Work Text:
Abram let his cigarette burn to the filter without taking a drag.
Alex thought that was a waste of a good cigarette. He’d been old enough to not pass as Mary’s son, so he wasn’t her son, just some kid who followed her around and bummed cigarettes and seemed cool enough, if a bit pathetic, to the shady people they were always interacting with.
Payton was a goody-two shoes. He’d made most of their way through eighth grade. He thought the fact that they had access to cigarettes at all was a travesty.
Abram didn't want the nicotine; he wanted the acrid smoke that reminded him of their mother. If he inhaled slowly enough, he could almost taste the ghost of gasoline and fire. It was at once revolting and comforting, and it sent a sick shudder down his spine.
The jolt went all the way to his fingertips, dislodging a clump of ash. It fell to the bleachers between his shoes and was whisked away by the wind.
He glanced up at the sky, but the stars were washed out behind the glare of stadium lights. He wondered - not for the first time - if their mother was looking down at him. Up, Jason insisted. He’d been around since just after Mary had taken them and run. He’d dealt with the full force of her anger.
Abram hoped she wasn’t watching, regardless. She'd beat them to hell and back if she saw him sitting around moping. Or for going back to exy in the first place. It hadn’t been his idea.
A door squealed open behind him, startling Abram from his thoughts.
Neil pushed forward, whip quick and blinking back stars as he pulled his duffel closer to his side and looked back. Coach Hernandez propped the locker room door open and sat beside Neil.
"I didn't see your parents at the game," Hernandez said, a little bit sad, a little bit exasperated.
"They're out of town," Neil lied.
"Still or again?"
Neither, but Neil wouldn't say that. Their mother was dead and their father… they wished he was dead.
Neil’s parents, the ones he could picture in his mind, sharp suits and high expectations, didn’t exist. They were a cover and it was easier if he remembered them. The people Abram had constructed.
He knew their teachers and coach were tired of hearing the same excuse any time they asked after their parents, but it was as easy a lie as it was overused.
It explained why no one would ever see the Jostens around town and why Neil Josten had a predilection for sleeping on school grounds.
It wasn't that they didn't have a place to live. It was more that their living situation wasn't legal.
Millport was a dying town, which meant there were dozens of houses on the market that would never sell.
They’d appropriated one last summer in a quiet neighborhood populated mostly by senior citizens. Their neighbors rarely left the comfort of their couches and daily soaps, but every time he came and went he risked getting spotted.
If people realized he was squatting they'd start asking difficult questions. It was usually easier to break into the locker room and sleep there.
Why Hernandez let them get away with it and didn't notify the authorities, Neil didn't know. Stephan did, he’d known a teacher like that once, he’d asked. Neil didn’t want to know, so Stephan didn’t share.
Hernandez held out his hand.
Neil passed him the cigarette and watched as Hernandez ground it out on the concrete steps.
The coach flicked the crumpled butt aside and turned to face Neil. "I thought they'd make an exception tonight.”
"No one knew it'd be the last game," Neil said, looking back at the court like he wasn’t lying and his coach didn’t know it.
Millport's loss booted them from state championships two games from finals. So close, too far. The season was over just like that.
None of them had really been expecting to win, though. No one on their team had had any hope, and maybe that was why they’d lost.
A crew was already dismantling the court, unhinging the plexiglass walls and rolling Astroturf over the hard floor.
When they were done it'd be a soccer field again. There'd be nothing left of Exy until fall. Neil felt sick watching it happen, but he couldn't look away.
Abram wanted to argue that Neil should follow their example. Leave exy under some astroturf and move on with their life.
Exy was a bastard sport, an evolved sort of lacrosse on a soccer-sized court with the violence of ice hockey, and Neil loved every part of it from its speed to its aggression.
It was the one piece of his childhood he'd never been able to give up. Nathaniel loved it and so did Neil.
"I'll call them later with the score," he lied, because
Hernandez was still watching him. "They didn't miss much."
"Not yet, maybe," Hernandez said. "There's someone here to see you."
To someone who'd spent half their life outrunning their past those were words from a nightmare.
Neil leaped to his feet and slung his bag over his shoulder, but the scuff of a shoe behind him warned him he was too late to escape.
