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The seats of the SUV are scratchy. Prickly. The leather creaks with Andrew’s each minute shift, agitatingly piercing in its sonority. Creak, creak, it says as he purposely wiggles in his seat, grinding down on it purposely and grinning all the while, not purposely. His cheeks hurt, or maybe it’s his head? Someone is screaming. A lot of someones are screaming, the grating voices and tones intertwining themselves into a drill that cuts through any thought he attempts to form—
Creak. He can’t hear it past the cacophony, but the sound must be as annoying as he usually finds it, because Kevin is frowning judgementally. Still, Kevin is always frowning when he also isn’t screaming, and Andrew prefers him frowning. Easier on the ears. Is Kevin the one screaming? His mouth is moving, stretching, rounding, but he can’t hear the creak of the leather and he certainly can’t hear Kevin.
Kevin Kevin Kevin. Kevin Hay Day who will have the forehead terrain worse than Coach’s by tomorrow if he doesn’t allow his eyebrows to rest. Always disappointed, always bitter, always second best. Ha. The number two, with a crown made of thorns.
Now he’s the one frowning. Kevin’s face is moved left and right, right and left, around and around and there are no thorns, which is good, because Andrew can’t fight thorns. He also can’t fight Kevin’s complacency no more than he can kill Tilda twice, just to really demolish her imprint on his life. Dead and still haunting him, mocking him and flaunting Aaron’s misplaced puppy love in front of him. She is one of the shriller voices screaming, tearing her ugly throat out, and he should’ve killed her twice. Should’ve gone for the jugular so she would stop. screaming.
His hands are suddenly empty, Kevin’s face inching away and frowning all the while. It’s going to stay stuck like that soon, he wants to notify him, but Kevin is leaving the car and no, that just won’t do. Where does he think he’s going? Back to the Nest?
The humid air pools sweat onto his brow and into the dips between his leather clad toes. More leather. Chunky boots, black and his own and occasionally a murder weapon. One stomp two stomps don’t step onto the line don’t let Kevin out of his sight. Easy game with easy steps.
That was just horrible, a voice says, the color of it conjuring Aaron’s image behind his eyes. Kevin seems to agree, judging by the unimpressed glare sharpening his already sharp face. All cutting lines and handsome angles; too bad the brain doesn’t match the brawn. Andrew would’ve offered to suck him off had he not opened the mouth that one sunny day in May. May Day.
That one was even worse, imaginary Aaron scoffs. “Shut up,” Andrew responds.
Kevin and Coach are glaring at him with symmetrical scowls, and wow, if their shared obsession with that bastard stick sport doesn’t automatically make them related, the matching pinch of the forehead for sure tells a scandalous story.
“I meant it Minyard, one word to the newbie and I’ll have you counting the parking lot gravel while Josten interrogates Kevin. We need him on the team. Kevin needs him on the team.”
That sounds important, he muses. He’s needed. That’s a good thing, right? That’s what he wanted once, no?
A slimy kind of dread slinks along his spine, rising upupup and this is important. He needs to focus, to find Kevin’s voice. But Kevin isn’t screaming anymore, so how is he supposed to follow it?
Focus.
Alas, no need to give it away to them so early and skip on all the fun. Maybe he could do the DNA test himself? The numero due could part with a few strands. He sheds like an overgrown bush anyway, the GC is littered with dark—
“Andrew.”
Ah. Kevin’s I Need Your Help tone. He’s frowning once again. If his fist just barely brushes the expanse of Kevin’s frowny, miserable face, catches his nose maybe, then the frown would cave in, and he would have drops of blood instead of clumps of hair to use for—
Focus.
“Aye aye, Captain. All aboard,” he salutes, then marches on to the rhythm of his clinking boots. The entourage must follow him, because they float around in his periphery, but he can’t hear them. The voices aren’t screaming anymore; the random country song Coach Fernandez blasted in the car is sinking them, and him, into an ocean of tranquility so numbing he sways with it momentarily.
What was he thinking about just now?
“Don’t forget what I said or I swear on all my scotch you keep stealing, you’ll be in timeout before you so much as twitch towards your armbands. No skin off my back.”
Scotch. That would pair nicely with the clouds he is floating on. He should nab another one as soon as they get back, just to remind Coach that he can!
He must’ve blinked for a few seconds too long, because Wymack isn’t there anymore. Kevin is there and safe and obnoxious and sitting buried under papers and—
Focus.
