Chapter Text
“You’re not going,” Kevin said.
“Do you know what he’ll do to you?”
“Do you know what he’ll do to Andrew if I don’t go?” Neil said. “I don’t have a choice. I have to go. You have to trust me.”
“He will break you.”
“He wishes he knew how,” Neil said. “Trust me. I promise I’ll come back, and when I do I’ll bring Andrew back with me. It’s going to be fine. So do you have my ticket or don’t you?”
Kevin pressed his lips into a hard, white line and looked away. “I have it.”
~Neil~
Neil might be sick. He’s used to lying, or he’s supposed to be. He’d been a liar for years on the run, giving fake names and telling stories of fake lives. He’d been lying to the Foxes the entire year so there shouldn’t be anything different about lying to Kevin now except somehow there just was.
But he lied through his teeth just like his mother taught him. Even she might have been proud of the bullshit that just sprouted from him.
None of this, any of this, was fine. But Kevin wasn’t arguing with him anymore, and honestly, he looked even closer to being sick than Neil felt.
“Kevin,” Neil muttered. “It’s fine, I swear it.” Kevin still didn’t look up, his face paling more and more by the second and a thin sheen of sweat collecting on his temples. Kevin looked seconds from dropping dead, and Neil wasn’t really sure how he was meant to fix it. “Do you trust me?” That got Kevin’s attention. Kevin’s head snapped up and his eyes locked onto Neil’s.
Slowly, Kevin nodded, his jaw locking up and something close to determination sliding into place. It wasn’t a spine—Neil wasn’t sure Kevin would ever regrow that—but it was good enough for the time being.
“Coach.” Dan looked over at Wymack when the silence stretched out between Kevin and Neil and it became clear that neither of them would say anything else. “Let’s go home.”
There were a few glances thrown at Neil and Kevin, silent inquiries as to the conversation spoken in violent French. Neil ignored them all, and Kevin’s eyes stayed fixed on the floor by Neil’s shoes.
There were hours before the Banquet was supposed to be over. Neil knew that Wymack knew that, but their coach showed no signs of considering an alternative. It was the right call. If Neil saw Riko again before the night was up, he’d break his damn neck—no he’d do much, much worse things.
He was getting uncomfortably close to vomiting where he stood, and it certainly wouldn’t be all too reassuring to anyone if he did. He had to keep his shit together long enough to get Kevin back on the bus and back to Palmetto. Neil could fall apart when he was back in his dorm, alone in his bed knowing everyone else was safe. He could last that long.
He compiled a list; of everything he’d do to Riko if he had the chance. It kept his nerves under control but made his stomach roll for other reasons. His father might have smiled if he could have seen it. It brought Nathaniel closer to the surface than Neil wanted him, but it stopped him from losing his mind right there on the bench.
He slowed but couldn’t get himself to stop. It was too hard to lie to himself. Neil could bully Kevin into handing over the plane tickets, he could bully himself into getting on the flight. But he wasn’t about to convince himself everything would be fine.
Neil knew exactly what sorts of monsters were waiting for him in the Nest.
He was distracted enough by his list and the concentration it took not to be sick in the middle of the Banquet, that he hadn’t noticed when Renee slipped away until she was back, Katelyn and Thomas trailing dumbly after her with puzzled expressions.
Neil stumbled along smoothly until they were back on the bus, his head already in the Nest. Riko couldn’t be worse than the Butcher surely, and Neil had survived his father for ten years. He’d survived another eight years on the run. Riko couldn’t be worse. There wasn’t much worse to get was there?
What would Andrew make of all this? He wouldn’t be grateful, wouldn’t shake Neil’s hand and offer up a smile. He’d probably kill Neil himself, and Neil would probably let him.
Neil should let him.
An aborted laugh pressed the insides of his cheeks and curled his lips into a smile that was more grief than amusement.
The bus ride back was silent. Neil leaned his head against the glass of the window, pressed against his skin like softened shards of ice. He could hear them all breathing, soft murmurs of conversation dancing over the seats. His Foxes were alive and safe around him. Tomorrow he’d get on a flight to West Virginia and they’d keep breathing, keep living, keep being safe.
