the bold black lettering as he sits down and slowly leans back; not accepting that he can’t see it anymore until he’s eased fully onto the mattress and is looking at the smooth ceiling above him and the light he hadn’t even thought to turn on.

He takes a breath in through his nose, holds it, considers letting it out through his mouth, and then chooses to release it out of his nose.

It’s a dusty room; he doesn’t want those kinds of germs in his mouth.

That’s probably not how germs transfer, but he can’t be bothered to care.

He can only hope it’s not true, along with hoping that he’s too tired for his brain to send him off into a pool of memories with a hard push.

Hope is fruitless, but an impressive lack of sleep can make anything a viable option.

Neil wakes with laboured breaths and aching joints that fade slower than the silver blades carving shapes into his weathered skin.

The name Lola drips from his pores like sweat, rolling down in beads that travel faster than warm blood.

His spine is curved while he bends over his knees, biting at his lips in an attempt to quiet his breathing.

"Filthy child." Nathan had said with a wicked smile while he watched the blood on his blade splatter down onto his boy like rainwater.

"Great." Neil says, digging his nails into himself as if it will help him now, when he's already lucid and wishing he weren't.

He’s not sure how long he slept. His phone is dead in his pocket, has been for two days, and there are no windows in his humble abode to offer some clues about the time of day.

If he had to guess, he might say just over an hour, but then again, he’s not necessarily in the right headspace to be properly guessing times or dates.

"Ten." He estimates, saying it out loud like it’ll carry more weight or something. Lock it in; maybe that’s what he’s going for. As long as he ignores the shake of desperate fear in his voice, it might even work.

Unfolding himself slowly like a crumpled tissue that’s wet enough to tear if the wind blows wrong, Neil finds that the clicks of his bones and the sweat pooled at his sternum are setting a low standard for the rest of the summer in Palmetto.

The heat won’t be any better once he’s forced to share a run-down dorm room with an unknown amount of college athletes in between exy games and doing his job. It’ll be a new level of hell if that room doesn’t have any form of air conditioning.

Neil steps over his pile of clothes and old suitcase parts, questioning if the breeze that hits his slick skin from his three small steps actually feels good or if he’s just itching to cool down.

One damp curl falls into his left eye as he bends down to start crawling up the stairs, still fatigued from his time in bed enough to detest the idea of walking.

Even the metal on the door handle is warm in his hand when he grabs it and pulls down, using the short-lived leverage he gets to propel himself forward so he can push the thin plank of wood fully open.

He puts his knee on the top step and stands on one of his feet, straightening up while supporting himself on the drywall beside him.

Vanya is sitting in one of the velvet blue stools at the marble kitchen counter, rotating the seat back and forth while she reads from a sheet of paper that Neil can’t see very well from his spot at the basement door.

"Why is it so hot down there?" He asks, letting her know that he’s there. "Hot air is supposed to rise or something, no?"

"It does." She frees the paper from one of her hands and points at the ceiling. "The top floor’s mine; it’s despicably balmy up there."

Closing his door behind him while he enters the living room, Neil squints at Vanya while she continues to read, raising a brow and wondering if he’s lost his mind. "Is that why you cut your hair?"

She smiles without looking up, shaking her head in disagreement and sending the frayed ends of her chopped braids swaying with the movement. "Not quite, but I’m not opposed to that idea."

"Ah," Neil says, walking across the carpet that he quickly deems to be his favourite thing in the house.

The lights in the kitchen are low, acting as the only thing to offer any sort of illumination with the black-out curtains drawn across the windows and the French doors that Neil knows are bound to open up to a wide backyard.

"Embracing the darkness, are we, Morticia?" He teases, mourning the loss of the carpet as he strolls across the tile of the kitchen floor.

"Not many other options," Vanya says, pushing a full bowl of spaghetti across the counter. "The sun went down hours ago."

Neil freezes, his foot stuttering, before rerouting to the nearest window. "Hours," The word is repeated under his breath, said with a level of disgust he’s surprised he can still muster.

Pushing the curtains back so fast that he doesn’t even get to pay attention to how soft they are, Neil peers into the darkness that stares back at him through the window above the barn-style sink.

"What the fuck?"

Just over an hour, he thought. Had guessed with such confidence that it was ten in the morning.

He hasn’t been this wrong in a while.

"What time did you think it was?" Tentatively, Vanya laughs from behind Neil, trying and failing to swallow her snort when she sees the look of confusion across his face after he turns to her.

"No," Neil closes his eyes for a second and takes a breath, preserving the molecule left of his dignity by refusing to tell her about his impressively bad guess. "What time is it?"

The bowl Vanya had sent his way doesn’t lay abandoned for long. Once Neil grasps that there’s truly no sun to be seen, he drops the silky curtain and stands opposite his sister, grabbing the skinny fork she stuck in the middle of the food and putting a singular noodle in his mouth.

"You’d know if you charged your phone." Vanya returns her attention back to the paper in front of her and uses the free hand she has to push a stack of files over to him, stopping them just beside the bowl. "It’s about an hour past midnight." She says anyway.

Neil fishes around in his food, manoeuvring his fork to get one noodle on each prong. "There goes my shot at a decent sleep schedule for my time here." He sighs.

"You’ve never had a sleep schedule before; no one expected you to start now."

"No," Neil agrees. "But the idea of one was fun."

"If you’re a high school student who’s aiming for honours, maybe." Tapping the manila folders beside Neil’s noodles with a glossy nail, Vanya lifts her sharp gaze and stares daggers into his soul. "Read those."

A yawn crawls through Neil’s lungs, but dies quickly. "And what are those?" He asks, finally bringing his fork full of organized noodles to his lips.

Vanya watches him closely, probably searching his face to see what his opinion of her cooking is. "Your team." She says, not looking away from him.

The next stab of Neil’s fork is less meticulous than the first, and it catches half the amount of the second dive. "I wasn’t aware a group of grown men and women could fit into some unnecessarily expensive files."

"Some of them could have gone without, but I was feeling generous." Flipping over the cover on the first folder, Vanya reveals one sheet of paper. Every inch of it covered in small text, but only on one page.

"How sweet of you." Neil says, nodding slowly and scanning a few of the words before him.

"Right?" Vanya grins, closing the folder. "Just read them, red, they’ll help you. Be your guide, or however you want to feel about that."

Humming long enough that the tip of his nose starts to tingle, Neil scratches his cheek and shoves his fork into his mouth. "I’ll need a guide?" He asks through his dinner.

"Some of them are messier than you." The warning Vanya provides is almost laughable. For a brief moment, Neil wonders if Kevin’s aware of what he’s gotten himself into. "Riko, too."

"You know, I thought I was ready to move to a brand new city," Neil starts, dragging the files closer to him. "Maybe teach myself how to die, have a little fun with Kevin, then leave once the work’s done." He lifts them up, skimming the names printed across the back of them and recognizing only a handful. "During that time, though, I didn’t really picture myself getting too involved with the team of terrors that comes with the territory."

"I’m afraid that’s non-negotiable, mon frère." If Vanya smiles any harder, Neil is fairly certain her face will remain stuck in that twisted position for the rest of eternity. She certainly deserves it. "I’ve never seen a group be so involved in each other's lives quite like this one is."

"Yes, that’s what everyone wants to hear after committing to being a part of said group." Putting his fork down with no intentions to pick it up again, Neil brings the files even closer, nudging the bowl away slightly.

Vanya places her hand over the stack, effectively blocking Neil from bringing them any closer. "You didn’t eat enough."

Neil glances down at his dinner, then back to the files, and then at the food once more. "Do you want me to read or eat?"

"Both." With a yawn that has her honey brown eyes screwing shut, Vanya spins her stool and slips off of it, her mysterious paper still in hand while she wanders over to the perfectly polished steel fridge. "Multitask; it’s not hard." What she retrieves from the fridge is a glass bottle filled to just below the brim with water.

"That’s what you think." The folders get spread across the clean marble with the flick of Neil’s finger. The sounds of water touching down in one of the two glasses Vanya pulled out can still be heard over the shuffling of paper as Neil closes his eyes and picks blindly from the mess.

He counts to three before settling on the one he lands on first.

"Allison Reynolds," Vanya comments, unimpressed, while she places a glass of water beside Neil’s food. "She ran away from her castle and settled for a dumpster, only to become one of the crown assholes." She goes on, taking a quick sip from her own glass and turning away. "Have fun with that one."

There’s a small rush of adrenaline that flutters through Neil’s cold veins. There and gone in a second, but long enough for him to catch it and pull.

An off-brand version of excitement that can only be bought by filling holes and stringing together points. If Neil’s pockets weren’t deeper than the secrets and scandals of parliament, he would be in more debt than his father was.

Neil swipes his tongue across his teeth, letting the tip of it catch on the metal hanging from his gums. He flips open the file and counts the pages, not paying attention to the information displayed for him just yet.

The house is quiet. Frighteningly so. When he finishes counting and says, "Four," in a tone lower than a whisper, it carries through the space like a scream, reverberating off of the minimal walls for what feels like ages.

Oh, this isn’t going to work.

It’s a snap decision, and it has him restacking the scattered pile of files, sticking it under his arm, and grabbing his bowl and glass.

The doors hidden behind curtains are already unlocked when Neil gets to them. With one weird move, he can use his foot to push the long, light-blocking fabric aside and open one door.

He hums into the early summer breeze of the late night. Well, late night, early morning, miraculously both at the same time.

Behind him, the door he opened falls closed on its own, clicking shut with a sound that gets absorbed by the emptiness of the backyard.

Neil walks over to the large glass table beside the glowing pool. It takes him all of thirty seconds to spread out his stuff across the smooth surface, making himself at home in the place he hasn’t even been at for a whole day.

The underwater lights lurking in the pool are bright, but not overwhelmingly so. Their shine reaches Neil’s spot with a tremendous stretch, peeking over the table and dancing up his page sweetly, showing him the contrast between the off-white pages and their rich ink.

"Better," He tells himself, readjusting in his seat until he’s basically laying down with his feet up on the table and Allison’s file resting comfortably on his chest.

Getting started, though, is harder than he anticipated. It takes nearly four tries to get Allison’s birthday to stick in his mind.