He twisted to see a large stranger standing in the locker room doorway. The wife beater the man wore showed off sleeves of tribal flame tattoos.
One hand was stuffed into his jeans pocket. The other held a thick file. His stance was casual, but the look in his brown eyes was intent.
Neil didn't recognize him, which meant he wasn't local.
Millport boasted fewer than nine hundred residents. This was a place where everyone knew everyone's business.
That ingrained nosiness made things uncomfortable for them and all their secrets, but they’d been hoping to use that small-town mentality as a shield.
Gossip about an outsider should have reached them before this stranger did. Millport had failed them.
"I don't know you," Neil said warily, Nathaniel looking out through his eyes. Poised, ready to grab for the knife the rest of them liked to pretend they didn’t carry.
"He's from a university," Hernandez explained soothingly. "He came to see you play tonight."
"Bullshit," Neil snapped. "No one recruits from Millport. No one knows where it is."
"There's this thing called a map," the stranger said. "You might have heard of it."
I like him, Alex declared.
Shut the fuck up, Nathaniel snapped.
Hernandez sent Neil a warning look and got to his feet. "He's here because I sent him your file. He put a note out saying he was short on his striker line, and I figured it was worth a shot. I didn't tell you because I didn't know if anything would come of it and I didn't want to get your hopes up."
Neil stared. "You did what?" They hadn’t given permission for that. They had decidedly not given permission for that. Even Neil, with his exy dreams, wasn’t stupid enough to do that. And even if he was, Abram would have stopped him.
"I tried contacting your parents when he asked for a face-to-face tonight, but they haven't returned my messages. You said they'd try to make it."
"They did," Neil said, feeling faint. "They couldn't."
"I can't wait for them," the stranger said, coming down to stand beside Hernandez. "It's stupid late in the season for me to be here, I know, but I had some technical difficulties with my last recruit. Coach Hernandez said you still haven't chosen a school for fall. Works out perfectly, doesn't it? I need a striker sub, and you need a team. All you have to do is sign the dotted line and you're mine for five years."
We don’t belong to fucking anyone, Stephan snarled, reaching for control. He wanted to strangle that man.
Neil tried to find his voice. It was Nathaniel who spoke. "You can't be serious." His sheath was tucked up under his shirt, just above the waist band, his fingers pressed lightly to the leather.
"Very serious, and very out of time," the man said.
He tossed his file onto the bleacher where Neil had been sitting. ‘Neil Josten’ was scrawled across the front in black marker.
Nathaniel thought about flipping the folder open, but what was the point?
In five weeks Neil would graduate and in six they’d be someone else somewhere very far away from here.
It didn't matter how much they liked being Neil Josten. That Neil was good at hosting. They’d stayed too long as it was.
They should be used to this by now. They’d spent eight years on the run, spinning lie after lie to leave a twisted trail behind them.
Twenty-two names stood between them and the truth, faces and names and backstories. Mostly still with them, a few faded into the background, a few gone outright.
They knew what would happen if anyone finally connected the dots.
Signing with a college team meant more than standing still. It meant they’d be stepping into a spotlight.
Prison couldn't stop their father for long, and they wouldn't survive a rematch with him.
The math was simple, but that didn't make this any easier. That contract was a one-way ticket to a future, something they could never have.
Neil wanted it so badly Nathaniel felt the ache. Or maybe that was his own wish. For a time that was his. When the others had been memories and bad days and he hadn’t had to let everyone else be the one making decisions.
Abram’s blinding hated for the fact that they’d ever tried out for Millport's team swept through them.
He'd known better than to step on a court. His mother told him they’d never play again. She'd warned him to obsess from a distance and they’d disobeyed her.
He hadn’t stopped them. He’d let Nathaniel talk him into letting Neil try out.
Nathaniel breathed and shoved the feeling, his awareness, of Abram back, back, back. He couldn’t focus on the man now, not now, when he was face to face with a threat.
"Please go away," he said.
"It's a bit sudden, but I really do need an answer tonight. The Committee's been hounding me since Janie got locked up."
Nathaniel’s stomach hit his shoes at that name. He snapped his gaze from the folder to the coach's face.
