Archive of Our Own

— i'll never know if there's danger in confession, or it's memory that presses like a blade against my throat —

It has been a very bad day.

Abram’s mother is absolutely rigid with tension, both arms locked straight at the elbows as she grips the wheel tightly and drives them one mile below the speed limit. They’ve been embroiled in a tense, awkward silence for nearly an hour, and he chews nervously at a hangnail as they both keep a hypervigilant eye on any vehicles that look like they may be tailing their nondescript, champagne-colored Honda Accord.

He can’t even blame her for her sharp, brusque attitude, either. Their flight from Nova Scotia to Louisiana had been diverted to Yeager Airport, and while the medical emergency on their plane had seemed legitimate enough to justify grounding them in West Virginia, there is absolutely nothing good about being within a 500-mile radius of Baltimore.

His mom is utterly convinced that the Butcher is on their trail. 

Even if Abram wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to persuade her otherwise. It’s too close for comfort, regardless of whether or not they’re going to have to lose his father’s men. Something about their impromptu landing has her even more on-edge than Abram’s ever seen her before, too. She’s always nervous and tense given the inherent nature of their life on the run, but this is different.

It’s scarier, if Abram is completely honest with himself. 

Nervous sweat gathers on her forehead, and he’s sure that her hands would feel cold and clammy if he tried to touch them. Every word she’d spat at him from the moment their plane landed had been drenched in something potent and terrified, something so instinctively primal that it had made Abram’s skin prickle apprehensively in sympathetic alarm.

She only ever sounds like that when they’re directly in his father’s sights. The fact that nobody obvious appears to be on their tail but she’s still so freaked out has his entire endocrine system on high alert.

After their close call in Seattle earlier this year, they really can’t afford to take any more chances. When she’d taken a bullet to the gut, Abram had spent a few terrifying days trying to stabilize her enough that her life didn’t remain at immediate risk. He’d kept her plied with copious amounts of alcohol so that he could dig the bullet out and sew her back together again, praying to gods that didn’t exist that she’d survive the internal bleeding on her own. 

They’d burned through a large amount of money, resources, and contacts to keep her alive. 

Three months of shaky recovery later, she’d made it out, but sometimes, Abram still sees her phantom blood beneath his fingernails when he looks down at his hands.

Because she is so clearly frightened of something, he refuses to let the deceptive quiet of their car on smooth highway asphalt lull him into a false sense of security.

Something must be seriously wrong for her to be so scared.

Abram wonders what it is she’s keeping from him. She never tells him the full story, and while he’s gotten used to her close-lipped approach to information, that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Even if he did gather the courage to ask, though, he’s fairly positive she’d slap him and tell him to shut up so that she could focus on driving.

So he stays silent as they drive. They might be running on little more than adrenaline and gas fumes, but she refuses to pull over until there’s a little more distance between them and Maryland.

They had planned to be in Louisiana by now, but instead, they’re on I-77 and headed to Charlotte, North Carolina. It doesn’t matter what flight they get on at the next major airport, as long as it’s far, far away from here.

Louisiana had sounded interesting, but Abram knows better than to pin his hopes on any of their premade plans. The only way any of this works is if they stay unpredictable, sometimes going so far as to book plane and train tickets they never actually board. Anything that masks their real trail makes it all-the-more challenging for the Butcher to track them down.

“New identities,” she snaps once she feels as though there’s an appropriate amount of mileage between Charleston and their vehicle. “Who are we?”

It’s a routine they both know well now, crafting new personalities while enroute to the next location that will keep them hidden and safe.

The next time they leave this car, they will become entirely new people, leaving behind any and all trace of whoever they were before.

Abram slides his hand into the laptop compartment of the travel backpack at his feet, unearthing a fireproof pouch containing a bundle of papers and documents. They’re running low on falsified documents, which is why she had been trying to get them out to Louisiana in the first place. Apparently she has a contact down there, someone who isn’t loyal to the Butcher and can be trusted to forge some new paperwork for them to have on-hand.

Almost everything they do is carefully calculated; his mother’s overly-paranoid strategy has kept them alive for this long, though, so Abram can’t find it in his heart to complain.

He slips a forged US passport out of the pouch. Tucked inside of it is an Arizona driver’s license and a picture of him with brown eyes and black hair. “Neil Josten,” he reads aloud. “Born March 31st. I’m 18.”

“And me?”

The second passport and license reads Lucy Josten.  

“You’re Lucy now,” he says. Right now, her hair is a dirty brown, but the black dye she’d used for the photo makes her look sickly, almost pallid, in her forged ID picture. “You were born December 13th, 1967, and we live in Arizona.”

“We’re visiting family for the holidays, then,” she says, her voice clipped as she irons out the details. “A combined trip to celebrate my birthday and visit—”

“Your sisters,” he finishes. “None of you were ever all that close, but one of them… had a health scare this year. A cardiac event. It brought us all back together.”

“That’s good, Neil. What else?”

The first time she calls him by a new name is always the hardest. It settles over him with an uncomfortable shudder, and he thinks to himself: Neil Josten. Neil Josten. I am Neil Josten.

Neil nods. “We’ve been struggling to make ends meet for the last year or so, after Dad died in a car accident.” If only. “But you picked up a second job recently to save up for this trip. You thought reconnecting with our living family would be good for me, especially with everything that’s happened.”

“It has to be something menial. Unskilled labor,” she muses. “I have no remarkable skills or education. Nothing so pathetic that people will pay special attention to it, though. Arizona doesn’t have a particularly high cost of living, which helps. Janitorial work?”

“Could be a housekeeper, too.” Neil thinks on it. Ideally, it’d be best if they could have access to a computer to see what local companies are in the area. Something generic will have to work for now, though. “A nursing home, maybe? No one will question that too much to ask for specifics.”

She makes a considering noise. “Custodial work and some housekeeping on the side. That'll do.”

He feels a swell of pride at her approval — he’s not always the best at creating alibis, and she’s been significantly more critical of his ideas in the past. It’s somewhat unclear whether he’s actually managed to brainstorm a solid, feasible background or she’s just too nervous to do much else but accept his ideas, but regardless, Neil will take the victory.

They spend the next half hour hammering out Lucy and Neil Josten’s personalities, though that’s generally the easy part. Quiet, unassuming, and lacking any memorable qualities is their most typical MO, allowing them to navigate countless cities with ease.

Eventually, though, the car engine sputters, and they exchange a glance. His mom usually doesn’t take risks like this, driving on an empty tank for so long, but it’s clear that they can’t go on for much longer.

Stopping for gas is a risk, but getting stranded on the side of the road is an even bigger one.

Clearly conceding, she takes the next exit off the highway and pulls into a well-lit Exxon rest stop, leaving the car on as they sit at the pump for a moment.

It’s a surveillance tactic, Neil knows. They wait, hearts racing, to see if anyone who was keeping pace with them on the road has also decided on a timely pit stop. When no one suspicious or familiar pulls up alongside them, she finally cuts the engine.

Every second counts when they commit to a stop while on the road. She grabs her own bag from the backseat, digging through it for a moment as she speaks. “I’m going to go dye my hair in the bathroom,” she says. “Fuel up and grab us something to eat. Twenty-five minutes and we’re gone.”

Neil flicks his gaze to the clock on the dash: 6:41. He nods, and she vanishes inside to ensure that she’ll match the picture on her newest form of identification.

Traveling after a flight is always a little more tense than usual — they don’t have any weapons on them, and the added vulnerability on top of his mom’s unusual defensiveness has Neil sweeping his gaze over anyone and anything that crosses his path as he grabs the car keys and locks the vehicle before heading toward the convenience store, too.

Luckily, gas stations in this part of the country usually have pocket knives for sale. They’re not nearly as comforting as a gun would be, but beggars can’t be choosers, not when there is almost nothing about this situation that is ideal.

Neil spots some halfway-decent-looking sandwiches in the refrigerated section, so he grabs several of them first — that’ll cover more than a few meals and give them enough time to get properly lost and untraced. After grabbing a couple more things, he approaches the register with an armful of drinks, protein bars, and sandwiches. Sure enough, there are a couple of multitools and pocket knives on display beneath the glass countertop, and Neil points out the most wicked-looking of them.

He pays in cash, of course, for the food, the knives, and a full tank of gas on pump three.

As he leaves, the analog clock hung above the entrance tells him it’s only been six minutes. If he’s quick, he thinks that he’ll be able to fuel up and take a restroom break for himself to wipe off some of the anxious sweat he’s acquired over the course of a stressful day.

By force of habit, Neil scans his surroundings as he gasses up the Honda. Luckily it has decent fuel economy — they should be able to make it out of the state before they’ll need to stop again. 

Nothing about the rest stop seems particularly of note (thankfully), and he watches idly as a black, expensive-looking sedan rolls up to a nearby pump. The license plate — EA09 02 — isn’t one that Neil has already seen on the road today, so he doesn’t give it much thought as his nozzle clicks to indicate the tank is full. Customized license plates are actually somewhat of a comfort to see. None of the Butcher's men would ever operate within a vehicle that was so memorable or easy to recall.

In the few seconds it takes for Neil to hang up the gas nozzle, he nearly misses it.

Nearly, because a flash of movement in his periphery has him jerking his head up instinctively and meeting the eyes of the man who just stepped out of the car.

Kevin Day, the son of Exy, looks back at him. Neil’s — Abram’s — Nathaniel’s — heart stops dead in his chest.

The only thing that grounds Nathaniel, that keeps him hanging on desperately to one single thread of sanity, is that there is absolutely no recognition in Kevin’s eyes. He may as well be staring at a wall for how blank his expression is.

Not Nathaniel, he thinks, wrestling for the self-control that keeps him calm, placid, and forgettable even through the throes of the animalistic instinct to flee. I am Neil Josten. I’m from Arizona. I have never met Kevin Day in my entire life.

It’s not impossible that he’s imagining Kevin right now, he rationalizes. There are few things Neil keeps from his mom — they live far too closely and with too little privacy for him to conceal much — but Kevin Day has always been one of his most privately-guarded secrets. This could very well be his subconscious wanting to spot Kevin, some sort of cocktail of obsession and exhaustion and delirium mixing together to create something untrue.

He knows West Virginia is home to the Edgar Allan Ravens, after all. It’d be a lie, even to himself, to pretend that he doesn’t remember Kevin and Riko watching his father take a living man apart in excruciating detail. 

Countless times has Neil looked at someone and thought, for a terrifying moment, that they were someone else. He has seen his father’s face in strangers at a restaurant, Lola’s cruel grin on cashiers at a supermarket, Jackson’s unmistakable gait in the middle of a public crowd…

Most of the time, he’s wrong. He usually blinks, remembering belatedly to breathe, as their familiar features dissolve into the nondescript ones of people he’s never seen before.

Not this time.

The man turns his head to stare at the gas pump, angling his face perfectly so that shadows melt away under the harsh overhead lighting, and Neil sees the smear of dark tattoo ink across his cheekbone. Certainty crashes into him like a semi truck.

