Chapter Text
“Come on, kid, you gotta wake up now.”
Neil didn't know where he was. His head throbbed. His forehead was resting against something cool and fiery pain pulsed in his cheek. Tape and stitches tugged at the sore skin of his abdomen as he shifted in his seat. Aches flared across his shoulders and soreness spiked hotly down his stiff legs. With effort, he peeled his eyes open and blinked up at the man leaning over him.
His first thought was, Why is it taking me so long to wake up? His second was, Where the hell am I?
His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and his throat felt like it was coated in glue. Crust clung to his eyelashes and the world wobbled as he tried to take in his surroundings. Neil recognized the familiar hollow feeling that followed a night spent under the influence of whatever drug Riko wanted to watch Neil experience. That answered the first question at least.
“Kid?” the man asked again, his voice too loud and impatient.
“What?” was all Neil managed to mumble.
The man frowned at him. “This is your stop. You have to get off here.”
“What?” Neil lifted his heavy head, peeling his sweaty forehead from the window, and looked out into the misty night. Where the hell am I? He squinted blearily and his heart iced over when he caught sight of an orange neon sign across the street that said “The Fox Den Tavern.” Memories filtered back to him. A flame melting the tattooed skin on his cheekbone. Riko's voice. Jean's hands.
They'd put him on a bus to South Carolina- to Palmetto State University of all places. Disowning him wasn't enough, apparently. Riko wanted to humiliate him as well.
There was something he was forgetting. He could feel the memory rustling under the thick fog lingering from his drugged sleep.
“Uh, you need me to call someone for you?” the man asked.
Neil patted his pockets and felt the familiar hard shape of his cell phone. “No, I'm fine.”
He unfolded his battered body from the seat and ambled down the narrow aisle under the flickering overhead lights that were dotted with dead flies. The man wished him luck as he stumbled down the steps onto the sidewalk. On the other side of the street was a row of bookstores, sporting goods stores, pizza parlors, fast food restaurants, and coffeehouses. Everything screamed orange and Foxes, Foxes, Foxes. Neil thought he was going to be sick and not because he could still smell his own burnt flesh.
As he stood there trying to process what he was seeing, the bus door hissed closed and the man drove away into the night.
Neil was alone for the first time in eight years and he was far from everything he knew. A thrill of terror shook through him, but he walked forward anyway.
He filled his lungs with fresh air like he used to dream of doing and it almost hurt. The stale air conditioning in the Nest had been all he breathed since the night he was handed over to the master. The smell of wet concrete and damp earth filled the air and a drizzling rain turned the streetlamps fuzzy. The coolness of the spring night cleared his head a little, enough for him to take stock of his injuries: bruises on his back, a long wound stitched closed across his belly, and a melted patch of skin on his left cheek.
Looking down, he noticed there was a large smear of bright orange paint across the front of his black long-sleeved shirt and it made his blood boil. The red patch of ruined skin on his face and the orange paint sent a clear message: Nathaniel Wesninski was no longer a Raven. Once the news of this spread, his life would be over.
Neil stopped under the awning of a closed bookstore and pulled out his phone. Shock kept his mind pleasantly numb, which eased the mortification he was sure he should have been feeling as he found Kevin Day on his contact list. He hit “call” and held the phone to his ear, staring blankly at a group of girls crossing the street while huddled together under a white umbrella littered with orange fox paw prints.
Three rings later, Kevin's frightened voice crawled into his ear. “Nathaniel?”
“I need a place to stay,” Neil said flatly.
“What's going on? What do you mean?”
“Kevin, shut the fuck up,” another voice grumbled in the background.
“I'm in Fox territory,” Neil explained. It sounded bizarre to his own ears.
“What?” Kevin's horror was apparent.
“Did you lose your hearing, too?” Neil hissed. “I'm somewhere in your godforsaken town and I need a place to stay tonight.”
“Andrew, get up. Andrew! We have to go,” Kevin said away from the receiver. “Nathaniel, can you see any street names? Stores?”