But once he does gain momentum, adding an ounce of pressure to the rubber ball balancing on a slant in his head, Neil finds himself grabbing onto each sentence with greedy hands. All too soon, he’s finished diving into the fucked up life of Allison Reynolds, and can’t tell if the bar has been set too high or too low.

There’s only one way to decide, he supposes, and that way is by feeling around the tabletop and getting a hold of someone else’s winding story.

"Okay," He says, bringing the new person down to his comfortable position. "Matthew Boyd. Tell me who the hell you are."

A drug addict. That’s who Matthew is. Former, but an addict nonetheless. Lovingly referred to as "Matt" by nearly everyone, it seems.

Matthew’s a sweet boy with stable but separated parents, and he got caught up in substance abuse. All wrapped up in one double-sided page. Neil can’t say he’s too impressed with the switch from Allison to Matthew.

The bar certainly has been set somewhere, and Neil’s more blind to that position now than he was before.

Pinched between his fingers after his third reach is the life of Nicholas Hemmick.

Neil considers the file, weighs it in his hands, observes the thickness of it, and wonders if the trouble it’ll take to count the pages is worth it or not.

When he opens the first page and sees the words "conversion therapy" about halfway through the third paragraph, he quickly decides that it isn't.

Nicholas, Neil decides, is a basket case. Just a bit. One who faced the Lord and was personally smacked across the face and spit on by him and his righteous glory.

The kid was tossed into an otherworldly low and never given a ladder or rope to get him more than a handful of inches off of the ground.

It’s the details about his desperate scramble to hold together his family that has Neil sitting up and sifting through the files until he finds the one labelled Andrew Minyard. He traces his fingertips across the name and sets it aside with Aaron Minyard, preparing to save them for last.

With that done, Neil picks the next person for this tango line of trauma. Another heavy stack of pages, all put together for one life, but if Renee Walker has information to give, Neil will take it without question.

That, however, is a mistake. A mighty one.

Reading everything Vanya dug up on Renee, or Natalie Shields, hits closer to home than Neil was wanting to get tonight. It sticks him like an undetected needle, urging him to figure out who the hell Danielle Wilds is just to put more distance between himself and these people.

He shouldn’t let himself run from problems like this, he’ll have to deal with Renee eventually. Running is one of his specialties, though, so it’s no surprise that he jumps from Danielle to Bryan Seth Gordon and then finally to Aaron Minyard with a speed that should be concerning considering the late time and low light.

Nine pages were shared between the three of them. Two sides of lettering, a small font, and reasonable kerning.

The uniform and presentable format carries through to Andrew Minyard and his twelve sheets of unscathed paper.

Twelve pages of horror. Twelve pages of predictable and preventable twists. Twelve pages of foster families, court cases, and cocktails of wrongly prescribed uppers and downers that shouldn’t be shoved into one person at the same time.

Number three on the Fox's lineup, a total mess of a man that manages to be both the storm and the one that harrows it, and the very thing that could fuck up Neil’s little mission.

"Andrew and Renee," Neil says to the rippling water and faraway breezes. "What a pair."

He supposes there might be some weight to the running bet regarding the two of them that he just read about. The one about the exact status of their relationship. From where Neil’s standing, that isn’t necessarily relevant to him, but the aspect of their joint forces doesn’t look too terribly good. 

Not for him, at least. The dance he’s going to be doing right under their all-knowing noses isn’t exactly subtle, nor is the flash of jazz hands he’s bound to wave on the way out.

They’re problems, those two. The whole team, actually, but some of them are lesser evils in the anthill they reside in.

It’s going to make for an interesting dynamic. Neil can say now, with his mind full and his food untouched beside his water, that he was wrong once again. So very wrong, because immersing himself with the group of people who are blissfully unaware of the bright red targets on their backs could prove to be useful.

He’s not sure how yet, thinks he has a hazy idea maybe, but they’ll be a good tool to have tucked under his arm and slid up his sleeve. A group of people with little to no moral compass and a multitude of questionable skills—that's pretty much exactly what he’s got going on back in Baltimore.

Vanya seems to enjoy the herd of disrespectful young adults, Kevin’s stance on them is unknown but to be revealed soon, and Neil is drunkenly teetering on the wooden fence separating the yard of for or against as though it’s his job.

Perhaps it is, in some ways. Or not, that’s always an option, too. Neil won’t know how much he’ll have to keep them in mind and lean on them until he has to be around them, live with them, learn with them, and fucking bond with them if it keeps his cover because apparently he hadn’t thought about that strategy at first.

Neil taps a finger against Andrew’s file. Lets his eyes wander across the expansive planes of nature before him while his chest expands with a deep breath.

Part of him wants to head back inside and see if Vanya’s got any cigarettes laying around. Another part of him feels like he should stay outside and think about what all of this means a little more. He doesn’t want to, though, he’s decently confident that any further pondering on this topic will lead to him overthinking things and getting too involved before things even really start.

It would be nice to stop thinking. His mind isn’t even that loud right now; it’s just a selfish desire for more silence than he really deserves that’s nagging his mind.

Neil sighs into the calm air and sits up, tossing the last folder back into the pile and planting his feet on the ground so he can push his chair back and stand.

The fabric of his socks drags against the warm pavement as he crosses over to stand at the edge of the pool. He balances for a moment, lifting up one foot and pulling his socks off slowly, one at a time, as he observes the gentle movements of the water beneath him and listens to the rustle of dying green leaves.

With his bare feet steadied on the ground, he sinks into a squat and leans forward far enough to drag the tips of his fingers across the top of the pool.

He breathes in the chemical-scented air, removing his hand from the pool and placing it beside him so he can have some support as he lowers himself into a sitting position and unfolds his legs to put his feet into the water.

Cool waves crawl up his bare skin, not hitting the hem of his pants thanks to the bunches of material pinched between his damp fingers.

Synchronizing his blinks with the patterns formed by the sound of the stirring water isn’t hard. Neil falls into the simple soothing action easier than he does the breathing exercises he makes Kevin do during his panic attacks. Not surprising, though, because Neil’s never been the type to take well to measured breaths.

Even as a kid, he hated it. Always despised the way it hurt his bruised and broken ribs, absolutely loathed the gargle sound that came from his throat while he tried not to choke on his own blood and focus on Vanya and her counting.

No. Not going there.

Neil doesn't think as he uses the muscles in his arms to shove himself out of his spot and into the water.

"Fuck,” He whisper-shouts, brushing water out of his eyes and coughing to clear it out of his mouth. A con to catching himself off guard is that he didn’t have time to breathe before he threw himself into the plunging pool.

He spits, unsure how much of it was bleached water or saliva. "Oh," His dripping hair grows longer, wound curls straightening as they fall into his eyes and blind him. With one more scratchy and wet breath, he pushes the soaked mop of red away from his face and tries to blink the dryness out of his eyes. "That was so fucking stupid."

Belatedly, Neil remembers he does not live alone anymore, and he whips his head towards the house, searching for windows on the top floor and trying to figure out if Vanya just saw what he did or not.

"Fuck," He repeats, his head rolling across his shoulders when he sees a light through the glass on Vanya’s floor.

She’s not in the window, as far as he can tell, but if it’s open at all, there’s no way she didn’t hear the splash of him tossing himself around like a rubber duck.

Looking closely at the window, peering through it as though Vanya will appear out of thin air, a chill walks its way up Neil’s spine with the knowledge that he could have been loud enough to disturb people.

One hell of a way to welcome himself to the neighbourhood.

Given the time, it's safe to assume that the majority of the people on the block are currently sleeping. Vanya probably is too; it’s not out of the ordinary for her to fall asleep at her desk with the lights on and music playing obnoxiously loud.

One of the many things she does that Neil will never understand. It's pretty low on the list, but it’s there nonetheless.

Summer feels like early spring as Neil pulls himself out of the swaying water, every small movement of air hitting his skin with a force that could chatter his teeth.

The pavement darkens at the splatters that flee from his hands when he smacks them down and eases his way back onto the edge fully.

He’s cold, and then he’s warm, and then he’s smiling at the stars like a fucking lunatic, battling his desire to be back in the water and the need to get back inside.

There’s hunger buried somewhere down in his stomach. Along with a thirst for non-chemically treated water. 

Both of which could be solved by Neil getting his ass back over to the table he was working at and finishing the food and water Vanya prepared for him. The spaghetti is probably cold now, the water warmed by the heated air, a touch of unappetizing green coating both of them in Neil’s eyes now.

"Can’t swim after you eat," Neil reasons with himself, bringing the bar in his tongue between his teeth to hide his grin as the decision to slide himself back into the pool clicks into place.

His clothes are already soaked, might as well give in and sink into the clarity of the softly rolling waves, bask in the night’s twinkling glaze simply because he can now.

The droplets of water that travel from his hair down to the sensitive skin on the shell of his ear make a dull sound. It’s rather hollow compared to the one he makes with his hand by swiping it from side to side under the surface of the water, deeper down but still close enough to the top to have a good amount of impact behind it.

For some reason, he bows his head and blows air into the movements that follow his hand, hearing the drips of miserable drops and his own breath instead of the movement of branches and the serene tunes of some distant windchimes.

The chimes sing, happier than Neil could ever be, and water splashes, free in a way no one knows, skipping across the space awaiting them like lightweight rocks thrown by clueless children.

It’s sweet, almost, the scenery Neil gets to partake in now. A little less so when he remembers the lousy drive to get here and the fact that his brother is so close but so scarily far away.

Not at all, with the knowledge that Kevin being nearby means Riko’s nearby too.

Neil signed up for this, he’s not dumb, but thinking about Riko being close feels significantly easier than knowing that the fucked up mongrel is day trip distance away now.

But he’s not scared. Not in the way he knows Kevin is. No, Neil would be more willing to say that he’s mildly pissed now that he’s actually saddled with the burden the depraved boy carries than anything else.

"That fucker." He says quietly, meandering further away from his edge and nearing the middle, going forward until he’s on his tiptoes, lifting his chin high to keep his head above water.

It’s hard to be mad when you know you look like a stray cat fighting for its life, Neil decides as he holds back a laugh and attempts not to waterboard himself.