He knew what he was walking into, but he could justify it. For the Foxes; for Andrew.
He’d lived a life full of pain, first his father, then his mother. It seemed like pain clung as tightly to him as his shadow did. But he could never say that any of it had been for anything. His father had been senselessly abusive, Lola needlessly cruel. He could understand the fear-driven rage that saturated every harsh touch of his mothers, but she’d still died in the end.
But this?
There was a point to this. Neil’s pain for his Foxes safety. That was the trade he was making, and he knew it would be bad, he knew there was a damn good chance he might not walk back out of the Nest as Neil Josten, but he couldn’t have forced himself to make another choice. Not in this life.
Neil settled in the seat that Andrew should be in and let the muted sounds of the Foxes lull him into something beside peace. He didn’t sleep, didn’t dare to close his eyes, but he sat there and tried to find some sort of rest.
It was late when they finally got back, late enough Neil’s eyes felt weighed down by bricks and the murmurs and whispers of conversation had long since slipped into silence. And still none of the Foxes could sleep. Not after the Banquet, after Riko.
Wymack dropped the dates off at the student dorms first before driving the team up to Fox Tower. They went in together, crammed shoulder to shoulder in an elevator not meant to fit eight athletes. They stepped off together, a bustle of movement and jostled elbows, and Kevin passed Neil a folded paper itinerary, their sides touching and the others moving behind them.
Neil didn’t have to open it.
He gave Matt the slip when the Upperclassman tried to drag him into the girls’ room to talk about what happened. Neil didn’t want to talk about it, he didn’t have the energy and he didn’t understand how they did. He gave them a tired smile, a half-excuse and ducked into his own dorm.
He closed the door behind him, kicking his shoes off to one side.
His mind was a hive of bees, stinging and unsettled. His hands pushed the window open, fingers curled around the cold ledge. He tried to light a cigarette, anything to take the edge off, but his hands were shaking too badly, trembling for every second the breath jumped in his lungs. He stared at them for a long moment, trying to force them to be still, but the longer he looked the worse they shook.
He ended up crawling into bed fully dressed, only checking the departure time so he'd know how early to set his alarm. Then he shoved the paper under his pillow with Andrew's bands, something to deal with another day.
Tomorrow.
He pulled his blankets over his head to block out the room and willed himself to stop thinking.
When Neil finally slept, he dreamed of death and blood.
For the first ten seconds after he woke up, Neil forgot about Riko and Evermore and Andrew. It was a near peace. He forgot about the bees under his skin and for ten seconds his hands were relaxed and still. Ten seconds was all the peace he was allotted.
There was movement in the other room, Matt shuffling around.
The other Foxes were flying out today, too. He knew Allison, Renee, and Dan were flying out to Bismarck together around lunchtime and would split up shortly after they landed to head their separate ways. Two hours after they were in the air the rest of the Foxes would be en route to LaGuardia.
He’d passed Matt's invitation along the week before exams and let Nicky do most of the work. It was easier than he’d expected once Kevin got past his ‘I want to play Exy’ stint and realized there were Exy courts in New York too.
Neil was relieved they’d be far away and together and safe, it fell over him like warm shower water chasing away the residual tension. But there was guilt curling in the pit of his stomach now. Nicky's original plans to go to Germany for Christmas derailed after Thanksgiving. He didn’t want to be far from Aaron, or Andrew for that matter, but Erik couldn’t take the time off to come here. In the end, it meant Matt was Nicky’s last, and only, chance for a fun holiday.
And here Neil was, about to throw another wrench into the plan.
How he was supposed to tell them, he hadn’t figured out. The truth—like it had been all year—was off-limits. None of them would let him go through with it if they knew where he was going. It wouldn’t matter what kind of danger Andrew was in, or what kind of danger they were in, the Foxes would sink their claws in and hold him there.
It was a small miracle in itself that Kevin was going along with any of this. He knew more than any of the Foxes what Riko was capable of, and he most definitely knew what was waiting for Neil in West Virginia. It was almost a nice thought that maybe Kevin trusted Neil to hold his ground; a more likely thought that he knew what Riko would do to the Foxes if Neil refused. And it was more likely still that Kevin didn’t really know the whole truth of Riko’s horrors.