Neil inhaled slowly through his nose, trying to ease the fury in his chest. “I'm outside a bookstore called... 'Foxfire.'”
“Okay. We'll be there in ten minutes, just stay put.”
Neil ignored the “we” and rolled his eyes at Kevin's instructions to stay there. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go. The call disconnected and, as he pulled the phone away from his ear, he noticed there was a new message in his inbox.
From Jean, there was a simple text that said, You are no longer my concern.
Harsh words, but Neil knew what was behind them. It was Jean's way of saying good-bye, saying that Neil should worry only about himself. He stopped and waited for the panic to set in, but there was nothing besides faint echoes of Jean's softly accented voice in the cavernous void in his chest.
It was almost midnight, almost Sunday, and it had been approximately forty hours since everyone heard the news that Kevin Day was signing with the Palmetto State Foxes as a striker instead of an assistant coach. Neil squinted down at his shoes and tilted his head a little. His body was sore, but nothing was broken luckily. Friday night's beating had been relatively light since Riko had been more focused on the long-term plan rather than the short-term fun.
Once Riko got it in his mind that Kevin had started to outgrow him as an Exy player, Riko became desperate to keep him in line. Last December, Riko cured his fear of being bested on the court by breaking Kevin's hand, but then Kevin vanished and that hadn't been part of the plan.
As furious as Riko had been to lose Kevin, it was nothing compared to his wrath now that Kevin had announced his intention to step back onto the court as a striker. Riko had tried to take Exy from Kevin and now Kevin was reaching out to take it back, which was a surprisingly bold move. Neil had been impressed for all of two minutes before Riko turned on him.
Neil clenched his eyes shut and let the waves of nausea and horror pass over him like heavy water as he remembered vividly. Riko had burned off the tattooed three from Neil's cheekbone, dragged his favorite blade across Neil's stomach, and let Neil try pathetically to stop the bleeding with his hands while Riko brought a knotted rope down heavily against his back until Riko got bored of watching. Jean barely had time to stitch Neil up before Riko came back with a glass of water that tasted salty and wrong. Neil drank it obediently only because it was better than being forced.
Neil couldn't remember who put him on the bus, but Riko's last words to him came rushing back.
“Kevin is your ticket back into Evermore. Bring him home and we'll find you a good plastic surgeon for your face. Doesn't that sound nice, Nathaniel? No one has to know you left the Nest at all.”
Neil opened his eyes and forcibly relaxed his shoulders. The promise of a panic attack whispered along the wobbly edges of his mind and he was almost relieved to be feeling anything at all. Even crippling panic was better than the mental abyss he sometimes lost himself in after a particularly brutal night.
An expensive-looking black car screeched to a crooked halt at the curb a little ways down the street from where he was standing. Neil watched the doors open and his pulse quickened as his former teammate stepped out. Kevin wore a thick coat and flannel pajama bottoms that were tucked into his sneakers. He looked haggard and shell-shocked as he took in the sight of Neil from the short distance. He didn't approach him, though, until a shorter, black-clad man with blond hair stepped lazily out of the driver's side and yawned into his fist. Neil knew this was Andrew Minyard, the one Riko had wanted to bear the number five. It was almost funny that Kevin had ended up on a team with the goalkeeper they'd wanted after all.
Andrew rounded the front of the vehicle and crooked two fingers toward Kevin to signal him to follow. Neil frowned at this. He'd hoped Kevin had become a free man instead of finding himself a new master.
“Nathaniel,” Kevin greeted.
“Kevin,” Neil returned dryly. He gestured to Andrew and affected ignorance. “And this is-?”
“Andrew Minyard, our freshman goalkeeper,” Kevin explained with a note of disapproval in his voice. He had spoken of Andrew's potential so much that it would've been impossible for Neil to forget his face or his stats.
Andrew took Neil in with a bored stare and then yawned again. “So this is Nathaniel.”
“Everyone calls me Neil,” Neil replied.
