Chapter Text
Neil Josten didn’t smoke. It was a terrible habit for someone’s health and their wallet, and Neil wasn’t one to start an addiction voluntarily. Still, at this moment, he longed for a cigarette. He didn’t want to inhale the nicotine or develop a habit. The morbid side of his brain, which was most of it, wanted to watch the smoke rise, the ashes fall, to remind him of his mother’s own smoking habit, and most recently of her burning body. The thought was at once revolting and comforting, and it sent a sick shudder down his spine. He wondered if his mother was looking down on him now. He hoped not.
The door squealed open behind him, startling him out of his morbidity. He pulled his duffel bag closer to him and looked over. Coach Hernandez propped the locker room door open and sat beside him.
“Didn’t see your parents at the game,” he commented.
“They’re out of town,” Neil replied.
“Still? Or again?”
Neither, but Neil wasn’t about to say that. Hernandez frowned at Neil in an aww, poor kid way, which was one of Neil’s least favorite ways to be looked at. “I thought they’d make an exception tonight.”
“No one knew it’d be the last game,” Neil shrugged it off, looking over at the court.
Millport’s loss tonight booted them from the championships two games from the finals. So close, too far . The season was over just like that. There was a crew taking down the plexi-glass walls and rolling astroturf over the hard floor to turn it back into a soccer field. There would soon be nothing left of Exy until fall, and Neil wouldn’t be returning to the court. Exy was the one piece of childhood Neil had never been able to give up, but once he graduated, he’d have to leave it all behind.
Hernandez cleared his throat, breaking the contemplative silence. “There’s someone here to see you.”
To someone who’d been on the run for the better half of his life, those words were a nightmare. Neil leaped to his feet with his bag thrown over his shoulder, ready to run if need be, but the scuff of a shoe behind him warned him that he was too late. Neil slowly turned around to face the stranger. A wife beater tank top showed off the man’s tattoos running across his arms. One hand was stuffed into his jean 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 from Millport, which boasted fewer than 900 residents. Small town mentality was annoying for Neil’s anonymity, but he’d hoped gossip about an outsider would reach him far before they did. Millport had failed him.
“I don’t know you,” Neil shifted.
“He’s from a university,” Hernandez specified. “He came to see you play tonight.”
“Bullshit,” Neil said. “No one recruits from Millport. Nobody knows where it is.”
“There’s this thing called a map,” the stranger remarked. “You might have heard of it.”
“He’s here because I sent him your file. He put out a note saying he was short on his striker line, and I figured it was worth a shot,” Hernandez explained, sounding a lot like he was talking to a caged animal. Maybe that’s what Neil looked like right now. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. I didn’t think anything would come of it.”
Neil stared at his high school coach who knew he had a complicated life. Who knew he slept in the locker room most of the time. Who knew Neil’s parents hadn’t come to a single game, parent conference, or been around at all. He should have known Neil wouldn’t want this, to be exposed to the world when he spent all of his time trying to hide. “You did what?”
“I tried contacting your parents when he asked for a face-to-face meeting tonight, but they haven’t returned my messages. You said they’d try to make it,” Hernandez deflected blame from himself to Neil’s imaginary parents.
“They did,” Neil lied. “They couldn’t.”
“I can’t wait for them,” the stranger interrupted, coming 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, right? I need a striker sub, you need a team. All you have to do is sign the dotted line and you’re mine for the next 5 years.”
Neil almost couldn't find his voice. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious, and out of time,” the man replied, tossing the file onto the bleacher where Neil had been sitting.
Neil’s name was scrawled in black ink across the front of the file. Neil thought to open it and read it, but what was the point? The man that this coach had put so much time into researching wasn’t real, and wouldn’t exist for much longer. In five weeks, Neil would graduate. A week after that he’d be long gone. It didn’t matter how much he liked being Neil Josten. His time was up.
It was simple to see the right answer, but that didn’t make it easy for Neil to choose. This contract was a one-way ticket to a future, something Neil could never have, and he wanted it so badly he ached. He mentally kicked himself for even trying out for the Millport team. His mother told him he’d never play again, warned him to obsess from a distance, and he’d disobeyed her. But what else was he supposed to do? This, exy, was the only thing left that's real to him. He couldn’t give it up. And now that he’d had a taste of it again, he didn’t know how to walk away.
“Please go away,” he begged, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate.
“It’s a bit sudden, but I really do need an answer by tonight. The Committee’s been hounding me since Janie got locked up,” The coach said, and suddenly Neil did know him.
Neil’s stomach hit the floor, and he snapped his gaze from the folder to the coach’s eyes. “Foxes. Palmetto State University.”
The man who Neil now knew as Coach David Wymack looked surprised at how quickly Neil had put it together. “Guess you saw the news.”
Technical difficulties had been an interesting way to describe it. What had really occurred was that the newest recruit to PSU, Janie Smalls, had tried to commit suicide via bathtub and slit wrists, and was now in the psychiatric ward at a hospital. Typical of a Fox, the news anchorman had said in an aside. Crude, but true.