If he were to die here, Vanya wouldn’t find him until she managed to wake up in a few hours. By then, he’ll be bloated and pale, looking less like a cat and more like an old cabbage roll left to float around in the sink of the decaying grandmother that made it.

Not the ideal way to go out; Neil would rather jump from a roof and play bird for the handful of seconds it takes him to hit the ground.

Be a new piece of splatter paint for onlookers to ogle at, contribute to society by becoming a tourist attraction that ends up bettering the economy, sounds about right to him.

With a low groan and an awkward move that has Neil holding his breath, he ends up on his back, floating on the water with his limbs spread out and no ounce of energy present in his body.

Lights threaten to stand in his peripheral vision, pointing and laughing at the small amounts of sun that pry apart the thick and tired clouds with their worn fingers.

Neil blinks blankly at the mocking smiles of the stars, unaware of the soft shine with which they caress his sculpted features, their hands taking his chin between their thumb and forefinger to plant kisses on his freckles as they trace the shape of Vulpecula into the back of his neck.

If he stays here for long enough, resting amongst nature and sucking in small breaths while he listens to the sleeping world live on around him, he’ll be able to observe the sunrise through sensitive eyes. Be able to see it reach out and awaken the people who take advantage of its beauty.

Turning tides and the singing decorative metal of stunningly made chimes will turn into chirping birds and slamming car doors.

The moon’s charming nods have to morph back into the same evil grin the sun possesses while it taunts Neil and his hair. His surroundings are going to regain their lifeless glow, and in the middle of it all will be Neil’s hungry and dehydrated but soaking self.

An interesting start to his time in South Carolina. Setting the standards low enough to get by.

No expectations to be met now. The only comparison he has for everything to come is tonight. The spin of the water, the twirl of the wind, and the lives of the teammates he’s yet to meet.

A slate with enough staining to keep him on track and hold him back from time to time. South Carolina will not be the sponge that cleans it, but what’s one more mark on the cracked granite Neil is made of?

Too many more chips, and he’ll be nothing.

This should only be a scratch.

Chapter Text

Shy pillars of hesitant sunlight stream through the cracked kitchen window, gracing everything not hidden away in a cabinet with their soft shine while simultaneously casting deepening shadows across the depths of the room.

David leans lazily against his cluttered counter, listening to the resounding silence that’s accompanied only by the struggling gurgle of his dying coffee maker. A small cloud of caffeinated steam floats from the back of the machine as it finishes brewing the pot. Only a few drops are left fighting for a spot in the carafe, the stragglers of the already runt-like group.

With his to-go mug already in hand, David approaches his diluted coffee, ready to fill the cup to just below the brim so he has enough space for one pack of sugar and enough milk to change the shade of the drink just slightly. He adds a light dash of whisky as well. For health reasons.

While he screws on the lid of his cup, the birds housed in the small cluster of trees outside his building begin to wake. They rise slowly, but work in a domino effect. One bird chirps, and then another one calls out alongside the first, and then another, and very soon, they are all weeping like war widows as David rolls his tired eyes and makes his grand escape from the kitchen.

His keys sit freely on his TV stand, crumpled into a pile and tangling with each other. Most of them decide to work with gravity once they get picked up, falling into place naturally with their usually obnoxious sound, but a few of them take an extra shake from David to right themselves.

The questionable air conditioning provided by the building kicks in at some point while David is sliding his shoes on and reaching for his silver doorknob. Fresh air comes rushing into the apartment with a whirl, providing a breeze that feels wonderful for about four seconds before the initial bliss wears off and the realisation that the air isn’t actually cold starts to set in.

At least the court has real air conditioning. David isn’t fond of leaving his place to get pumped full of lukewarm recycled air for the day, but he has fans for a reason. Once he gets home later, he’ll have to turn every last one on to get the warmth away, casually running up his electricity bill in the process. It’s times like this where he considers starting the search for a new apartment. But it’s also times like this that he has to remind himself of the privacy he gets by having a floor all to himself, along with the benefit of having a record-breaking short commute to work.

The hallway David steps into is unaffected by the blast of room-temperature air. If he were to stand in the same place for about five minutes, he’d probably end up standing in a pool of his own sweat, given how quickly it drips from him in the heated hall.

The elevator is no better. If anything, it’s worse. That might make sense in some ways, considering it’s quite literally just a box with no real ventilation, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Overnight, the whole building managed to convert itself into a two-star sauna that doesn’t relax or detox anyone, but instead wrings people like a damp cloth before whipping them over a rock a handful of times to make sure all of the liquid has been removed.

David can’t tell if the lack of cliché elevator music makes this experience better or worse. He’s inclined to say better, based simply on his lack of care for music in general, but any distraction would be a good one if it took his mind off of the sweat dripping down his back for even just a second.

So very slowly, the rusted doors pry themselves apart. At the rate the weather is climbing, they’ll be welded together by the end of the week, and David will have to take the stairs to get to the lobby. Maybe he should start carrying a crowbar around with him. In case of emergency, obviously. A small upside to that would just so happen to be that the metal of the tool would be cooler than the wind that meanders pathetically around outside.

David steps into the outdoor world, the doors to the apartment building swinging shut behind him. He glances at his surroundings for a moment. A dirty rubber ball teeters over the grate for the street drain, its loud pattern hardly visible through the grime that coats it. Not too far away from the ball, the shrivelled beginnings of a flower weep into the concrete, its leaves hugging close to its body as it slowly realises that it will never bloom.

The ageing sun, angled awkwardly in the sky, swings impatiently through the endless space it lives in, serving as a ruthless reminder that David has been standing still for approximately three seconds now and is already getting a lovely sunburn. It’ll ache desperately from where it hides behind his worn-out wife-beater, probably etching the mangled shape into his already leathered skin. The kids will most likely bug him about not applying any form of SPF; Nicky and Abby will surely hound him about his lack of care for his skin, pinning him to the wall of his own court with their judgmental eyes while they lecture him.

That’s just fine. It’s not as though that exact scenario hasn’t panned out about three times already. It always tends to follow the same lines. David, why don’t you clean under your fingernails? David, when was the last time you trimmed your eyebrows? Coach, do you know that you can buy teeth-whitening strips nowadays?

His teeth are just fine, thank you very much, and yes, he’s aware that the world is progressing at agitating speeds and having facial hair and dirty hands is no longer something people will accept. But even now, as he shuffles tiredly to his beaten truck, trying and failing miserably to protect his energy from the hungry heat, he can’t find it in himself to care. There’s no point in hiding from the inevitable.

It’s a blessing of sorts—the bitter kind that's bound to blow up in his face at some point—that has his morning and afternoon laid out in a way that will grant him total isolation. It’s often thought by the psychology experts that linger around campus—just close enough for David to overhear a conversation or two but not close enough to warrant a polite interaction—that isolation is the most brutal form of human punishment. They base their opinions largely on an experiment performed in the 1950s in which some Canadian psychology professor put a handful of student volunteers into small rooms, where they were mercilessly deprived of any sort of sensory input from their surroundings.

With nothing more than a bed in their provided chambers, the students who agreed to risk their humanity for $20 a day didn’t last nearly as long as anyone involved with the experiment had been hoping. David had stopped eavesdropping on that particular discussion when the topic turned to the symptoms experienced by the underpaid lab rats after everything was said and done, but he’d taken one thing with him: a wholly uneducated belief that he could have made it through the intended 6 weeks of the experiment and come out completely unscathed and $840 richer. On occasion, he still likes to entertain this rather self-righteous thought.

As he slides into the driver's seat of his 2004 Toyota Tacoma, he figures that the experiment could be a relaxing weekend activity for him. A well-deserved reward for putting up with unruly amounts of short-tempered college athletes daily. With a few crisp Cuban cigars and just enough blended bourbon to lighten the mood, he might be able to talk his way into a handful of vacation days to follow through with the mildly ritualistic events.

With a pitiful grip, David blindly attempts to navigate his rusted key into its home in the ignition. He sighs into the searing silence, finally gaining the dignity to look at where his hand is flopping about. Only then, with his eyes on the destination of his key, is he able to force the toothed metal into its declared spot. He listens to the repetitive dinging that sounds before he allows the engine to fully stutter to life, his thumb trailing back and forth across the ridges of the fox paw he’d let Dan slide onto the keyring after her first season on the team. Not one part of him wishes to return to the sudatorium his apartment has become, but there is a deep sense of longing in his tired gut that requests to know the peacefulness of his bed once more.

David grips the gear shifter, pulling it back into the drive setting and effectively derailing his train of thought before it had the opportunity to gain any real momentum. There is a truly terrifying stack of paperwork on his desk at the stadium, calling his name and aching to know the taste of ink, and he’ll be damned if he lets it grow any further. He’s already been putting it off for three days now; his self-driven streak simply won’t allow him to stand around idly anymore, even if he knows exactly what information every page of deadened wood and recycled scrap contains. Evidently, the ERC and their graceful leniency will only stretch so far for so long, with not a care in the world for the dreadful context that surrounds the cumbersome issue at hand as they wave their gavel via threatening letters and overly complex sentences.

Easing his truck out of its parking spot and out onto the neglected roads, passing through the gate hiding his apartment complex from the world with a single swipe of the key he keeps separate from his ring, David feels a little like the child he was never quite allowed to be. But only a little. He’s grown enough to bite his tongue and put up with the short drive and long day ahead of him. That, however, doesn’t exempt him from not wanting to do any of it in the slightest.

He’ll put pen to paper, claim a half-hour lunch break for himself, groan about endless neck cramps while he glares resentfully at the words written in size 12 Arial font with double spacing and manual indents, and then he’ll visit Abby for a taste of real food and humanity once his court gets taken over by one overachiever and his group of sullen burnouts. Life is a strange phenomenon, yes, but not for David. Not in these winding days of summer, when the majority of his Foxes are enjoying their vacation and willing it to continue for just a little longer. During this blessed assortment of time, David lives his life on a predictable schedule, and he doesn’t hate it.

