Chapter Text
“If we’re all accounted for, we should head out,” a security guard said and Andrew flicked his gaze towards him. It was unusual for them to be there after a relatively normal game and had Andrew’s thoughts not been elsewhere he likely would’ve focused much more on the oddness of there being one standing by the exit, facing the Foxes like he was assessing how dangerous each of them were. However, all Andrew's mind seemed to be able to focus on was the one word Neil had spoken before the second half of the game, along with the abrupt amount of honesty—or at least what counted as honesty for Neil Josten—he’d received from him on the bus without having been asked for a single bit of it. His thoughts swam with images of the tales of his time on the run Neil had woven with his words, telling them with more truth and emotion than Andrew was sure he’d spoken with in years.
“We’re still waiting for Neil,” Nicky said, and it struck Andrew at that moment that Neil had been gone longer than usual, another thing that was off about his behavior. Had it only been one or maybe two things that were abnormal it might not have been quite so notable, but combined together they were proof that something wasn’t quite right. Something was wrong, but nothing about any of it fit together to form a clear picture. Andrew glanced over at Kevin, meeting his equally as concerned gaze, though he was worse at hiding his fear. His shoulders were rigid, eyebrows furrowed, fingers tightly gripping his racquet as he stood stock still near the wall closest to Andrew.
Neil stepped into the room at that moment and any doubts in Andrew’s mind that something wasn’t right dissipated. He didn’t quite hear whatever it was that Nicky said, nor did he really process Kevin leaning his racquet against the wall. All he saw was the barely hidden tension in Neil’s shoulders, the paleness of his face, his wide eyes that seemed more focused than usual, more aware of every detail.
“I’m sorry,” Neil said and there was too much emotion behind it, too much longing and concentration in his gaze as he looked around the room at the Foxes. It was like he was trying to memorize it all, capture it in his mind like one of the pictures he stared at on the wall back at the Foxhole Court.
Andrew moved towards him without realizing he was doing it, stepping into Neil’s direct line of sight, not quite in his space but closer than he’d normally get, especially around others. Kevin followed, essentially blocking Neil from everyone else's sight in the process, and Andrew resisted the urge to glance his way. He half expected Neil to respond with his signature “I’m fine,” to their silent demand to know what was going on.
"Neil-" Kevin started but stopped when Neil's gaze snapped to him, then to Andrew, blue eyes still bolder than usual, unfamiliar words leaving his lips.
“Thank you.” Emotion and honesty, more than locking down a goal and winning a game should’ve evoked, even from Neil, dripped from the words, eyes filled with a desperate sort of longing, a pain and sorrow deeper than Andrew had ever seen from him, all mixed with an odd sort of finality. “Both of you. You were amazing.”
Something burned in Andrew’s chest, both painfully familiar and incredibly foreign all at once. He wanted to demand that Neil answer his question, wanted to push him back against the wall behind him and stop him from looking at him the way he was, wanted to yell at him because the words sounded too much like a goodbye, especially when paired with the fact that he’d not only broken their deal, gotten Andrew to give up his protection of him, but also told him more truths about himself than Andrew had ever heard or asked from him. Neil's name escaped Kevin's lips again next to him in a broken, desperate voice, but Andrew barely registered it as he took in the look in Neil's eyes, the still rigid set of his shoulders.
Andrew wasn't given the chance to fully contemplate doing any of the things he felt the urge to do before Wymack motioned them all out of the lounge. He’d have to ask Neil why he sounded so final once they were on the bus, away from everyone else but Kevin, he just had to make sure he didn’t run off before then. Kevin let out a shaky, loud exhale next to Andrew and when he glanced his way, there was even more panic in his eyes than before, panic that bordered on terror. There was something going on that he didn't know about, something that it seemed like Kevin might know and Andrew wanted to demand an answer from both of them right then and there, but Wymack again called for them to fall in line with the rest of them before he could.
Andrew kept his gaze locked on Neil as they left the stadium. His head tipped slightly towards each side of the crowd like he was looking for someone or something in them, tension growing in his shoulders as he clenched his fists. Andrew’s attention was torn away from Neil, however, when a glass bottle came flying out of the crowd and smashed into Aaron’s shoulder, bouncing off and shattering on the ground at his feet. He glared out into the crowd, itching to grab his knives or hit the person responsible, but not only would that make things much worse, he also didn’t have a clue who it was that had thrown the bottle. His and the rest of the foxes’ inaction had no effect on the crowd, as the one bottle being thrown seemed to set off a string of other things following it. A cooler crashed into a drunk fan on Palmetto’s side, somehow thrown in an arc over the divide, narrowly missing Dan. Without warning, everything seemed to blur and distort around him.