And this year, a man Neil hadn’t seen in eight years was signed onto the Foxes starting line-up. If Kevin Day recognized him, that would mean the end of Neil Josten.
“You can’t be here,” Neil shook his head.
“Yet here I stand,” Wymack replied. “Need a pen?”
“No,” Neil said, probably too quickly. “No, I’m not signing with you.”
“I misheard you.”
“You signed Kevin.”
“And Kevin’s signing you, so–”
Neil didn’t stick around for the rest. He bolted up the bleachers for the locker room. Metal clanged beneath his shoes, almost drowning out the protests of Coach Hernandez. Neil 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 Neil Josten. He’d leave tonight and run until he forgot. Until he forgot Wymack ever said those words to him.
Neil wasn’t fast enough.
He was halfway through the locker room when he realized he wasn’t alone. There was someone in the lounge, between him and the door. Light glinted off a yellow racquet as the stranger took a swing, and Neil was going too fast to stop. Wood slammed into his gut hard enough to crush his lungs and spine. He didn’t remember falling, but suddenly he was on his hands and knees, struggling ineffectively for breath. He’d puke if only he could manage that first gasp, but his body refused to cooperate.
The buzzing in his ears was Wymack’s furious voice, but he sounded a thousand miles away. “Goddammit, Minyard. This is why we can’t have nice things.”
“Oh Coach,” the assailant spoke over Neil’s head. “If he was nice, he wouldn’t be of any use to us, would he?”
“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 went black, then suddenly into way too sharp of focus as air finally hit Neil’s lungs. Neil inhaled so sharply he choked, and every breath seemed to threaten to tear him apart. He wrapped an arm around his middle to protect himself, then slanted a fierce look at the man who’d hit him.
Wymack already said his name, but Neil didn’t need it. He’d seen his face in too many newspaper clippings to not know him on sight. Andrew Minyard. Blonde, five feet even, hazel eyes and a fierce smile. He was the foxes’ freshman goalkeeper and their deadliest investment. Most of the foxes were self destructive, whereas Andrew seemed keen on collateral damage. Meeting Andrew face-to-face was just as disorienting as it was painful.
Andrew grinned down at Neil and tapped two fingers to his temple in salute. “Better luck next time.”
“Fuck you,” Neil spat out. “Whose racquet did you steal?”
“Borrow,” Andrew corrected, tossing it at Neil. “There you go.”
“Neil! Jesus.” Hernandez had finally caught up, and helped Neil to his feet. “Are you alright?”
“Andrew’s a bit raw on manners,” Wymack explained, walking around to stand between Andrew and Neil. Andrew had no issue reading that silent warning, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated shrug and retreating to give Neil some space. Wymack looked back over at Neil once Andrew was far enough for comfort. “He break anything?”
Neil pressed careful hands against his sides, breathing to feel if anything was indeed broken. He’d fractured bones enough times to know he’d gotten lucky this once. “I’m fine. Coach, I’m leaving. Let me go.”
“We’re not done,” Wymack protested.
“Coach Wymack-”
Hernandez started, but Wymack gave him a look that could have either been a plea or a glare. “Give us one minute, please?”
Hernandez sighed and looked at Neil. “I’ll be right out back.”
Neil listened to his footsteps as he left, wishing he was the one walking away right now. The back door swung closed with an agonizing creak, and Neil 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, right?”
The blood left Neil’s face so fast the world tilted. He 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.”
Wymack looked incredulously at him. “Is that a problem?”
Neil couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t tell anyone 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 said, and Neil had to fight to keep breathing.
He knew better than to turn around, but he was already moving. He should have guessed when he saw Andrew here, but he hadn’t wanted to think about 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 atop the entertainment center along the back wall. He’d pushed the TV off to one side to give himself more room, looking everything like a king on a makeshift throne. He’d watched this entire spectacle and, judging by the look on his face, was thoroughly unimpressed.
It’d been years since Neil stood in the same room as Kevin, years since they’d watched Neil’s father cut a screaming man into a hundred bloody pieces. Neil knew Kevin’s face so well, probably better than he knew his own with his avoidance of mirrors. Everything about Neil was different since they last saw each other. Everything about Kevin was the same, from his thick, dark hair and green eyes to the black number two tattooed onto his otherwise perfect face, right on his left cheekbone.
Neil knew Kevin couldn't recognize him. It’d been too long since the last time. They’d grown up a world apart. Neil’s disguised looks, his dark hair and brown contacts, were surely enough to hide his true face. But why else would Kevin fucking Day be here, looking for him? No Class 1 school would stoop so low, not even the Foxes. Neil’s records said he’d only been playing Exy for a year. He’d been careful to not stand out.
Had he slipped? Had it been too obvious that he had past experience he wasn’t talking about? How had he caught Kevin's eye despite his best attempts to stay hidden? If it was that easy for Kevin, what sort of beacon was he sending to his father’s people?