So long as Kevin kept his mouth shut it didn’t make a difference to Neil.
He shoved his blankets aside and sat up, his mind fishing around for an escape. Not an escape, no, an excuse. Neil wasn’t escaping anything anymore. He’d lost the chance to run the second he said yes to the contract. He might have even had a chance until the interview with Kathy. But he was beyond escaping now. Even if he packed his bags and ran, left the Foxes and Kevin and Andrew behind, the Moriyama’s would find him. There was no disappearing into nothing this time around.
He lifted his pillow to get his phone and hesitated at the sight of Andrew’s armbands. Andrew would kill him if he saw him now. He’d be furious, in that odd manic way that he could be. What would that anger look like when the drugs were stripped from his system? What would Andrew be like free from that manic cell?
They had an understanding the two of them. Neil looked at Andrew and he saw someone who’d hit the end of his rope and held on. In the same way that Neil was nothing and no one, Andrew had nothing and no one. They were different and the same, separate lives knotted together with the same twisted understanding.
Would that understanding still be there? Would Andrew still be that solid presence in Neil’s life? Would, would, would.
There were too many questions and not enough answers—not enough time for answers.
In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Neil would wind up dead by May, at the hands of the Moriyama’s or his father’s people. Whatever understanding he and Andrew had, whatever sort of family he forged in the Foxes convoluted ranks, it would amount to nothing. He was allowed to play along, for now, teasing the idea of friendship and family and normality—not that mafia engaged sports were normal—but it would be taken away from him. He would be taken away from it.
His fingers twitched, and he squeezed two tight fists. Just to remind himself that, at least for now, this was still real. He was still real.
Nicky’s voice coming from the other room jarred him from his thoughts. He dropped his pillow again before it clicked: he had a way out, and Andrew had given it to him. He grabbed his phone, flipped it open, and put it to his ear. By the time Nicky pushed the bedroom door open without knocking, Neil had struck up a conversation with no one at all.
“Yes, I saw it,” Neil said, glancing over at Nicky to acknowledge his entrance.
Nicky’s mouth was open for a greeting, but he fell quiet when he realized Neil was on the phone. Instead of leaving—Neil had never been more grateful for Nicky’s curiosity than right now—Nicky got comfortable against the doorframe to wait him out. Neil was counting on that.
In the months since Andrew had first handed Neil this phone, none of them had ever once seen him make a call on it. Neil had been betting that alone would be enough for Nicky to stay. Neil signalled to Nicky that he was almost finished and half-turned away in a false attempt for a little more privacy.
“What did you expect? You waited this long to figure it out. By now I’ve already made other plans. I—” Neil cut himself off, listened to silence for an extended moment, and bulled on. It felt a little ridiculous, but he’d gotten used to this sort of lying over the years, the sort where there was an audience to fool—an audience all too invested in the dramatics. “But how long have you known he was coming? You could have said something. I don’t know. I said I don’t know. I’d have to—” Neil scrubbed a hand across his eyes as if the entire conversation was exhausting to deal with. Honestly, the whole ordeal was too exhausting to deal with, and here he was, dealing with it anyway. “Okay. Goodbye.”
He clicked his phone shut and dropped it off to one side.
For a minute, silence reigned. For a minute, Neil wondered if his little show had been enough. Then Nicky came into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Neil sagged back against the wall and watched in his peripheral as Nicky climbed halfway up the ladder to his bunk. Nicky folded his arms across Neil’s pillow and stared at Neil.
“Everything okay there?” Nicky asked. There was genuine concern in his question, and it was enough that Neil had to fight not to choke on it.
“I’m fine.”
Nicky just looked at him. “We’ve known each other forever by now. At some point, you’re going to have to stop lying to my face. That didn’t sound fine and you don’t look fine. So what’s really going on?”
Oh, Nicky. Sweet, predictable Nicky. Neil felt sick using him like this, but the thought of Andrew, helpless and suffering through withdrawal with a monster down the hall was worse. So much worse.
