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Neil was out running when it really began to hit. He had been feeling a bit off during practice, but chalked it up to anxiety in the face of the Foxes’ upcoming match against Edgar Allen. However, when practice continued and Neil didn’t feel any less antsy than he had before, he decided that he needed to go for a run. After a brief conversation with Andrew, who wasn’t in the mood to run and would supervise Kevin, Neil was off on one of his favorite paths, looping through campus and the outskirts on a run just long enough to take his mind off of things yet not long enough to leave him too sore for practice the next day.
Neil was frustrated to find out that this was apparently not one of the times where running could help shake him out of his own thoughts. Instead, Neil found himself replaying the Foxes’ last match against the Ravens, his own conversation with Ichirou, the sound of the bullet piercing Riko’s flesh, and the image of Lola cackling as his father threatened to break his legs.
Aiming to prevent further destruction to his already damaged psyche, Neil put in extra speed for the last mile or so, attempting to drown out the sound of his nightmares from the past with the pounding of his feet against the pavement and his ragged breathing.
When he stumbles up to his dorm room roughly five minutes later, he is uncharacteristically out of breath and feels like he ran for much longer than he had. His head swims as he drops to the floor, roughly unlaces his shoes and then tosses them a short distance away. Neil then sits with his knees pulled up to his chest,his head resting on them, eyes half-closed, and tries to make them focus on his surroundings. Stop it, He tells himself. You’re fine.
Neil’s not sure how long he’s been sitting on the floor when a knock sounds on the door of his dorm room, but it’s long enough that Neil’s back feels stiff from sitting on the floor in the same position for an extended amount of time. Neil stands up off the floor slowly and cautiously, but apparently his legs have now decided they can continue to hold him, so he stands the rest of the way less carefully and then takes a minute to stretch his back and glance around the dorm. As he’s walking to unlock the door, where another knock is sounding, he pauses to be grateful that nobody was home when he came in from his run. It’s not that he would have particularly minded if Andrew was there, but Neil knew that despite Andrew’s constant reminders that he “Doesn’t give a shit,” Andrew would spend the remainder of the day – and probably the next few as well – critically gazing at Neil, his hazel eyes looking for a sign that Neil wasn’t quite as fine as he claimed. So, in the long run, it was probably best that Andrew wasn’t here for this particular little episode. Neil was fine. I’m fine. Breathe. Blink. Walk. Door.
Neil’s startled out of his train of thought when a knock on the door sounds for the third time, and he takes a deep breath before hurrying the rest of the distance to the door and unlocking it to see Matt’s smiling face.
“Hey!” Matt greets, stepping inside after Neil opens the door wide enough for him to step through.
“Hi,” Neil replies, still mentally cataloging the pattern of his breathing and making sure that he doesn’t give away anything concerning his current mental state.
“Do you guys have any drink glasses?” Matt asks, meandering off into the living room before turning to look back at Neil. “Where’s Andrew and Kevin?”
Neil shrugs, “The court, I think. Why do you want glasses?”
“Nicky broke our last clean one, and we’re all too lazy to do the dishes,” Matt grins cheekily, and Neil rolls his eyes.
“I think we have a few, I’ll go grab some.”
Matt just nods in response, getting distracted as he apparently sees something interesting outside the dorm’s living room window. When Neil reaches the kitchen, Matt is chuckling to himself and looking down at the street below.
“The soccer players decided to start a water balloon fight in the parking lot apparently,” Matt chuckles from his position at the window as Neil heads towards the cabinet where they keep the drink glasses. Neil’s mind is still distracted, the light a bit too harsh for his pounding head and his legs a bit too wobbly to move confidently.
“That’s a fuck ton of water balloons,” Matt laughs. “I feel sorry for whichever sorry ass had to dish out the money.”
Neil mutters a “Mmhmm” that he knows Matt probably can’t hear. He vaguely notices that his hands are shaking as he reaches to open the cabinet, but doesn’t think much of it until he attempts to grab a glass and drops it, the sound of shattering glass piercing through his dazed thoughts.
Neil looks down and is somewhat surprised to see that the glass actually broke, despite hearing the shattering of the glass. He stares at the counter, now covered in shattered glass, without really comprehending what he’s seeing, but eventually he notices a dull pain in his hands. Neil looks down to see that he had apparently tried to clumsily pick up some of the shattered glass pieces at some point, although he doesn’t remember when. Both of his hands are bloodied and shaking, and Neil stares down at them in horror.