Neil knows Kevin Day’s face almost better than he knows his own after years of tracking him in the public eye. 

Hysterically, he thinks, Of course. They’ve got to be close to EAU — why wouldn’t Kevin be fueling up his car, the one branded with his university and his jersey number on a custom license plate?

He needs to alert his mom to the danger they’re in; they need to go now. If there’s any chance at all that Kevin could recognize him, they’re in trouble.

Was this why she was so afraid to be here?

Neil is so caught up in his own panic that it takes almost a full minute of his heart pounding in his chest to realize that something is terribly, awfully wrong with Kevin Day.

Not my problem, he thinks madly, even as he takes in the panic and desperation written clearly across Kevin’s features. He’s got the same sheen of anxious sweat on his face as Neil’s mother had, and he hasn’t moved another inch as he looks at the gas pump like it’s a complex problem to figure out.

If this is a trap, it’s an extremely confusing one. Neil is so entirely caught off-guard by Kevin’s presence that he would’ve made an easy target, if Kevin were working for the Butcher. Instead, Kevin’s face is pale and drawn as he stands rigidly beside his car. There’s not a single weapon in sight, and his shoulders are hunched all the way up to his ears, like he’s upset.

Or possibly hurt.

Neil doesn’t know how he didn’t spot it sooner — the expression on Kevin’s face is obviously one of unmitigated pain. His eyes are glassy with agony, not bland composure.

When Neil takes him in more fully, he sees that Kevin is taking up a protective stance, his left arm pressing carefully against his abdomen. If he were to lie down, Neil has no doubt that he would be curled in on himself, the fetal position his ultimate defense against whatever injury he’s clearly endured.

They’re standing close enough to one another that, when Neil shifts, he can smell the blood on him. Kevin is wearing a Ravens practice uniform, like he’d just paused mid-practice to run a quick errand, but the damned thing is almost entirely black. Neil can’t quite tell where he’s bleeding from — is it his stomach? His arm?

Fuck. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. This is not Neil’s problem. He tells himself this once more, but the words sound shaky and unconvincing even in his own head.

“Are you okay?” Neil hears himself ask. It’s stupid. It’s reckless. It’s probably going to get him killed. But Kevin Day is hurt, and Neil is in a position to do something about it. His mom won’t be back for about fifteen minutes — it might be enough time to help him.

“What?” Kevin snaps at him, his teeth clicking together hard enough that it must ache. He sounds angry, but knowing what he knows, Neil reads the tension as a cornered, wounded animal lashing out.

His survival instincts must be taking a hiatus, because he asks again, patiently, “Where are you hurt?”

Kevin says, probably more on instinct than anything else, “I’m not—” but he can't even finish the lie before his face crumples. Horrifyingly, Neil watches as tears start to well in his eyes. 

This isn’t the Kevin Day he’s seen in interviews, charming anyone and everyone who approaches him. This isn’t the Kevin Day he’s seen on the court, watching reruns of old games on ESPN on shitty motel televisions in the hidden hours when his mom left him alone to negotiate with her contacts or access a new stash of money. This isn’t the Kevin Day that Neil had met as a child, haughty and arrogant with the legacy of Kayleigh resting on his shoulders.

This isn’t even the Kevin Day that Neil remembers, wide-eyed and horrified as his father cut a man into ribbons in front of them all.

No, this is something new, and as loath as Neil is to admit it, it’s something interesting. He has to know more. 

Surely he has enough time to triage the situation before his mom returns.

“Okay,” Neil says, the word too quick and panicked to sound truly comforting. If Kevin bursts into tears, Neil isn’t sure what the fuck he’ll do. “What can I do to help?”

“I forgot my wallet.” There’s a hazy, dazed quality to Kevin’s words, as though he can’t quite believe such an inane thing. He’s probably still in shock. It’s honestly a miracle that he didn’t crash while driving like this.

Neil raises a skeptical eyebrow anyway. He darts his eyes down to Kevin’s practice uniform — the shorts don’t have any pockets, and there are no tell-tale bulges of a gun, wallet, or cell phone anywhere on his profile.  “And you need gas?” 

“Yeah.” Kevin’s lips press together in a thin line. “I can… I’ll find a way to pay you back once I’m safe.”

What the fuck does that mean? Is he unsafe right now? Is Neil digging his own grave by entertaining this conversation?

He sighs, digs $40 out of his wallet, and shoves it toward Kevin’s dominant side. It is, admittedly, a bit of a test. Instinctively, Kevin should reach out and grab it with his famous left hand. 

Instead, though, he flinches so hard that he actually takes a step back, cringing away from Neil’s reach and the money alike.

Ah, hell.

“Your hand,” Neil decides in the split-second of his reaction. “Show me it.” 

“No. I can’t—” Kevin’s chest starts to heave in the tell-tale signs of a panic attack. It’s one step above him starting to cry, though it’s still a bleak outlook. The moment Kevin gives in to his more base emotions, Neil’s going to lose the chance to get through to him.

“Kevin,” he snaps. That’s enough to startle him, and Neil is gratified to see a sharp bit of clarity return to his gaze. “What happened?”

“You know who I am,” Kevin says, sounding defeated at the realization. 

And I’ve got about ten minutes to figure out what I’m going to do with that, Neil thinks grimly. Aloud, he says, “Yes. And I know you have all of the resources and wealth of the rich and famous, but instead you’re here, without your wallet, bleeding. Let me see how bad it is.”

Kevin stares at him for a moment, stubbornness clinging to him for one more moment before it melts away into unhappy surrender. “My life is over, anyway. Might as well give the press a new scandal.” 

He carefully peels his arm away from his stomach and into the shitty gas station lighting. 

Neil has seen — and experienced — some particularly horrific things over the course of his short life, but seeing the full extent of Kevin Day’s mangled left hand is still awful enough to take his breath away. 

Oh, god. Is that exposed bone? Even Neil’s father knew better than to dabble so recklessly with something that could become so easily infected.

This is bad. Bad enough that Neil should give him the money, fetch his mother, and get the fuck out of here without another word to Kevin.

Instead he hisses, “Give me your keys and get in my car,” every single word feeling more and more like a death sentence.

Kevin looks at Neil like he’s insane. He’s probably right. “What?”

“We don’t have time for this.” Neil snatches the keyring from where Kevin’s right hand is loosely dangling it. “I’m going to move your vehicle into a spot. You’re going to sit in my car while I figure out what the fuck we’re doing next.”

“I’m not letting you kidnap me,” Kevin squawks, and Neil has never been more relieved to hear that dull resignation vanish from his voice as indignation overpowers it.

“Do you have another choice?” Neil returns rudely as he unlocks his own car. “You’re bleeding out without a penny to your name. Are you going to let me help you or not? I can just as easily walk away.”

It’s very obviously a bluff, but Kevin is probably too riddled with adrenaline to figure that out. “You can’t make me do anything, asshole,” he snaps. 

Neil resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You just told me your life is over,” he tries to coax, though he’s positive that he’s failing. “So you can either give up on fighting at a stupid gas station, or you can get inside so we can find a way for you to survive this.”

An eternity passes while Kevin weighs his miserable options. Eventually, he snaps, “Fine,” sounding absolutely put-out about it. “Fuck you. Fine.”

As Kevin ducks into the backseat of their stolen Honda, Neil wastes no time sliding into the driver’s seat of Kevin’s luxurious sedan. 

His car takes three tries to start. Kevin really was out of gas, in every sense of the word. Neil shifts it into neutral as it ominously sputters and watches it roll slowly toward a nearby parking space. Once it's between the lines, he drops the keys into the cupholder — if someone steals the car, then so be it. It’ll be one more thing that separates Neil and Mom from Kevin from this entire cursed state.

This is how Neil knows he’s truly fucked: he’s already made the decision, at least subconsciously.

Kevin is coming with them, his mom's ire about it be damned. Neil can't abandon him like this.

As he heads back toward the Honda, seeing Kevin in the backseat makes Neil’s stomach flip nervously. His mom is going to absolutely lose it. This is, quite possibly, the worst decision he’s ever made before.

He still climbs into the backseat next to Kevin, who looks about two seconds away from hyperventilating. 

“I can’t… fix you,” Neil says, sounding stilted and awkward as he clicks the key fob to re-lock the doors. “But I can give you something for the pain. And my mom might know someone we can take you to.”

“No hospitals,” Kevin gasps, going pale. “I’m not going to a hospital, I’ll leave right now and walk if I have to—”

“No hospitals,” Neil interrupts. They’re not going anywhere public with a guy with a fucking face tattoo, that’s for sure. “Something more… discreet.” 

He doesn’t want to say it, even if Kevin is clearly aware, too, that he’s going to need surgery. Physical therapy. Months, if not years, of recovery, to try and regain full use of his hand.

His Exy career is ruined, and that fact hangs between them like a poisonous miasma.

But maybe Neil can prevent a raging fucking infection. He unzips one of the pockets of his mom’s bags and takes out two bottles, shaking out one pill from each. “Take these.”

Kevin stares at him, unmoving. “Who the fuck are you?” he asks, like the thought only just crossed his mind.

“A friend,” Neil grits out. An idiot. Someone my mom is going to draw and quarter in about six minutes. “Take the pills. If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve knifed you in the gut already.”

His childhood idol stubbornly glares at him like Neil isn’t trying to save his life. “Not until you tell me who you are.”

“Nobody. Come on, I know you’re hurting. It’s an antibiotic and a Vicodin,” Neil tries one final time. 

“How am I supposed to trust you?” Kevin asks, disgusted. He turns back toward the car door, reaching out with his good hand to open it, and Neil feels nearly overcome with dread at the thought of him disappearing into the night.

It’s suicide, and yet Neil says it anyway: “Kevin, stop. It’s me. It’s Nathaniel.” He tries to tack on Wesninski at the end, but the name lodges in his throat.

Whatever Kevin was expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. His head snaps around so quickly it’d be comical under literally any other circumstances, and his green eyes grow so huge that even in the shadows Neil can clearly see the whites around his irises.

Disbelief transforms into terror before Neil’s own eyes, which — he supposes is fair.

Anyone who’s ever been in close proximity to his father and has even a lick of common sense should have that kind of response. The last thing Neil needs is for Kevin to bolt, though, so he places a firm hand on his shoulder, shoving Kevin even deeper into the seat.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he hisses. “Looks like someone already did enough damage to you, anyway.”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Kevin gasps. His face is taut in a pale grimace, making the two tattooed beneath his temple stand out even more starkly. “Or — or I’m dead, Riko actually managed to kill me—”

Riko? Why would Riko want to kill Kevin? They’re adopted brothers, unified in all that they do —

Oh.

Neil’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have assumed that something as inane as family ties would prevent someone from spilling the blood of their loved ones. He really, truly knows better than that.

Given that Riko was Kevin's first go-to name for that particular brand of violence, then it's highly likely that his wounded dominant hand wasn't quite so accidental.

