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Neil was used to the quiet of the court at this time of night. He was used to being the only one here or one of the only ones. Kevin had needed to change his schedule for when he came to practice and Neil had continued with later sessions on his own. Some nights Andrew would join him. He would sit on the bleachers and sometimes lay down and nap there while he went through drills and practiced his shots.
Tonight was not one of those nights.
Andrew had been busy with schoolwork over the last few days. As odd as Neil knew it sounded to the rest of the team, Andrew did care. Especially now that Neil was captain of the team there had been a noted shift in Andrew’s attitude towards playing. He still didn’t care about exy and Neil was sure he probably never truly would.
But Andrew cared about him. Andrew cared enough about him to put in effort towards the stick ball he found so annoying. Andrew would listen to him and Kevin talk over games in the dorm. He would put up with their obsessions even when he told them to shut up from time to time.
Neil smiled as he struck into an empty goal for the umpteenth time in the night. He was almost done. He could imagine the crickets singing outside and Andrew’s disgruntled expression when he would come in to finally go to bed. He needed to change out and take a shower before he got anywhere near the dorms or Andrew might just kill him himself.
The thought of it made Neil’s smile grow wider.
When he first became a fox he’d thought he would die here. One day he would need to run or he was going to be caught by his father and he would he killed. One day he would need to pack his bag and take off and pretend Neil Josten didn’t exist. He’d thought the memories of playing a game or two on a real exy team would be enough for him before he would never play it again.
He’d been wrong.
Instead of running, Neil traced the edges of a key and found something to call home. He outgrew his duffel bag and he made Neil Josten real.
His father was dead. Riko was dead. He had a deal to keep himself and the ones he cared about alive. There were recruiters for pro teams watching almost all of their games. The Foxes had been doing well this season and the credit was coming out to him.
Wymack didn’t let him on press to talk about it.
Neil didn’t mind.
They had their new members and the whole team felt like it needed to he restructured. He’d just about driven himself insane looking at the lineups of everything to figure out the best plays they could make. Kevin had tried to help him in the beginning but the two of them had only ended up arguing over the potentials of everyone on the team.
Neil wasn’t going to apologize for believing in the team. He wasn’t going to apologize for believing they could be strong or that they could learn. He’d offered night practices to them but none of them had taken the offer yet. That was another reason he’d taken to practicing when he did. He needed to know that he would have the time to work on his own skills and movements in addition to training others if they chose to come.
The freshmen were foxes through and through. All of them came in with their own baggage and issues. The team needed to learn to communicate with each other all over again and this time they didn’t have the extremes pushed onto them by the Moriyamas.
Small victories, even if Neil thought it might have been easier the first time.
He hadn’t envied Dan back then trying to hold everything together and he certainly respected her more now standing where she had been. She was already one of the strongest people he knew but seeing exactly what she dealt with made it hit all the more.
One of the freshmen wouldn’t talk about his past at all. He shut down everything that came near the territory and on one hand Neil understood. Of course he understood. He had been there not that long ago and he understood fine the importance of burying everything.
That hadn’t stopped him from venting his frustrations on the roof with Andrew sitting for a smoke beside him.
“You did the same thing.”
“I at least made things up to fill the space. This is just silence. It’s different.”
“It’s honest.”
“It’s not like you to like a new person.”
“He’s quiet. Quiet isn’t irritating.”
That didn’t mean Andrew trusted them. Neil had seen the way he would watch them when no one else was paying attention. He’d been on the receiving end of that stare far too many times to not know what it was. The assessment Andrew would give while he was trying to figure out if someone was a threat or if they were safe enough to keep around near the family the foxes had created for themselves. Neil knew the jury was still out on what he was going to decide but that was fine. It wasn’t like Andrew had made his choice on him until he’d proven himself. The freshmen just needed a chance to do that too. They needed the time to trust them and open up.
None of them were going to force that. They all understood the importance of it coming out on its own.
Even when it had exploded in his own face when he’d refused to open up before.
Neil landed another strike and felt pride in his chest at watching his own skills improve. He was sure if Kevin was here he would have something to say about his form but Neil was alone and so he could enjoy it for however long he wanted. There had been jokes made about the FBI in front of the new freshmen. The team never liked really when he joked about the things that happened to him but Neil was used to it. He knew that it was extreme for the rest of them but he’d never been a stranger to it. There was a certain look Kevin and Andrew both took on when he would make his quips and that was the one thing that made him pull them back.
Still, he could say that he tried.