"Foxes," he said. "Palmetto State University." Because he couldn’t not know. He needed to know all things exy. He burned with it.
The man - who they now knew had to be Coach David Wymack - looked surprised at how quickly they put it together. "I guess you saw the news." It was a little self-deprecating.
Technical difficulties, he'd said. It was a nice way of saying his last recruit, Janie Smalls, had tried to kill herself.
Her best friend found her bleeding out in a bathtub and got her to a hospital just in time. Last they’d heard, the girl was on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward.
Typical of a Fox, the anchorman had said in crass aside, and he wasn't exaggerating. The Palmetto State University Foxes were a team of talented rejects and junkies because Wymack only recruited athletes from broken homes.
His decision to turn the Foxhole Court into a halfway house of sorts was nice in theory, but it meant his players were fractured isolationists who couldn't get along long enough to get through a game.
They were notorious in the NCAA both for their tiny size and for getting ranked dead-last three years running.
They'd done significantly better this past year thanks to the perseverance of their captain and the strength of their new defense line, but they were still considered a joke by critics.
Even the ERC, the Exy Rules and Regulations Committee, was losing patience with their poor results.
Then former national champion Kevin Day joined the line.
Nathaniel remembered him. Dark hair and quiet eyes. Eyes that screamed as they drowned. Silent but for the bubbles.
He was the greatest thing that could happen to the Foxes and it meant they could never accept Wymack's offer.
Nathaniel hadn't seen Kevin in almost eight years and he'd never be ready to see him again.
Some doors had to stay closed. Their life depended on it.
"You can't be here," Nathaniel said, more of a croak than anything.
"Yet here I stand," Wymack said. "Need a pen?"
Yes, Stephan said. Because he was a little shit who liked anyone who would sass them a little bit.
"No," Nathaniel said, because he had common sense. "No. I'm not playing for you."
"I misheard you."
No, you fucking didn’t. Abram was pacing. He wanted to reach out and yank. He wanted to scream, more than voiceless. He wanted to make Wymack wince and back away with the force of it.
"You signed Kevin."
"And Kevin's signing you, so—"
Nathaniel didn't bother to stick around for the rest.
He bolted up the bleachers for the locker room. Metal clanged beneath his shoes, not quite loud enough to drown out Hernandez's startled query.
He 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 Five more weeks for Neil. He'd leave tonight and run until he forgot Wymack ever said those words to them.
Neil wanted to say yes, to turn around and open his arms and welcome death with a smile.
Fuck that shit. If there was one thing Nathaniel understood, it was staying alive.
He wasn't fast enough.
He was halfway through the locker room when he realized they weren’t alone. There was someone waiting for him in the lounge between him and the front door.
Light glinted off a bright yellow racquet as the stranger took a swing, Nathaniel 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 ineffectually at the floor as he tried to breathe.
He'd puke if he could only manage that first gasp, but their body refused to cooperate.
The buzzing in his ears was Wymack's furious voice, but he sounded a thousand miles away. "God damn it, Minyard. This is why we can't have nice things."
"Oh, Coach," someone said over their head. "If he was nice, he wouldn't be any use to us, would he?"
They weren’t nice, Alex wanted them to know. They weren’t nice and they weren’t going to be useful to the asshole who beamed them with a racquet.
"He's 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."
The world crackled black, then came into too-sharp focus as air finally hit their tortured lungs. Nathaniel inhaled so sharply he choked, and every wracking cough threatened to shake him apart.
He wrapped an arm around his middle to hold himself together and slanted a fierce look up at his assailant.
Wymack already said the man's name, but Nathaniel didn't need it. He'd seen this face in too many newspaper clippings to not know him on sight.
Andrew Minyard didn't look like much in person, blonde and five feet even, but Nathaniel knew better.
Andrew was the Foxes' freshman goalkeeper and their deadliest investment.
Most of the Foxes were self-destructive, whereas Andrew seemed keen on collateral damage. He'd spent three years at a juvie facility and barely avoided a second term.
Andrew was also the only person to ever turn down the first-ranked Edgar Allan University.
Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama themselves set up a meet-and-greet to welcome him to the line, but Andrew refused and joined the dead-last Foxes instead.