“My uncle’s flying to Arizona for Christmas,” Neil said.
“Good thing? Bad thing?”
“Both?” Neil shrugged against the wall. “He’s a good guy, but he’s usually smart enough to avoid my parents. I haven’t seen him in years, and he’s never come over on a holiday. Something must be up. I just don’t know what. I don’t know if…” Neil trailed off and gestured helplessly. “I promised myself I’d never go home again, but.”
He saw the way Nicky’s face changed, even as minutely as it did. Nicky was relating to him, remembering how desperately he’s wanted to make things right with his own parents. He saw Nicky looking at Neil Josten and seeing himself reflected there. Would Nicky forgive him when he found out all of this was a lie? Would any of them?
“But you want to see him again,” Nicky concluded.
“It doesn’t matter,” Neil said. “I told Andrew I’d stay with Kevin.”
“But Kevin’s going to be with us,” Nicky said, “and we’re going to be with Matt and Matt’s mom. The four of us can keep an eye on him if you need some time with your family. You need money for a ticket?”
“I already have one,” Neil said and held up his folded itinerary. “Mom emailed it to me a couple days ago. I just didn’t want to deal with it before the banquet.”
Half-truths and half-lies folded together seamlessly, knitted and pressed and ironed out until there was no telling where the truth ended and the lie began. Nicky ate up every single thing Neil offered, greedy for any sort of chance to help out a friend—to help Neil who had given only the barest of bones of his ‘past’.
“You’re hopeless,” Nicky said. ‘If you want to go, go. You’ve done more than enough for us this semester, Neil. At some point, you’ve got to think about yourself. Watch,” he said when Neil shook his head. “I’m going to go tell the others, and they’ll all tell you to go home. You’ll see.”
“But—” Neil said, but Nicky was already gone.
Neil swallowed down the rest of his argument. It wasn’t a fight he wanted or needed to win, anyway. For a moment he pitied Nicky for being so gullible, but Neil took no satisfaction in what he’d just done. Again, he’d used Nicky to get what he wanted, sent Nicky out to do all the leg work for a plan he didn’t know he was a part of.
His mother would be proud. His father even. And Neil hated that more than anything.
He unfolded the itinerary slowly and studied it with a sinking feeling in his stomach. In two hours, he’d be on a flight to Charleston, West Virginia. In two hours, he’d be boarding a plane to the Nest, to Riko and Tetsuji. He’d be playing right into Moriyama's hands. And he wasn’t scheduled to come back until the night of New Year’s Eve. That was two weeks alone with the Ravens.
Two weeks alone with Riko.
The suite door banged as Nicky went back to his room to consult with Aaron and Kevin. When Matt walked into the bedroom a couple of seconds later Neil was expecting him.
“What are we going to do with you?” Matt asked.
“Sorry,” Neil said. And he thought he might actually be sorry. For the lies all year, for the lies now, for taking the trust that he’d been given and using it like this. They’d all be furious with him when he got back, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold it against them if they could never trust him again.
“What for?” Matt waved that off. “When's your flight?”
“Eleven-ten, if I go.”
“You’re going,” Matt decided. And it was a victory then, Neil getting his way, but it felt awful. “I’ll give you a lift to the airport.”
Neil grimaced at him but got out of bed at last. It wasn’t hard to play at reluctance. He’d be less willing to actually go see the family he had left than he was to go to the Nest.
He wasn't hungry but he made himself eat some instant oatmeal and toast. He had to look something like normal. Nicky returned to say he’d told all of the Foxes what was going on. Apparently, they all wanted Neil on that plane. Neil nodded and said nothing, and Nicky left him in peace to get ready.
He showered and dressed, stuffed his duffel bag full and only paused for a moment when he realized somehow, he’d gotten to the point where he had more possessions than he had space in his bag.
Neil was as ready to go as he was going to get, but he wasn’t ready to walk out of the room just yet. He sat on his desk and breathed in the empty space. He’d come back. He was a Fox; this was where he belonged. He would be back, and Andrew would be back, and everything would be fine.