Slowly, calculatedly, Neil says, “If Riko was willing to destroy your life by breaking your hand, then you already know you can’t go back. Come with us. It’s your best chance at survival.”

The loud bang! of someone’s arm slapping the car window startles them both.

Neil nearly throws up from anxiety when jerks his head up to see his mom looking absolutely enraged, her hair wet and still dripping from the fresh dye job. 

“Unlock the fucking car right now,” she snarls, muffled but still heart-stoppingly clear as pure, unadulterated rage flashes on her features.

He’s tempted to say no, hop in the front seat, and drive away.

Even she doesn’t deserve that, though. Neil withdraws the key fob with shaking fingers and unlocks the doors.

She wrenches the door open and wastes no time in shoving her forearm against Kevin’s throat. Neil wants to protest her rough treatment, but he doesn’t really have the right, not when he’s just done the stupidest thing possible by revealing their identities to what amounts to a complete stranger.

The way Kevin reacts, at least, makes Neil confident that his presence is entirely unrelated to the Butcher. If he was one of Nathan’s men, he would’ve never let himself be corralled so easily.

“What the fuck is this,” she says, deathly quiet. 

Kevin Day is a fit, thickly-muscled college athlete. On a good day, there is absolutely no reality under which he could lose a physical fight to Neil’s mom, as lithe and small as she is.

It’s not a good day, though.

He recoils against the passenger seat cushions, whimpering when Mom jostles his injured hand. She’s too practiced to look down, though, just in case it’s a diversion tactic. 

“Mom,” Neil rasps, his throat dry with panic. “Mom, it’s okay. He’s hurt and doesn’t have a weapon or phone on him. He poses no threat to us.”

“No threat?” she demands. “You made contact with someone who knows our faces, and you think he’s no threat? ”

“Please don’t kill me,” Kevin begs, gasping for breath. He looks the part of a cornered animal, now, terrified spit flying from his mouth as he pleads. “I won’t — I won’t tell anyone, please—”

This is quickly spiraling beyond Neil’s control. If he can’t deescalate the situation, then there’s no telling what will happen.

So Neil does something he never has before in a fit of desperation: he flicks open the biggest pocket knife he’d purchased and presses it to the line of his own throat.

“Back off, Mom,” he says, the words shaky but firm. “Let’s take a deep breath and think about this.”

Neil has never stood up to his mom like this before. 

It’s absolutely terrifying. 

It’s absolutely invigorating. 

She shoots him a look of fury and betrayal, but blessedly removes her arm from Kevin’s trachea. 

“Give me that,” she snaps, her palpable anger making her throat bob. Neil’s own throat moves in sympathy, bumping up against the blade. He tightens his sweaty grip around the hilt as he fights to keep it from drawing blood.

“Go sit in the front seat,” he counters, feeling hysteria bubble in his throat. 

“God dammit, Abram,” she barks, and the name surprises them both into flinching, “this is not a fucking negotiation.”

Not once in their seven years on the run has she ever called him the wrong name. Not once has she ever slipped up by calling him Abram in front of another living person. Neil feels Kevin burning a hole into the side of his head with his stare. This proof of how rattled she is means something, even if he doesn’t quite know what, yet.

“Let’s go,” he says, trying to keep his voice level and matter-of-fact. “It’s been twenty-five minutes. Kevin is coming with us.”

“I don’t—” Kevin starts. Neil risks the movement to shoot him a quelling look, and he shuts up.

Her face does something complicated. At first, Neil thinks she’s going to call his bluff, hitting him hard enough to concuss him so that she can kill Kevin and get them the hell out of here, but then she —

Relaxes.

Takes a deep breath.

Says, “Okay.” 

Gets out of the passenger seat and opens the driver’s seat door.

Neil and Kevin share a look of complete and utter disbelief. Even though Kevin doesn’t know Neil’s mom at all, he can’t have missed the sudden change of heart.

There’s no way it was that easy.

“Um,” Neil starts, not knowing at all what to even say. Kevin grabs the pills from where Neil had dropped them onto the backseat and swallows them both dry.

“Shut the hell up,” she returns sharply, which is at least a little more familiar, as she starts the engine and pulls away from the gas station. Dread and relief tangle in equal measures in Neil’s stomach.

What is she thinking?

They’re silent for long enough that the painkillers take effect. Neil can see the line of Kevin’s shoulders relax just the barest inch, and some part of him warms at the knowledge that he’s helped, even if it’s in such a miniscule, inconsequential way.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” his mom finally asks, jerking her chin in Kevin’s general direction.

Neil stays quiet, wondering if Kevin is going to tell them the truth.

“Is it,” Kevin starts, swallowing as he shoots glances at Neil and his mom. “You’re really them. Mary and Nathaniel.”

She stares ahead at the road, though Neil does notice the way her hands clamp even tighter against the steering wheel. Her knuckles look completely bloodless, they’re so pale. “No,” she corrects. “We are Lucy and Neil Josten, and as of this moment, you are anyone but Kevin Day. I’m not going to give you a second chance to explain — what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he retorts instinctively. It’s a good sign, at least, that the fire burning within him that Neil has admired for over a decade isn’t entirely extinguished. He sighs, his shoulders sagging. “Shit. Alright. Riko broke my hand. He couldn’t stand the idea that I was better than him. I’m absolutely fucked. Is that what you want to hear?”

For some reason, his mom — Lucy, Neil makes himself think, because she’s just admitted that they’re not about to burn these identities after the complex problem of Kevin — doesn’t look surprised whatsoever. “How bad is it?”

The question is directed at Neil. He knows what she’s really asking: is it something they can manage themselves in a hotel room?

He swallows down the instinctive fear at her reaction. “Hanover,” he murmurs quietly.

They’ve traversed a dozen countries while on the run, and over time, the two of them have developed a very peculiar and unique-to-them code of speaking. If something major happens in a particular city, neither of them have trouble recalling the protocol they’d needed to use to survive.

When Neil was fourteen, the Butcher’s men had caught up to them in Germany. Neil had broken his arm jumping out of a car, a nasty compound fracture that required an underground doctor in northern France to reset the bone and deal with the beginnings of a brutal infection.

It had been bad, especially because Mom hated using Hatford connections. She was always terrified while they were in Europe that word would get back to her family.

She spits a vicious curse, one hand flying to pinch at the bridge of her nose in aggravation. Neil shrinks back into the seat, knowing she’s going to take the frustration out on him later.

“What does that mean?” Kevin asks anxiously. “You can’t take me to a hospital. Anyone in West Virginia will recognize me.”

Mom says in German, “How much is his life worth?”

Neil grimaces in turn. “How much is it going to cost?”

Kevin looks like he wants to protest their switching of languages, but something complicated shines in his eyes and he stays quiet, watching them intently.

“I could kill him with my bare hands for free,” she says, her calm, even tone punctuating the truth of her words. “Or we can drop a hundred thousand on a doctor in Chicago.”

It shouldn’t cost that much, but neither should it be that easy. “What’s the catch?” he asks, because he knows better than to take anything for granted. If she’s contemplating burning one of their black market connections, then she’s given careful thought to their options already. 

Neil tries to see it as a positive sign that she wants Kevin’s hand repaired almost as badly as he surely does. Maybe that means she can grow to value his life and safety as much as she does Neil’s own.

“You’ll be killing the doctor before we leave,” she responds. “It will be your mess to clean up. She’s not going to be loyal to us.”

Ah. An associate of the Butcher’s, then. 

Mom is asking him to weigh Kevin’s life against this unknown doctor’s. Neil would like to believe he has some moral compass that would prevent him from such a devil’s bargain, but he knows himself by now.

Knows he has plenty of blood on his hands already.

“Chicago,” he decides, and a moment later his mom pulls off onto the next exit to flip around and take the northwest-bound freeway. To Kevin, Neil says, “We’re going to take you to a doctor. No hospitals, and it’ll be under the table. But you need to keep taking those antibiotics to get ahead of any potential infection if we want to—”

Neil cuts himself off. He doesn’t want to say keep the hand aloud, because speaking those words into existence means solidifying the reality that Kevin will never play Exy again. It’s more than likely that the best he can hope for is some reduced mobility.

If they don’t have to amputate, that is.

Kevin looks like he’s going to throw up. He shifts in his seat to stare out the window, jaw set in discomfort. 

“Fine,” he says shortly. Then, a bit more grudgingly, “I’m grateful for the help.”

“You’ll need a new identity,” Neil muses. This life has been routine for so long that he nearly forgot that Kevin likely has no idea how to operate. There haven’t been many opportunities in Neil’s life to feel like he’s more of an expert about something than someone else, but something within him preens at the possibility of teaching Kevin how to function in this new way.

“And to carve that tattoo off your face,” Mom adds. “Take care of that, Neil. And give me a goddamn knife already.”

Now that she’s out of arm's-reach of Kevin, he passes her two of the knives. Kevin blanches as they exchange hands in the wake of her words.

“I’m not going to remove his tattoo,” Neil protests. It’s a little startling how quickly and easily he has begun to stand up to her, but he doesn’t have time to focus on that at the moment. “Not when he’s already prone to infection. We’ll stop at a drugstore for some makeup and extra bandaids.”

She hisses in displeasure. “Identifiable marks,” she says sharply, judgment clear in her tone.

Something deep within Neil rebels at the thought of flaying Kevin’s tattoo from his cheekbone. He won’t. He simply won’t. Leveraging Kevin’s likely desire to refrain from the same, he says, “You wake up every single morning and put makeup on to conceal it. No exceptions. I don’t care if we’re the only other human beings you plan on seeing. From the moment we get the appropriate supplies, it’s out of sight. Otherwise…” he gestures at one of the knives.

“Understood.” Kevin sounds more like he’s replying to a drill sergeant than a teenage boy roughly his age, but it’ll do. More interestingly, he sounds scared but not overly-terrified about the threat.

It’s yet another thing to file away and turn over in his mind later.

For now, Neil passes him a nondescript bandaid from his mom’s bag, and Kevin dutifully affixes it just beneath his eye. He didn’t even need to look into a mirror in order to cover it exactly, Neil notes.

It’s going to be a bitch to get Kevin falsified documents now that they’ve been diverted from Louisiana and North Carolina both. Neil thinks on it for a moment even as something akin to giddiness rises in him.

Holy shit. They’re actually doing this.

Kevin doesn’t look anything like Neil or his mother, but at least they’ve got the same hair color. His height is going to make him stand out no matter what, though.

“Brown contacts,” Neil says after a bit. It won’t hold up to close scrutiny, not with Kevin’s defined, recognizable jawline and classically handsome features, but it’ll give them at least a few moments of unrecognizable discretion. “And I think we’re going to have to shave your head.”

He watches the No appear on Kevin’s lips, but at least he’s clever enough to stop himself from actually saying them aloud. The Butcher’s reputation has stayed his words, clearly.

As if in apology, Neil asks, “Do you have a name in mind that we can call you?” He can at least give him that.