That yellow is even more kitsch than the Foxes’ blinding orange. The racquet is a familiar weight in his hands, a fact which disgusts him to no end, and why shouldn’t he replace one stick for another and just light a well-deserved cigarette? Smoke alarms are a piece of cake to dismantle, but then again, inconveniencing Kevin should always be a priority. Just one sprinkle and—
A blur zooms towards him – short, lithe, entirely too fast for Andrew’s drugged brain to comprehend; the sprinting figure is inching closer. A nagging urge to intercept it rears its head and he adjusts his grip, the wood cracking, and—
FOCUS.
He swings.
His muscles don’t burn, they ache in tandem with the frantic heaving that finally reaches his ears. The world straightens as it comes into focus with a startling sensory overload, and the haze he was previously wading through freezes along with the poison coursing through his veins. The corners of his mouth continue to crawl upwards on their own volition, but he is present. Standing, smiling, engaged in a staring contest with a glaring mess kneeling on the floor.
Neil kneeling, his brain supplies, but he is in control enough to not laugh out loud. Instead, he focuses on the hard wood in his hand and the booming tenor of his coach’s yell.
"God damn it, Minyard. This is why we can't have nice things!” Wymack is furious, and furiously hypocritical, and maybe Andrew should really laugh until his lungs give out. They’re going to fail either way one of these days; that might be a fate less dull than turning into a nicotine wrapped charcoal. Him, a fag. Another pun. Why is Aaron being quiet all of a sudden?
"Oh, Coach," he says, warns, notes, "If he was nice, he wouldn't be of any use to us, would he?"
"He's of no use to us if you break him."
"You'd rather I let him go? Put a band-aid on him and he'll be good as new."
We need him, is what Wymack said. They certainly need someone, but upon closer inspection, the potential recruit doesn’t hold water. He isn’t…right, in the same way that none of them are, but this one?
Neil Josten, age 19, born in Millport, a striker, a mosaic of expertly dyed brown hair and colored contacts, is a good old wolf disguised as a sheep. Too fast to be anything but a runaway, too twitchy to be anything but a rabbit, and that knowing glint darkening his fierce scowl? Oh, he doesn’t like that one one bit.
Andrew is presented with a puzzle containing a plethora of contradicting pieces, and they are all flashing red. Just who is Neil Josten?
He loves a good game. May the worst one break.
"Better luck next time,” he flashes a two-fingered salute and allows his smile to spread to the point of ripping at the seams. An entertaining image, that one. Maybe the sight would discourage Kevin from flying across the country in search for another lapdog. Josten should bark to prove him right.
"Fuck you," Neil says instead, because he is no fun. "Whose racquet did you steal?"
Horrifying accusation. As if he would ever want to be in possession of one. "Borrow." he tosses the appallingly bright stick at his feet. Josten is there, too. On a second thought, he could remain the— "Here you go."
That thing practically glows in the dark, yet the fire in Neil’s eyes almost blinds him. So much spite. Such a pretty face. One could believe that this is why Kevin chose this paranoid caricature to play on the team, but Andrew knows better—Kevin is tasteless, not to mention that he actually thinks with his obsessive little brain instead of his dick. A real shame.
"Neil," Coach Hernandez hurries over like a knight in shining armor, catching Neil by his arm to help him up. "Jesus, are you all right?"
Imagining Josten in a dress fitting for a Disney princess as he belts about damsels in distress and rogue antiheroes with racquets as their chosen weapon is almost amusing enough to force him to sing a few Disney classics out loud, if only to scratch the itch that the songs create. Is his brain starting to overheat? Can he blame Neil’s flexed thighs for his momentary distraction?
That, and the tide is lapping at his feet, bringing echoes of voices with each harsh push against his calves. If Kevin knows what is good for him, he will keep that bottle far, far away.
Wymack is speaking, something or other about Andrew’s manners, which Andrew comes close to snorting at. Manners. The thing that your parents teach you. One of mankind's many pretensions.
He still chooses to prove the old man wrong and move away with a theatrical shrug, if only to observe the good part unbothered. The best part. He’d rub his hands together if he wasn't already overwhelmed by the sweat trapped in his socks.
He tunes back in during Neil’s fruitless episode of stubbornness, early enough to detect the death grip Neil has on the strap of his duffle bag. Didn’t mommy ever tell him not to be so obvious about where he keeps his treasures?
"I already gave you my answer. I won't sign with you."