Pulling into the parking lot of the stadium, every spot that trails up and down the length of the rectangle carved out for their spectators and players is empty. Predictably so. Just as he likes. Surprises have never been a particularly interesting aspect of life for him. They weren’t when he was a child, and they ended with quiet bitterness, and they certainly aren’t now, when most of the time they end with a battered kid fresh out of their high school exy season signing a contract that’ll provide them a safe haven that isn’t even really safe.

The sun crawling over the roof of the court is, blessedly, much meeker than the roaring flames he’d experienced just a few minutes prior. David pushes his door open, the whole of his upper body dragging drowsily with it as he fails to remove his fingers from the handle. He leans for a moment, using his free hand to snatch his keys from the ignition, and then he caves and removes his feet from the footwell beneath him, swinging them into the open before planting them on the ground with fake determination. Maybe if he pretends he wants to loiter in his office and read spiteful letters, his feet will believe him and take him there. Maybe.

He’s got to look at the bright side here. His office isn’t just piles upon piles of paper; it’s snacks—the good ones that he only keeps at the court because he knows he’d go through them all in one sitting on his frumpy couch if he were to keep them in his apartment. And it’s drinks. Cans of root beer and a few of those cherry-flavoured Kool-Aid jammers he uses to raise his blood sugar when his eyes start drooping. It’s the coupon he has pinned to his tack board for the small Chinese restaurant a few minutes away, the gift card for that swanky coffee shop Allison gave him for Christmas, and, most importantly, that beloved air conditioning he was thinking of this morning.

See? It’s not all bad. Though it certainly may not be all good, David thinks to himself as he slams his truck’s door shut behind him and purposefully stomps away, it could be significantly worse. He could be one of the students at Palmetto, living in a dorm that hasn’t known any form of renovation since the early 80s and being slowly deafened by the volume of the dining hall each time dinner rush hours roll around.

David is fast as he punches in the security code. He doesn’t even bother to linger to make sure the gate successfully falls shut behind him. Within seconds, his fingers wrap around the warm silver handle of the stadium’s doors, tightening their grip as he pulls the door open wide enough to rush inside. A wave of mental clarity washes over his body at the same time cold air does. His strides widen as he stalks through the stadium, heading towards his office, and his cheeks tingle with the ghosting of a smug smile born from his gratitude for no longer being a student.

Every once in a while, how far he’s come in life really hits him. Coaching class I exy is a hell of a lot nicer than where he was told he would end up as a child. But as those glittering epiphanies hit him, the waving tides of this cruel reality also dose his veins. As David twists the knob to his office door and steps inside the stuffy room, it’s like a needle of brutal actuality is injected right into a major artery.

Now, David’s mind may not jump from conclusion to conclusion as fast as it once did, and it may drag its feet while it connects dots on occasions, but his memory has mercifully been left largely untouched. In fact, with his rising age, he feels stable in admitting that he’s only gotten better at remembering specifics. But he tips his head not even a quarter of an inch to the side, blinks twice in quick succession, and he can’t help but question if the papers on his desk have multiplied or if this is what they looked like yesterday. Typically, he’d have known approximately how many pages exactly were sprinkled across his desk when he left yesterday, but clearly he’d been having a less than typical day because the number he had in his head this morning pales in comparison to what he sees now.

He takes a few measly steps towards his desk and the army of documents, placing his coffee cup down on the only clear spot of table left. Going through all of this is sure to take him hours. Maybe even an additional day, depending on the level of his dedication at the halfway point.

This whole thing would be less of a gargantuan "fuck you" if David weren’t fairly certain that every piece of paper before him didn’t say the same damn thing. He’d been aware of the fate he was doomed to pursue when he’d left to tend to the stacks originally, but now that he’s been slapped across the face by the true commitment he’s bound himself to, his back tingles as the devil himself shoves him around the desk and into his seat.

Worn-out padding spreads apart under his weight, welcoming him as he settles into the spot prepared for him thanks to years of having the same old chair. The weathered material is painfully familiar, and it already threatens to distract him from the task at hand. However, with a shred of willpower and the knowledge that neglect won’t nurture this mound, David is able to lean forward, retrieve a dying pen from the old cup he uses to store pencils, and put his head down so he can get to work.

It’s a truly harrowing feat, and after writing his signature about nine times on the first two double-sided pages alone, he takes a momentary break to roll his chair over to the small radio he keeps on the windowsill. He presses a few buttons and messes with some knobs, and he ends up on a channel that’s declared it’s going to be playing ad-free classic rock for the next sixty minutes. Turning up the volume to a level that’s not going to drown out the words he has to read through but is still loud enough to make this day more bearable, he rolls back over to his desk and resumes his work.

In the privacy of his office, he allows his head to nod along to Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild, and he taps his pen against his desk when he’s able to stop writing dates and providing signatures. As songs switch and tempos ebb and flow, he does much of the same, keeping himself occupied with his surroundings even while he continues to make steady progress.

The addition of music keeps him going. Eventually, Scorpions’ Rock You Like A Hurricane fades out slowly, its gradual end being interrupted by the energetic voice of a radio host. The voice talks fast, and David has barely caught the words being said as the music stops before he’s being led to what’s bound to be the longest ad break in history.

He puts his pen down and shakes out his clammy hand, rolling his head across his shoulders and groaning as he stretches an arm over his head. Rotating his chair, he reaches across his desk to grab the coffee cup he’d left on the faraway corner. A few stray papers brush against his bare arms, providing a truly nasty reminder that he’s nowhere near being done here.

As several repetitive ads drone on like beige noise in the background, David sips his steaming caffeine and picks his pen back up. His hand hovers over the page he’s working on while he holds his cup to his lips, remaining in place as he sits partially frozen in his position like a statue in a second-rate art museum. He doesn’t want to keep working right now—not while some narrator named Steff tells her colleague, Mitchell, about the newest deals in their co-owned jewellery store. If the music gets to take a prolonged and torturous break, why shouldn’t David be allowed to take one as well? Walk around the empty building a bit, stare at the freshly shined court, make sure the locker rooms also got a nice visit from the janitor—that sort of fun stuff.

If he wants to waste his time and drag this whole process out for much longer than he should, that’s his business. He’s never actually cared to take a look at the constitution, but surely there's some sort of law to back him up now.

With all the spite in the world fueling him, David drops his pen once more, not bothering to put the cap on it, and he uses his feet to push his chair away from his desk. Before standing up, he unscrews the lid of his coffee cup and takes a long swig. Abby hates when he does this; she always says he’s more prone to a ghastly spill when he takes the lid off, but David knows that the amount of liquid he gets with one open-container sip will never compare to the abysmal amount he gets when he complies with the small mouthpiece.

But, even with the bonus of better access, Abby is still right on some level, which is why David keeps a watchful eye on the silky refreshment as he stands up, paying close attention to the way it sloshes around with his movement. He’s consumed enough of it to not be worried about it jumping over the brim of the cup, but he figures it’s better to be safe than sorry. Not safe enough to put the lid back on, though; he has an image to maintain after all.

As he safely rounds his desk, he allows himself to pick up the pace in his steps, accelerating from hunch-back grandma speed to his usual lengthy yet unrushed strides. With comfort bleeding into his actions, he starts holding the cup more casually as he nears the tightly shut door, relaxing his posture and not being put off by the warmth radiating off of his cup.

In his firm grasp, the door handle is cool. He attempts to have another sip of his coffee, taking a small step back to easily open the door, but quickly abandons such movements when his heart falls into his stomach and he slams the door closed after only getting it open about two inches.

His breathing stutters, and the hand holding his coffee spasms. The cup falls to the ground, drowning both the floor and David’s feet in the hot liquid.

Many emotions flicker through his head in a matter of seconds, with fear being a rather prominent one. He leans up against the door with his shoulder, using his body weight as a barricade as he ignores the burning feeling in his feet.

A short, light laugh sounds from the other side of the door. The foreignness of the laugh rings shortly through the otherwise silent building; its shallow subtlety only makes David lean against the door harder.

See, in David’s mind, there are small files. These small files contain rudimentary knowledge about each and every kid on his team. What food they tend to eat, what hours they choose to keep, what they do in stressful situations, and what their voices and laughs and shouts of pain sound like. He could be anywhere in the court doing anything, and if one of his Foxes laughed, he would know which one it was, which is exactly why he’s perfectly aware that whoever is standing silently on the other side of this door is not one of his Foxes.

It certainly isn’t Betsy or Abby either, and there’s no world in which David would even entertain the idea of it being a maintenance worker. There are only a handful of workers that frequent Palmetto, and the number of those who will come inside the court is even fewer. David has seen each of the few who will brave the wrath of the Foxhole, and he knows that the single, slender hand he’d seen hanging motionlessly at this stranger’s side could not possibly belong to any of those few.

Unease rolls feverishly in David’s stomach as he maintains a brave face. Slowly, so painfully slowly, his brain starts attempting to function, and words and questions try to string themselves together. He’s beaten to the punch, though.

"The university website said you were holding office hours for athletes." The explanations come out in an even-toned voice, hidden slightly behind a thick accent that David can’t exactly place right now. The stranger must take a step closer to the door because their voice sounds louder as they continue. "I can come back later, though, if you’re busy."

The coffee that splashed devilishly around his ankles threatens to blister the skin, and David suddenly feels just a little foolish. Seriously, he’s barricaded himself in his office all because he got a little spooked? Really?

"Right," he replies, glancing down at his feet to make sure his skin isn’t bubbling from the burn. As he does so, he catches a quick glimpse of the paperwork on his desk, and he has half a mind to tell the random kid to go away. He doesn’t, though.

Stepping away from the door, David pretends he doesn’t hear the carpet make an awful squelching sound, and he grabs the handle with no real confidence. His stomach calms significantly when he actually sees the oddity that managed to catch him off guard.

Curly red hair, short as all hell, a bitchy look on his face, and one too many piercings to be safe. He looks just about ready to squint and punch a hole in the drywall for no good reason, but somehow, there’s an air of composure to him. It’s almost as if the short stack knows what he can do and doesn’t care who else does, which is decidedly very strange but not at all out of the ordinary for a Fox. But overall, the kid can’t be more than 5’4 at best, and he looks one solid gust of wind away from being blown into a tomb.

