Chapter Text
Jeremy spotted Kevin coming down the tunnel first, his tattooed cheek turned toward Jeremy as he searched the crowd in arrivals. Only after that did Jeremy notice the people around him. While Jeremy had known Kevin wouldn’t be travelling across the country alone, he had not expected Kevin’s text that “they” were boarding the flight this morning to refer to his whole team. Jeremy counted them automatically, spotting the Foxes’ taller players one by one and the shorter ones once the crowd had dispersed. Kevin came to a stop in front of him, and Jeremy’s moment of stunned chock passed as he reached out to clap him firmly on the back.
“Good to finally have you here!” he said, looking around the Foxes and familiarizing himself with faces he’d mostly seen on TV and behind the net of their helmets, before looking back at Kevin. “Though, to be honest, I didn’t expect so many of you to come!”
His laugh was meant to be disarming, but Kevin looked vaguely embarrassed to hear it. “I would have forewarned you if I knew Allison was planning to invite herself and the rest of the team here. Unfortunately, I didn’t.” Kevin glared shortly at the tallest blonde on the team with his last sentence, and Jeremy’s gaze followed it to her.
Allison Reynolds reached out her hand and introduced herself with a wink that almost startled Jeremy to turn her down at the spot, before remembering his surroundings. Instead, he nodded quickly and looked back to Kevin. “So… How was your flight?”
“Unremarkable,” Kevin said. “My phone hasn’t updated yet. What time is it?”
“Half past seven, give or take a few. I can swing you by the hotel first if you want to check in, otherwise you could probably unwind with us first. I just need to update Laila on… yeah! Not sure if you were able to eat on account of what time your flight was,” he said, and watched most of the Foxes shake their heads or voice disharmonious negatives. “Great! I just need to check in with Laila. I’ve got four open seats in my car, but maybe you could start looking for a taxi for the rest of you?”
The team moved in a scattered group through the exit out to the sidewalk where taxi drivers waited for passengers, and pulled up his phone. He weighed it in his hand for a moment before clicking on Laila’s contact. After a few rings, she picked up with a “Jeremy? Everything alright?”
“Yeah! It’s just, you know how I said Kevin would likely not come alone, and might have a teammate or two with him? Well, he brought all eight of them.”
Laila’s terse “What,” was barely audible over the tinny sounds of Spanish swears in the background, and then a choice curse in French. Jeremy waited for the ruckus to be over, but Laila was quicker to speak again. “Okay… It’s fine. This is fine. Would have appreciated a heads-up, but it is what it is.” Jeremy winced, knowing some of Laila’s calm facade was merely self-soothing. “We’ll have to order takeout instead, though.”
“I’m not making arepas for thirteen people,” Jean’s sour voice sounded from the speakers of his phone, and Cat’s laugh followed.
“I’d have told you if I’d known about it. It seems like Kevin might not have, either. I think we’ll head to your place before the hotel, so expect us in a bit.”
They hung up after a quick goodbye and Jeremy hurried after the Foxes outside. Luckily, they hadn’t had to go far to find a driver who would take them, and Jeremy found them loading their luggage into the back of a black minivan with a taxi logo painted on an open door. Neil and one of the Minyards stood close to each other, leaning over the same cigarette, and Jeremy stopped next to them. They looked up at him as one, perfectly synchronised, their faces equally discomfitingly blank.
Jeremy swallowed the feeling of having intruded on a personal moment and asked, “Do you know if we’re going straight to Cat and Laila’s or if you want to drop your luggage off at the hotel first?”
Neil answered with a look towards Kevin as Andrew stubbed the cigarette out. “Straight to Jean.”
Jeremy was not sure what to think of Neil. He had shown up at their doorstep some months earlier to run off with an anxious Jean, and dropped an even worse-for-wear Jean off in the middle of the night. Beyond that, there was the considerable amount of news coverage from the past year about him. Jeremy tried not to think about that, though — he knew better than anyone how unfair the media could be.