Kevin is quiet for long enough that Neil takes it as a sign that he doesn’t have a fake identity lined up, so he starts running through possible names that he hasn’t already adopted in the past.

“David,” Kevin finally says, so quiet he’s almost whispering. “Can you call me David?”

Neil nods. He’s never been David before, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

His mom — Lucy, he reminds himself once again, solidifying their identities in his own consciousness — says, “It’s at least nine hours to Chicago. Get a few hours of rest so we can take shifts driving. We’re not stopping again.”

And he can’t help but smile, because this is strange and different and terribly dangerous, but Neil feels excited for the first time in years. Something still isn’t quite right about this mess, but he’ll take what little victories he can get.

She had said we, after all.

When Kevin inevitably falls into a restless sleep, Neil waits for his mom to scold him for his stupidity. He knows it’s coming, that she’s going to dig her nails into his arm and punish him with the back of her hand for doing something so completely reckless and idiotic, but the minutes turn into hours of uneasy silence.

And yet, she doesn’t say anything. No, she looks deep in thought, staring ahead at the road like it has captivated all of her attention. Her only tell is that she chain-smokes half a pack of cigarettes without pause, the acrid smell so familiar to Neil at this point that he hardly even notices it.

Neil isn’t sure what’s worse: that the reprimand will come when he least expects it, or that, for some unknown reason, it may never come at all.

Infuriatingly, Kevin looks just as good with a buzzcut and brown eyes. 

Neil squints at him with an accusatory look. Clumps of Kevin’s hair lie in the sink as Neil palms a disposable razor. Kevin appraises himself in the mirror of their cheap motel room, rubbing his uninjured hand over his scalp with curiosity. His face is strangely bare of any definitive marks — Neil had purchased six different brands of foundation and four different shades of concealer to experiment with which one would have more coverage over his tattoo. Luckily, two of them had worked fairly well.

“I don’t look like me,” Kevin says, which — duh, that’s the fucking point.

Neil keeps trying to refer to Kevin as David in his head, desperate to avoid calling him out by the wrong name aloud, but despite his best efforts, he keeps failing. Kevin is Kevin. There are some universal truths that cannot be altered, and for some reason, Neil’s mind has decided this is one of them.

“It’s not going to fool anyone for long,” Neil’s mother says, ever the optimist. It’s hard to begrudge her paranoia, though, especially given the fact that Kevin is somewhat of a local celebrity. Illinois is still firmly within the realm of the Ravens’ collegiate district; their Exy team plays the Redbirds multiple times each season.

“It will have to do.” Neil brushes some of the stray hairs from Kevin’s shirt collar, his stomach squirming strangely as he does. It’s still so very surreal to touch Kevin and meet the firm, unyielding muscle that proves this is not some ridiculous hallucination, and it certainly doesn't help that Kevin seems to be perfectly fine with letting him.

Though they have the motel booked through the night, they don’t waste much more time in the room. Neil and his mom take turns showering, washing off the grime of the long car trip, while Kevin sits on the bed and stares down at his mangled hand.

It’s stopped bleeding, at least, though Neil knows far-too-intimately that the aching throb of it is probably all-consuming. 

Once they’re all clean, changed, and Kevin looks at least a little different than he had before, they all pile into a new car — one Mom had hotwired and left running in front of their room while Neil finished up with Kevin.

The next few hours are going to be tricky.

Kevin’s likely going to need surgery, which is going to leave Neil and his mom exposed while the doctor operates. The only positive thing about it all is that a doctor performing surgery will be too busy to alert others of their identities and locations. 

Still, they prepare multiple contingencies. Just in case, Neil's mom possesses a cell phone jammer to block any potential signals while Kevin's under the knife. In addition, Neil feels vastly more comfortable with the weight of a firearm on his person — thank you, Walmart, for the easy access and purchase — and the knowledge that his mom is, at least temporarily, making a genuine effort to help Kevin.

When they pull up to a row of nondescript houses, Mom grimaces and cuts the engine. “Don’t fuck this up,” she warns the both of them.

Neil and Kevin are going in alone; apparently, there is a decent chance that the doctor might recognize his mom on-sight, so she’s hanging back while Neil triages the situation. Again, Neil is overcome with the bizarre sensation of how much things have drastically changed in such a short window of time. Six months ago, she would have never sent him into such a potentially dangerous situation alone.

Neil nods and exits the car, staying close to Kevin. They never exchange anything so cliche as I love yous, but he does hold Mom’s steely gaze for one long moment before ushering Kevin toward the front door of one particular house.

“No names,” he mutters in Kevin’s ear as a reminder. They’re running far too low on papers to burn extra identities right now, and the less they talk, the less likely it is their voices will get recognized or be remembered. 

He knocks four times, swallowing nervously as they wait. 

The man who opens the door is someone that Neil has never seen before, though that doesn’t mean much. He’s huge and overly-muscular, probably due to immense amounts of weight-lifting, or steroids, or both. 

His occupation is readily apparent.

Neil schools his features into something neutral. “Good morning,” he says, shifting the backpack slung around his shoulders pointedly. “We’ve got an appointment at ten?”

The doctor’s bodyguard stares the two of them down, eyes alighting on Kevin’s injured hand with a keen sense of expertise. After a moment, he scans the street behind them and then gestures for them to step inside.

When the door closes behind them, Neil suppresses a shiver. The main sitting room of the house is deceptively normal-looking, with a corduroy couch facing a television that is currently off. 

Neil wonders if there have been any news reports about Kevin’s disappearance. They’ve been on the road for so long without access to TV or Internet that it’s anyone’s guess.

“No weapons,” the bodyguard says gruffly, holding an expectant palm out. “This is neutral territory.”

Obediently, Neil hands over the gun in his front coat pocket. After a moment of silent anticipation, he sighs and withdraws one of the pocket knives to pass over, too.

All according to plan so far.

“And you?” 

Kevin startles when he realizes the bodyguard is asking about his weapons. “I don’t,” he starts, hesitant as he shoots an unsure glance at Neil. “I’m not carrying any.”

“He’s clean,” Neil confirms. And about to be unconscious on an operating table, he thinks. What the fuck is he going to do, fight the drugs and take you all out?

Even he knows better than to make a joke like that aloud, though.

The guy leads them through the front room, and Neil’s shoulders relax a fraction of an inch as the house grows more and more definitively medical as they make their way further inside. He commits the layout of the house to memory as they move, clocking the doors that lead to the garage and backyard and taking in the decor and medical preparations alike. There are entire bookcases full of various supplies and instruments, organized neatly in stacks and bins full of wrapped sterile implements.

The bodyguard pauses at the entrance of an open bedroom, where a hospital bed on wheels is sitting looking particularly sterile and empty. “Surgery room is down the hall,” he explains, looking like actually communicating using spoken English is extraordinarily challenging for him. “Change into that—” he jerks his chin towards a folded hospital gown “—and someone will be by to insert your IV shortly.”

For the very first time, Kevin looks like he’s realizing that this is actually happening. As the bodyguard wanders away (though Neil can see his sharp alertness of their presences — he is well-trained , that’s for sure), he turns to Neil in panic. “I can’t do this,” he hisses quietly. “What if they kill me?”

They really, really don’t have time for Kevin to second-guess things right now. “You’re already fucked,” Neil says harshly. “If you don’t take this opportunity, there’s every chance that the only way you’re going to survive an injury like that is with amputation, and that’s if you’re lucky. Put on the fucking gown. We’re spending a lot of money on this.”

The stressed furrow of his brow grows even deeper at Neil’s bluntness. “Maybe we should go to an actual hospital…”

“No. That’s not an option. This isn’t legal, but that doesn’t mean they’re not still trained professionals. If you back out now, I can’t guarantee that — that you’ll get anything else.” His mother certainly won’t be very forgiving if they walk away from this empty-handed.

Kevin looks absolutely pissed as he jerks his shirt off and strips down to put the gown on. Neil averts his eyes politely, noticing the wide window concealed with a blackout curtain in the room. Hmm. Another possible entry or exit point, maybe.

A few moments after Kevin has climbed onto the gurney, a short, nondescript woman turns the corner of the hallway. “Hello,” she says, just as neutral as her bodyguard.

He catches the faintest noise of someone humming coming from down the hall, and it doesn’t sound like the man at the front of the house. At least three people in the building, then.

Neil nods his own greeting. “Good morning,” he says. “My friend here is ready for you.” Maybe one of the reasons Kevin is so grumpy is that he hasn’t eaten in hours. When Mom had contacted the doctor to arrange this last-minute visit, she’d mentioned that an empty stomach was ideal prior to surgery. 

And Kevin is going to need surgery, that much is certain.

She moves past Neil and starts inspecting Kevin’s injury, asking him questions about his pain levels and current dexterity. A few minutes later, a tall man in powder blue scrubs appears with a strange metal box that has a handle on it, a white, square-shaped block, and a laptop.

Neil’s about to ask What the hell when the man (a nurse, maybe?) ducks his head sheepishly and says, “Portable x-ray unit. Usually you see them with large-animal vets, since this is easier than trying to get a big ol’ stationary machine involved.”

Interestingly, it is this bit of technology that has Kevin exhaling a sigh of relief. Maybe his understanding of black market doctors had been sketchy, illegal drugs and back-alley surgeries, but the fact that he’s about to get his hand x-rayed — and with it, perhaps some answers and an actual fix — seems to calm him down significantly.

They set up Kevin’s hand against the white block and drape some lead aprons over themselves as they take a few shots at different angles. Neil watches as the images almost immediately transmit to the laptop.

All of them stare intently at the screen; Neil has almost no expertise with the intricacies of what the internal human body is supposed to look like, but even he’s pretty sure your bones aren’t supposed to look quite like that. Or be so… squished together.

The doctor studies the x-rays for several minutes before turning back to Neil. “This is worse than you described,” she says candidly. “I can fix it, but it’s a lot of work fiddling with the tendons and bones. We’d have an easier go of things if you would allow me to place some pins in these fingers, but I understand that’d be a deal-breaker. One-fifty.”

Neil’s lips press into a thin line. Shit. Mom’s going to be upset. But even if she is scamming them, Neil knows it’s their best bet. 

“One-fifty,” he agrees. Thankfully, they had anticipated a potential change in price. He shrugs the backpack off and unzips it, showing her the stacks of bills nestled inside. Then he pointedly takes out two more sheafs of rubber-banded money from his jacket pocket and adds them to the backpack. 

When he offers her the bag, she calls out, “Edward! Payment.” The bodyguard — Edward, Neil thinks with an internal wince — appears in the doorway. Neil passes it off to him, trying his hardest not to contemplate how much harder it is to kill someone when you know their name.

The doctor nods as her bodyguard begins to inspect the veracity of their transaction and retrieves a few supplies for an IV from a nearby shelf. “Don’t worry,” she says, her voice a bit softer as she talks to Kevin. “Recovery won’t hurt worse than the pain you’re already in right now.”