Kevin winced. Neil had adopted the nickname on his first day at the Nest. “Oh, you wanted me to kneel? I thought you were just calling me Neil. My bad.” He'd earned a broken nose for being cheeky, but he still fought to keep the new name. It annoyed Riko to no end and that alone was worth the temporary pain.
“Not everyone, apparently,” Andrew observed, rocking back on his heels.
“Riko called him Nathaniel,” Kevin explained. He still looked like he couldn't believe Neil was there in front of him. “He sent you here, didn't he?”
Neil arched an eyebrow and switched to French. “Do you think I'd come here by choice?”
Because of Kevin's mild obsession with the goalkeeper, Neil knew Andrew had taken German at his high school after he was released from juvie and moved to South Carolina. He was fairly certain Andrew didn't speak any other languages.
Kevin followed his lead, thankfully, and answered in French, “If you're here to try to get me to come back-”
“You are not the center of my universe, Kevin. I don't give a shit what you do.”
“What are you going to tell Riko when you go back?”
“Nothing. I'm not going back.”
Kevin gaped. “If you don't go back to the Nest-”
“I'm not going to put myself back in a cage.”
Andrew flicked a lazy stare between the two of them and said, “I'm bored. Fly home, little bird, this ain't the place for you. We're leaving, Kevin.”
Panic surged into Neil's throat, but he forced himself to keep still and swallow back his words. He wouldn't beg anyone for help, let alone a Fox.
Kevin looked more distressed than Neil felt, which was surprising. “We can't just leave him, Andrew. Let's take him to Wymack's for the night and we'll figure it out in the morning.”
Andrew reached up and twisted his hand into the collar of Kevin's coat, using it to pull Kevin's face a little closer. “Don't be a sentimental idiot. It makes it more difficult to keep you alive.”
“But-”
“I just need somewhere to sleep for the night. I'll leave in the morning.” Neil interrupted.
Andrew looked over, still holding Kevin by his collar, and gave Neil a look that almost seemed amused. Amusement made Neil uncomfortable. It was never a good day when Riko was laughing.
“You're not going to try to talk me into going back with you?” Kevin asked, narrowing his eyes.
“No.”
Andrew scoffed. “Nice attempt at a trick. I give it three out of five stars. Tell Riko to try harder next time, will you?”
Neil bristled, but turned his attention back to Kevin. “Are you going to help me or not? It's a simple question and I'd rather get an answer sooner than later.”
Kevin and Andrew exchanged a look and then Kevin said, “Get in the car. We're going to Wymack's.”
Neil followed them to the vehicle and climbed into the backseat as the other two sat in the front. The interior smelled like leather and cigarette smoke and the seat was much softer than the one on the bus had been. The engine growled to life when Andrew turned the key in the ignition. Kevin hunched against the window in the passenger seat while Andrew threw the car into gear and wrenched it back into the road. Neil caught himself against the door when Andrew took a turn too sharply and he glared at the back of his head.
Kevin twisted around to look back at him and gestured to the bandage on his face. In French, he asked, “Why are you hiding your number?”
“It fell off.”
Kevin clucked his tongue in annoyance. “Fine. Be that way. Listen, though, the coach doesn't know that he's my father. I would appreciate you not mentioning it while you're in his home.”
Neil returned his gaze to Kevin's pleading expression and felt only a hot coil of anger tightening in his chest. The only reason Kevin fled to this pathetic excuse of an Exy team was because he knew Coach Wymack was his biological father and now he couldn't even tell him the truth. How utterly pathetic.
“I don't care enough to say anything,” Neil said dismissively, turning to look out the window. Droplets spattered the glass and some of the larger ones raced down in blurry lines. The town was dark save for illuminated neon signs and streetlamps. Some groups of students were wandering around the sidewalks, laughing loudly as they tried to keep each other upright. There weren't many cars on the road, which allowed Andrew to drive as fast as he pleased.
Everything was wrong and Neil didn't know what to do. He was exhausted and he wished more than anything that he would wake up in his own bed to find this was all a dream.
He swallowed hard and mentally stepped back from the panic rising in his chest. He would find a way to survive this. He would figure something out. He didn't have a choice.