“What are you doing here?” He finally asked through numb lips.
“Why were you leaving?” Kevin asked.
“I asked you first.”
This led to a long conversation about how, on paper, Neil was not worth it, but the video that Hernandez had sent in showing Neil’s playing had convinced them that he was who they needed. If Neil was anyone else in the world, those words would be like heaven.
The smart thing to do was run. 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 team. Neil shouldn’t submit himself to that sort of scrutiny when his life's on the line. He should tear Wymack’s contract into a thousand pieces and leave.
Leaving meant living, but Neil’s way of living was survival, nothing more. It was new names and new places and never looking back. It was packing up and going as soon as he started to feel settled. This last year, without his mother at his side, it meant being completely alone and adrift, with only Exy to hang onto. He didn’t know if he was ready for a life without the sport.
Exy was the only thing that made him feel real. Wymack’s contract was permission to keep playing. It was a chance to at least pretend at being normal a little while longer. Wymack said the contract was for five years, but Neil figured he didn’t have to stay that long. He could run at the first sign of danger.
“Well?” Wymack prompted.
Survival instincts warred with need and twisted into an almost debilitating pain. “I have to talk to my mother,” Neil lied, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“What for?” Wymack asked. “You’re legal, aren’t you? Your file says you’re nineteen.”
Neil was eighteen, but he wasn’t going to contradict what his forged paperwork said. “I still need to ask.”
“She’ll be happy for you.”
“Maybe,” Neil agreed quietly, knowing it was another lie. If his mother was here, if she knew that he was even considering this, she’d be livid. Neil could imagine the pain of her punishments and almost winced in phantom pain. “I’ll talk to her tonight.”
“We can give you a lift home.”
“I’m fine.”
Wymack looked at Andrew and Kevin. His Foxes. “Go wait in the car.”
Kevin gathered himself and his files, sliding off his throne. Andrew waited for Kevin to catch up before leading them out the door. Wymack waited until they were gone before turning a serious look on Neil.
“You need one of us to talk to your parents?”
“I’m fine,” Neil repeated.
Neil had heard all the crap people talked about Wymack, calling him an idealistic idiot and too optimistic. But with him standing in front of Neil and saying the inspiring, borderline cheesy things he said to encourage Neil that he wasn’t alone, it was hard to listen and not believe that he was sincere. Neil was torn between disdain and incredulity. Why Wymack set himself up for disappointment time and time again, Neil couldn’t understand. He would’ve given up on the Foxes years ago.
Wymack gave him another 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 he nodded, but it hurt more to see that tired look settle in Wymack’s eyes. It wasn’t the pity he saw in Hernandez, but something familiar. The look said that Wymack understood what it cost to be Neil, and knew what it was like to have to fight to wake up and keep moving every morning. Neil doubted Wymack could fully understand, but even that tiny bit of support was more than he’d ever gotten in his life. Neil had to look away.
“Your graduation ceremony is May eleventh, according to Hernandez,” Wymack said at length. “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. He realized there was no use fighting this. This was his chance, and he was going to take it.
“Keep the papers tonight,” Wymack offered, pushing his folder at Neil. This time, Neil took it. “Your coach can fax the signed copies to me on Monday. Welcome to the line.”
Neil couldn’t manage any words. Not even a thank you, though it seemed appropriate. He just kept his gaze on the floor until Wymack went in search of Hernandez.
The back door closed behind him, and Neil’s nerves broke. He ran for the bathroom stalls and made it just in time to vomit whatever he’d eaten today into a toilet. He could only imagine his mother’s rage, remembering the savage yank of her hands in his hair. All these years trying to keep moving, to stay hidden, and he was destroying it. She would never forgive him and he knew it, and that did nothing at all to help the feeling of dread in his gut.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped out between wet coughs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, mom I’m sorry…”
He stumbled over to the sinks and rinsed his mouth out. After he was done, he stared at himself in the mirror. Black hair, brown eyes, Neil looked like the average teenager. Nobody to notice, nobody to stick in anyone’s memory. That was the way he liked to keep his looks, but he wondered if it could hold up against the news coverage that the Foxes were going to get. He grimaced at his reflection, seeing through the hair dye and the contacts to the truth underneath. If he was even a little more dramatic, he would’ve smashed the mirror. Instead, he leaned closer and tugged at his hair to check his roots before leaning back and looking away from himself.
“University,” he whispered. It sounded like a dream; it tasted like damnation.
Wymack and Hernandez were waiting for him when he walked back through the locker room, but he went straight past them out the door. Andrew opened the back door of the SUV when Neil passed, giving Neil a taunting smile.
“Too good to play with us, too good to ride with us?”
Neil flipped him off before speeding up to a jog. He was running full speed by the time he hit the end of the parking lot. He left the stadium and the Foxes and their too-good promises behind him, but the unsigned contract in his duffel bag felt like an anchor around his neck.