Which is just great. The last thing he needs is knowing that she’s kind and understanding to those in need.

Neil tries to tune her out to the best of his ability as she preps Kevin for surgery. When he’s finally led away, Neil offers him what he hopes is a comforting smile. “You’ll be back to normal when you wake up,” he tries.

Kevin looks anxious as they wheel him away. At least he’ll be unconscious and completely out of it for a while yet. The nurse follows them after explaining that he’s there to monitor Kevin under anesthesia and help with the complexities of Kevin’s repairing tendons and resetting bones.

It’s fairly gruesome, even for Neil’s wide breadth of experience.

He waits for four and a half hours before the doctor emerges, sweaty and looking exhausted. “It went well,” she says before he can ask. “His arm is blocked from the elbow down, so the pain should be fairly manageable for the next 24 hours. But I’ll give you some meds to help with it once that wears off, along with some antibiotics. There was no sign of infection, and everything is cleaned out now, but he doesn’t need to deal with that on top of everything else.”

Neil nods robotically. Each word she says sends another thick stone of dread sinking down into his stomach. “Thank you,” he says, throat gumming up around the sincere words. “You’ve done more for us than you could ever know.”

“Let me know if you need anything else,” she replies, swiping her arm across her forehead. 

The nurse brings Kevin out in a wheelchair and hands Neil a paper bag full of medicine and printouts of physical therapy exercises Kevin will be able to use once he’s healed. Neil’s palms feel prickly with anxious sweat as he gently places the bag in Kevin’s lap, wraps his hands around the push handles, and wheels Kevin toward the door.

“Thank you,” Neil croaks as he approaches the threshold of the front door. “I’ll be right back with the wheelchair. We appreciate you letting us use it.”

He leaves the doctor’s house and takes Kevin out to their car.

Mom doesn’t say anything as she moves to immediately help him. They manage to transfer Kevin into the backseat, buckling him in so he can’t slump too far down into the seat, before she gives him a pointed look. 

He nods.

Every second that passes as he wheels the empty chair back up to the house feels like an eternity. His heart pounds in his chest, especially as Edward gives him an almost-respectful nod and hands him his weapons — the magazine and gun in two parts. “Your things,” he says. 

“Your wheelchair,” Neil returns. “Is there a good place to bring this?”

As Edward turns away to gesture down the hallway, Neil quietly closes the front door behind him and slides a second pistol out from the small of his back. A silencer is already screwed onto the end of it, and he wastes no time as he trains it on his first target.

No one can know what just happened, after all.

In an ideal world, Kevin would be able to recover in a hospital bed. 

Nothing in Neil’s life has ever been ideal, though. Now that Kevin is a part of his life, he’s also been roped into experiencing some of the worst shit imaginable. Their goal is to head for North Dakota so that the three of them can hunker down in a hotel room for the first few days of Kevin’s recovery, but they have to get there first.

It promises to be an interesting trip.

Kevin rouses from the anesthesia in fits and starts, his green eyes watery and heavy-lidded as he manages to blink himself into something approaching real consciousness.

Neil sits patiently in the backseat beside him while his mom drives, attention trained like a hawk on his most minute movements. He shifts from his position against the car door and window, arm held close to his abdomen and wrapped in endless layers of gauze.

“Doesn’ hurt,” Kevin slurs in confusion after working his mouth for a few moments to try and speak. “Issit not there ‘nymore? Nooo, did they cut it off—”

“No,” Neil rushes to say. He knows he should probably be kind to Kevin after all he’s gone through, but this version of him is so absolutely pathetic that Neil can’t help but bite his lips to conceal a smile. “Everything went well. They’ve nerve-blocked your arm so you can’t feel the pain.”

“Oh.” Kevin stares blearily at him for a moment, as though processing the words is more challenging than swimming through molasses. Then he sniffs, and promptly bursts into tears. “I want my mom.”

Jesus Christ. He must still be high off his ass from the drugs. Neil’s eyebrows fly into his hairline, and he says, “Um. Why?”

“She always knows what to do when I’m broken,” he insists, voice hitching on a sob as he tries to lurch forward toward Neil. The seatbelt locks, trapping him against the seat, and he squirms around like a bug pinned to styrofoam. “Get her. Please?”

“Okay,” Neil soothes, patting awkwardly at Kevin’s shoulder. This is so far beyond anything he’s equipped to deal with. His mom is being equally as unhelpful in the front seat, which means it’s up to him to try and calm down this mess of a former athlete. “Okay, I’ll go get her. But can you take it easy, first? Relax, and she’ll be on her way.”

Kevin cranes his neck toward Neil, gratitude so plain and obvious on his face that it’s completely incongruent with what Neil has learned about his entire personality. “Thank you,” he murmurs, relieved as tears trail down his cheeks.

Feeling an inexplicable surge of guilt, Neil says, shaking one of the bottles of pills, “Hey, your mom asked you to take these. Can you do that for me?” 

With a tiny whimper, he nods. “Is she coming soon?” he asks, voice hushed like they’re sharing confidential information.

“Yeah, Kevin,” Neil says. He suddenly feels very weary, the gravity of the people he’s killed today and the unexpected innocence plain on Kevin’s features weighing him down in equal measures. “Yeah, she’ll be here in a minute.”

Neil has to press one pill at a time against Kevin’s lips for him to actually take them. He tries not to think too deeply about how intimate this must look, Kevin’s features slack with unfounded trust as Neil offers him the mouth of a bottle of water so he can down them both. His Adam’s apple bobs as he obediently listens to Neil’s command to swallow, a few drops trickling out the side of his slack lips.

Feeling flushed for some reason, Neil swipes the stray beads of water from Kevin’s mouth with his thumb. It’s polite to clean up after him while he’s clearly still so out of it. That’s all.

He thinks that’s the end of it, that Kevin will sink back into unconsciousness until they reach state lines, but — nothing in Neil’s life has ever been ideal.

Kevin drops his head against where Neil’s hand is still resting on his shoulder, and, in utter disbelief, he watches Kevin bump the edge of his chin against Neil’s knuckles.

Is he — nuzzling Neil’s fingers?

Utterly bewildered, Neil turns his hand so that his palm is facing up and watches, entranced, as Kevin leans into it like a flower blooming toward the sun. It’s like he subconsciously craves the physical touch, even from someone as wretched as Neil.

Kevin’s eyes slip closed as Neil presses his hand more firmly against that sharp jawline in a moment of utter weakness.

Only, the thing is — Neil isn’t sure who is really demonstrating a lapse in sanity here. Kevin, for thinking that Neil is worth seeking physical comfort from, or Neil, for giving in to it?

He withdraws his hand after a moment, shaking it out a few times. Somehow, the action doesn’t manage to dislodge the twisty feeling in his chest as the warmth of Kevin’s face seems burned into his skin.

The next time Kevin falls back into a fitful rest, Neil’s mom asks, “Was he worth it?”

The money, or the blood on Neil’s hands?

Or both?

“How many people have you killed to save me?” he asks instead. If they’re weighing lives against each other, then Neil is fairly sure he would come out wanting compared to some of the bodies they have dropped along the way.

“That’s different,” she snaps. “You’re my son.”

Affection wars with insecurity in his chest. All of those people were someone’s kids, too. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it, though; it’s too late for Neil to fight a battle against the choices they’ve both made in order to survive. He turns away to watch their car eat up miles upon miles of dark asphalt, lit only by the few sets of headlights surrounding them. 

“He doesn’t know,” Neil says in the end, since that is something that he can carry within him. Kevin will walk away from this experience feeling grateful to the doctor who saved his hand, completely ignorant about her gruesome fate. “And he never will.”

His mom makes a derisive noise. “You do him no favors trying to shield him from reality.”

Neil knows that. He just… wants Kevin to still have a shot at making it out of all of this alive. It’s a stupid sort of idealism, especially since he’s well-aware that bringing Kevin into the fold makes him vulnerable to the sorts of dangers they’re used to.

With a jolt, Neil realizes what she’s really asking. Is Kevin worth fucking up our plans? Is he worth the complete and irrevocable shift in our dynamic?

Does she resent Kevin for capturing Neil’s attention? 

“I won’t apologize, if that’s what you’re looking for,” he says, crossing his arms and sinking further in his seat. 

“We can’t leave the country with him,” she replies pointedly. 

Neil reads between the lines again. His mother has never been particularly forthcoming with her own thoughts, but luckily he has years upon years of experience dealing with her. “You’ve already spent too much on him to pretend that you’re not invested now,” he says sullenly. “A fake passport or three is hardly a drop in the bucket comparatively.”

Her lips tug down into a frown, accentuating the barest hint of wrinkles webbing across her face. “And when we run out of funds because I didn’t factor another fucking human being into our plans?”

He doesn’t know exactly how much money she has squirreled away, though their frugal lifestyle has undoubtedly stretched their resources out even further. Frustrated, Neil lets his head fall back against the seat cushion. Her pragmatic mindset is what has gotten them this far, he reminds himself, even when she presses him to the edge of irritation.

Neil takes an annoyed breath. “We only have to keep this up until he dies, anyway,” he says quietly.

His mom stiffens at the words. She loathes every single mention of his dad, and now is no exception. Her hand darts toward him and away so quickly that Neil hears the smack! of skin on skin before he even feels the slap. He’s left reeling from the impact in the aftermath of her hitting him as hard as she possibly could from the awkward angle, his face reddening from the sharp sting.

Copper bursts across his tongue from where his teeth had cut into his cheek.

“Do not,” she snarls, panic ratcheting up a notch as her chest heaves, “say anything like that ever again. Have I taught you nothing about survival?”

“Sorry,” Neil replies dizzily, going quiet as he feels his mind go distant and carry his consciousness far beyond the confines of the car. He curls up in the seat, pressing his uninjured cheek against the cold glass of his passenger-side window like it will soothe the burning ache of the one she’d hit. 

She doesn’t say another word for hours.

The next time they stop for gas, Neil surreptitiously checks the magazines hanging inside the tiny convenience store. He doesn’t know quite what he’s expecting: for Kevin’s face to be plastered over the shiny covers, along with a sensational headline?

Exy darling Kevin Day missing from Edgar Allan University? Kayleigh Day’s Son Kidnapped By Guy He Met Once?

There’s nothing even remotely sports-related, though. Even the latest copy of Sports Illustrated is featuring some random football player. It’s a bit of a relief, though it does beg the question of why the Ravens haven’t issued a public manhunt for Kevin.

Something to ask him about, maybe.

Neil pays for their gas and a new carton of cigarettes for his mom before heading back to the car. They’re due for a grocery store trip soon, but he knows his mom doesn’t want to stop for so long until they’re well into North Dakota and have swapped vehicles at least twice. 

His jaw cracks wide open on a yawn right as her door opens.

“You drive,” she mutters as she steps out of the car. “I need a few hours of sleep.”

Neil accepts the peace offering with a nod, sliding into the driver’s seat without further preamble. 