He left them to their staring to tell the driver the address, and placed himself off to the side to watch five of the Foxes climb into the minivan. They were the Foxes who were the least familiar to him — the ones whose faces were easier to connect to jersey numbers and last names than to first names and Kevin’s anecdotes. The driver gave Jeremy a thumbs-up, which he gladly returned, and drove off. Jeremy twisted to face Kevin, Renee, Neil, and Andrew, and gestured for them to follow him to his car.
On the short walk, Jeremy noticed his gaze flickering to Renee several times. She walked calmly and turned her head to look around her in a way that could come off as mere curiosity, but Jeremy recognized something sharper in it.
He almost opened his mouth to ask something inane in an effort to get to know her on some small level, but that idea made him think of Jean. The distraction was almost enough to make him miss his car, and he stopped abruptly before taking a few steps back to open the driver’s door. A smile was already settling on his lips for reasons he did not want to think about, and his “Oops. Almost missed it,” sounded ridiculous even to his own ears.
Kevin didn’t even look at the others before settling into the passenger seat, and Jeremy peeled off from the sidewalk as soon as all the safety belts in the back seats had clicked into place.
Once they had left the crowded roads around the airport, Jeremy looked into his rear-view mirror and met Neil’s icy eyes in the reflection. Jeremy cleared his throat and looked back at the road. “I have to admit I’d have thought it would just be you, Neil, coming with Kevin.”
Kevin looked over his shoulder into the back seat, and then Jeremy felt his gaze settle on him. “Why would you think Neil would be the one to come with me?”
“I just thought he’d want to see Jean again,” Jeremy answered with a one-shouldered shrug.
For a moment, he stared out at the road. Then he realised the car had gone a bit too silent. Looking around, he saw how Kevin had his face between the seats and his gaze sharpened on Neil. Jeremy thought he could see his eye twitching. Andrew and Renee had both also turned in their seats to watch Neil between them. There was something dark in Andrew’s eyes that had not been there before.
Before Jeremy could break the tension, Kevin fired off in rapid French, which Neil responded to with shorter, calmer sentences in the same language. Kevin seemed to be building up towards shouting, but slammed his back into his seat with his face in his hands before he could get there. In the silence that remained, Andrew’s hoarse voice said something in a language that Jeremy did not think was French, but was certainly not English, either. Neil’s answer was longer this time, and was only met with a “112 percent,” from Andrew.
While Neil didn’t look bothered by whatever they were saying to him, Jeremy still felt like he had to come to his aide. “Your visit worked out for the best. That was the same weekend Grayson Johnson passed away, and before they ruled it a suicide, they had Jean marked as the most obvious suspect. You gave him an alibi,” Jeremy said, and looked back into the rear-view mirror to see Neil looking decidedly annoyed with him. Jeremy looked back onto the road, heard Kevin groan into his hands, and decided to let the silence fester for the rest of the ride.
---
By the time he pulled up behind Laila’s car, the tense silence was making Jeremy’s skin crawl. The taxi was parked along the sidewalk and Matthew Boyd was helping the driver unload the Foxes’ luggage from the back. Andrew stopped by one of the carry ons and dug a packet of cigarettes out, which he shook at Kevin.
“Is there a corner store around? He had to toss his lighter at security,” Kevin asked Jeremy.
“Oh, I’ve got one you can borrow,” Jeremy said, rounding Kevin and leaning back into the car to get his own pack from the glove box. He opened it and let the lighter fall into his hand, turning back with it held out. Kevin had arched a brow and before Jeremy could open his mouth to explain that the cigarettes mostly made for easy pick-ups, Neil spoke.
“It seems all captains have their vices, Kevin.” The smile on his face could have been called shit-eating, if it wasn’t so terrifying. Andrew took the lighter out of Jeremy’s hand and walked off, Neil following behind him.