Both sides pushed forward towards each other, neither of them caring about the fact that there were people between them. Andrew tried to keep an eye on Aaron, Nicky, Neil, and Kevin, but quickly lost track of both his cousin and the rabbit as the two crowds went at each other with an uncontrollable type of ferocity that came only with people not being quite in their right minds. He grabbed hold of Kevin’s shirt, dragging him away from a guy whose fist nearly collided with the tattoo on his cheek.
Once again, Andrew resisted the urge to pull out his knives; They’d only wind him up in jail, something he couldn’t afford, not when he still had promises to keep. He grabbed hold of Aaron’s arm before the crowd could pull him away and started shoving his way through the crowd in the direction they’d been going. Chaos reigned around them, stray punches and elbows hitting Andrew, one to his face nearly knocking him down. Ignoring everything was nearly impossible, but he tried his hardest to reach his goal despite it all. It was hard to tell left from right even as the crowd got thinner, whether that was from it being broken apart by cops and security guards or from them just getting further from the middle of it, Andrew didn't know.
The moment they pushed through the last part of the crowd, emerging into the darker area of the parking lot that was still mostly filled with cars, Andrew released his grip on the other two. He swept his gaze over the tops of the cars and over the crowd, looking for something to help orient himself so he could figure out where the bus was. Still, when he couldn’t find anything particularly helpful, he instead looked for a familiar flash of auburn hair in the crowd or outside it. It was too dark and there were too many people, however, making it impossible to tell who anyone was or even really what they looked like.
“The bus,” Kevin said suddenly, moving before Andrew himself had even spotted the thing he was referring to. He and Aaron, whose eyes were glued to the mass of people that was slowly thinning out as police shoved people apart, followed. Sure enough, after walking around a couple of cars, the bright orange and white bus became visible, the horrendous color scheme for once a blessing rather than an annoyance. The door was thrown open already by the time they got there and everyone, it seemed, had already found their way to it.
Renee’s hands were being tended to by Abby towards the back of the bus, Allison sat beside her, left eye slightly swollen, makeup smudged. Wymack let out a small sigh when he saw them and Dan sunk down into the seat next to Matt. Everyone on the bus was beat up in some way, blood crusted beneath noses, slowly forming bruises discoloring people’s skin, clothes ripped.
“ Gott sei dank. ” Nicky jumped up from where he had been sitting in the front row, rushing towards them, eyes wide with relief. For a second he hovered in front of Andrew, gaze sweeping over him, looking almost as if he might hug him. Andrew scowled slightly, though he doubted it looked quite as angry as it usually did and Nicky nodded slightly before moving past him towards Aaron.
Andrew scanned the faces of the people on the bus and it took him a moment to realize that he'd been wrong when he first got on. Not everyone was there, someone was missing. Someone who he was supposed to protect—except, no, he wasn’t, because Neil had broken their deal.
“Where’s Neil?” the words slipped out before he could stop them and Renee looked up at him, away from her hands. There was a combination of both a knowing and a concerned look in her eyes, though before she said anything, Matt answered. His gaze was directed out the nearest window, everything about his posture oozing fear and concern.
“I lost track of him. Last I saw, he was with one of the security guards.” His voice shook slightly and he didn’t move from where he sat. Something inside of Andrew tensed, like a rubber band being stretched and twisted at the same time, and his hand twitched at his side.
Andrew started towards the stairs leading back down to the door without a second thought, only to be pulled to a stop by a hand grabbing hold of his arm. The person’s grip was tight, making it impossible for him to go further unless it loosened, and he spun around. Aaron let go of him the second he turned, like he’d been burned, and scowled at him, ignoring Andrew’s clenched fist that shook as he held himself back from punching something.
“Where are you going?” he hissed and his gaze flicked out through the door behind Andrew, “It’s not safe out there.”
“To find Neil.” Matt glanced up at that but didn’t otherwise move. Andrew turned away from Aaron again, rushing down the stairs and storming off into the parking lot. He ignored Aaron’s call of his name behind him, though the sound of footsteps following him nearly made him slow down. For a second he thought they were his twin’s, but it only took a few strides for it to become apparent that they were Kevin’s.