"You didn't listen to my whole offer," Wymack says. Where’s the popcorn he was promised? "If I paid to fly three people out here to see you, the least you could do is give me five minutes, don't you think?"
The words hit Josten harder than Andrew’s two-handed swing. No. Wrong, absolutely wrong reaction. No exy fanatic who dreams of having Kevin shove his stick, or his ravaged left hand if the screams from their last loser game are to be believed, up their ass would ever sport a look of Utter Betrayal.
Not good. Not good at all. Seems like Mr. Knows Where Each Exit Is has a story to tell. One Andrew needs to be in the right mind to hear. Is brother dearest sending a late birthday gift? Will he get a turn on the pinata? Does his previous itty-bitty-tiny-miny swing count? Would Kevin’s new special interest disintegrate into a confetti of secrets or candy?
The guy’s duffle sways as he visibly cringes away, his breathing so labored Andrew briefly wonders if his lungs got punctured. One should hope not, Day wouldn’t survive the premature loss.
"You didn't bring him here,” Josten says, and wow that’s one atrocious spy. The looks have got to play a factor in why he’s still being kept on Riko’s payroll. He should work on acquiring facts about his targets instead of faking fright. He probably keeps all his intel in a written and traceable form, the idiot.
The mocking laugher tickles at Andrew’s throat, but he swallows it, and then swallows again, and then swallows for the third time because the third time’s the charm but then he swallows again because he’s not superstitious and there is no more spit left for him to swallow but if he really tried he could gather some and aim at the flight risk vibrating before him and spit it out to see how spooked he’d get. How many cigarettes does he have left?
Wymack just stares at the pathetic display. So does Kevin. And Fernandez. Andrew won’t join because he’s not sheep, but the racquet is still too bright, or are those the lights? What is Josten’s gym routine, and more importantly, how long could he last while being suffocated by his ridiculously toned thighs? Five, his memory supplies. You know this, it says as it tries to dissolve into that memory and nope. Not a game of association. Five feet fight feel fine, and his smile has to dip and deepen because consonance is an ear worm like no other and he has to FOCUS.
"I'm not good enough to play on the same court as a champion,” Josten declares. It lacks reverence. Lacks admiration. Andrew has seized him up six or seven times by now and yet… Josten is an enigma. He’s also a ten. Jos ten. His stupidity can almost be forgiven with that face. His teeth burn with the urge to latch onto skin and pull and suck and maybe dismember and scavenge for what makes Josten tick.
Oh. This cannot be a problem. He will not allo—
"True, but irrelevant.”
Enter Kevin Day, stage left.
Unfairly tall, broad, imposing Kevin with his judgy scowls and bunched eyebrows, sitting like a king amongst peasants, or at least those he considers below him. Everyone is below Kevin royalty Day. Such is the fate of not being born a child prodigy to a talented mother and never growing an inch past five feet. Dangle Andrew upside down and he’d be in a grave. Wasn’t that the saying? He five feet deep, Neil whatshisname Josten five feet away, paler than his darkened complexion should allow and inching farther away. Huuuu how curious.
Neil Loses His Shit in the exact way Andrew expected him to—he locks his knees like a newborn fawn and accompanies it with a deer in the headlights look in a show of such obvious panic that Andrew has to sincerely doubt his profession. Either he’s ludicrous enough to bank on receiving empathy of all things, or he’s just. That inept at his job.
Which one is it? Whichonewhichonewhichone
"What are you doing here?" Josten asks. Andrew’s throat is parched.
"Why were you leaving?"
"I asked you first."
"Coach already answered that question. We are waiting for you to sign the contract. Stop wasting our time."
Blablabla. Boring.
"No," Neil counters, sounding much less flattered and more paranoid than he should. Andrew is smiling so wide his eye slits turn into crescents. "There are a thousand strikers who'd jump at the chance to play with you. Why don't you bother them?"
Suspicious, not awed. Of course, Coach and Player Two, ever in their single-minded, sober intensity, fail to notice it.
Why does he even bother?
"We saw their files. We chose you." Coach affirms with patience that rivals Renee’s. Hardly a productive sentiment, since the truth is more accessible with a pair of knives, if you ask Andrew.
"I won't play with Kevin."
Especially if you ask him right now. His lungs are convulsing from the abundance of the locker room stench.
"You will.”
He ransacks his pockets, only feeling the barest hint of anything when his fingers brush against a cigarette pack and manage to pull one out.
"Maybe you haven't noticed, but we're not leaving here until you say yes. Kevin says we have to have you, and he's right."