“I can drive if you need me to,” Kevin rasps from the backseat. His voice sounds thick with sleep, and for some indecipherable reason, it makes Neil shiver.

He’s not used to anyone else existing in their orbit, and it’s clearly doing strange things to his brain. Neil shakes his head briefly to recenter himself and address Kevin’s offer. “Your bloodstream is probably 50% opiates right about now,” he says. “No thanks.”

“‘m not completely useless,” he insists, sounding petulant about it. “How can I help?”

“Go to the bathroom if you need to,” Neil’s mom suggests. “You’ve got three minutes.”

Kevin squints at her for a moment before nodding. “Alright. Be right back.”

“Hey,” Neil interjects. He taps at his own face, mirroring the location where Kevin’s tattoo is. With all of his restless and pained shifting, the foundation has smeared to reveal the dark ink underlying it. Since one of his arms is out of commission, Neil takes pity on him, pulling out a band-aid from one of his pockets and carefully peeling the adhesive backing off before passing it back to him.

Obediently, Kevin sticks it on his cheekbone with his good hand. 

As he wobbly moves to standing and heads toward the store, Neil expects his mom to say — something.

Not an apology, of course. Maybe a condemnation of this entire plan to keep Kevin alive, though. A bitter refrain about Neil’s impulsive ways and how it will get them both killed. But she says nothing, just keeps her eyes on the gas pump as it refuels the car up.

At least Kevin has a good internal clock — he returns just as the pump clicks.

They make it to Fargo without incident. It’s beginning to look more and more like stumbling across Kevin truly was a coincidence of insane proportions, given the fact that no one has tailed them or initiated a firefight. 

Neil and his mom have had far worse welcomes before. 

Against all odds, she pays for a week in a motel room. It’s a completely unexpected kindness, especially as the nerve block wears off and Kevin’s face starts to grow more and more pale and pinched with pain. Letting him sleep on an actual bed will probably be one of the most instrumental elements of his healing. 

They rest in shifts, keeping a careful eye on the comings and goings of vehicles and people alike from the drawn curtains of their room. When it’s Neil’s turn to stand vigil over his sleeping mother and Kevin, he feels a sharp sense of pride as he scrutinizes any potential threat to the well-being of those in his care.

In the quiet hours, with only the sound of their soft breathing, Neil lets himself think about how easily he’d accepted Kevin’s presence. Though it’s only been a handful of frantic days despite their many, many miles on the road, it already feels like routine to look over his shoulder and check to make sure Kevin is still there.

What does that say about him, he wonders? Neil has always known that his fixation on Kevin Day’s career has bordered freakish obsession. He’d sunk hours into the strange world of frankly-embarrassing hero worship, remembering his mother’s words from early on in their escape: You will never play Exy again. Admire it from a distance, or not at all.

Having Kevin so close now is beyond surreal. If Neil won’t ever get to experience the exhilarating rush of a plexiglass court again, then being able to reach out and touch Kevin will have to be enough. He's not delusional enough to believe that Kevin will ever look at Neil the way he's starting to look at him, but that's fine. Having him like this is better than not having him at all.

On the third day, after they’ve all slept about twenty hours apiece, Kevin seems to snap out of his drug-induced fugue state. Neil’s mom is out at a nearby grocery store restocking their supplies as Neil watches Kevin pace the length of the room.

“Not even a quick jog around the motel perimeter?” he asks sharply, glaring at Neil.

“Not even a quick jog around the motel perimeter,” Neil confirms. It’s truly a pity, because Neil would love a good run right about now, too. But his mother’s rules are ironclad. When she’s gone, Neil is not to leave the room or open the door to anyone.

“I just need to stretch my legs,” Kevin argues. He must misunderstand Neil’s directive, because he tries, “I won’t overexert myself.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Neil gestures to the small room with one hand. “Do some sit-ups or something if you really need a work-out. We’re not going anywhere until Mom gets back.”

Kevin sneers at him, though he’s going to have to hone his craft if he wants to try and intimidate Neil into rescinding his words. The most Neil can muster at the sight is a faint sense of amusement. 

To distract him from what is inevitably going to be another mediocre attempt at rebellion, Neil says, “If you could make up your own team out of all current players in the NCAA, who would it be and why?”

That knocks Kevin off-kilter, but only for a moment. His brows knit together before he starts counting off players on his right hand: “Jean is one of the best defensemen, no contest…”

Neil settles in to listen and grill him on his picks, enthralled by the competent focus on Kevin’s features as he speaks.

While his mom takes a shower one evening, Neil turns to Kevin and asks, “Where were you going to go?” 

He doesn’t know what compels him to ask while she’s not around. It just… seems like something private that Neil doesn’t necessarily want her to know.

Kevin mutes the Exy game he’d been watching on the motel television. Neil’s mom hates that he watches games, terrified that Neil will see a single half played and decide to give up his life to go play backliner, but it’s one of the best ways to calm Kevin down (and shut him up).

“My dad,” Kevin says quietly. He sounds wistful. “I thought — he has a good reputation. He might’ve taken me in.”

“I didn’t know you knew who your father was.”

“He doesn’t know, either.”

At that, Neil laughs. “What, you were just going to show up on his doorstep bleeding?”

With a furious blush, Kevin glares at him. Neil thinks he likes the way it looks too much, so he averts his gaze and stares at the muted game until his own cheeks feel less flushed. 

“He’s a good man,” Kevin insists.

“The bar,” Neil says, feeling somewhat dizzy with disbelief that he’s found someone his age that he can actually joke about this with, “is extremely low.”

They both lapse into silence as they consider the only father figures they’ve ever known — Nathan Wesninski and Tetsuji Moriyama do not inspire much confidence.

Kevin wants to tell him. Neil knows this much, otherwise he would’ve bluntly shot the conversational topic down. Maybe Kevin is as awed by the possibility of their connection, too. Maybe, if Neil were to ever build up the courage to lean in close and ask Kevin if he'd want to —

No. It's a useless thought. Neil redirects his fractured attention on the conversation at hand. “Who is it?”

Kevin points at the television screen. Neil furrows his brow in confusion, watching the game incomprehensibly for a few moments. It’s a rerun of the Palmetto State Foxes playing the Belmonte Terrapins.

“The Foxes’ coach,” Kevin whispers, watching as one of the strikers in fluorescent orange is slammed against the plexiglass by a backliner in forest green. Neil winces in sympathy. “David Wymack.”

Oh. That actually sounds… vaguely familiar. Wymack had been one of Kayleigh’s best friends, Neil recalls. And the Foxes are something of a charity project, if he remembers correctly. Their coach recruits lost causes and problem children for everyone else in the Southern district to demolish on the court.

He feels his lips quirk at the obvious origin of the name he has Neil and his mom calling him. 

“You would’ve fit right in,” Neil concedes. He gestures to two of the Foxes getting into a verbal argument — and then shoving match — on the screen. “Look: you’ve missed your calling to be their punching bag.”

Kevin kicks at his legs, landing a solid hit against Neil’s shin. He curses lowly as Kevin says, “Fuck off. I could score on their entire team right-handed.”

Belatedly, he flinches, like he really had forgotten about his injury until just this moment. Neil bites his cheek to conceal the reflexive, victorious grin threatening to unfurl across his features. 

“Even their maniac goalie?” Neil asks, diverting another impending anxiety attack about his hand. That sounds right to him, at least. He remembers clipping a newspaper article about the only person to turn down a Ravens contract, only to burn it with a disposable lighter before his mom could see what he’d done.

Kevin sniffs. “He never plays for more than a half. It’d be child’s play to rack up enough goals that they couldn’t come back from it.”

Neil gives in and lets the smile loose — that’s as good as an admission that Kevin couldn’t score against him. Apparently Andrew Minyard is something to fear.

Their conversation dies when his mom exits the bathroom, narrowing her eyes and commanding them to turn the television off. Kevin does so immediately, and Neil rolls over onto his side, cradling this new information close to his chest like freshly-lit kindling. 

David Wymack, huh?

It feels like a secret that only Neil gets to know — no, to share — with Kevin.

On the second-to-last day of their motel stay, Kevin steels himself to let Neil change his bandages. It’ll be the first time that he lays eyes on his injury since the surgery, though Neil had already changed them once while they were still on the road and Kevin was mostly high out of his mind. 

He offers Kevin some cheap tequila as a balm, but Kevin shakes his head vigorously and says, “No. Ravens don’t drink.”

Fair enough. If Kevin wants to be stone-cold sober as he takes in the damage, then Neil can’t help but begrudgingly respect the choice. It also doesn’t seem apt to ask if Kevin even is still a Raven, so he bites his tongue on that one.

His mom is out at the local library, gathering information and resources together to figure out their next location. The forethought and planning aren’t often a luxury they often get, and so she’s taking advantage of the quiet moment to give them a solid trajectory.

Neil carefully unwinds the layers of gauze from around Kevin’s hand. The light in the bathroom is stark and bright as he reveals Kevin’s skin beneath the medical tape and dressings, keeping his fingers loosely around Kevin's wrist to stabilize his hand.

“Oh,” Kevin says quietly, the breath punched out of him. There are several black sutures crawling down the lengths of his fingers and across his knuckles, the skin puckered and discolored beneath them. It’s a bit terrifying to look at, Neil has to admit, but beneath that, it’s kind of astounding. His hand looks like a hand again, rather than a pulpy mess of exposed sinew and bone, and most of the swelling has gone down enough that his fingers don’t look like fat, purple sausages anymore.

“It looks good,” Neil says. “No signs of infection, and all of those stitches are way neater than some of the shit Mom’s done with a sewing needle on me.”

“That’s not the compliment you think it is,” Kevin retorts, but the insult sounds empty and hollow. His attention is fully fixated on his hand, and he shakily brings it up to his face to inspect it more closely.

Neil lets him, though everything within him is screaming to ask Kevin about his range of motion. Could you hold a racquet again? is a callous question, though, even for him.

He turns on the warm tap of the faucet, letting the water heat up. “We can let it breathe for a bit,” Neil says. “Clean it up with some soap and then leave it open until tonight.”

Kevin nods, though he doesn’t move. Slowly, he twitches each finger on his left hand, a mixture of discomfort and wonder swirling on his features as they all respond to his command.

“Can I?” Neil asks, excited despite himself. He holds his hand up to Kevin’s, three fingers pressing together for Kevin to try and grab onto.

After a split second of hesitation, Kevin complies, haltingly hovering his thumb and pointer finger over Neil’s hand. It takes slow, agonizing minutes for Kevin to build up enough — strength? motivation? confidence? — to try and wrap his hand around Neil’s fingers, but he does.

He does.

“Fuck,” Neil breathes as he feels the slightest squeeze from Kevin’s left hand. “Okay, shit, yeah, let’s not push it, but Kev, that’s amazing—”

Neil didn’t mean to call him a nickname, but he flushes as it slips out, realizing all of a sudden that they’re basically holding fucking hands and he’s clearly overstepped his bounds. All he wants to do upon the realization hitting him like a truck is rip his hand away from Kevin’s grasp, but his injury is still too tender and fragile to treat with such brutality.