He wasn’t that good of a liar.
Neil should have known he wasn’t going to leave without Kevin stopping by. He didn’t expect some valiant effort to convince him not to go, Kevin didn’t have the balls for that, but he saw something coming.
Kevin was a shadow in the doorway, stationary and tense as a trigger. It was clear he had something to say, but it was equally clear he was still trying to find enough of a spine to say it.
“Can I give you something to take with you?” Neil asked, his hands were busy in his duffel, playing with the half-folded tags of the top shirts. “Will you promise to keep it safe? I don’t want to leave it here, but bringing it with me…” Neil didn’t have to finish that thought. Kevin knew. The Nest was not a place where things could be kept safe.
Neil looked over, and the seconds passed between them. When Kevin nodded, Neil moved, digging his binder out of the safe. It took everything Neil had to hand it over, and even when Kevin’s fingers closed around it he couldn’t quite let it go.
“Don’t open it.” He might have intended for it to be a question, but it came out as an unquestionable command.
“I don’t want to know,” Kevin agreed.
Neil let go, watching his binder, the single most important thing he owned, settle in Kevin Day’s folded arm, tucked against the other striker’s chest.
Neil pushed the safe closed, locking it back up even with nothing left in it. He put it back where it belonged and climbed to his feet.
“Neil,” Kevin said.
“I’m coming back.” But it was more for his own sake than for Kevin’s now. It was a promise. He had things left here, possessions he was leaving behind, friends. He had built a whole life as Neil Josten right here. It didn’t matter what happened once he left, he was coming back. “You promised you’d finish this year with me. I’m holding you to that.”
“Neil,” Kevin stressed. “I mean it.”
Kevin didn’t have to say what he meant. They both knew. Still, Neil frowned, his head slipping to the left a little. This he hadn’t expected. Kevin was an asshole, rude and barrish and aggressive. Neil figured that was his way of caring, but this was bordering on sentimental, on apologetic.
Kevin cleared his throat and clarified, and Neil wasn’t expecting it at all. “I need Neil Josten to come back.”
Understanding fell slowly over Neil, cooly schooling his features into false ease, Neil nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“No,” Kevin pressed, and this was not at all what Neil had predicted. This was Kevin feeling. This was Kevin looking at Neil like he knew him again, like they were friends, and asking him to keep Neil Josten alive. “Your best isn’t good enough.” And that sounded more like the Kevin Day Neil knew. “I need Josten.”
Neil wanted to make a joke, mention that Kevin could probably win games just fine playing as the only striker on the court. Neil Josten wasn’t supposed to be anything more than that. But Neil Josten had sunk his claws in deeper than he’d expected him to. Neil Josten had stopped being a mask somewhere between Millport, Arizona and the Winter Banquet and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do about it.
Truths and lies knitted together, truths and lies so close he couldn’t tell which was which. Truths and lies and truths and lies and somewhere nestled in the mess of it all Neil Josten became something real. As real as Nathaniel Wesninski and Abram Hatford were. Truths and lies and the three facets of himself, his three truths pooling into something real and whole.
Stitched together and true.
And he didn’t know what to do with that at all.
Instead, he spoke softly. “I can’t make that promise.”
Whatever Kevin was gearing up to say, his face all scrunched up like he was trying to turn his emotions into words, he didn’t have to. Matt poked his head in with a lopsided grin.
“Hey, you ready?”
Neil picked up his duffel, slid the strap over his shoulder and pulled his lips into a semblance of the grin on Matt’s face. There was still panic in his eyes that he couldn’t hide, but if Matt saw it he must have assumed Neil was just nervous about heading home.
“I’ll keep the binder safe,” Kevin said in French. “You keep Neil safe.”
Neil couldn’t answer that; he wouldn’t answer that. He wasn’t sure who would come back out of the nest, but he made the decision right there that someone would. Neil or Nathaniel or Abram, he would walk out of there a real person.
Riko wouldn’t take that from him.
He turned his body towards Matt, took the first step towards the door and tried to stop his hands from trembling. “Yeah, let’s go.”