"What d'ya need?" David asks, watching as those unreadable eyes in front of him narrow inexplicably. In another world, he might be more put off by this first impression. But in that other world, he probably isn’t about to be booted from the exy season, and the skin of his feet probably isn’t a handful of degrees away from melting off, so truthfully, fuck that other world.

"A spot," the kid answers, his eyes returning to their original posture. His shoulders open up, as if he’s attempting to make himself seem larger than he actually is. "On your team."

David doesn’t do anything for five very long seconds. He waits completely impatiently for a round of laughter to come out of the kid, or another of those short humorous gasps he let out earlier. He waits for any sign that this kid finds this funny, because obviously this is a joke; no one ever wants to be a Fox, they get borderline blackmailed into it, that’s how this goes. People don’t come to him, he has to go to them.

But silence is the only thing that dares to face David’s waiting breaths. Well, silence and a few bored blinks from his guest, but David likes to think he’s figured out how to let that teenage angst edge-lord behaviour roll off of him by now.

"Why?" he asks when the air grows awkward. "Are you mental?" In theory, there should be much less speculation in his tone, but he just can't be bothered to try and hide it. This is wrong; this kid is disturbing the natural order like a freak of nature. There’s got to be something seriously wrong if he’s actively asking for a position. Then again, though, there’s something wrong with everyone else on the team, so why would this random Annie-the-orphan-looking kid be any different?

The kid stares back, wildly unimpressed, if the thin line his lips have pressed into means anything. "If I say yes, can I be on the team?"

Oh, there is something wrong with him. Something deeply wrong with him. Etched into his bones and living in his veins type of wrong. But desperate times, right? "If that magical yes makes you a capable player, I might consider it." David answers cautiously.

Instead of playing ball with him and firing off one more of those snarky remarks he clearly has waiting on the tip of his tongue, the kid stands still, staring forward expectantly. He’s probably waiting for David to cave and go off to dig out some gear for him. Smart boy, this one is, because that’s exactly what ends up happening. Who needs walking breaks when there's a potential new player waiting to be recruited?

David heaves a sigh that carries the weight of the world and shoulders past his guest, more than happy to act like his shoes aren't probably leaving some sort of wet, coffee-scented footprints in his wake. He doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if the kid is following; he knows he is, no matter how silent his footsteps are in comparison to David’s own. Still, his eyes wander casually to one of the windows they pass by, and they flicker back forward once he sees shiny curls bouncing in step behind him.

"You know your size?" He asks, approaching the dingy storage room that holds all of the extra equipment. It’s not locked, it never is, and the handle gives easily under the pressure of David’s palm. The motion-detecting lights turn on once the door opens more than a few inches.

A quiet hum of affirmation is the format in which the answer comes from the stranger at his back, so he steps away from the doorway and gestures inside. "I’ll leave the court door open," he says, watching out of the corner of his eye as the kid steps into the room and looks around. "But I’ll be in the stands."

If the player is at all offended when David walks away from him, he doesn’t make any sound to show it. The only noise coming from the storage room is the shuffling of clothes and racquets, and as David puts more distance between himself and the door as he makes his way to the court, he swears he hears the disheartening sound of a bucket of balls tipping over. It takes a lot of effort to keep from snorting a laugh.

He lets a smile crack his lips, but only once he’s reached the court and knows he’s safe from those dead eyes. David can’t say for sure if he’s smiling because he knows that not too far away there’s a brooding kid chasing exy balls around the storage room or because of how insane the situation is. Hell, it’s probably both.

In an act of kindness, David uses a spare stack of the cones he keeps around for training to prop open the door, and he sets another stack just inside the court for the kid to use. After picking gear and chasing balls around, he probably won’t even think to bring some for himself.

David, satisfied with his good deed for the year, makes his way to the stands to pick a seat that will grant him the best view. He wants to see every detail—every bead of sweat that forms with every passing second, every minute twitch, every stuttering step. He ends up sitting in the middle of the third row from the bottom, crossing his arms over his chest, nodding in approval of his spot.

Not long after he settles, the door to the court rattles with its slight movement, and the kid steps through the opening he’s made. With the hand not holding his chosen racquet, he grabs the cones and walks forward. He pauses for a moment, keeping his eyes trained on the ground as he inspects what must be the spot he’s chosen to work in, and then he tosses the racquet to the ground and starts setting up cones. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of thought put into the setup for whatever basic drills he’s about to perform. The pattern he sets the cones in is one every exy player knows and loathes. The one taught in high school that’s basically designed to make the player fail.

One moment of contemplation, one sluggish step, one wrong thought—that’s all it takes to completely ruin the momentum established by the player and send the whole drill askew. The basic building blocks of the drill aren’t even hard; that’s what makes this drill so awful, because in theory, it’s so easy that a child could do it. But for some reason no one can comprehend, the moment it all gets put together and executed, it becomes a thing of nightmares. David only really uses this drill when the Foxes are being particularly rowdy. They’ve come to see it almost as a punishment. Every player in the history of the world has, really.

But for some reason, here this kid is, setting himself up for failure by choice in his first impression. If this is meant to be some ploy to impress David, it’s backfiring. All David feels is dread about the inevitable outcome.

This guy is shooting himself in the foot, and he’s doing it with no expression and confident strides. He just keeps getting more and more strange with every minute that ticks by.

When he manages to get all the cones in a position he deems correct, and he’s not wrong, he scoops his racquet back up and takes his spot at the very end of the drill. Flipping the racquet over in his hands, he frees the ball he’d had tucked away in the net. The ball bounces off the ground once, then twice, and then it’s back in the net of the kid, and he’s off, flying down the court, weaving between cones, hitting the spaces between other ones with the ball, and catching the ricochet flawlessly each time. That’s how it always starts. After the first round is when people get tired, cones fall down, and legs get caught up on each other.

David isn’t sure exactly how many rounds this kid plans on pushing out, but the end of the first comes, and he dives into a second serving of torture like it’s fun for him. He’s probably just riding the high of adrenaline, which is bound to make his crash even worse than David was expecting, but that’s fine. Clearly, he’s got raw talent. Not even knowing what position he plays, David’s already decided he’ll take him. Even if he’s not a striker, with enough prodding from Kevin, he will be by the end of the first month of official practices.

At some point, while David is wondering how much trouble it’ll surely be to introduce the team to a new member, his new Fox goes for a third round in the drill that was crafted by Lucifer himself. David can see a thin layer of sweat starting to shine under the heavy light of the stadium, and he only now notices that the kid came onto the court without a helmet. He brushes that realisation off; after all, his players do basic drills without their helmets all the time, but he shakes his head to himself, thinking about the field day Abby and Kevin are going to have with their lecture about basic game safety. The first chance they get to pounce on this poor kid is going to be a bloodbath of forced apologies and fake understanding. It’ll be incredibly entertaining.

Lost in his thoughts on how this new addition will unfold, David almost doesn’t take notice when the kid goes for round four. He uncrosses his arms and leans forward, watching with a puzzled expression and counting the reps. And then he stands, because the kid goes for a fifth round. If the sound of the ball slamming against the court floor every few seconds weren't so loud, David’s certain the only thing he’d be able to hear is the panting breaths from the complete affront to the laws of the human body’s endurance.

David starts marching down from his spot in the stands as the kid reaches round number six. He squints through the plexiglass, testing to make sure it wasn’t just a trick of the lights and that all of the cones are indeed still standing.

They are. It’s insane. Ridiculous. Whatever team had this kid in high school should have been praying daily for the blessing it would have been to have a player with stamina and precise accuracy like this one. David should send this kid’s old coach a fruit basket for honing his skills so well.

The kid is on his seventh round when David finally smacks the plexiglass and puts a stop to him. Honestly, he didn’t think it was possible for someone to get so far on what’s basically a suicide mission. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little freaked out that he now knows someone can. More so, though, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t ready to click his heels with glee over that certain someone being one of his Foxes now.

He walks slowly over to the court door, giving the new Fox time to catch his breath. His shoulders rise and fall quickly, and he uses his fingers to shake out his sweaty hair, dropping his racquet.

David slides his hand into the gap that’s been kept by the extra stack of practice cones and opens the door to let himself onto the court. He looks between the boy and the cones and shakes his head once more, bemused by the situation. "Kid," he says, loud enough that his voice will carry over to its intended target. "What’s your name?"

The kid tilts his head, not in a curious way, but in a way that says he’d been expecting this. "Nathaniel Wesninski," he responds, raising his voice the same way David had. "Why?"

"Well, I need to know what to have printed on the back of your jersey, don’t I?" David leans against the wall beside him, crossing his arms and observing as Nathaniel nods along in understanding.

Nathaniel shrugs. "I suppose," he says, then turns his attention away from David when he seemingly grows bored of him, and he starts picking up the cones he’d set out.

David waits patiently for Nathaniel at the door and holds it open for him once he’s close enough. "Just leave the cones here," he says to Nathaniel as he kicks the extra cones away from the door, returning them back to their usual spot just beside it. "No use in putting ‘em back."

Nathaniel does as he’s told with no hesitation. Once he’s got his cones down and away, he looks at David, waiting to be told what to do next. "Go shower," David decides. "Jersey and pads go in the bin beside the door to be cleaned; you can put the racquet and ball back in the storage room. Come to my office before you leave, though, you need to sign some stuff."

Nodding, Nathaniel heads in the direction that David points him in to get to the locker rooms. He probably already knows where they are, he’d used them to change into the gear in the first place, but David’s not cruel enough to assume. Once Nathaniel pushes his way into the locker room, David starts the journey back to his office.

Immediately, the room reeks of coffee. The smell smacks David across the face hard enough to make him pause before he fully steps back into the office. His first order of business is opening a window, which he does in a record time of two seconds. His next order of business is opening one of the drawers that go down the side of his desk and shoving all the paperwork he left scattered around into the already full space. He’s using his fingertips to cram the papers in as he slides the drawer closed, careful not to get his skin pinched by the quickly closing gap.

When he’s satisfied with the decently presentable state of his office, he turns around and starts digging in his filing cabinet. He pulls out the appropriate contracts and smacks them down onto his desk, then he goes rooting for a pen that isn’t his favourite but will work well enough in the hands of Nathaniel to not be horrifically embarrassing. He smacks the pen down on top of the papers.

