Chapter Text
It was a rainy night, because everything that goes wrong always goes wrong on rainy nights.
It was a week before finals. Neil had gone to the library to study, and from here to there has found himself standing on its doorstep with his brain fried from numbers, clutching one strap of his backpack and staring at the pouring rain. He blinked occasionally when water sprayed on his face.
He could call Andrew, he thought to himself. But it was kind of the middle of the night, and he wasn’t that far from Fox Tower — well, yes, it was on the other end of the campus, but at least it was in the campus. He could run it.
He debated it for a few moments, before deciding that Kevin will kill him for running in the rain so close before a game, and Andrew will kill him for not having called him. Not wanting to die, twice over even less, he searched his pockets for his phone.
“Ah, fuck,” he breathed, his nose twitching at the cold. He pulled his backpack off his shoulder and searched it as well, but he couldn’t find his phone anywhere.
Then he suddenly remembered that he’d left it to charge at Fox Tower, with full intent to take it before leaving, believe it or not. But then he just, you know, didn’t. “Ah, fuck.”
Guess he was going to have to make a run for it.
So he did. He was soaked in a millisecond, sneezing halfway through the campus. He could see Fox Tower not too far ahead, but when he started crossing the road to get there, a thunder crackled overhead, sinking out what he later realized was the blare of a horn.
There was a flash of light, overhead and on the road, and Neil barely managed to skid out of the way of the van in time. He turned around, about to yell at whomever the crazy driver was to watch it, when he realized the van stopped.
Another thunder crackled overhead, and suddenly he saw three people climbing out of the vehicle.
He would’ve just walked away had they not looked so out of place. Neil wasn’t very judgmental, of looks least of all; he, himself, hated it when people stared at his scars. But he hadn’t survived on his own so long without learning to notice when something was off about someone.
They all wore gray robes, for one thing. And they were all looking at him — definitely at him, since there was nobody else around.
And then they started walking toward him.
Yeah, screw that.
He broke into a run at the opposite direction, only to see that there was another robe-wearing weirdo blocking his path. He was about to turn and run in a random, free direction, when he suddenly halted, realizing he was surrounded.
“Hey, guys,” he said, putting his hands up placatedly. “Let’s talk this out. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Neil Josten,” said one of the robe-wearing weirdos — one of the original trio, who also happened to be wearing an ominous hat. “Of the Palmetto Foxes.”
Oh, great. They were exy fans. “Uh,” Neil said, looking around. He very much did not like being cornered like that; he couldn’t possibly keep eyes on them all at once. But, since the hat-and-robe-wearing weirdo seemed to be their leader (Neil knew because of the hat, obviously), they remained fixated in their places. “If you guys want autographs or something—“
The leader put his hands together in a prayer-esc gesture and looked up at the pouring sky. “Let the order reinstate.”
Neil didn’t like the sound of that. But before he could find a way out of here, someone grabbed him from behind, pressing a chloroformed cloth to his nose and mouth.
Neil struggled, but his movements quickly turned sluggish. He faintly heard the wet thump of his backpack hitting the pavement, and when his knees gave out on him, he felt himself being hauled up and dragged away.
Alarms blared in his head. Bad bad bad need to call Andrew—
There was a metallic creak as the door of the van opened, and Neil was shoved inside. And then, as the door was shut and darkness met him, he passed out.
***
Neil groaned before he opened his eyes.
His muscles were sore. His headache was something else. And, strangely, he was particularly parched.
He cracked open his eyes, squinting at the light. There wasn’t much of it; it was yellow and soft, and threw heavy shadows at the ground. He was sitting on a chair. Frowning slightly, he lifted his head, and pulled his hands — only to be met with resistance.
He groaned again. The timing was awful, really. His finals were literally next week.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said a low, gravelly voice. Neil squinted ahead at the figure sitting in a chair in front of him, who, unlike himself, was free of any restraints.
“Lemme go,” he said, his voice sounding too loopy for his liking. He didn’t think he sounded very intimidating. Where’s Andrew when he’s needed? “Imma make you regret this.”
“We’ve been waiting for you,” said the man. It was the hat-man. Leader Guy. “Now, the time has finally come.”
“What the hell are you talking about,” Neil muttered, pulling again. Man, he was tired. His mind started absentmindedly fiddling with numbers, like it did when he was about to fall asleep after having studied a bit too much. “Lemme go, you fucking weirdo.”