He never explained that choice, but everyone assumed it was because Wymack was willing to sign his family as well.
Whatever the reason, Andrew was blamed for Kevin's recent transfer.
Kevin played for Edgar Allan's Ravens until he broke his dominant hand in a skiing accident this past December.
A skiing 'accident,’ Stephan supplied whenever they thought about it. Everyone could feel his skepticism when he spoke.
An injury like that cost him his college contract, but he should have recuperated where he'd have his former team's support.
Instead he’d moved to Palmetto to be Wymack's informal assistant coach.
Three weeks prior, he’d officially signed to next year's starting line-up.
The only thing a dismal team like the Foxes could offer Kevin was the goalkeeper who'd once spurned him.
Kevin. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. The words ran through their mind at the sight of the man standing above them. James liked taunting Nathaniel.
Neil and Nathaniel had spent the spring digging up everything they could find on Andrew, wanting to understand the man who'd caught Kevin's eye.
Meeting Andrew face to face was as disorienting as it was painful.
Andrew smiled down at them and tapped two fingers to his temple in salute. "Better luck next time."
"Fuck you," Nathaniel spat. "Whose racquet did you steal?"
"Borrow." Andrew tossed it at them. "Here you go." It went clattering to the ground when Nathaniel made no move to catch it.
"Neil," Hernandez said, catching them by the arm to help them up. "Jesus, are you all right?"
What do you think, idiot? Stephan asked.
"Andrew's a bit raw on manners," Wymack said unapologetically, coming around to stand between Nathaniel and Andrew.
Andrew had no problems reading that silent warning. He threw his hands up in an exaggerated shrug and retreated to give Nathaniel more room.
Wymack watched him go before looking them over. "He break anything?"
Nathaniel pressed careful hands to his ribs and breathed, feeling the way his muscles screamed in protest. They’d enough fractured bones and left Nathaniel to deal with the aftermath to know they’d gotten lucky. "I'm fine. Coach, I'm leaving. Let me go."
He began skittering for the doorway.
"We're not done," Wymack said, stepping into his path.
"Coach Wymack," Hernandez started.
Wymack didn't let him finish. "Give us a second?"
Hernandez looked from Wymack to Nathaniel, then let go. "I'll be right out back."
Nathaniel listened to his footsteps as he left. Someone was chanting fuck on repeat. Not that he knew who it was.
There was a rattle as the door prop was kicked out of its spot and the back door swung closed with an agonizing creak.
He waited for it to click before speaking again. "I already gave you my answer. I won't sign with you."
"You didn't listen to my whole offer," Wymack said. "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 blood left their face so fast the world tilted. Nathaniel took a stumbling step back from Wymack, a desperate search for both balance and room to breathe. His duffel banged into his hip and he knotted a hand around its strap, needing something to hold onto. "You didn't bring him here."
He wanted to see the boy again. See how he’d grown and how he hadn’t. He’d been all of twelve the last time they’d seen him.
Abram wanted them to make a break for it. Keep moving, keep running. It was what their mother had taught him, first and foremost.
Nathaniel’s feet stayed rooted and Abram howled.
Wymack stared at them, hard. "Is that a problem?"
Nathaniel couldn't exactly tell him the truth, so he said, "I'm not good enough to play on the same court as a champion."
"True, but irrelevant," a new voice cut in and Nathaniel stopped breathing.
He knew better than to turn around, but he was already moving.
He should have guessed when he saw Andrew - James had guessed it and he’d rubbed in Nathaniel’s face, and he hadn’t listened - but he hadn't wanted to think it.
There was no reason for a goalkeeper to meet a potential striker. Andrew was only here because Kevin Day never went anywhere alone.
Kevin was sitting on top of the entertainment center along the back wall.
He'd pushed the TV off to one side to give himself more room and covered the space around him with papers. He'd watched this entire spectacle and, judging by the cool look on his face, was unimpressed by Nathaniel’s reaction.
It'd been years. Years since they'd watched Nathaniel’s father cut a screaming man into a hundred bloody pieces.
He knew Kevin's face as well as he knew his own, consequence of watching Kevin grow up in the public eye from a thousand or more miles away.