And he said they should burn Josten’s statistics into ash and mix it with Kevin’s morning kale smoothie, but apparently he doesn’t quite see “the vision”. He doesn’t quite see anything; the voices are melting into swirling colors, a kaleidoscope of movement and shades that spin his head around.
"-wn away your coach's letter the second we ope-"
His armbands are sweating, and so are his boots; the heat of his knives radiates. Kevin’s eyes are too green; Josten’s eyes aren’t green at all. Coach Fernandez is coughing on the side, and the thump his back receives sounds blue, looks blue? He should look into aura reading.
"-ile is deplorable…don't want someone with your inexperience on our co….ing we're trying to do with the Foxes this y…”
It is important that his boots don’t squeal. The early California summer is no less vengeful than the middle of it, but why should he care when he’s not there, and neither is Aaron, but he can taste the scorching warmth as his upper lip sweats and the black of his jeans is bleeding out of the fabric so he’s maybe fooled himself into believing that he’s gotten out. Bee. Buzz buzz. He can feel and taste and touch and see and smell the brown in Josten’s hair dye. Smells like a liar.
“-our coach knew better than to send us your statistics. He se…ape so we could see you in action in-”
Something is warming the palm of his hand—oval, familiar, damming. He flips it over his reddening fingers. A cigarette, not the handle of a knife.
“You play like you have everything to lose."
He plays like he’s already losing, and all he can do is play until the loss is cemented. Keep up Kevin.
Who thought that? Ooh, there’s ash on his hoodie. Flick.
"It's not a good idea." The first truth Neil has told this since meeting them. Bring that pinata back. Where did the racquet go?
"I have to talk to my mother.” RRRRR. Liar liar pants on fire.
"I still need to ask." Wrong again! Aaron will hate this guy. He himself already does.
"She'll be happy for you." If she were Stephanie Walker, perhaps. Seems like they’ve got a Tilda Minyard or a Maria Hemmick on their hands. His hands are already red and warm enough, are Neil’s?
"I'll talk to her tonight." He needs to catch this guy red-handed in a lie. Yes this one is bad, shut the fuck up Aaron.
"I'm fine."
Andrew slams his mouth shut to avoid letting a hysterical giggle slip past, or the surge of vomit that’s sizzling between his vocal cords. What a promising career in stand-up comedy! He could get Kevin’s delusion a run for his money!
Wymack sends him and Kevin a look he doesn’t care to decipher, then dismisses them with a clear "Go wait in the car”.
Finally, his abused lungs scream at him as his shepards Kevin and his stack of papers out, giving him a cursory once-over once the metal door shuts behind them. All intact, no thanks to his own efforts. His Majesty deserves a nick or two for forcing him to endure the eye candy bound to get them all killed by the end of the year that is their new freshman. Andrew will gurgle blood in his laughing mouth while letting Kevin know that he’s “told him so”. But all in due time.
SUV isn’t locked, and he finds that out when he jiggles the lock to piss himself off with the sound. He is surrounded by fucking fools.
“Sit,” he orders Kevin because he can after he flings the back door open, then slams it because he can. Kevin glares, then rolls his eyes, then sighs, then sprawls himself over the backseat. Andrew catches the end of his shirt when he swings the door closed. The hinge is oiled, and Andrew’s scream is lodged in his throat. He smiles a close mouthed smile as he hums. The busy bees go buzzing five by five. Hoorah! Hoorah!
He draws a bee on the window. It’s invisible, but the faint buzz of her wings echo in Andrew’s mind and mingle with the colors. The tide laps at his knees. To go back, to their hive.
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
The locker room door bursts open, and out comes just ten Josten, still as white as the ash flecks on Andrew’s jeans. The color doesn’t suit him–it’s too weak, too resonant, all wrong. What if he smashes it apart and reassembles it anew? Puts flush on Neil’s cheeks?
Delusion is contagious. He’ll have to let Bee know.
Neil’s walk resembles a jog as he nears the SUV, his steps glitchy and barely touching the ground. Andrew opens the door enough to push his head through and reward Neil for being his entertainment for the night with a smile that is all teeth. He can’t help himself; Neil is practically begging to be poked at. "Too good to play with us, too good to ride with us?"
Neil side-eyes him as he passes. Andrew follows his progress until he disappears from the view, running away like a man sentenced, and he doesn’t stop smiling. He’s going to throw up in a minute.
The bees go buzzing ten by ten. The little one stops to shout, “THE END!”