Neil begins to mouth an apologetic Sorry, but Kevin cuts him off. “It’s fine,” he says giddily, loosening his grip and letting a tiny smile alight on his face. He seems far too ecstatic about his potential recovery to let Neil's stupid feelings drag him down, thank fuck.

When Kevin lets his fingers slip away, Neil feels selfish for mourning the loss. They haven't had many options but to grow closer over the last few days, but Neil still wants —

He doesn't even know. More. As much as Kevin will give him.

"Can I help you," Kevin asks with a devastating smirk, and Neil realizes belatedly that he's been staring at Kevin's mouth for the last handful of seconds. 

"Yes," he rasps, mortified, "by shutting the fuck up."

Mary has warned him off girls time and time again. Crushes are a weakness, he knows, and getting tangled up in emotions like this makes him an easy target. But she never said anything about boys.

She never said anything about how to cope with Kevin Day looking at Neil like that.

"We should disinfect your stitches," he says, hoping that Kevin will take the hint and move away from this strange little bubble of tension as the sound of running water fills the awkward silence.

Kevin says, "Neil," in a voice that Neil can't decipher, and he interrupts with, "It's my bad. I got lost in my own head," because he can't bear to hear what Kevin is going to say next.

Sorry, but you're hideous and I'd never be interested in you like that. Stop looking at me with that disgusting look on your face. You didn't really think I'd let you touch me again, did you?

None of those things happen, though.

What does happen is that Kevin grabs Neil's forearm with his right hand and tugs him closer. Neil, entirely unprepared for Kevin on the offensive — which is so unbelievably stupid when Neil knows his fucking Exy stats, the man is a legendary athlete and he's been lulled into a sense of false security while Kevin's been on the mend — stumbles into his broad chest.

"Thank you," Kevin says, exaggerating his gratitude as he cranes his neck to press a kiss to Neil's cheek.

Neil garbles out something unintelligible as his heart slams against his ribcage. This moment doesn't feel real, and he's convinced that he'll blink himself back into consciousness as this all dissolves into a dream-like mirage. To protect the delusion, he focuses all of his energy toward memorizing what the press of Kevin's lips against his skin had felt like.

"You look like you're about to die from a heart attack. It's just a kiss. We do it all the time in the Nest."

"Fuck you," he says without heat. They might be a bit more casual about their affections at Evermore, but Neil's not a Raven, and Kevin knows that. 

This is different. It has to be.

In dizzy disbelief, Neil rocks up onto his tiptoes and, in a fit of what must be overconfident insanity, counter-attacks Kevin by pressing a kiss of his own to Kevin's cheek. "You're welcome, by the way. But I'd prefer if you thanked me by getting back onto the goddamn court."

Kevin laughs. Then he startles, like he hadn't expected to be so amused by Neil. Perhaps they're both high on the joy of seeing Kevin's potential recovery, because Neil offers him a reluctant smile in return instead of immediately hating himself like the last time he tried to kiss a girl from Canada.

He doesn't feel ready to talk about either of their kisses, though, at least not right now. Kevin appears to read his mind, thankfully, as he shifts gears back into the complaining motherfucker Neil has reluctantly grown to like. “My hand hurts like a bitch. Every part of it is throbbing.”

Grateful, Neil shoves all of his inopportune feelings down. “Of course it does. You’re due for another round of meds, anyway. Let’s get this thing cleaned up, and then maybe we can find something good to watch.”

“There are no Exy games or history documentaries on, I already checked.” Kevin pouts as he lets Neil soap up his hand, and Neil focuses very, very intently on the task instead of giving in to the urge to do something else that's stupidly impulsive. “And nothing else is worth watching.”

“There’s an X-Files marathon happening on channel 32,” Neil counters, though it’s definitely a losing battle — Kevin hates the entire sci-fi genre, and thinks it’s a waste of time. Neil could use some escapism right now, though. He doesn’t have the capacity, or the privacy, to wholly contemplate what the unexpected intimacy of this entire moment means to him.

He puts a random episode on, keeping his attention on Kevin out of the corner of his eye. The television becomes background noise to his sharp focus as he stares down at his hand, inspecting the sutures carefully.

Neil pretends not to notice as he replays Kevin's kiss in his head on a repeating loop.

“What are you guys going to do about the Moriyamas?”

The question jolts Neil out of his musings, though it doesn’t make any sense. “What do you mean?” he asks cautiously. He hasn’t really thought of the Moriyamas in ages — their existence was merely a backdrop to the horrors of his father.

For some reason, his words set Kevin off. He jolts, a look of absolute fright overtaking his features as his previously-relaxed state vanishes entirely. His jaw works uselessly for a moment before he manages a hoarse, “Wait, you don’t know? How do you not know?”

Neil’s skin prickles with goosebumps. “Why do we need to do something about the Moriyamas?”

“She never told you,” he realizes. “She’s kept it from you this whole time. Why do you think you’re running, Nathaniel?”

He can’t help but flinch at the name. It erases all of the goodwill they had just built up; if Kevin is referring to him by Nathaniel, it can't mean anything good.

“You already know,” Neil says, dread building inside of him. “Because my father wants us both dead. We had to get away.”

Kevin laughs, though the sound is devoid of humor. “Stupid. You’re so stupid. I’m stupid, too. We’re already dead men, if you’re unprepared for the full weight of the Moriyamas to come down on us.”

“Kevin, what does that mean? What do you know?”

Neil spends almost every day of his waking existence feeling out of his depth. His mother has always concealed information from him — where they’re going next, who she’s calling or who is calling her, how much money they have left, why she had such an inexplicable hatred of Neil’s fascination with Exy…

But this feels far, far more significant. It’s not just a detail he hasn’t become privy to. What Kevin’s reaction implies is that Neil has a fundamental misunderstanding of his entire life.

“The Butcher works for the Moriyamas,” Kevin says finally. “Your dad is Lord Kengo’s right-hand man. They run an entire criminal empire, which your mom apparently never fucking bothered to tell you.”

What?

“Wait,” Neil says. Every word that Kevin continues to speak hammers something fatal into the fabric of Neil’s entire being. “Wait, what?”

“I am property to them, and they hate misplacing their things. Why do you think they’ve dedicated so many resources toward tracking you down? You were — and are — a loose end. A threat to Lord Kengo’s ironclad control over his men. Nathan was meant to show his loyalty by giving up his only son, and not only did he fail in his attempt, but you aren’t dead yet. You make a mockery of them.”

Neil feels everything shift slightly to the left. He blinks rapidly, sucking in a ragged breath as he tries to process what Kevin’s saying. He doesn’t even have the luxury of anesthesia to cloud his thoughts or dull the sharp, panicked realization of what this means. Kevin’s not a liar like Neil and his mom are; he has no reason to deceive Neil about something like this.

That day, when Neil, Riko, and Kevin had scrimmed. It wasn’t just three kids playing a game of Exy, was it?

“When we met,” Neil starts hesitantly.

He nods. “It was a tryout. You had two days to win the master over to see if you’d be a good gift to him. If you weren’t worth his time, your dad was going to execute you himself.”

Neil’s blood turns to ice in his veins. He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to know: “How did I do?”

Kevin shrugs. “We’ll never know. Your mom took you on the second day.”

Every memory Neil has of the past eight years slants off-kilter into something new and chilling. It all makes a stark, terrible sort of sense, doesn’t it? His mom’s refusal to let him grow close to Exy again. Her absolute panic when they’d landed in West Virginia. How his father has had seemingly endless resources and men to track them down over the last eight years.

Oh, god.

Kevin’s right: they’re dead men unless they can figure something out. Instinctively, Neil wants to talk to his mom, even though he knows now she would offer no comfort to him, not about this. He swallows down his rising panic, repeating that fact to himself. It’s one of the hardest things he ever does, wrestling his terror into something that he can manage.

“We have to keep this a secret. Don’t tell her I know,” Neil begs. “I — I’ll figure something out. But she never told me, and I was just grateful to be gone. I never asked questions, but she wouldn't have answered them, anyway. Can we keep this between us? At least for now?”

“Why would I do that? Your ignorance is going to get us killed,” Kevin says. The man who kissed him just a handful of minutes ago has vanished entirely. Now, he looks as terrified as Neil feels.

“Just — a few days. Please?”

He watches Neil carefully for a moment. “A few days,” he agrees after a long pause. “But I deserve to have answers. It’s my life, too.”

Thank fuck. His concession gives Neil some wiggle room to figure out what the fuck to do with this information.

Why hadn’t his mom ever told him? 

Is he really deserving of so little trust?

Neil wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of a door quietly opening. Instinctively, he keeps his breathing even, shifting slowly and soundlessly to withdraw the gun out from underneath his pillow.

He assesses the situation: to his right he can hear Kevin breathing softly and rhythmically. There’s no sound to his left where his mother should be, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she isn’t there. After all, Neil’s mom can be notoriously quiet when she wants to be.

Gradually, he opens his eyes and tips his head to evaluate his surroundings, angling the gun out toward the space of the open room. 

There’s no one there, just Kevin in a deep sleep on the second bed as some sort of sixth-sense prickles uncomfortably at Neil. More importantly, though, his mom isn’t beside him anymore.

Neil exhales a breath. His mom leaving the room is much preferable to someone breaking into their room in the dead of night.

Except —

Why did she leave just now? What is she doing?

He’s not about to delude himself into thinking that his mom hasn’t done something like this before, but with Kevin’s knowledge fresh in his mind, he can’t help but think he has to pry. So Neil carefully climbs out of bed, keeping the gun held loosely in one hand (just in case, he tells himself), as he approaches the door.

When he presses his ear up to the cool metal of the motel door, he can’t hear anything. A peek out of the corner of the curtain reveals nothing, either, so Neil thinks he’s going to have to actually leave the room if he wants answers.

And, possibly against his better judgment, he does.

He may be impulsive, but he won’t be completely stupid about this. Neil slips on his shoes, grabs his wallet, and tucks the gun into the pouch of the hoodie he’d fallen asleep in. He shoots one final glance at Kevin, who sleeps like the dead and detests waking up in any form with extreme prejudice, and slips outside of the motel room.

Turns out he needn’t have worried: his mom is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car, phone held up to her ear as she speaks rapidly. When she sees him, her eyes bulge out of her head and one hand immediately flies toward the door to lock the vehicle.

Oh, fuck that. Neil sweeps his gaze around the empty parking lot as he marches toward her, relieved to see it completely empty and devoid of life at this hour. She glares at him, stabbing a finger in the direction of their motel room through the windshield.

Fueled by something equal-parts hysterical and fed-up, Neil shakes his head. Not this time. He tries the passenger seat door handle, even though he knows it’s locked and won’t open.