Leader Guy stood up, and for a second Neil thought he’s actually convinced him; but then Leader Guy started pacing, and Neil groaned again, his head lulling.
“Now the ritual will finally be completed,” Leader Guy said.
When the door opened and the rest of the cult — it had to be a cult, right? — came in, Neil suddenly became a whole lot more alert. he tugged at his restraints again, and, pulling at his legs, found that they were also tied; the ropes weren’t too tight, but there were way too many people in the room to allow him a swift escape. Or any escape at all, for that matter.
Leader Guy pulled a leather-bound book out of his robes, opened it on what looked to Neil like a completely random page, and began chanting. The rest of the cult joined in, one by one, until the air was heavy with the sounds, and Neil felt something prickle at the back of his neck.
“Lemme go, you freaks,” he snarled, pulling again. Leader Guy stepped closer to him, not lifting his eyes from the book. Another man stepped forward and sprinkled something on him, making Neil sneeze. The hell was that?
The chanting abruptly stopped, and everyone looked to Neil. Neil squirmed under the attention, fruitlessly pulling his hands again. “Did it fail?” he asked. Then, just so that everyone was on the same page, added, “I hope it failed.”
But Leader Guy grinned at him from under the hat. Neil looked back warily.
And then he felt it. It was sudden. Like, startlingly so. One moment he was sitting on the chair, looking at the guy’s face, and the next he was standing on it, his horizon drastically dropping.
He let out a startled squeak. Then he let out another startled squeak at the sound he, himself, has made; he turned this and that way, seeing the exhilarated expressions of an entire cult of weirdos looking down at him.
Okay. So whatever they were doing succeeded, and now Neil was, he was… He wasn’t sure yet, but he didn’t dwell on it. Solve the problem, then figure out what’s going on. One thing these guys clearly haven’t thought of was that whatever they did, it’d gotten him free of his binds.
He lunged at them, instincts kicking in. He quickly found that instead of hands, he had paws. And instead of legs, he also had paws. So he couldn’t throw a punch. Whatever; he wasn’t good at hand-to-hand combat anyway. What he did have, though, was his mouth; a quick lick of his teeth revealed that they have sharpened, and really, that was all he needed.
He bit Leader Guy in the calf, and that yelped and dropped his book. Neil evaded the raining pages, then lunged at another cultist, biting him as well. There were screams of panic and blurs of movement, robes swishing around as some bolted and others remained to fight; one guy made grabby hands at him, but the second he laid a hand on Neil’s fur — he had fur, what the fuck — Neil bit his hand, hard.
There was blood in his mouth. Yack.
Neil wasn’t panicking. He was too busy fighting for his freedom to do that.
From here to there, he managed to find the exit, and sprinted out of the room. Then he found his way out of the building. Whatever has happened to him, it didn’t take away his speed; if anything, he was now faster, smaller, and harder to catch. He left behind a trail of cultists either bleeding or scrambling after him. But he didn’t slow down.
He broke out into the rainy night, and ran until he couldn’t hear the scuffle of footsteps behind him. When he stopped, by the empty road, he was heaving like a madman.
He calmed down and assessed his surroundings. He had to find his way back home. Then, with Andrew’s help, he’ll figure out what the hell was wrong with him, and everything will be fixed.
Luckily, he recognized the road signs. He wasn’t too far away from Fox Tower, but in his newfound pace, it would probably take him a couple hours to get there.
He sighed.
And he started walking.
***
Andrew wasn’t panicking.
Neil was missing, again, and Andrew wasn’t panicking. Not at all.
He’d come across Neil’s bag by accident, of all things. He’d been on his way back from a therapy session with Bee — alone this time, seeing as Aaron was busy sacrificing goats for a chance to pass his finals — and had seen it lying by the road.
It was barely a glance, and at first, Andrew thought he must be getting paranoid about his Junkie getting kidnapped and almost murdered. Sue him; it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. But he stopped the car and went to check it out, just in case.
Up close, even under the pouring rain, he instantly recognized it.
He was thrown back to the last time that had happened, seeing an exy court instead of a deserted road, a phone and keys and a sports bag that wouldn’t have ever been left alone. There was noise around him; people yelling, shoving, pushing; a mayhem that couldn’t be pinpointed. His blood was rushing in his ears, and he looked around him, searching for Neil.