“Drew—” he started but cut himself off as if he had changed his mind about what he was going to say. Andrew didn’t spare him so much as a glance as he continued to walk through the parking lot, eyes scanning over every person there. People seemed to have finally mostly calmed down and many were either stumbling around or were being loaded into police cars and ambulances. The red, white, and blue lights of the emergency vehicles lit up the parking lot more than the streetlights did, casting an odd sort of light over everything, making things seem like colors they weren’t. In most places, Neil’s hair would’ve stuck out amongst a crowd of people, his bright, ice blue eyes would’ve been impossible to miss, but not here, not with the flashing lights and the veil of darkness.
Andrew moved closer to where they had come out of the stadium, where he had last seen Neil. Bags, coats, empty bottles, and other random things littered the pavement there, along with flecks of red that could only be blood from people who had already been taken somewhere else. So much stuff was scattered around that he almost missed the bright orange duffel bag and the racquet that lay just a foot or so from it, both scuffed up and dirtied but unmistakably Neil’s.
He ran— ran , something he never did—towards them, cold, dark claws of an emotion he hadn’t felt, hadn’t let himself feel, in years digging into his chest. Kevin followed, moving almost faster than Andrew when he noticed what he'd found. One of the few predictable things about Neil was that he didn’t leave his bag for anything, not even if he was bleeding out, and they both knew that better than the rest of the Foxes besides maybe Wymack. Something clinked as he picked up the duffel bag and Andrew stiffened when he noticed the flip phone and keys tucked into the outer netting of the bag, the gray and black metal of both standing out starkly against the orange and white.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Neil’s expression, apologetic and pained, his voice, breaking and filled with honesty, and his sudden odd behavior from before seemed to crash down onto Andrew like they were ice water being thrown in his face. If Neil had run, his duffel and his racquet wouldn’t still be there, his keys wouldn’t still be there, making it impossible for Neil to return to Palmetto to get the rest of his things, to get what Andrew knew he needed to run. Something else had happened, and Neil had known it would before it did, somehow. Except he’d left his things and he’d said goodbye in his own weird, hidden way instead of asking for any kind of help.
Feeling the claws of desperation and fear dig deeper into his chest, he pulled out the phone and keys. The keys dug into his palm as he gripped them and the phone lit up the second he opened it, not even a password protecting it, something that seemed incredibly off for someone like Neil, someone with so many secrets. It was more of a testament to how little he used it, how little he really cared for it, how he only kept it because he’d promised he would than anything else.
The phone was already on messages, already showing a small list of text chats, all labeled with contact names except for the one at the very top of it, which was just a number with an area code that Andrew didn’t recognize. Barely aware of what he was doing, he went to the chat with the unknown number. 0 , that was all it had in it, no previous messages, no response, nothing besides one eerie number.
Something was definitely wrong.
It could’ve been a wrong number text, except something told Andrew it wasn’t. If it was, Neil would have deleted it, he would’ve-
Andrew clicked out of the chat and went to the deleted messages file, where there was a string of thirty deleted messages from the past month, all from numbers with the same area code, but different phone numbers, each and every one of them just a number, counting down to 0.
Andrew went to the call history, knowing what he’d find before he even clicked on it. A call, from the same area code, had come in just minutes before Neil had come into the lounge and said those eight words that kept ringing through Andrew’s mind, on repeat— Thank you, both of you. You were amazing .
Something was fucking wrong.
Andrew sprang to his feet, Kevin looking up at him slowly, like he was in a trance, from the racquet he held in his hands, fingers tangled in its loose and broken netting. There had to be something else that would give Andrew some clue as to where Neil was, what had happened. But there wasn’t, nothing else near them seemed to have anything to do with him.
“He’s gone,” Kevin murmured and Andrew’s grip on the keys and phone tightened, the edge of the keys cutting into his skin, the phone creaking slightly like it might crumple in his hand if he gripped it just a bit tighter. He picked up Neil’s duffel, slipping the phone into it again and began wandering around, scanning over everything around them. He tried to ignore the growing fear in him, nearly choking him as the claws of it dug deeper into his flesh, filling his lungs with blood and drowning him in it. It had been over ten years since he had sworn to himself that he’d never feel like this again, and until that moment he had succeeded. Now, the terror flooded through him like a tidal wave, nearly pulling him under as he searched for something, anything , even though he knew it was hopeless.
Neil was gone and it was all Andrew’s fucking fault.
Andrew didn’t believe in regret, had never really seen the purpose in wanting to do something that had already been done differently, since it had already happened, couldn’t be changed. But for the first time, he felt a twinge of it. If he hadn’t let Neil break their deal, hadn’t convinced himself he could ask Neil why he was being weird on the bus later, hadn’t let Neil disappear into the crowd when the riot broke out, then this wouldn’t have happened. Neil wouldn’t be fucking missing, taken who knows where by who knows who, after apparently being warned, something he hadn’t even bothered to tell Andrew about, despite the fact that they still had a deal the entire time.