Prepared now, he leans back in his seat and waits for Nathaniel. He’d left the door open a crack, so he’s able to hear when impressively light footsteps disrupt the silence that had previously laid over the floor. Quickly, he comes to the conclusion that he won’t be able to rely on sound to hear Nathaniel's approach, but on a shift in the air. Odd, but doable. David takes that information and tucks it away in a new file in his brain made for Nathaniel. There’s not a lot in that file yet, but with time, that will change. His Foxes are good at prying things out of each other, and David is even better at eavesdropping on what those things just so happen to be.

The gap in his door widens, and in comes Nathaniel, his damp hair soiling the collar of his black button-up shirt. His face doesn’t show any signs that he got a whiff of the coffee in the carpet, so David relaxes just a little more.

"Here," he leans forward, pushing the papers and pens towards the chair on the opposite side of the desk and tapping them with his index finger, hoping Nathaniel gets the memo and sits down. "Fill these out."

Nathaniel eyes the papers, but doesn’t question them. He slides into the free chair and starts reading. He signs where he needs to, checks the boxes when he wants to, and initials underneath the text box that informs him when practice starts, when the season starts, when he’ll need to move in, and when he’ll need to move out. He provides a phone number and an address, and he fills out the information for an emergency contact. He doesn’t list a parent or guardian in the section that asks for it, but none of his players really do that anyway.

When he’s done, Nathaniel puts the cap back on the pen, straightens the papers out, and passes them back to David.

"I’ll handle any messy logistical stuff." David says, flipping through the pages quickly to double-check Nathaniel didn’t miss anything. Once he’s sure every line has a signature, he turns his chair and slides the papers back into his filing cabinet, in an empty pocket with no name tag yet. He’ll need to check the spelling of that last name a couple hundred times before he’ll be confident enough to relay it with no road bumps.

When he returns to his desk, Nathaniel is still sitting there, silent. "You can go now, kid; I’m done with you for today," he says, knowing that there are still mounds of work for him to get through once he’s alone again.

Nathaniel seems to be a man of few words. He stands, nods, and leaves David’s office with no fanfare, shutting the door behind him. David can’t help but feel like he’s gotten lucky with this one. He’s a good player, he doesn’t talk much, and he listens. If there’s regret to be had here, David isn’t seeing it. Not yet, at least.

And even several hours after Nathaniel has left, David has filed the new player with the ERC and the school, he doesn’t see those regrets. It’s not until the sun is down, his paperwork is done, he's eaten with Abby, and he’s driven back to his apartment that he sees them.

He’s sitting in his truck with the engine off and the doors unlocked. It’s less hot out now that the sky is dark and cloudy. The only light around him spills out of the glass doors that lead into his building. His seatbelt flings itself back into its rightful spot quickly, and David’s got his hand on the handle to get out, but he’s distracted by the buzz of his phone.

Figuring it won’t hurt to investigate quickly, he settles back into the driver’s seat and squints at the glowing screen. The grainy text against his black background doesn’t provide much information, but the few words he does see have him devoting his attention to unlocking his phone as fast as he can and putting his speed-reading skills to the test.

What he ends up taking away from the email that was surely sent to every class I exy coach in the district is that they’re being invaded. A certain awful black bird is moving down south, and it’s taking its unkindness with it.

David isn’t particularly petrified, but he knows someone who will be. And he knows that this specific someone has a little card up his sleeve that is going to be murderous and impossibly more vigilant and untrusting than he already was. And of course, the cherry on top of the cake, he knows that he just signed a player who suspiciously came out of nowhere with what he now sees to be suspiciously sharp skills, and even though he’s not worried, he knows that the little card lurking on his team will be.

How rich.

Chapter Text

The air freezes, sucking the harsh breath directly from Kevin’s mouth.

His muscles twitch under the thick material of his hoodie, protesting the sudden standstill he’s fallen into.

“Are you all right?” Wymack asks sceptically, quirking a brow and judging in the silent, stoic way he so often does.

It would be irritating under any other circumstances. That look has served to rip the dwindling shreds of his lacklustre spine out of his back on the court, in the stands, through the windows of the team’s bus. But now, it rolls off of Kevin like chilled rain on a child’s umbrella; a minor papercut juxtaposed against a gunshot wound in his chest that was delivered by a black and red gun.

Small doses of whipping wind push themselves through the screen of Wymack’s very open window, their sound flying past Kevin’s ear like the wide wings of a raven.

Fitting.

“You have to breathe,” Wymack tries, a notable haste creeping into his voice as Kevin only continues to stare blankly, his jaw entirely slack and his eyes drying out painfully fast.

Blink, goddamnit, Kevin wills, but to no avail. His body seems to have taken a little siesta away from his mind, pushed out by the clammy hands of panic.

Wymack takes a step forward.

Kevin takes a step back, his muscles functioning without any real input from his brain.

Rather startlingly, he ends up backing into the sharp edge of Wymack’s coffee table. He stumbles and then falls, his ass making brutal contact with the table.

He breathes. Fucking finally.

And chokes. But. Oh well.

Baby steps. Literally. His feet plant themselves as his mind tries to make the best of the pain, using it as a one-way ticket back into the basket of his skull.

Wymack’s charging forward, concern etched into his pinched expression, but Kevin’s muscles seem determined to handle this fiasco all on their lonesome.

They jump, and then he’s up.

Kevin blinks. He’s almost back in his head; his eyes have started welling with tears in a last-ditch effort to keep them moisturised.

He really doesn’t mean to lash out. But then again, he’s not confident that clear thinking actually would have stopped him from forming a fist and punching Wymack’s shoulder hard enough to send the man hurriedly stepping back a handful of steps, though, so maybe he does mean it. Maybe he just doesn’t mean it with the intent to cause true physical harm to Wymack, because he certainly doesn’t deserve that; maybe he just wants out. That would be logical. He’s running to the door as his psyche tangos with his body, and he’s on his way to a safe haven he hasn’t actually identified yet.

“Kevin!” Wymack shouts after him, hanging himself out of his door while Kevin dashes down the hall. “Kevin Day!”

Kevin turns for the stairs—not the elevator—and he bumps into a wall.

It hurts. Like hell.

He’s back in his head.

Things feel real again. His heart is trying to leap from his chest like a bird heading for flight, his head pounds harder than a criminal on the locked doors of a jail cell, and his shoulder aches.

No, not aches. That’s too gentle of a word.

It burns with the honest wrath of scathing holy fire.

Yeah, that’s dramatic. Neil would be proud of that fancy phrasing.

Oh. Neil. Yes, he’s safe.

He’s also in a whole other state, parked in his spacious apartment, arguing with Swedish people over the phone because he thinks speaking their language is a fun enough reason to warrant him starting a low-level mob war.

But he’d hang up. For Kevin’s sake. He’s going to fly to South Carolina pretty soon for Kevin, ending his playtime to put on his “brother boots" isn't much of a stretch. A while ago, Kevin may have thought so, but after their last phone call, he’s able to see more than ever that Neil is so dumb, he would do just about anything in the name of Kevin fucking Day.

Ridiculous on the best of days. Marginally tolerable when Kevin’s willing to take advantage of that fact.

The door to the emergency stairwell swings shut behind him, cutting off Wymack’s growling shouts.

Kevin, with his racing mind packed tightly into his suffocating body, finally breathes. Fully. Deeply. Wholly. Even as he practically slides down the stairs, his sweating hands gripping the railing to keep him from falling, he breathes. He might be losing his dignity right now, but he’s not so far gone that he’ll let himself stop his breathing and plummet. Not anymore, now that he’s the one making his decisions instead of his stupid muscles, which are always airing on the edge of being just tired enough to be sore anyway. He loves his muscles because apparently everything that hurts him is something he needs to pour all of his affection into—it’s a character flaw, he’s aware—and he wouldn’t be able to get by without them.

Damned things, his muscles are, though. They never step up when he needs them most. They can’t even flinch away fast enough when a furious racquet is just atoms away from turning his hand into a jellified bag of crushed bones.

That one might actually be something that could be traced back to his mind. Some nonsense about the real neurological factors that go into truly narrowing down reaction time, but that’s getting into Aaron’s territory, and Kevin would honestly rather eat a raw pig’s sphincter than tread Aaron’s waters, even if just for the fistful of seconds that it will take to lend a cruel hand to the panic punching his organs.

He takes the stairs two at a time, breathing and thinking and consciously using his brain to move.

Faster! Faster! He screams to his legs, right as Wymack is tossing the heavy door open and contradicting him by screaming, “Slow down before you do something stupid!”

Chasing after a highly trained and obviously flustered exy player is stupid, if he really wants to play that game, but Kevin won’t bite. He can’t. If he opens his mouth to talk at the speed he's going, it’s his tongue that’ll get bit, not the bait.

He just wants out. He clearly wants out. People don’t run away without saying a word because they want to stay and crack open a cold one while they talk about all the stresses in their separate yet intertwined worlds. Kevin would’ve thought that Wymack would get that by now. Foxes run off the court all the time and he doesn’t chase them, why the hell is he chasing Kevin now?

Because this isn’t the court and something is very glaringly wrong?

That’s not his problem.

Actually, now that he’s thinking of it, the court does sound like a pretty decent place to go right about now. He’ll regurgitate his panic via demolishing a few of the cones that have been nearing the end of their lives for a good while now, he can lock the doors, and he can bask in the glorious silence that will swing in the air with his laboured breaths.

Perfect.

The court isn’t even that far from here, he can run the distance and make it with enough energy under his belt to get him through a few effortless hours of practice.

Running’s always been Neil’s forte, but he can dabble in it tonight.

Wait, no, he was going to call Neil, wasn’t he?

Does he still need to go to the court if he’s going to call Neil? Of course he does, that was a stupid thing to think of.

Kevin reaches the end of the staircase before Wymack can catch up to him. He shoves his way through the rusty door standing proudly in his way, and he doesn’t bother to aid it as it slowly falls closed. Wymack can deal with it when he eventually reaches the bottom. For now, all Kevin can focus on is getting to the court. He’ll call Neil when he gets there, sure, but he needs to do that first part of his plan before he’ll even bother trying to unlock his phone.