But around him was an empty road, not a court; and the mayhem wasn’t but the ringing of his own phone, vibrating in his pocket.
Andrew didn’t look away from Neil’s backpack as he pulled out his phone and answered the call. “What.”
“Is Neil with you?” it was Kevin, sounding agitated. “We were supposed to go over the recording of our last match, and he’s, like, two hours late, and I can find him literally nowhere. His phone’s here, too. Neil, if you’re there, I want you to know that you’re a jackass—“
“He isn’t here,” Andrew flatly said, fiddling with one of the backpack’s straps. He unzipped the main compartment, finding only a bunch of study materials. “You said he didn’t take his phone?”
“Yeah, it’s charging,” Kevin said. “I mean, I took it out already, but it was charging before.”
Andrew let out a long, measured sigh, trying to rack his brain for solutions. There had to be some reasonable explanation that wasn’t a recap of Neil’s first kidnapping. There had to be something. All of Neil’s father’s associates were either dead or in jail; they couldn’t have gotten out to get him, could they? But then again, that was what they’d thought back then.
Andrew looked around him again, and his gaze fell on something orange peeking out from between a few trees. He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what it was, when a fox suddenly jumped out and raced straight at him.
“Rob?” Andrew found himself saying. Rob was their exy mascot, and the only Fox on the team that was an actual fox — but she rarely went anywhere by herself anymore. “What are you doing here?”
“What does Rob have to do with this?” Kevin complained in his ear. Andrew hung up on him, shoved the phone in his pocket and picked up Neil’s backpack. But as the fox got closer, Andrew could see it wasn’t Rob; Rob was slimmer and slightly smaller, even though this new fox wasn’t too big, either. Now that Andrew was really looking, its fur was also redder.
With the ferocity it launched itself at him, Andrew thought it might have rabies; he stepped back out of instinct, and once he did, the fox suddenly halted.
It looked up at him and barked, stance still vigilant, clear blue eyes wide and bewildered.
“Are you lost?” Andrew asked it. The fox barked again, before breaking into a bark sequence that had Andrew frowning. He looked around him again, but he and the fox seemed to be the only living creatures out here.
And then the fox leaped up to him, claws grabbing a hold of the backpack and tearing it free of Andrew’s grasp. Andrew tried snatching it back, but the fox dragged it away; before Andrew could react, the fox dragged out a notebook, and used a paw to open it.
Andrew watched, stupefied, as the fox struggled to turn the pages with its paws. Finally, it stopped, dragged the notebook toward Andrew via its teeth, and barked up at him.
Andrew stared at the fox. The fox nudged the notebook forward, then tapped its paw on something scribbled at the top of the page.
Property of Neil Josten.
Andrew blinked, and looked around him again. Maybe he was dreaming. That made sense; he couldn’t count the amount of times he’s dreamt of Neil getting kidnapped again, and then, you know, brutally murdered in front of him — and an oddly cognizant fox was far from the weirdest thing to have plagued his dreams.
The fox tapped the name again and barked twice, maintaining eye contact with Andrew. When Andrew didn’t stir, it broke into vehement barks and tapped Neil’s name in rapid succession, before gesturing its paw at itself.
Okay. So Andrew was dreaming of Neil as a fox now. Everything was cool. Everything was fine. He was probably calling Bee when he woke up.
For now, though, he sat down. The pavement was cold and wet and dirty, but Neil the fox saw it as the gesture that it was, and approached him, relief somehow clear on his face. His snout.
Because he had a snout.
Andrew picked up Neil the fox and put him in his lap. “What did you get yourself into this time, Junkie?”
Neil the fox started barking at him, and when he kept barking and barking with almost cartoonish expressiveness, Andrew realized he was actually trying to tell him. The only problem was that Andrew didn’t speak Fox.
So Andrew stared at him blankly until Neil realized his mistake and snapped his mouth shut. He let out a low, desperate whine, and buried his fox-face in Andrew’s shirt.
Andrew, at a complete loss of what to do, blinked at the nothing in particular. It kind of tickled, if he were being honest. And it was seriously adorable. He would’ve awwed had he not been dead inside.