Neil knows that the cuts aren’t as bad as they look, knows that it’s just the blood that makes them look bad. Still, the panic that began earlier in the day finally hits a breaking point and Neil slides to the floor, still staring at his hands in panic. He hears Lola’s voice in his head, sees his father standing in front of him with his favorite knife, hears Riko’s laughter as one of the Ravens breaks a thumb, sees Ichirou, Tetsuji, and Riko standing in front of him with grins as sharp as knives. All at once, he can’t breathe.
“Neil? What’s going on, I thought I heard–” Matt starts, stepping into the kitchen and faced with the sight of Neil, bloodied and slumped against the fridge with a look of pure terror on his face.
“Neil!” Matt gasps, crouching in front of Neil with concern in his eyes. Neil, however, does not see Matt but Lola, coming to burn more scars into his face with her dashboard lighter and flinches back, hitting his head against the fridge behind him in the process.
“Neil, stay with me. It’s ok,” Matt murmured while backing up a few feet to give Neil some room. “Neil, it’s Matt. You’re in Palmetto.”
Neil stays slumped against the fridge, his breathing becoming more and more ragged as the image of his father and mother appear before him, his mother with blood dripping from her abdomen and out of her mouth, his father with a grin that betrays his insanity and a bloodied knife in one hand, gun in the other.
“Look at what you did, Nathaniel!” His father taunts, moving forward to plunge the knife in his mother’s wound again and again and again.
“Stop,” Neil whimpers at the vision of his father. His eyes are blurry with tears and fear. Neil thinks he can hear a voice that sort of sounds like Matt somewhere in the distance, but he’s not sure and the image of his father and mother in front of him are far more important.
“Why didn’t you keep running?” His mother asks as more blood trickles out of her mouth. “I told you to keep running! This is all your fault… all your fault… all your fault!”
Neil sobs and clenches his fist, burying his nails in the already stinging cuts on his palms. Neil only realizes he hasn’t been breathing properly again when he suddenly gets the urge to breathe, and gasps out air as black spots dot his vision. He thinks he can hear Matt again, but it sounds like the Matt in his head just said Andrew’s name, and that’s not right because Andrew and Matt aren’t friends. Still, as Neil drifts in and out of consciousness, he hears half of the imaginary conversation between Matt and Andrew.
“Fuck, Andrew I don’t know! He dropped a glass and his hands are bloody and he’s sobbing and collapsing and I don’t think he can hear me!” There’s a brief pause, but then dream Matt’s voice is back and sounding more urgent than ever. “He’s blacked out. Fuck, where the fuck are you?! I don’t know how to help him!”
Just as the pain of his nails digging into his hands finally registers and Neil feels that he is about to vomit, there is something unfamiliar being laid against his cheek and a voice finding its way through his shattering brain.
“Neil,” the voice says, and Neil thinks he’s hallucinating again because the voice sounds a lot like Andrew, but Andrew’s with Kevin at the court.
Neil attempts to take a deep breath in order to respond, but all that comes up is a shaky sob and another memory of Lola.
A few seconds later, the same voice says, “Neil.” And then a pause. “Abram.”
Finally, Neil opens his eyes. He blearily sees Matt sitting on the floor by the entrance to the kitchen and comprehends that the thing pressed to his cheek must be Matt’s phone, and therefore Andrew is actually speaking.
“Andrew,” Neil croaks. “I-”
“Shut up and listen,” Andrew replies, his bored, flat tone a welcome distraction. “Breathe. In and out, Abram. You’re on the filthy floor of our kitchen and no one is there to hurt you.”
“I need you,” Neil chokes around another sob.
“I’m on my way,” Is Andrew’s response.
“What about Kevin?” Neil asks, his thoughts becoming more and more coherent the more he talks to Andrew.
“Left him at the court.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t move fast enough,” Andrew responds. His voice is tight with anger and what Neil assumes is a mix of worry and tension, although to anyone else it would sound as apathetic as ever.
“How long?” Neil asks.
“I’m around the corner from the dorms.”
Neil makes a vague noise of assent and closes his eyes, listening to Andrew’s breathing on the other end of the line and concentrating on matching his own breathing to Andrew’s. He can hear Andrew turn off the Maserati’s engine, can hear him pull open the car door and then the slam when he closes it, can hear the whoosh of the dorm’s front door opening and the pounding of hard-soled shoes against the metal of the stairs, can hear the creaking of their dorm room door opening through both the phone and with his own ears, and when Andrew appears in the kitchen doorway, stepping past Matt to get to Neil and immediately sitting down on the floor with him and placing a strong hand on the back of his neck, Neil knows he’s going to be okay.