He began packing his things for the night when he heard the sound of a door opening deeper in the stadium. Neil paused immediately. All of his instincts kicked into gear in the space between heartbeats. Danger raced through his thoughts and immediately Neil was checking his exits and what chances he had for a fight right now. If there was a gun or multiple attackers he was going to lose. His phone was in the locker room. He could try to get to it but he couldn’t be sure he would make it in time. He was fast but he wasn’t faster than a bullet.
Had he told Andrew what time he would be back tonight? Would he come looking for him if he was late?
His chances at survival ran through his thoughts on a cycle. It was rehearsed. Even though he was safe now with the foxes Neil still had the instinct to run and save himself from danger. He knew how to fight now and he was happy to stand his ground to defend his team but he knew when to draw back if he would lose.
He held his racket tighter in his hands and readied himself for who he might see. Some of his father’s old men that hadn’t been taken in yet by the FBI. Ravens who wanted another chance to get revenge against the Fox that ripped them down off their pedestal.
Instead, Neil saw his freshmen.
“Hey Captain.”
Neil sighed the tension out of his chest.
“I wasn’t expecting you guys.”
“We know you’ve been coming here every night waiting for us.” Jack, the quiet one, watched him while he spoke. “We thought it might be good to come for once.”
Ashley, a girl with a lot of promise but a lot of anger, offered him a smile that felt forced. Neil wondered if there was a bet at play in what they were really doing here. It didn’t seem like them.
“We got a present for you.”
Something about the way she said it made a chill run down his spine. His instincts told him to run but he’d promised that he would stay. He promised that he was going to take care of this team when he became its captain. If that meant dealing with freshmen who unsettled him then that was what it meant. He would figure it out. He would be fine. He’d handled worse.
“Do I have time to get changed first? I was about to head back.”
It was late. He couldn’t check the time but he knew he’d been here for at least a few hours. If he was going to be later then Andrew would want to know so he wouldn’t come get him. The last time he’d lost track of time during a practice and Andrew had come to fetch him he’d been rather unhappy with him. It had been tense silence while Neil knew he worried him and Andrew wouldn’t put it into words. They communicated with their silence between their nothing and Neil had quietly promised him that it wouldn’t happen again.
“It’s kind of something that needs timed, if you don’t mind.”
Eric reminded him a lot of Seth if he was being honest. Maybe that was part of why Neil wanted things to work for him here on the team. Maybe it had nothing to do with it. All the same, the words now made his instinct stand on edge.
He took a breath and nodded all the same.
“Lead the way.”
Neil carried his racket with him and followed them back to the stadium snack area. They made their way back to the kitchen.
“What, did you guys make food or something here?”
“Something like that.”
In a split second Jack moved faster than Neil had ever seen him and ripped the racket from his hand. He tried to adjust to fight back from whatever was about to happen only to feel metal collide hard with his spine. The echoing ring of the pot that was used as a weapon filled his head but all Neil could focus on was the numbness that shot down through his legs when he tried to move. In that single moment, he couldn’t hold himself up. His legs dropped from beneath him and he fell face forward to the tile of the kitchen. Panic seized his chest as he tried to curl his toes and felt nothing.
“Get him up. It’s only going to be at a boil for so much longer.”
“What are you doing?!”
All he could see in front of him was Lola. He wasn’t being hurt by his teammates. He was being hurt by his father’s men. All over again.
“You’re not the only one who grew up learning how to hurt people.”
Eric grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up to his knees. Neil bit back a sound at the pain that flared from his back to his toes but he could have cried with the relief that once he was upright he could feel his toes.
“The Butcher’s son, a run away, famous, taking power for himself.”
Jack’s voice was low.
“My father worked for yours. You left. All of the rest of us were punished. Now you’re being like them? Like the Ravens?”
His heart stuttered at the thought. That he might have taken over Captain of the Foxes to be like Riko had bile in his throat.
“You’re wrong.”
“You can’t Captain if you can’t call commands.”
Ashley held another pot in her hands. It was steaming. He could hear the bubbling boil from here.
“Can’t say any other lies either.”
Jack and Eric both held him. he knew how to fight and he knew how to get out of a position like this but their grips were strong and every movement he made sent numbness washing down his legs. He couldn’t run from this. He couldn’t fight from this.
“You don’t have to do this.”
He had to try.
“We do.”
“Our parents free us if we do.”
They held his mouth open. Neil tried to trash and get himself away but the water came spilling over the edge of the pot and into his mouth and throat.
