Work Text:
“I'm thinking about taking some defense classes.” Abby said, twirling her bright orange chopsticks around the noodles of her Pad Thai. Across the coffee table, David glanced away from the Exy game playing softly on the TV.
“Yeah?” He said.
Her eyes were drawn again to the angry red sunken scars pulling jaggedly across his left forearm; a souvenir from a drunken fan at their last away game. It cut harshly into the tribal flame tattoo there, ruining the once clean lines.
David couldn't care less.
He'd leapt in front of Andrew, moving faster than Abby had ever seen, positively feral as he decked the fan to the ground, teeth bared and furious, seemingly ignorant of the gore his arm had become as the bottle had shattered against him.
Her Foxes had been attacked again , hurt again and she'd been unable to do anything but wrap up the wound.
Nicky had wept for the entire ride to the hospital (she realized suddenly that she'd never apologized for snapping at Matt when she demanded he drive the bus. She'd been only thinking about the fact that of all of them, he drove the largest car, so he'd be the most likely to get to them to the hospital quickly) and Andrew and Neil had spent the short ride staring at David's soaked bandages like they'd never seen blood before.
On the bus ride home with one hand resting over the steady beat of David's heart, she'd let herself be quietly furious. Her Foxes didn't deserve any of what had happened to them. They were just kids for Christ sake.
It was high time, she thought, to learn to fight back.
“Yeah.” She echoed. David nodded and slurped his noodles.
“Let's get you some gloves then.”
“Hi Abby, my name's Nate! Welcome!”
Nate cut an intimidating figure to be sure. He was about as tall as Matt but even broader, but his face was carved into a calm, happy smile behind his bushy red beard as he clapped his hands to his waist. “You're looking for self-defense lessons I hear?
“I suppose,” Abby said.
“Huh- No, wait.” Nate said, squinting, “Aren't you with PSU? The Exy team?”
Abby straightened, prepared to verbally spar when Nate put up placating hands, “Oh no, don't get me wrong. I love the Foxes, underdog story of a lifetime. I meant- well, they've had a rough lately; it's all over ESPN.”
He turned and reached behind him to the registration desk of the martial arts studio they were standing in and the young woman behind the counter with her arms covered in bright, colorful floral tattoos handed him a glossy promotional pamphlet with a grin. He turned back and flipped it open, spinning it around to face Abby.
“This is just a suggestion, of course, and your free week means you can take as many of these classes as you want, but you signed up online for this class,” he pointed to the photo in the upper hand corner of a room full of women kicking at sandbags in perfect sync, “I think, if I'm guessing right, that you're looking for something more like this.” He pointed to a photo at the bottom and Abby stepped forward to look closer at the photo and the course description.
“Yes,” Abby said, smiling up at him, “Yes, I think you're right.”
“Chipotle is life!” Nicky sighed, fingers pressed to the glass in front of the display case, eyes glazed with hunger and exhaustion. Their game finished three hours ago but the entire team was still too hyped from the win to have slept on the bus. They were beginning to reach the kind of tired where everything was funny and she figured that once they'd eaten their way through the nowhere-Florida Chipotle that they'd finally crash and get some much needed rest. Allison and Renee were leaning against each other and giggling as they headed out towards the bus, their to-go orders cradled against their chests like a baby.
“Guac is extra.” The employee ahead told Andrew, but he simply stared her down, expression unsettlingly blank, until she slopped a huge hunk of it on his burrito bowl and slid it down the counter.
Abby was at the back of the line, behind a group of adults wearing colors from the school they'd just beaten into the dirt. She'd made a pit stop at the bathroom as she was driving this time, and didn’t really want to stop again until they were home.
The group in front of her were mumbling to themselves grumpily, watching as the last of her team scrapped the steak and chicken bins dry in the way only student athletes could.
“Guac is life.” Nicky moaned reverently. Beside him Matt sighed indulgently and leaned against his shoulder to slide him along.
Which of course, was when one of the women in front of her decided to make a derogatory comment that was somehow racist, homophobic and sexist.
Nicky, sweet, earnest Nicky, didn't even turn even though he had to have heard, judging by the pure fire in Matt's eyes when he turned around to glare. Even Andrew heard, evidenced when he slowly, oh so slowly, turned his blank stare at the group in front of her.
The tension was suffocating, the promise of a fight winding around their ankles and she just couldn't help herself as righteous rage bubbled up in her chest.
“How astonishingly rude and ignorant.” Abby said, “You owe us all an apology.”
“Excuse me?” The woman, shorter than her with teased blonde hair turned on Abby like a rattlesnake.
“You heard me. You just said something incredibly hateful about a young man half your age that you know nothing about. You-”
“You can't talk to me like th-”
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Abby said, speaking over the outraged sputtering.
“Nicky, finish ordering so we can go.”
Matt speed them both along and Abby stepped out of line to follow them out the door, no longer hungry in the face of her anger. Her hands were trembling at her sides, a detail she knew that David and Andrew noticed where they stood sentinel on opposite sides of the bus's door, both watching over the team as they climbed aboard.
“Hey!”
David and Andrew drew themselves to attention.
Abby turned.
One of the men from the group before was striding towards her, chest puffed up and overfull cheeks flushed. He tugged on his grey and gold ball cap as he slowed to a stop, wiry arms crossed in front of his chest.
“You owe my wife an apology.” Abby leaned to glance behind him at where the blonde was daintily blotting tears in the arms of one of the other men. “You embarrassed her.”
“She embarrassed herself.” Abby snapped back, “She owes my boy an apology, and yet here we are.”
“Here's the thing, you're going to apologize.” The man said, then made the mistake of his life by reaching for her.
There were rapid footsteps coming up behind her, and it would have been easier to step back and let David handle it, but-
Her mind cut to David's furious expression as Andrew had turned his head away from a bottle headed straight for him.
Nicky's resigned grimace in the face of discrimination.
Neil, dissolving into a panic attack under her hands as she tried to wrap his horrifically burned arms.
Being trapped in the bus as her team attempted to fend off a riot.
The rage burning in her heart boiled over, filling her veins with molten wrath as she let the instinct that Nate had drilled into her for the past six months take over. She grabbed the man's arm, pivoted, and hurled him over her shoulder to the asphalt.
“Abby!” David shouted, his voice a mixture of shock and delight.
The man's wife cried out in alarm and Abby let loose the celestial fury she'd been suppressing for the past year.
“Don't you ever talk about my kids again, you backwards bat, or else getting the wind knocked out of you will be paradise compared to what I will do to you!”
“Abby, sweet Jesus, get on the bus.” David said, placing an insistent guiding hand on her elbow. She allowed herself to be lead and then let Renee split her burrito with her once she was seated, munching furiously on the steak like the cow had personally offended her. David threw himself into the driver's seat and drove the bus out of the parking lot like he’d stolen it, shouting over his shoulder for Nicky to sit the fuck down, Hemmick, I swear to God!
“When did you learn to do that?” Allison asked, delightedly scandalized.
“I've been taking classes.” Abby replied.
“Is everyone on this team a boxer?” Aaron said.
“I’m doing Krav Maga,” Abby corrected, smiling at the gobsmacked expression on Matt’s face, “Not boxing.”
“My point stands taller.” Aaron said, “My point has grown fucking roots.”
“Hey now,” Abby smiled, “All Foxes have teeth, I just decided it was time to sharpen mine.”