“Andrew-” Kevin started, appearing at his shoulder, Neil’s racquet gripped in his hands so tightly his knuckles were white. He broke off when Andrew met his gaze for only a second, hoping and fearing at the same time to convey the anger and panic coursing through him, and continued to search for something. He tried his hardest to push down the fear that just wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t listen to him as it always had, but it didn't work. The fear coming off of Kevin in waves wasn't helping him in the slightest and he didn't know what he was supposed to fucking do because he couldn't find anything .
Andrew wandered around the entire stadium, Kevin following him despite the fact that he obviously didn’t see the point anymore. By the time they were back where they started, still absolutely no clues as to where Neil was, the ambulances had all left, as had most of the police cars, and the parking lot was almost completely empty besides the Foxes’ bus, bright orange and white against the darkness. Andrew swept another look over the parking lot, dark and deserted, nothing to hint that anything more than fans getting over enthusiastic had taken place, nothing hinting someone had been taken, dragged away to some nearby building or into a car.
“We’re not going to find anything else,” Kevin said and even though Andrew didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to admit he had no way of finding Neil, not this way at least, he knew Kevin was right. Still, he glared at him for a long moment before turning to walk back towards the bus. "What'd you find on the phone?"
Andrew paused and looked back at Kevin, who looked more terrified, more lost, than he ever had before. His grip on Neil's racquet was so tight his whole arm shook with the muscle strain, and his green eyes were wide, shimmering with what could've been unshed tears if Andrew let himself focus enough on it. He knew more about this than Andrew and he wanted to do something to get him to tell him what it was but it could wait till they got to the bus, till there was someone who could stop him if he lost control. So he held up a finger and turned back to walk towards the bus.
Wymack was outside of it, talking to a police officer, when they got there. He looked briefly over at them, face darkening slightly when his eyes landed on the duffel bag and the racquet.
“Fucking perfect time for him to decide to leave,” he muttered and dragged a defeated hand down his face.
“He didn’t run.”
The officer looked as if he wanted to speak but Andrew stepped forward slightly, suddenly caring less about being arrested than he had before. If the officer thought he could get himself involved in their business, he was wrong, and would pay for it.
“Minyard, get on the damn bus,” Wymack snapped before Andrew could do anything. Had it been a normal day, whatever normal was for being on a team of people who were all fucked up to some degree, at least, he wouldn’t have listened. Except, he had to find Neil and punching someone who would arrest him for it would make that much more difficult, so he just scowled at the man dressed in dark blue clothes, with perfect hair and no wrinkles visible in his clothing.
The duffel bag bounced against his side as he climbed the couple of steps up into the bus, Kevin following him. Everyone on the bus fell silent when they reached the top, Nicky rising to his feet again, followed by Dan and Matt. For a second, they looked hopeful, before their gazes landed on Neil’s things. Nicky sagged, letting out a shaky breath, Dan’s eyes hardened, lips pressed into a tight, thin line, while Matt swore.
Andrew glared at all of them as he shoved his way to the back of the bus, slouching down into the seat Neil had been in before looking back at him, the seat they had kissed on hours ago, Andrew having no clue it could be their last because Neil was such a fucking idiot. For a moment, he just sat there, feeling Neil’s keys dig into his skin, cutting through his palm and causing blood to pool up.
The claws dug into him again and he grabbed the duffel bag, dropping the keys onto the seat beside him, ignoring the beads of scarlet red on them. As always, the clothes in Neil’s duffel were folded in specific ways, exactly the same as they had been folded when Andrew had looked through his bag months ago. Nothing in it gave anything away, the only indicator that something was wrong about it being the keys and phone and the fact that Neil didn’t have it .
He was drowning in his own sudden fear, trying to cut it off, trying to push it back, push it down, push it away, but it kept choking him.
Andrew pulled the phone back out of the netting, opening it and clicking on the number that had called Neil in the locker room. It didn’t even ring, an automatic, robotic voice simply saying the number had been disconnected. Every other number that had sent Neil a text over the past month did the exact same thing when he called them.
Something had happened to Neil, someone had taken him, and Andrew had absolutely nothing to go on about who it was or where they were taking him, or even fucking why. It could have been Riko, but somehow he doubted that. Despite what had happened over Christmas with Neil, Riko wasn’t that careless, nor would he have bothered to send warnings to Neil in the first place. This was someone else, someone Andrew had the feeling he didn’t know about because nothing added up. Neil had kept secrets and never before had it been so fucking annoying.