It burned. It scalded the whole way down and Neil choked on it. He thought he might have breathed some of it with the way his lungs felt like they were lit on fire. Tears sprung into his eyes and he couldn’t stop them. He tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
By the time the water finished pouring he was doubling over and heaving. Spluttering water that looked tainted red on the tile of the floor. All he could taste was blood. He was shaking. It was too much like before. It felt too much like Baltimore.
Hands grabbed him again and Neil couldn’t even yell at them to stop. He couldn’t get his legs to listen to him to kick out or run to get him away. He couldn’t do anything as they dragged him over to a janitor’s closet and tossed him inside.
“Clean everything up.” Ashley stared at him as she spoke. “We can’t have any evidence. Then we leave. Eric you set up the dorm right?”
“Looks like we were kidnapped. No evidence left behind.”
“Good. Lock him in and let’s go.”
Ashley and Eric both left. Jack stayed at the door watching him for a moment. Neil tried to find something he could grab for a weapon.
The closet was nearly empty.
“Sorry, Captain. It had to be like this.”
The door locked shut and Neil was trapped in the dark. The closet walls felt like they were closing in around him. He tried once to reach for the knob to see if he could break it and escape only for his back to lock itself with pain and drag him back down. He could try to escape and paralyze himself or he could wait.
Neil had no choice but to wait.
To listen to the sounds of the freshmen cleaning everything they’d done and their walk out of the stadium. he thought about the odds of all of them having background tied to his. He thought about the chances that they were planted into the path of the Foxes for this exact reason. To take him down. To kill him. To end the fight he talked his way out of.
He lost track of time after that. Sitting curled with his back pressed against the wall of the closet. It hurt but Neil knew pain. He knew it so well he thought he might go crazy without it. That split moment where he couldn’t feel his legs kept flashing through his mind. His lungs kept trying to forget how to do their job and he wanted to curse himself. He had dealt with worse. He could still move. He could feel his legs, he could move them, he wasn’t paralyzed, he could still run.
Being trapped in the closet wasn’t helping him calm down.
He needed to prove to himself that he could still run. He needed to prove that he wasn’t going to die in this closet even though he knew he wouldn’t. The team would need to report in the morning for practice. He wasn’t able to yell or scream but someone would notice he was missing. Andrew would notice when he wasn’t there in the morning. They would search. They would find his things even though the freshmen got rid of them from the court. Andrew would know. Andrew would find him. Andrew would keep him safe.
He just had to wait out the hours it took until sunrise and he would be okay.
A traitor in the back of his mind whispered the thought that he might never speak again.
It sounded like his mother.
Every time he swallowed he felt the pain again. The burns that traveled down his throat and felt like they might have melted his skin. Just the mental image of that made him want to gag but getting sick was only going to make it worse. His throat hadn’t collapsed and it wasn’t sealed shut otherwise he wouldn’t be able to breathe and he would be dead.
He could breathe.
He was fine.
Even though the air felt like it was too little and he was fighting to get a full breath into his lungs. It was just the fear responsible for that, nothing else. He was just being a coward. he was better than this.
He wished he had his phone. He wished he’d texted Andrew. He wished he’d listened to his gut and not followed the freshmen back when he knew they were being strange.
The dark of the closet shrank in around him until it was the only thing Neil could focus on. He tried to rely on his imagination to plan how he would communicate what happened to his team when they found him. He was going to end up in a hospital and while he didn’t want to be prodded on or examined by doctors, he didn’t want to lose his voice forever either. If he couldn’t speak then he couldn’t be team Captain. He couldn’t continue on in the way Dan wanted him to. With an injury like this part of him wondered if he would make it to a pro team. A demotion of his rank, injury related or not, was going to be frowned upon and not look good to any of the recruiters. If he couldn’t secure his position on a pro team then he was going to die. He wouldn’t be able to bargain his way out of his hole again. He wouldn’t have anything else to offer.
Neil shuddered and tried to breathe. He tried to swallow and ignore the panic in his head that said his throat was closing up and the air was running out.
His imagination showed him his father in front of him. The way he had laughed and the threat he’d given of taking away his ability to run. He had failed that night but members of his own team had almost done it tonight. In one strike they had nearly taken everything away from him.
If he was paralyzed or hurt or moved wrong in this closet and did more damage to himself than he’d already experienced, would Ichirou send someone into his hospital room and shoot him there? Would he poison him? Would he make it look like an accident? A suicide?