Jeremy watched them walk for a second before turning back to Kevin. “What was that about?”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “Neil and I have been… having disagreements about his vice-captaincy. The vice he’s talking about is letting his mouth run about the freshmen. It’s ruining practices.”
Jeremy forced an inappropriate smile off his face and looked back to Neil and Andrew’s retreating backs. They were walking close to each other, both facing forward. They really were quite far away, he thought, and asked Kevin, “Uh. Are they coming back?”
Kevin followed his gaze. “Probably. It’s not your fault, it’s California. Aaron might also be… off. It’s too many memories too soon after the trial, is all.”
Jeremy nodded. “Anything I can do, just ask.” The phrase made him abruptly remember that he was supposed to be hosting, or at least welcoming their guests.
Renee was handing out bags to their corresponding owners while Allison was counting out bills that she handed to the driver. The Foxes’ captain was waiting on the sidewalk, so Jeremy walked up to her and shook her hand.
“I’ve been rude, I’m sorry. Welcome to L.A., Danielle Wilds. You’ve done a great job with this team.”
Her handshake was firm, but her voice was friendly as she answered. “Thank you. Kevin might be your biggest admirer, but I’m also a fan. You better think we’ll see you in the finals this year. And just Dan is fine.”
At that moment, Boyd came to a stop next to her. “Matt Boyd,” he introduced himself while shaking Jeremy’s hand. His arms were bare in the summer heat, and Jeremy forced his eyes from the obvious track marks. Judging by Matt’s knowing smile, he’d been caught anyway, and Jeremy felt a flush on his face as he moved on to the next pair.
If not for the armbands that Andrew had been sporting, Jeremy would not have known that this Minyard was Aaron. Still, any residual doubt was eradicated as Aaron introduced himself with just his name, before his eyes fell off Jeremy and his gaze strayed to the side. Off, Kevin had said, and Jeremy decided to spare him.
The man standing next to Aaron introduced himself as Nicky, and Jeremy recognized him as one of the Foxes’ backliners. Nicky had an easy smile though occasionally spared worried looks for Aaron, and his rainbow-patterned bracelets reassured Jeremy that it would be safe to introduce this team to the floozies.
Jeremy watched as the team rounded up to shoulder their assortment of bags and walked up the stairs with a spring in his step. This could be good for them, he tried to assure himself, and found himself hesitating over who “them” were. He opened the door to see Cat and Laila waiting in the hallway, and toed his shoes off. Kevin was right behind him, and by the time all of the Foxes had stepped inside, Jeremy had had to retreat to the living room to make space and the hallway was starting to look like a shoe store that mostly sold orange sneakers.
It was Cat and Laila’s turn to make the rounds and introduce themselves, and Jeremy listened to the Foxes chuckle as Cat greeted Kevin with “Hail, Queen”.
Jeremy took the opportunity to check the kitchen, where he found a sullen-looking Jean, pouring one batch of coffee into a thermos and putting the pot back to start on a second. He looked up as he heard Jeremy enter, and his expectant gaze softened with recognition. Jeremy leaned with his hip on the kitchen island as Jean poured a cup and set it down in front of him, before returning to his own half-drunk coffee. Despite the racket filtering in from the hallway, the kitchen offered a moment of respite and calm. It was almost blasphemous to break it, but something stronger still compelled Jeremy to ask, “Jean?”
Jean’s jaw loosened and his eyes softened in a look that Jeremy had started to associate with Jean’s moments of total honesty. It was an open look that spoke of quiet contemplation of how to express his feelings in a language that Jeremy could understand.
Before his mouth could open with some heartbreaking truth, the wood floors behind Jeremy creaked under the pressure of socked feet. Jean’s jaw clamped close and the look in his eyes shuttered as the steps approached and settled next to Jeremy.
In the reflection of Jean’s mirror-gray eyes, Jeremy saw a distorted Kevin open his mouth, his voice raspy with the stumped, “Jean”.