Andrew snapped the gray phone shut and for the first time in weeks pulled his own out, flipping it open instead. Finding the numbers of every hospital nearby wasn’t hard and he called each and every one of them. There was no real point to it, everything indicated that something else had happened, that Neil hadn’t just been knocked out and whisked away in an ambulance. But it was the only thing Andrew could fucking do and even though he hated thinking of it that way, a small part of him hoped one of them would have him.
They all told him the same thing, every time he called, until his phone’s battery was nearly completely drained, and the bus had moved out onto the road to go to one of them because Abby wanted to have a few of them checked out. He snapped his phone shut, resisting the urge to punch something or to hurl the stupid thing out the window next to him.
Kevin met his gaze when he looked up at him, eyes still panicked, but hands no longer desperately gripping Neil's racquet. Andrew wasn't sure how long he'd been there, next to him, but he got the feeling he'd heard all of the desperate phone calls, the unsympathetic and robotic sounding "No, sorry, we don't have anyone of that description here" s that each hospital gave him. Kevin's hands were shaking where they gripped the edges of Neil's duffel bag, his gaze on Neil's phone like it would ring or like it would give him all the answers they both wanted. A shudder passed through him and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before reaching for the gray flip phone still held in Andrew's hand. Andrew let him take it even though it felt like one of the only things he had tying him to what happened to Neil, because it seemed like maybe Kevin could find something in it that Andrew couldn't.
Kevin opened the phone and it turned on to the one message that Andrew had kept going back to stare at before calling the hospitals. For a second, he seemed frozen, eyes glued to the screen, lips parted in an indecipherable look, then a gasping exhale escaped him and the phone slipped from his grip.
"No," Kevin muttered, shaking his head weakly, and Andrew reached forwards to grab his wrist when he looked like he was going to stumble up and away from the phone as if it were cursed. "No, no, no, no, no… not now, not him, oh god.."
Andrew tightened his grip on Kevin's wrists, forcing him back down onto the seat as his breaths came out in increasingly fast pants. His gaze didn't shift from the phone that was now on the floor, his frantic muttering shifting into rapid French that Andrew didn't understand a word of. Andrew tugged his wrists a bit, trying to grab his attention, and Kevin glanced up at him for a split second before looking back at the phone, which slid a few inches to the right as the bus turned.
"Kevin, what the fuck is going on?" he snapped and Kevin's eyes met his again, unshed tears glistening in them. He shook in Andrew's grip, pants not slowing down as he continued to glance in between the phone and Andrew's face.
"Neil, he— oh mon dieu , this is bad, this— he's dead, fuck, no , fuck, I—"
"Kevin," Andrew repeated and gripped his chin with his right hand to get his gaze to face him.
"His father— I said I wouldn't— I— Drew—"
"His father? I swear to God , Kevin—"
Kevin choked on a sob and squeezed his eyes shut before staring at Andrew for a long moment. Andrew could sense the rest of the Foxes' gazes on them, could feel their anxiety and fear, but he didn't pay them any mind. "Neil's father… Andrew, Neil's with him, fuck, he's… how… when did he get out, oh fuck. Andrew, his father has him, he—"
Andrew didn't quite understand what Kevin was saying, didn't quite know what he meant, just that he and Neil had lied to him and now Neil was gone and it was his fault . "Where?"
"Baltimore," Kevin gasped and squeezed his eyes shut again. "Oh god, he's in Baltimore ."
Kevin curled in on himself, pulling half out of Andrew's grip in the process. Andrew sprang to his feet, planning to run up to Wymack and tell him to go to Baltimore, to ignore traffic laws, just get them there, but neither Wymack nor Abby were in the bus. Emergency lights flashed through the windows, sirens blared, and he realized they'd gotten to the hospital without him noticing.
"I'll get Wymack," Dan said before Andrew could move away from his seat and he stared at her. He could feel his mask slipping, could feel his emotions bubble to the surface, visible to everyone as his own breath caught in his throat and he nodded curtly as she raced down the bus stairs. Kevin let out another hysteric sob, and Andrew looked back at him. They needed to find Neil now , Andrew didn't know what to do if he wasn't there, didn't know what to do with himself. He sank back down into the seat next to Kevin and waited for Dan to come back with Wymack so they could go. If they weren't back in ten minutes he was going to drive the bus himself or go steal a car to get there himself. They needed to get to Neil. No matter what it took.