He’s running through the short span of the empty lobby with a lazy form. Disappointment in himself for the slacking tries to crawl to the forefront of his mind, but his need to get away and the sheer unfocused chaos brought on by the news of the Raven’s migration slaughters it with ease.

He won’t need to worry about his running form if he’s dead.

With sloppy stomps and shallow gasps, Kevin starts to drip with sweat. The unfortunately warm perspiration beads against his skin, drying and cooling as the wind does laps around him.

On autopilot, he tosses the doors aside and adjusts to the change in terrain, picking his feet up just a hair more than before so he doesn’t catch the toe of his shoe on some rock that accidentally got cemented to the curb and end up going ass over heels.

Barely lit streetlights point Kevin to his exit the same way those people with the funny-looking batons do on an airstrip. However, instead of waving around and shouting a completely useless “over here!” to the approaching aircraft Kevin Day version 0.02, they timidly hum to the weighted darkness of the musky night and keep their strewn light cast away from his face.

It feels like ages have gone by once he passes a final blooming tree and leaves the complex’s parking lot. He wants to plant himself in the cool ground, wrap his body around the roots of that tree, and rest and observe for eternity. He’s tired, so tired, but he has all the energy in the world. It bounds through his body, knocking on the walls of his heart and waking any cell that’ll listen, and it’s the single most incredibly exhausting thing he’s ever experienced.

His feet pound against the sidewalk anyway. He says a tragic goodbye to the tree via a slightly saddened look, and he continues on. Wymack may very well still be hot on his tail, but who isn’t by now? Vanya’s somewhere around, lurking, stalking, doing her job. Neil’s got all of his fingers in every cookie jar, sorting and planning and hiding. And now, unimpressively, Riko is drooling, just waiting to get a piece of Kevin’s freak self once more because the dozen and then some years he already had to feast on Kevin’s youth just were not enough.

Kevin slows, partially because he wants to hear if Wymack actually is chasing him or not, but also because he wants to sigh, and quite expectedly, it’s incredibly hard to sigh when one is breathing like they’ve never known mildly clean air.

The outdoors are silent. Kevin’s breaths reverberate off the sidewalk and the still trees, whispering their bitter melody into his ears. It’s reminiscent of his time with Jean and the French lessons administered strictly after dark, where neither boy was willing to be the one who took the conversation above 16 decibels because 17 seemed to always be when the grotesquely thin walls started working against them.

Wymack isn’t after him, then. It wouldn’t be so quiet out if he were.

Draped in a security blanket of isolation, Kevin allows himself to reach a normal walking pace. His chest rises and falls, quickly inflating with shallow gasps, and his nostrils are flaring like he’s a rabid dog. All he’s really missing is the foam in his mouth and a distinctive predatory gaze. The current deer-in-headlights look he’s surely got going on right now just won’t cut it if he wants to commit to the bit.

Kevin knows this path fairly well. He’s walked it many times after being called to retrieve a loopy and bored Andrew. But somehow, it still feels so foreign in the night, as if an inky black sky overhead and artificial lights painting a maze before him change everything. On a whim, he tips his head back and closes his eyes, hoping that the secret key to this equation is simply no sight. Muscle memory is an incredible thing.

His shoes grind against the pebbles scattered across the sidewalk, dispersing them beneath his weight. He can almost feel all of them through the thin layer of rubber under his feet. If he wanted to, maybe he could count them, just like he counts his steps on the court.

One, two, three, four—pivot—five, six. Aim, toss, score.

On an empty court, he could score with his eyes closed. Possibly on a full court, too, if his opponents are particularly gentle and notably against surprise body checks.

Riko could likely do the same. Andrew, as well. If the court was silent and empty, Andrew could find every incoming shot from just the sound of the reverberation, and everyone knows it. Only Kevin is willing to accept that, though. The rest of the team chooses to ignore it because they think it’s unfair, or something; that he could defend his goal as if some god of talent himself had laid gentle hands on him, yet he opts to not because it’s fun for him.

Kevin laughs to himself. Fun is all Andrew seems to want, and it seems to be the only thing he can’t get, at least not out of Kevin. Kevin bends easily, he scares easily—he’s weak in his bones and he knows it. He’s not exactly comfortable that everyone else does, too, however. Andrew needs someone better than Kevin. So do a lot of people. The entire Palmetto exy team needs someone less breakable than him. They need someone who wouldn't let a racquet smash their hands, someone who wouldn't even get close.

Disgustingly enough, that could be Riko. He doesn’t bend or break or scare, he does the breaking and scaring. He lacks a significant part of his soul. He could be the call to life that the team who tries their hardest to not acknowledge their bleeding souls needs. Riko would chew the Palmetto foxes up and spit them out like stale gum. He’d leave them all for dead on the road and not even blink.

Kevin couldn’t do that, he needs them too much. He’s weak with them, but he’s weaker without them; not that he’d ever tell them that.

It’s shameful, though, really, because he used to be like Riko. He used to be able to scare and ruin and break. How ironic is it that Riko, the very one who taught him the difference between scuffed and scratched, is the one who damaged him beyond belief? And how fucking pathetic is it that Kevin let him?

Beyond the shell of his eyelids, a muffled glow blooms.

Kevin cracks his eye open slowly, and a blinding building waits for him. The stark night cowers around the virgin white court. Impressively, the orange paw expanding across the side of the Foxhole feels dimmer than the sea of pearls it swims in.

Once upon a time, there was a lightbulb above the gate that permitted entry to the court. It shone directly onto the keypad, and if someone were to look at the just right angle, they would see the smudged fingerprints that landed on every number in the passcode. Since this time several months ago, that light bulb, which had been plucked from Wymack’s home office, has since sadly died. The weather-worn husk of it still remains fixed in place, however, fruitful even in the path of adversity that the South Carolina heat has laid for it, not a single crack on its dusty surface. Kevin finds himself glancing up at it as he types in this month’s passcode.

It’ll crack someday, he’s pretty sure of that. Ever since it died, he’s been waiting for that day. When the sun is just a tad too hot, or the rain too hard. The day that bulb cracks is the day his luck runs out.

Today, the court’s outdoor lights bounce off of it as they usually do, winking at him like the stars, displaying the tattered but full body of the bulb.

No cracks.

The keypad makes some electronic sound as it opens, and the gate rattles with a high metallic pitch as Kevin snakes his hand through the chicken wire steel pattern and pulls it open.

He should really stop trusting that light bulb. It never seems to be accurate. If he could erase the association formed from his mind, he would.

Kevin walks a little while longer, blatant impatience in his feet.

Riko can’t exist on the Foxhole court. Not yet. Kevin won’t let him.

The silence that encases him is one of hunger, desperation. It’s bitterly unfair, but Kevin really wishes he weren’t alone. He doesn’t want to sink on this ship on his own. Even after he locates his racquet and a bucket of balls, he still wishes he had someone to scrimmage with him.

He stands stiffly on the sleek floor of the court, still adorned in his sweatpants, tee-shirt, and his comfiest sneakers. His phone burns a hole in his back pocket.

Unable to let go of his racquet, he drops the bucket of balls. A few react to the force of the fall and jump around before spilling out of the mouth and rolling away in every direction.

There’s a distinct tiredness in Kevin’s movements as he reaches for the pricey glowing brick and unlocks it. Rather lazily, he presses on Neil’s contact and listens to the dial tone. All at once, Kevin is back in the seat of Andrew’s car, aching and stewing in his misery.

The phone clicks as Neil picks up, and Kevin, inexplicably, sighs. The sound echoes across the empty court and rings hideously through the speakers of his phone.

“Ugh,” he hears Neil say. Then, “Are you in a damn cave?”

Against all of his best efforts, Kevin smiles. “The court.”

That echoes, too.

“The Foxhole Court?” Neil asks, sounding genuinely perplexed.

Kevin’s smile twitches. “Is there any other one?”

Neil hangs up.

For a moment, Kevin can’t believe it. He stares blankly at the ‘call ended’ screen and pushes his lips together tightly. Selfishly, he feels incredibly hurt. He should’ve known better, calling Neil to bitch about his life once again was pushing it, but damn if he wasn’t expecting just a moment’s consideration before being pushed aside.

The screen of his phone dims and then goes completely dark.

Kevin stares past his reflection, confused and perturbed.

He really doesn’t know how long he stood around after that. It could've been hours, or it could've been just minutes. It was long enough for Wymack to catch up to him, though.

Funny, Kevin hadn’t noticed that he was still being tailed.

The doors tucked away in the stands swing open and closed, and a chill dances up Kevin’s back. He waits patiently for the bellowing call of his name. The shout so loud it could rattle the walls of the utopian homes in Atlantis. Incredibly, it doesn’t come.

In a daze, Kevin looks over to the door to his left, the one he just heard close.

His stomach drops when he realises that no one is there.

He’s no fool, he won’t call out to seek a presence that isn’t here. Though he stands as still as he can as the fear that maybe Riko’s come prematurely for him immobilises his legs.

Sweat beads down the nape of his neck, and his eyes burn, itching for the moisture of a blink, but Kevin only continues to stare, thinking that maybe if he looks long enough, whatever’s lurking in the shadows will cave and jump out at him.

Eventually, when he can no longer take it, he blinks.

“Kevin?”

There has never on earth been a faster move than the one made by his eyes as he uses all his strength to tear them back open and search for the source of that call, his blood running cold in the process.

“Neil?” He calls back. He knows that voice.

“You look moist,” the voice returns, and it sounds closer now. Kevin turns quickly and falls back by several paces when a familiar cloud of auburn hair clouds his sight.

There’s a certain breathlessness that no one ever really talks about. Maybe it’s because most people never really experience it, but if that’s true, then Kevin feels endless sympathy for the general population, because this breathlessness is fresher than the air after a heavy rainfall, drenched in the warm hues that one might find accompanying a winter-kissed sunset. It’s a pleasant breeze on a dangerously balmy day, and it’s retreating fear and relentless relief. It lays comfortably between love and misery, and it shakes Kevin’s body at the sight of his ever-unbroken brother, tearing his nerve endings apart and then repairing them in one graceful movement.