Instead, he patted Neil’s fluffy fox-head, hearing Neil sniff.
Andrew’s brain shut down when Neil started purring.
***
Kevin was officially sick of living when he saw Andrew bursting into their dorm room, carrying yet another fox in his arms.
“I don’t care what Neil says, we are not keeping another fox in here,” Kevin proclaimed before Andrew even had the time to shut the door behind him. Andrew shot him a glare and stalked across the room before sitting on Neil’s bed.
“This is Neil,” he said, gesturing his head at the sleeping fox in his arms. Kevin mock laughed at him and walked into the kitchen.
A minute later he walked back into the room, a dismayed expression on his face and an unopened bio-something-something yogurt in his hand. “You’re joking, right?”
Andrew looked at him unblinkingly. The fox in his arms let out a low, whistling snore, and both boys looked down at it. It shifted in Andrew’s arms, squishing its nose harder against Andrew’s shirt. Andrew patted its head once and looked back up at Kevin, who stared at the fox with skeptical eyes. “It’s impossible.”
“Obviously,” Andrew said without explaining further.
“But—“ Kevin started, then fell silent. A few seconds passed before he finished his thought. “But Neil’s a person. And this is a fox.”
Andrew shrugged.
Kevin left the room once again. When he came back, a bottle of whisky took the yogurt’s place. Kevin sat down on the bed next to Andrew, poured a little whisky into a plastic cup, and handed it to Andrew. Andrew instantly knocked it back.
Kevin poured some more into Andrew’s cup, and then into his own plastic cup. “What are we gonna do?”
Andrew let Neil the fox, who’s woken up, sniff the whisky. Neil crinkled his nose, which made Andrew shrug and knock it back himself. “I’ve no clue.”
That was when Andrew’s elbow knocked into the edge of the bunk-bed’s beam. He froze in his place, and, to Kevin’s curious look, slowly turned his head to the beam. “Ow.”
Kevin frowned. Andrew dropped his eyes to look at Neil the fox, then blinked twice, before something somber invaded his face. “Fuck. This is real, isn’t it.”
“That’s just it,” Kevin said. “I don’t think it is.”
“But I’m not dreaming.”
“Maybe the agriculture undergrads accidentally set fire to their final project again,” Kevin suggested. They both sniffed the air, and Kevin shook his head contemplatively. They’ve both arrived at the same conclusion, though just looking at the closed window could’ve told them that.
Kevin sighed and poured him and Andrew whisky shots. Neil the fox laughed at them in the incredibly jeering way of foxes, at which Kevin knocked back another shot with lightning speed. “Shut up, you asshole.”
Neil the fox barked at him gleefully, and Andrew snorted and proceeded to knock back another shot of his own.
It wasn’t long until the bottle was empty. It wasn’t long at all.
***
The foxes of Fox Tower, those not wasted or currently foxes, stood at the threshold of Neil, Andrew and Kevin’s room.
“Why is Andrew drunk in the middle of the day?” Nicky asked. Andrew turned to him with a glower that had them all shifting away and slurred something incomprehensible, before turning and punching the wall. Flecks of plaster crumbled away.
Nicky stared at him wide-eyed. “…Neat in the box? What?”
Matt peeked his head in. “I think he said, Nick in the lock.”
Nicky frowned at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And who’s Nick?” added Dan.
“Kevin, did you recruit someone without telling us again?” Matt yelled into the room, presumably at the corner where Kevin sat slumped, hugging an empty bottle of whisky. Kevin lifted round eyes to him and shook his head.
“Neil,” Andrew angrily slurred, raising his voice, “s’fox.”
“I think Andrew’s lost it,” Nicky muttered.
“Oh, only now?” Allison sneered at him.
“Guys, guys, let’s do this like civil people,” Dan said, spreading her arms in a peace-maker gesture. She turned her attention back to Andrew, who’s leaned the back of his head against the wall and somehow managed to look down at them all despite being generally much shorter. “Where’s Neil?”
Andrew and Kevin simultaneously pointed to the fox perched on Neil’s bed.
“That’s Rob,” Aaron flatly said.
“How much have they had to drink?” muttered Dan.
And at that moment, Rob climbed out from under the bed. To the astonishment of the Foxes, she leisurely stalked toward Robbie, the resident massive fox plushie sitting by the T.V., and flopped down against it. Everybody looked back at the fox perched on the bed, who barked at them.