Everything about him was different. Everything was the same, from his dark hair and green eyes to the black number two tattooed onto his left cheekbone.
Seeing that number, Nathaneil wanted to retch.
Kevin had that number back then, too, but he'd been too young to have it done permanently. Instead he and his adopted brother Riko Moriyama wrote the numbers one and two on their faces with markers, tracing them over and over anytime they started to fade.
Nathaniel didn't understand it then, but Kevin and Riko were aiming for the stars. They were going to be famous, they promised him.
They were right. They had professional teams and played for the Ravens. The year prior, they were inducted to the national team, the US Court.
Kevin and Riko were champions, and but Nathaniel was, they were, a jumble of lies and dead-ends and half lives and half people.
Nathaniel knew Kevin couldn't recognize them. It'd been too long. They looked like Neil Josten, all dark hair dye and brown contacts.
But why else would Kevin Day be in Millport looking at him? No Class I school would stoop so low, not even the Foxes.
Their records said they’d only been playing Exy for a year. He'd been very careful this year to act like a know-nothing, even loading up on and lugging around How-To books last fall.
It had been easy to pretend at first, since they hadn't picked up a racquet in eight years. The fact they were playing a different position now than he'd played at little league helped. The fact that Neil was a new person, learning to exist as he learned to play, to be familiar.
Had he slipped? Had it been too obvious that they had past experience Neil wasn't talking about? How had they caught Kevin's eye despite their best attempts to stay hidden?
If it was that easy for Kevin, what sort of beacon were they sending to their father's people?
Neil nudged him in the side, hard. He was glaring at Kevin Day. Neil Josten had no reason to glare at Kevin Day. He’d never met the older man, all he had was hero worship.
Nathaniel smoothed his expression from one of terrified hatred into something a little more awestruck. He forced words out through numb lips. "What are you doing here?"
"Why were you leaving?" Kevin countered.
"I asked you first."
"Coach already answered that question," Kevin said, a tad impatiently. "We are waiting for you to sign the contract. Stop wasting our time."
"No," Nathaniel said and hoped his voice didn’t wavier. "There are a thousand strikers who'd jump at the chance to play with you. Why don't you bother them?" His fingers crept towards his knife tucked just out of sight.
"We saw their files," Wymack said. "We chose you."
"I won't play with Kevin."
Can’t, Neil corrected, too late. Can’t not won’t. Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t.
"You will," Kevin said, like it was set in stone. Like he didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter.
Wymack shrugged at Nathaniel. "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."
"We should have thrown away your coach's letter the second we opened it," Kevin said. "Your file is deplorable and I don't want someone with your inexperience on our court. It goes against everything we're trying to do with the Foxes this year. Fortunately for you, your coach knew better than to send us your statistics. He sent us a tape so we could see you in action instead. You play like you have everything to lose."
Fortunate, Stephan snorted. He thinks we’re lucky. Stephan did not like Kevin.
But. If Kevin remembered them, he'd know that file was a lie. He'd know about Nathaniel’s little league teams. He'd remember the scrimmage interrupted by that man's murder.
"That's why," Nathaniel whispered, half to himself.
"That's the only kind of striker worth playing with."
Relief made Nathaniel sick to his stomach. Kevin didn't recognize them and this was just a horrible coincidence. Maybe it was the world's way of showing them what could happen if they stayed in the same place for too long.
Next time it might not be Kevin. Next time it might be their father.
"It actually works in our favor that you're all the way out here," Wymack said, oblivious to Nathaniel’s internal revelation. "No one outside of our team and school board even knows we're here. We don't want your face all over the news this summer. We've got too much to deal with right now and we don't want to drag you into the mess until you're safe and settled at campus. There's a confidentiality clause in your contract, says you can't tell anyone you're ours until the season starts in August."
Nathaniel looked at Kevin again, searching for his name on Kevin's face. "It's not a good idea."
"Your opinion has been duly noted and dismissed," Wymack said. "Anything else, or are you going to start signing stuff?"
The smart thing to do was bail. And that’s what we’re going to do! Abram snapped.
Even if Kevin didn't know who he was, this was a terrible idea.