At a time not congruent with the present, Kevin may have heard the words that fell from Neil’s visibly moving mouth, or he may have truly appreciated the shining sarcasm in the corner of his wild smile, but the thing about this splendiferous breathlessness is that it tends to take one’s senses and render them sufficiently null. There is no scent or texture that can part the fog of this euphoria. In many aspects, Kevin often finds it quite a similar taste to panic, but a favourable difference is that it subsides much faster.

Kevin collects himself like a child hunting pieces of a shattered vase before their parents return, frantically and quite ineffectively, but Neil waits for him. He stands just out of Kevin’s view, the considerate blob of darkened colours that he is—God, the colours of palmetto are blinding him to normal pigments—and he says nothing more until the dust in Kevin’s body has cleared.

Kevin coughs. Well, actually, hawks would be a more accurate description, and Neil takes a sliding step closer.

“Gross,” he says, and Kevin would be lying if he claimed that he wasn’t ready to lose himself in that stupid rhythmic voice he knows so dearly.

At one point, the scent of sterilising chemicals would have brought a twisted sense of comfort to Kevin. At least he’d know that some random person’s blood wasn’t transmitting airborne diseases into his admittedly questionable immune system, but now, it burns. The ammonia does an interesting waltz with the cells of his windpipe on its way into his chest and threatens to make him splutter endlessly. He manages to grasp onto the present, though, and says shallowly, “What the hell?”

Neil’s face gleams like the Star of Bethlehem, and he tips his head. The shapeless mess he calls his hair falls to one side, moving freely in the clean air between them. “How can you be so surprised when you knew that I was coming?”

“You never gave me a date,” Kevin argues, the court temporarily losing its undeniably foreign structure. “You never said anything about a timeline. In fact,” his eyes lose their last shred of blur, and now he can see Neil and the smug set of his shoulders and the slight crinkle in his nose that makes his words and their ever-present instigating tone all the more easy to fall back into. “You never said anything about anything. You haven’t said a word to me in months, Neil, I’d have more luck winning the lottery than getting an ETA from you.”

“It’s like you never left,” Neil says gaily, and Kevin can suddenly realise that he’s enjoying his anger. Well, maybe not enjoying it, but certainly fuelling its flames. Maybe he’s just spurring him on to take his mind off of the Raven’s transfer.

Kevin’s shoulders sag minutely at his own reminder. “Have you heard?” he asks miserably.

“Oh, skip all the pleasantries, why don’t you? I’m fine, thank you for asking, though my eyes may never recover after taking in all this orange.”

A sigh carries through the stadium as Neil revels in Kevin’s lack of answer. “Yes, I have.”

“And?” Kevin pushes, not entirely certain what he’s seeking. Can Neil find a way to call this off? Would he have to go home if he did? What constitutes Riko as being ‘taken care of’? Suddenly a grave lack of forethought dances about his mind; he should have pushed Neil for more substance about his plan during their initial call. But would Neil have answered him? Does Neil have these answers?

“And?” Neil muses, frustration showing in the twitch of his eye. Neil is usually better at concealing his anger. “Well,” he rolls his shoulders down and back, something he does unconsciously when he’s trying to escape tense thoughts. “They did everything as neatly as possible. Ducked under all of the right red tape.”

Kevin inches closer to him, hanging on his words.

“Finding a way to sidestep this would be hard now, considering everything has been reviewed about a thousand times; anything we might be able to do would be discovered and questioned immediately, in great depth no less.” Neil looks towards the high ceiling of the court, likely saying a silent prayer for patience. “They flew under the radar for as long as they could for that exact reason, most likely. It’s too late for their enemies—and that’s a numerous list—to do anything. All the workable parts have already set sail.”

There’s a considerable weight settling onto Kevin’s shoulders, pairing with a sort of indescribable fear in his stomach. It dances around in the bile, violently flipping back and forth like it’s putting on a bad synchronised performance.

“Not that I’m panicking or anything,” Kevin lies, attempting to betray the hurricane in his head. “But if I were, how strong would you recommend I let that feeling grow?”

His voice escapes with a tremble he doesn’t recall ever approving of, and Neil clearly notices. Luckily, he occasionally exercises some decency, so he allows Kevin to hide behind his distancing question. He does grin, though, and it’s an expression that tells Kevin how terrible his facade truly is.

“Well,” Neil starts, a contemplative squint in his eyes. “That depends, I guess.”

“On?” Kevin pries quickly. Lying has never been his forte.

Neil waves one hand in the air before him, like he’s sifting through his answers. “On,” he says, like a fucking parrot. “Your willingness to recognise that you aren’t alone in this town. Whether or not you can see the hoops the Ravens will have to jump through to get to you. Whether or not you can see the hoops people will jump through to stop them from getting to you.”

His message rings clear to Kevin: I’ll stand in their way for you. Kevin, however, is not necessarily of a mind sound enough to accept this reassurance, so he tucks it away in a nearby corner of his brain for later interpretation.

The sound of a door slamming disturbs the silence that had lapsed between them. Kevin knows the door in question is not one that leads to the court itself, but one of the many stutter steps before it. As well, he knows the constant stream of chatter that follows the noise belongs not to the cruel mouth of a particular raven; not the ramrod figure that finds a thrill in watching Kevin cower, in watching him beg. No, that devil always chose to skulk about the halls of his palace in a pacifying silence. This is not that. This is the impending approach of Kevin’s chosen goalkeeper and his ever-present group of familial obligations.

“You should go,” Kevin says, and he partially can’t believe the words as they come from his mouth. He doesn’t want Neil to go, he wants Neil to follow him closely as he inevitably ventures into the vast darkness that lies in wait outside, temporarily hiding the angry eyes that sear into the target on his back. But he can’t bring himself to referee the bloodbath that will ensue the moment Andrew sees Kevin standing alone with what will appear to him as a stranger. Andrew doesn’t know about Neil, Kevin had always been careful to skirt around that particular detail; if he hadn’t, Andrew would never let Neil within a hundred yards of Kevin. The brutality Kevin had spoken to Andrew of, the dark picture of the Edgar Allan’s Ravens, would not allow the former to bestow any kind of allowance on Neil. Andrew’s silent vow to ban everything that had ever been cloaked in the red and black hues of his former university from his life has no room for pity.

“They don’t know you yet,” he amends when Neil remains present, unmoved by his request. “They’ll never let you set foot near me if they find you here now.”

“They,” Neil says, and Kevin can see the gears sliding into place behind his bright eyes. He tilts his head minutely, straining to hear the approach of the newcomers, and Kevin can’t help but wonder if Neil knows he’s even doing it.

He slides a foot back carefully, recognition dawning on his face as he accepts Kevin’s explanation. “Okay,” he says with a nod, a sharp, knowing look raking over Kevin’s defeated face. “I won’t be far.”

Kevin’s chest warms. He is not comforted by Neil’s leave, but he grasps onto the knowledge that Neil is here, that he exists in the flesh, and that he will continue to be silently present whether or not Kevin is ready to admit that or not. It’s a grounding series of thoughts, and for now, Kevin will hold on tightly to this knowledge and use it to survive.

Neil disappears into the stands, ducking into a darkened doorway right as Andrew launches the doors open.

“Kevin!” Nicky calls out. “Thank God,” he continues, sounding tired.

Kevin forcefully pulls his gaze away from Neil’s exit, placing it on the scowling twins and Nicky’s beaming smile.

The small crowd descends the stairs, stopping halfway as Kevin begins to walk towards them, admitting to himself that he can’t spend any more time at the court. Not tonight.

“Coach said we’d find you here,” Nicky says.

Andrew stands beside Nicky, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Did the bedbugs finally start biting?” He asks tauntingly, eyeing up the rest of the empty court. Kevin knows that Andrew is taking in the entire scene, the lack of gear he’s wearing, the racquet he clutches like it holds the secrets of the universe, the obvious terror that tucked itself into the corners of his expression. Andrew can see it all.

“I wasn’t tired,” Kevin says. “I wanted to work off some energy.”

“Oh, clearly.” Andrew replies, looking at the scant amount of balls that rolled around the court with no help from Kevin. It’s not nearly enough to indicate that Kevin had done much practicing at all, and their obvious proximity to the bucket only furthers the contrasting evidence.

Andrew doesn’t believe a word he’s saying, but Kevin isn’t in the mood to offer the real explanation. The news of the Raven’s descent will only agitate Andrew further, something with which Andrew never needs any assistance; not to mention, Kevin can’t exactly bring himself to state the proclamation himself. Not yet.

He loathes withholding the information; how can he let Andrew even try to hold up his end of the deal they struck up when he fled the nest if he doesn’t provide him with this vital insight? How is that fair?

It’s not. But life so rarely is.

“Well, are you tired now? Because some of us were sleeping when you decided to escape.” Contempt bleeds into Aaron’s plea to leave the court. If Kevin can’t handle a verbal spar with one Minyard twin, he is simply unwilling to put up with both of them, so he nods and begins climbing the steps ever further.

Andrew snatches the racquet from Kevin’s hand. The move is so quick that Kevin almost allows himself to flinch at the contact.

“I’ll get this,” Andrew says, his eyes still on the court. “Go wait in the car.” His demand is aimed at the three of them, so they all begrudgingly begin marching towards the exit. Kevin watches, though, as Andrew cuts across the steps to put his racquet away and how his head never turns away from the space Neil once stood. Kevin knows that Andrew has no way of actually knowing that Neil was there, it’s not as if he’d left a cloud of smoke when he disappeared. And yet, even as Nicky holds open the doors for him and begins speaking in nonsensical run-on sentences, Kevin feels as though a dark cloud has chained itself to his ankle. The reality of the conflict that will occur between Neil and Andrew starts to grow on the horizon, and Kevin despises it. But it keeps his mind from wandering to the Ravens and their spiteful leader, so he allows it.

The doors fall shut behind him, and he officially loses sight of Andrew. Aaron and Nicky walk to the car alongside him, and Kevin accepts the safety in numbers that they provide.

As they walk through the stadium, Kevin shifts uncomfortably, uncertainty plaguing his existence.

What a very unfair life he leads.