Chapter Text
“Josten! Neil Josten! How does it feel to win the NCAA Championship?”
Volleys of white flashes sear his eyes, leaving him disadvantaged against the sea of reporters.
“Can you comment on the ratio of interceptions to turnovers made by the Foxes tonight?”
Neil goes to speak, but finds his lips uncooperative. He reaches for his face and looks down when nothing moves. His arms are nothing more than bleeding stumps, oozing with brackish pus and reeking of infection. Mary would kill him for letting it get this bad. He needs to-
The reporters are oblivious to his torment, “Neil, as the leading scorer with eight points, your family must be beyond proud. Who’s watching you at home tonight?”
Who's watching you at home tonight?
Who’s watching-
“-All you have to do is sign the dotted line and you’re mine for five years.” The large stranger gives Neil an odd look as he gasps, returning to the present. The pungent smell of gym socks and sweaty jerseys anchor Neil to the dimly lit locker room, but his vision still feels fuzzy from the imagined cameras. He could never join a professional team.
The shooting cameras may as well be guns, because once the wrong people saw him, he’d be dead. An interview may as well be the public reading of his last will and testament.
He’s debating whether his threadbare blanket from the shelter should go to Jimmy, the addict from the mall food court, or Jose, the homeless man he’d met under a bridge, when he realizes Wymack is talking again.
“-It’s a bit sudden, but I really do need an answer tonight. The Committee’s been hounding me since Janie got locked up.”
Janie.
Janie Smalls.
The latest Palmetto State University exy recruit to end in failure. Or attempted failure, as her current psych ward patient status would have it.
The PSU Foxes were the smallest team in the NCAA. Made up of junkies and rejects from broken homes, the Foxes were notorious for ranking dead-last and ending up dead.
That meant this was-
Coach Wymack of the Palmetto State Foxes continues moving his mouth, but only a high pitched ringing fills Neil's head. He fights to hear the tattooed man and immediately regrets it upon hearing Kevin’s name.
Neil hasn’t seen Kevin in eight years. Eight years spent on the run. Twenty-two names linking Neil and his past. Through Austria, Canada, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and-
He was only five weeks away from his next one. He thought he had gotten away with having just one guilty pleasure in exy, but his mother was right. She was always right.
She’d warned him to obsess from a distance, and he’d disobeyed her.
His feet were moving before his mind could process it.
Neil didn’t look back to see if they were following.
All he knew, all that mattered, was getting as far away from here as possible.
Forget graduation.
Forget “Neil Josten”.
He’d leave tonight and run until he forgot Wymack ever came for him.
Neil wasn’t fast enough.
He was halfway through the locker room when he realized he wasn’t alone. There was someone waiting for him in the lounge between him and the front door. Light glinted off of a bright yellow racket as the stranger took a swing, and Neil was going too fast to stop. Wood slammed into his gut hard enough to crush his lungs into his spine. He didn’t remember falling, but suddenly he was on his hands and knees, scrabbling ineffectively at the floor as he tried to breathe.
He could hear Wymack saying something about broken things and the assailant saying he would be good as new with a band aid.
Neil wasn’t familiar with band aids. All his booboos had required stitches and vodka.
He fixed a scathing glare on the man in front of him, attempting to regain some semblance of dignity even as he coughed and choked on air.
If Kevin was the person he started following the Foxes’ games for, Andrew was the reason he kept watching. At five foot flat and with a murderous personality to match, the freshman goalkeeper was publicly noted to be the reason for Kevin Day’s transfer from Edgar Allen. He was the only person to turn down an offer from the first ranked university, instead joining PSU after the promise of positions for his cousin Nicky and twin brother Aaron on the Foxes court, as well. His three year stint in juvie only added to his title as the Foxes’ deadliest investment.
Neil had often wondered why Kevin would leave his place at Riko’s right hand on the number one exy team in the league to become assistant coach for the Foxes.
Although he had been injured in a skiing accident and lost his college contract, he should have been recuperating among his teammates. Instead he had appeared as the foxes assistant coach last year- even joining the lineup this year, if rumors were to be believed. The only reason Neil could think of for this was that Kevin was chasing the only thing he had asked for and been denied- Andrew Minyard.
The aforementioned bastard tipped a mocking salute in Neil’s direction, “Better luck next time.”
Yes. There would be a next time. Because the sharp pain of his ribs reminds him of his mother’s punishments and Neil will never again stray from his mother’s advice.
More familiar than any hug or show of affection, the feeling of near fractured bones reminds him of her love.
“Look,” Neil says, standing to face the coach, “I appreciate you coming down here and all, but I don’t meet the requirements for your team, even if I was interested in joining. Yeah, I sleep in the locker room sometimes, but it’s only cuz every time I go home my parents badger me about college decisions and interning at my dad’s new job. I can’t live up to being the golden boy all the time so I just say I’m at a friend's house.”
Neil fights to keep a neutral face as the tension in Wymack’s shoulders is released. Resignation. Acceptance. Neil is good at reading languages. Including the language of the human body. He’s in control again. He inhales to put the final nail in the coffin when he’s interrupted by a coquettish voice from behind.
“Mhmm. They sound like loving parents all right. Wouldn’t want them to get worried when you don’t show up to family dinner. But, oh- Coach, I must have forgotten- how many times does the school have on record that Neil’s parents were out of town? Let’s see- there’s back to school night, parents night, the first game of the season, homecoming, the last game of the season, every game of the season-”
The blood leaves Neil’s face so fast the world tilts. Why would a freshmen goalkeeper be flown out to meet a potential recruit? He wouldn’t be. Andrew was only here because Kevin Day never went anywhere alone. He should have known.
He does know better than to turn around.
The passing of time, dark hair dye, and brown contacts may disguise his features, but he isn’t Andrew. If Kevin Day asks him to his face to go live the life that was stolen from him eight years ago, he would be on their returning flight tomorrow.
Neil may know how to read other people, but he knows himself even better.
He pictures the man behind him as he’s seen on tv screens from the safe distance of thousands of miles away. Black hair, sharp cheekbones, haughty green eyes, and that arrogant tattoo.
Then he imagines Kevin as he remembers him best. Eyes bugging out of his round face, with snot and tears dribbling down his face. Blood splattering on his little league uniform as they both stood frozen, watching Neil’s father butcher a man into a hundred pieces.
He imagines turning around and seeing that same horror on Kevin’s face directed at him.
Kevin knows where Neil’s “home” is. If Kevin wants to bring Neil home, he will need a hearse, because Neil will not be taken alive.
“I’m not interested. ” He hisses instead, wrapping his hand around his sports bag and shifting on his feet. Neil barrels past Wymack, out of the locker room, and past Coach Hernandez, who shouts something indistinguishable over the thundering of Neil’s heart. He cringes at the sound of gravel against his court shoes as he bursts through the gym’s side door, but it isn’t as if he’ll ever use them again.
The run home is a blur and he uses the time to berate himself one last time.
Neil’s obsession with Kevin stems from a longing to exist. Neil’s past was locked in Kevin’s memories. It was proof he existed, same as the game they both played.
Kevin was proof Neil was real, but Neil couldn’t be real.
Real boys could die.
Neil needed to be a ghost.