Every second that she remains on the phone feels like another nail in a coffin Neil is just starting to imagine the shape of. She’s up to something, and he needs to intervene as quickly as possible. Part of him screams about self-preservation, about capitulating to her demands because she’s done so much to try and keep him alive, but —

The rest of him is pissed.

“Open it,” he barks, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu at the reversal of the scene at the gas station when he’d first stumbled upon Kevin.

As a murderous fire alights in his mother’s eyes, a clear indication that she’s gearing up to deny him again, Neil’s patience abruptly runs out.

He takes the gun out and gestures at the window meaningfully. Tapping the butt of it against glass, Neil starts counting down visibly on his fingers: Five. Four. Three. Two.

His mom bites out an audible curse and unlocks the door, and he catches the tailend of her saying “—eepest apologies,” before she hangs up the phone. She doesn’t give him the chance to speak, immediately turning her full, undivided attention on him as she hisses, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I could ask the same of you,” he returns as he slides into the passenger seat, his voice shaking ever-so-slightly. It goes against his every instinct to talk back to her; there is approximately no reality under which she doesn’t punish him for this. If it’s already going to hurt, though, he might as well pull the truth out of her.

“I’m trying to save your ungrateful life.” She runs a furious hand through her hair and it snags in the snarled tangles of jet-black strands. “Go back inside, now. This doesn’t concern you.”

Her words are a contradiction. Neil sets his jaw, settling in for a fight. “Who were you talking to?”

“Abram,” she says, his name sounding like a whip crack. “I will not tell you again. Go. The fuck. Inside.”

He can’t do that, not when she’s obviously hiding something from him. And if she’s not going to be forthcoming on details, then he’ll just have to push until something breaks. “No. I think I deserve to know if it involves me.”

“You don’t,” she retorts sharply. “The less you know, the safer you are.”

It’s the same refrain she has said for years. She insists that his ignorance is a necessary element for their life on the run — as he is the younger and less experienced of the two of them, he’s the weaker link. A vulnerability. The one dependent entirely on her to survive. For several years, Neil has typically been inclined to believe her. Nevertheless, with Kevin now in the mix and his newfound knowledge of the Moriyama empire, Neil thinks he’s a bit tired of staying in the dark.

“I’m not a child anymore, Mom. You can’t keep hiding shit from me.”

His words are as much a plea as a command — if she’d let him in, even a little, maybe he could help carry the burden of the pressure she is constantly under. If she can just be honest with him, then he can help.

Instead of quieting down and reasoning with him, though, she explodes. 

Even though Neil has more than enough prior experience to have anticipated this, somehow it’s still a shock when she lunges across the center console and pounds a fist against his collarbone. 

“Mom!” he gasps as her sudden, rage-fueled assault surprises him into inaction. It isn’t even the pain that’s knocking him breathless, but the sheer force she puts behind each strike. Something in him catches on fire even as he cowers instinctively away from the pain of her bony knuckles across his bony clavicle, pressing himself further into the fabric of the seat.

She howls, punctuating each of her words with her fists, “You’ve interrupted the most important phone call of our entire lives, Abram! Do I need to beat this sudden rebellion out of you?”

“Who were you talking to?” he asks again, raising his own voice to meet her violence even as he screws his eyes shut to ride out the pain of each raining blow. “Was it the Moriyamas?”

That’s enough to still her hand, but she retaliates against his prying question by grabbing both of his shoulders and shaking him. “Where did you—” she demands, alarm lacing through the words before she cuts herself off. “Kevin. What lies did he tell you?”

“I think he told me the truth, Mom.” Rather than give in to the panic, Neil feels a strange sense of calm settle over him even as her fingers press bruises into his arms. Nothing his mother does to him will ever be as painful or as horrifying as Nathan’s preferred methods of torture — no, her violence has always been nothing more than a tool to rein him in, to keep him scared and docile and obedient.

Neil has gone along with her every whim quietly and with hardly a single complaint. He’s always trusted that she had his best interests at heart and complied with her directives because she’s managed to maneuver them out of even the most dangerous, hopeless situations before. He has absolutely no doubt that everything she’s done for him has been because she believed it was the best option. Only a mother’s love could give her the strength to squirrel him away from the brutality of the Butcher — and the Moriyamas, who impossibly have even more sway and power than Neil’s father.

But… Neil is starting to doubt her methods. It can’t be like this forever; he doesn’t think either of them will survive such a thing.

Taking a deep breath in, Neil flattens his palms against his mom’s chest and shoves her back.

“Tell me,” he demands in the wake of her utter and complete shock. “Why were you on the phone?”

His mom stares at him in disbelief. She must register some of his thoughts on his face, because she says incredulously, “You ungrateful little shit. You think you know better than me? That you could survive for even a fucking second without me?”

“That depends,” he replies, his heart making a valiant attempt to beat right out of his chest. “Why were you calling a Moriyama?”

“To save your life,” she insists, desperation leaking into her tone. “You want the truth? You think you’re old enough to handle the fucking truth? Fine. You stumbled upon the perfect tool for us to finally bargain for our freedom. I was negotiating the terms.”

What?

No.

Through numb lips, Neil says, “You can’t.”

He sounds every bit the petulant child. But —

Not Kevin. 

His mother sneers in his face as she spits, “I can do as I want, you thankless brat. You’ve never had the stomach for the real work this takes — don’t think I haven’t noticed your little nightmares after Chicago. You’d still be beneath your father’s cleaver if it wasn’t for me.”

For a heartbeat, Neil can't breathe, the panic is so real and overwhelming. Distantly, he recognizes what she’s doing, trying to scare him into backing down. Maybe it even would have worked, if she was just threatening him. But she’s made the mistake of bringing Kevin into this. 

“They wouldn’t agree to the deal,” Neil tries, his thoughts racing. His mom has been plotting this entire time to give Kevin up, hasn’t she? “Kevin’s injured. He isn’t worth our lives.”

“You think too small,” she says with a mean smile. “Lord Kengo cares about money. How much do you think he’s lost by letting your father spend so recklessly only to fail at hunting us down? This is your stupidity, Abram. You lack the ability to look at the larger picture. What does the Butcher do with Kengo’s money? Wastes it. What did I do? I fixed his broken investment and will return it to him in good faith. It’s an easy enough exchange. Don’t you want your freedom? Don’t you want your father to call off the manhunt because he thinks we’re dead?”

Of course Neil does. That’s all he’s ever wanted, second only to Nathan’s own death. But his mom has, yet again, made this decision without him, and she’s gotten it all wrong.

There is only one complete and utter certainty that rings in his head while she speaks: Neil is not worth Kevin’s life.

Neil will never be worth Kevin’s life.

No.

“You can’t,” he says. “You won’t. I won’t let you.”

He’s killed for Kevin already, and she thinks he’d be okay with giving him up? With sending him back to the people who broke his fucking hand? He refuses. Kevin's done the hard part of walking away from the Nest and regaining his freedom away from the control of the family that believes him to be no better than a possession. Neil won't be part of a plot to send him back there. 

If that’s to be the cost of Neil’s own freedom, then he doesn’t want it. And Neil has always known his mother’s greatest weakness, though he’s never thought of weaponizing it against her before this very moment. All she wants is for Neil to survive, isn’t it? She would do anything to ensure he lives.

Well, Neil can use that. 

“You don’t have a choice,” she snarls. “It’s too late to go back now. Kengo already knows.”

“I agree,” Neil says. “It is too late to go back. But Kevin and I have discussed our own plan, Mom. And you’ve already taught me everything I could ever need to know about running and staying hidden. So how about this — you call him back, and you rework this fucking deal, or we run. You can’t stop us, and you won’t ever find us again.”

It’s not exactly a lie, but close enough. Neil has been turning over the concept of Palmetto, South Carolina in his mind since Kevin told him about his father, and speaking the words aloud — however untrue his conversations about Kevin have or haven’t been — solidifies something that he hadn’t even known was there until this exact moment.

The realization hits Neil like a direct blow to the chest.

He doesn’t want to live like this anymore. It’s not really living, anyway, is it? Surviving and always looking over his shoulder has taken its toll over the years. Hiding in the shadows may be the only method of survival that he’s ever known, but there has to be another way. If they can prop Kevin up in the media, give him a public platform and attention that keeps him in the spotlight and out of Moriyama reach, then it might force his mom into a stalemate. 

Neil will return to her then and only then, once Kevin’s safety is firmly secured.

He anticipates his mother’s rage this time, at least. 

She screeches, “I will knock you the fuck out right this second, you insolent child,” one of her hands flying out to grab at him and make good on her threat.

He flinches away from her grasp and pulls the door open, fairly stumbling out of the car. As she scrabbles over his seat to chase after him, he takes a few clumsy backward steps away. 

“Leave us alone,” he shouts, the words echoing around the parking lot. It’s unwise to be this loud, this obvious, but adrenaline is pumping through him and he’s already fighting every instinct screaming at him to run. Staying quiet is a luxury he's not quite capable of at the moment.

To his complete surprise, though, she actually freezes in her pursuit. 

A second later, he realizes why.

Almost without his conscious recognition, he’s drawn the gun on her. 

Neil is pointing a loaded weapon at his own mother. She was right, he thinks hysterically: there really is no coming back from this. 

“I’m tired, Mom,” he says, his voice cracking on her name. “I don’t want this anymore. I can’t… I can’t choose you, not like this. Let us go. I really don’t want to hurt you.”

She looks as though she’s weighing whether or not he’d actually discharge the gun in her direction. Neil thumbs the safety off, feeling terrified tears well up in his eyes as he stares her down. 

Finally, after what feels like a goddamn lifetime, she relents, huffing a furious breath through her nose. “Fine. Go out on your own. See how you like it. Your broken little friend already has a target on his face to match the one on your back. See how far you’ll get without me, you dumb, self-centered pissant.”

Just like when she’d caved and let Kevin tag along, Neil feels an acute sense of wrongness. He acknowledges the reality that it’s more-than-likely that she isn’t giving up entirely; even as she lets him go, he's positive that she's cooking up another scheme to try and wrest his rebellion under control. No, Neil may have won this battle, but the war is still raging on. His mother is far too relentless to truly let this go. 

Still, he'll take the victory right now. It just makes it that much more obvious that they need to get to Palmetto State University as quickly as possible. Neil can’t protect Kevin on his own.

“Don’t follow us,” he warns. “Stay away from both of us, and we won’t have a problem. We don’t want or need your help.” 

Dismissively, his mother returns, “Good. I’m washing my hands of someone so fucking thankless of all I’ve sacrificed. Get out of my sight.”

Neil walks backward the entire way toward the motel room, the gun trained on her. She doesn’t move, though, effectively cowed at least for the moment.

When his back hits the door, Neil opens it and heaves a great breath of simultaneous panic and relief. Loudly and frantically, as he dives for his mother’s binder to steal a handful of pages containing vital information like black market contacts, bank account information, and contact lens prescriptions, he yells, “Kevin, get the fuck up. We need to go now.”

This is their only chance to run. Neil and Kevin take it.

— you know i swear i’d give you anything —