Would he frame it on Andrew so he couldn’t take revenge?
A choked sob escaped him before he could stop it. The thought of Andrew alone in a prison cell for life because he was framed for his murder made him sick. it wasn’t like the Moriyamas didn’t have the power for it. That much had already been proven after every battle they had with Riko. The foxes would know the truth of what happened but Andrew wouldn’t be able to fight his way through a court case if there was fabricated evidence and his history was put on display. he would go to prison and he would let himself rot there.
Never before did Neil crave Andrew’s touch. He needed to feel him beside him. He needed to know that they were going to be together again and that it was okay. That it wasn’t over and he wasn’t dead and Andrew wasn’t in prison for his murder that hadn’t even happened yet.
He was scared to move.
Scared that if he breathed too deep he would feel his spine sever itself and he would never walk or run again.
There was a sound on the other side of the closet door. A door. Someone walking.
Was it morning? Was it Wymack coming in to get ready for the day? Was it Kevin wanting to get an early start? Had it been that long already? Did one of the freshmen forget something? Were they coming back to kill him so he couldn’t communicate what they did?
He strained his ears to tell. Part of him wanted to kick at the door or knock on it until it opened so he could see who it was and get this fixed here and now. Another part of him worried if the freshmen had called on the Moriyamas and had his death sentence on the other side of this door.
He listened to the footsteps walk to the court and stop. He counted the seconds it took before they were vanishing away and he heard the swish of the locker room door. He hadn’t even realized how well sound traveled through the stadium when it was empty like this. Neil listened to every sound from the other person until he heard a voice filter through
“Have you seen Neil?”
Andrew.
“He’s not in the stadium. His phone was on the floor in the locker room. He’s careless but not that careless. Have you seen him? Did you see anything when you were here?”
It was Andrew.
Hope fluttered dangerously in his chest and Neil mustered his courage to move enough that he could knock his fist into the closet door. The talking stopped the moment he made contact and he knew Andrew was trying to locate it.
He knocked again. Harder this time.
Footsteps turned careful outside the door and Neil could imagine the knife that was slid into Andrew’s palm. How he would be approaching the door to make sure it was actually safe before he reached out for it. Neil just kept knocking. Even when the doorknob rattled and proved itself locked.
“Neil?”
He knocked twice. A silent code to try to tell Andrew that it was him.
There was silence beyond the door for only a handful of seconds before Neil could hear the lock mechanism being picked. It only took a moment for the door to click and the knob to turn. For light to come spilling into the closet and for Neil to see the one person he’d been needing to see since the world was made dark on him.
Andrew froze the moment he saw him.
Neil knew he was a sight. He wanted so badly to reach out to him but he knew Andrew needed time and he knew how he was with touch. No matter how badly Neil wanted to cling to him and bury himself against Andrew’s chest, he wouldn’t. Not unless he had permission.
He couldn’t even ask.
Andrew knelt in front of him.
“What hurts?”
He pointed to his throat.
“Can you speak?”
He shook his head and shifted his legs again. He curled his toes through his shoes and breathed at feeling them move.
Andrew caught the fidget.
“What else hurts?”
Neil pointed to his back. Something flickered over Andrew’s eyes the moment he put together why he was moving the way he was. He watched his partner pull back and Neil barely stopped himself from reaching out to chase him. Andrew’s phone was in his hand and pressed to his ear in a second but the way he was watching him, Neil knew he’d seen it.
“Wake up Abby and Wymack. Get them here. Now. Neil is hurt.”
He ended the call without anything else. Neil tried to breathe. Andrew was here. Andrew was going to protect him. He was alright. He could breathe. He could still move. He wasn’t going to die.
“You were late. I came looking for you.”
Neil didn’t know if he should try to laugh or cry. For the first time, Andrew lifted his hand toward him and hesitated just an inch away.
“Yes or no?”
Neil nodded his yes and Andrew’s hand made way to the back of his neck immediately.
“Don’t move until Abby is here.”
He could wait a while longer to try and bury himself against Andrew’s skin.
“You’re not doing practices alone anymore. You come back when Kevin leaves.”
Neil nodded.
“When you can speak, you’re telling me who did this.”
Andrew would kill them.
“When they get here they’ll want you out of the closet. Are you able to do it alone or do you want help? Once for alone, two for help.”
Neil knocked on the floor twice. Andrew nodded.
They didn’t need to say it outloud, they both understood.
He was safe now. He was okay now. It was over now.
He was safe.