The Foxes spent too much time in the news and it'd only get worse with Kevin on the line.
They shouldn't - couldn’t - submit themself to that sort of scrutiny. They should tear Wymack's contract into a thousand pieces and leave.
Neil strained with the desire to say yes. He understood, but he didn’t. He’d been told, but it wasn’t his life and his memories and his reality.
Leaving meant living, but their way of living was survival, nothing more. It was new names and new places and never looking back. It was packing up and going, becoming someone new, as soon as they started to feel settled.
The past year, without their mother at their side, it meant being completely alone and adrift.
Nathaniel didn't know if he was ready for that. If Abram was ready for that. If they were ready for that.
Wymack said it was for five years, but they didn't have to stay that long. They could duck and run whenever they wanted. It was Neil’s traitorous thoughts infiltrating his mind.
Nathaniel held back a wince when Abram smacked Neil, hard enough to hurt if they weren’t on the inside.
He looked at Kevin again. Kevin didn't recognize him. Their past was locked in Kevin's memories. It was proof they existed, that they were real and not a collection of lies.
"Well?" Wymack demanded.
Survival instincts warred with need and twisted into an almost debilitating panic. "I have to talk to my mother," Nathaniel said, because he didn't know what else to say. He couldn’t explain the others. He couldn’t-- he wanted them to agree, before saying shit.
"What for?" Wymack asked. "You're legal, aren't you? Your file says you're nineteen."
They were eighteen, but he wasn't going to contradict the paperwork they’d forged for Neil. "I still need to ask."
"She'll be happy for you."
"Maybe," Nathaniel agreed quietly, knowing it was a lie. If their mother knew they were even considering accepting, she'd be furious.
It was probably a good thing she'd never know, but Nathaniel didn't think ‘good’ was supposed to feel like a knife in his chest. Like the cavity it would leave when pulled out, gushing blood that never slowed. "I'll talk to her tonight."
"We can give you a lift home."
"I'm fine,” Nathaniel ground out, no way these people could be allowed to know anything more about him.
Wymack looked at his Foxes. "Go wait in the car."
Kevin gathered his files and slid off his perch. Andrew waited for Kevin to catch up and led him out of the locker room. Wymack waited until they were gone, then turned a serious look on Nathaniel.
"You need one of us to talk to your parents?"
"I'm fine," Nathaniel repeated because the alternative was hysterical laughter.
Wymack didn't even try for subtlety with his next question. "Are they the ones who hurt you?"
Fuck. This was so not a conversation for Nathaniel. He stared at Wymack at a complete loss. It was blunt enough to be rude on so many levels that there wasn't a good place to start answering it, even with Neil’s understanding bubbling up.
Wymack seemed to realize that, because he pushed on before Nathaniel could respond.
"Let's try that again. The reason I'm asking is because
Coach Hernandez guesses you spend several nights a week here. He thinks there's something going on since you won't change out with the others or let anyone meet your parents. That's why he nominated you to me; he thinks you fit the line. You know what that means, right? You know the people I look for.”
Nathaniel nodded faintly, feeling Neil tug at the edge of his consciousness. This was something he should handle, afterall.
"I don't know if he's right," he continued, "but something tells me he's not far off. Either way, the locker room's going to be shut down once the school year ends. You're not going to be able to come here during the summer. If your parents are a problem for you, we'll move you to South Carolina early."
"You'll do what?" Nathaniel asked, surprised.
"Andrew's lot stays in town for summer break," Wymack explained. "They crash with Abby, our team nurse. Her place is full, but you could stay with me until the dorm opens in June. My apartment's not made for two people but I've got a couch that's a little softer than a rock.”
Fuck no. Oliver was one of the only ones who’d stayed with Nathaniel over the years. He was the one who surfaced, quiet and watching, when they were left alone with an adult man.
"We'll tell everyone you're there for conditional early practice. Chances are half of them will believe it. You won't be able to fool the rest, but that doesn't matter. Foxes are Foxes for a reason and they know we wouldn't sign you if you didn't qualify. That doesn't mean they know specifics. It's not my place to ask, and I'm sure as hell not going to tell them."