“Wait,” Nicky said. “If Rob’s there…”
“Then who’s that?” Allison said, looking at the fox. Andrew sighed, and Kevin let out a groan of pure, unadulterated despair.
“It’s Neil,” he said, voice surprisingly un-slurred. “Neil is a fox.”
“Kevin, but that’s impossible,” said Nicky.
“Tell that to Neil, who’s a fox!” Kevin exclaimed, wildly gesturing at the bed with Neil on it. “He can even solve math problems and everything! Believe me, we’ve checked.”
“You didn’t do jack,” Andrew called out.
“I brought the damn whisky, so shut up.”
“I don’t follow,” Matt muttered.
“Maybe they’re telling the truth,” suggested Renee. Everybody turned to look at where she was standing behind them, outside the room. “How often do you see Andrew getting drunk?”
“Never,” said Aaron.
“And Neil’s nowhere to be found, too,” added Matt. They all turned their attentions back to the fox, eyes narrow and suspicious. Andrew and Kevin were arguing loudly, but nobody paid them any mind anymore.
This was crazy.
But it was also Neil they were talking about. If something like that would happen to anybody, it would happen to him.
In the end, they decided to test it. Allison searched the drawers in search of Neil’s math textbook while Dan fetched a pencil and paper; Nicky picked up the fox — Neil? — and gently set him down on the writing desk. The textbook was open on a math problem, and the pencil and paper were both in easy reach.
The fox sighed, before picking up the pencil with its mouth and approaching the textbook. They all watched as it seemingly read the question, and, to their astonishment, started scribbling something on the paper.
Ten minutes later, they have all been laid witness to the first fox in the world’s history (probably) to have solved a logarithmic equation.
“Fuck me sideways,” Nicky muttered, eyes wide and voice shocked. “Neil, is that really you?”
The fox — Neil — nodded vehemently, before spitting out the pencil so that it hit Kevin’s head. Kevin swore at him, but otherwise didn’t move.
“That’s Neil alright,” Allison said, a hand over her gaping mouth. Dan clutched hard onto her forearm, while Matt and Aaron both stared in stoic awe.
“How did that even happen?” Renee asked. Despite her generally calm exterior, she stood very still, looking slightly alarmed.
“Tr’d,” Andrew slurred, now sitting on the bed Neil’s vacated, “to ask, b’t I don’t f’ckin’ speak Fox."
“But he can write,” Allison noted. Neil the fox lifted his eyes to her in what seemed to be an eureka moment, before starting to bark in Kevin’s direction. Kevin searched around for the pencil that’s been spat at him and threw it in the table’s general direction, which promptly landed the pencil in the trash bin.
Neil barked at him indignantly.
Matt quickly found another pencil and set it down on the table. Under the logarithmic equation, Neil started scribbling frantically. When he was done, he set the pencil down and tried to push the page in their direction.
Allison picked up the paper and cleared her throat. Even Andrew straightened, paying full attention as she read Neil’s explanation out loud.
“A cult kidnapped me and turned me into a fox for their ritual,” she read. “But I ran away before they could finish it.”
Matt frowned at Neil. “What do you mean, a cult kidnapped you?”
Neil did the fox-version of shrugging, and let out a short bark. Allison set the paper down for him to write again.
When he was done, she picked it up again and read. “They wanted the order to reinstate.”
“Dude, that explains, like, literally nothing,” Nicky said.
“And you also misspelt reinstate,” Allison said, looking up at Neil. Neil somehow managed to glare at her, at which the words died on her tongue, and she put the paper down.
“Do we… what do we do?” Dan asked. Kevin looked up to her, staggeringly standing up with his hand supported against the wall.
“We thought maybe we could wait it out,” he said. “Maybe it’ll wear off at some point.”
Neil the fox picked up the pencil and wrote something down. Allison picked it up. “But I have exams next week. I’ll be kicked out if I don’t show up to any of them.”
All the faces in the room paled, save for Andrew’s. Andrew was now lying on Neil’s bed, staring at the wooden bottom of his own bed above it. “Then we have to find a way to turn him back.”
“But how are we going to do that?” asked Matt.
Surprisingly, it was Aaron who spoke up. “I’ve got an idea."