It took two tries to get the word out. "Why?" Because people didn’t do kind shit. Not for Nathaniel, not for Neil, not for anyone. Not anyone as broken and fractured as they were.
Coach Wymack was quiet for a minute. "Did you think I made the team the way it is because I thought it would be a good publicity stunt? It's about second chances, Neil. Second, third, fourth, whatever, as long as you get at least one more than what anyone else wanted to give you."
They’d heard Wymack referred to as an idealistic idiot by more than one person, but it was hard to listen to him and not believe that he was sincere. Neil was incredulous. Nathaniel was filled with disdain.
Why Wymack set himself up for disappointment time and time again, Nathaniel didn't know. He would have given up on the Foxes years ago.
Neil wanted to know. Wanted to know so badly he burned with it. There had never been anyone to offer him kindness. He was the only one who’d never met their mother. Met Mary.
Wymack gave him a second to think before asking again, "Are your parents going to be a problem?"
It was too much to take a chance on, but too much to walk away from. It hurt when Neil nodded, but it hurt more to see that tired look settle in Wymack's eyes. It wasn't the pity he thought he could see in Hernandez from time to time, but something familiar that said Wymack understood what it cost to be Neil.
He knew what it was like to have to fight to wake up and keep moving every day. Neil doubted the man could ever really understand, but even that tiny bit was more than he'd ever gotten in his life. Neil had to look away.
Neil, Abram said, hard and demanding, Neil don’t you dare. He made a grab for control, for front, but Neil just… dodged him.
"Your graduation ceremony is May eleventh, according to your coach," Wymack continued. "We'll have someone pick you up from Upstate Regional Airport Friday the twelfth."
Neil almost pointed out that he hadn't agreed to anything (yet), but the words died in his throat as he realized he really was going.
No, no we’re not, Abram snapped. Grabbing Neil’s arm and shaking him. Neil blinked at Wymack for a moment before settling back into the outside.
"Keep the papers tonight," Wymack offered, pushing his folder at Neil again. This time Neil took it. "Your coach can fax the signed copies to me on Monday. Welcome to the line."
"Thank you" seemed appropriate, but Neil couldn't manage it. There was too much noise in his head. Voices clambering over each other. Some of them excited, others disdainful, Abram, furious. Nathaniel was silent.
He kept his stare on the floor. Wymack didn't wait long for a response before going in search of Hernandez.
The back door banged shut behind him, and Neil's nerves broke. He ran for the bathroom and made it to a stall just in time to dry-heave into a toilet.
Abram was telling him all about their mother's rage if she knew what he was doing. The savage yank of herhands in his hair. All these years spent trying to keep moving and hidden, and now he was going to destroy their hard work.
She would never forgive them for this and he knew it, and that did nothing at all to help the clenching feeling in his gut.
"I'm sorry," he gasped out between wet coughs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
So take it back, Abram pleaded, knowing Neil wouldn’t. Knowing he’d lost the battle in the face of Nathaniel’s silence.
He stumbled over to the sinks to rinse his mouth out and stared himself down in the mirrors that hung above them.
Black hair and brown eyes, plain and average. No one to notice in a crowd, no one to stick in one's memory. Neil Josten.
That was what he wanted, but he wondered if it could hold up against news cameras.
He grimaced a little at his reflection and leaned closer to the mirror, tugging hard at chunks of hair to check his roots. They were dark enough that he relaxed and leaned back a bit.
"University," he said quietly.
Death. Oliver said. Quiet and simple. It seemed he was feeling verbose.
Neil unzipped their duffel bag enough to put Wymack's paperwork away. When he returned to the main room, the two coaches were waiting on him. Neil said nothing to them but went past them to the door.
Andrew opened the back door of Hernandez's SUV when Neil passed and gave Neil a knowing, taunting smile. "Too good to play with us, too good to ride with us. Not even going to show off that pretty jewelry you were hiding?" So Andrew had seen the knife.
Neil flicked him a cool look sped up to a jog. By the time he reached the far edge of the parking lot he was running.
He left the stadium and the Foxes and their too-good promises behind him, but the unsigned contract in his bag felt like an anchor around his neck.
Maybe he wanted to drown, anyway.