Chapter Text
Neil's current issue is that he's running low out of buffer space. He's been in his human shape for four days now. And Kevin is in the same damn house as him.
Abby has been keeping the other foxes away, for the most part, but Neil knows that Kevin is going to show his face eventually. To have a face-to-face talk about the whole 'assault' thing that got them in this mess, or whatever. And when that happens, Neil is out of time. His jig is up. So he might as well face it on his own terms.
Neil has been getting up to practice moving around while he's alone. Mostly, in the dead of night when no one is going to hear him. His injuries are starting to become a more manageable pain, and he can almost always ignore the ache in his lungs that comes with breathing now. The infection is a little bit more troublesome, but these people are very meddlesome. He suspects that Abby would straight up give him the antibiotics to continue taking, out of the goodness of her heart or her hippocratic oath. Do nurses have that? Either way.
The point is, Neil is not going to be caught unaware. He needs to be ahead of this. He doesn't want to show his hand too much, but he can't allow this to happen around him. Kevin could know or not know or say anything. That is the worst case scenario about all of this. So Neil has to get there first.
With two knocks, like always, Wymack opens Neil's door with a plate of food in his hands. Neil has been having some trouble with recognizing stuff, food items especially. He hasn't eaten like this in a long time. He thinks the smell might be... beef? But there's more aromatic things with it.
Neil mentally chides himself, this isn't what matters. He wields his sticky note pad, which is pre-prepared. Simply: kevin.
Wymack reads it, and then tilts his head, questioning. Could Neil have made it anymore clear? He adds, now?
"You want to talk to him?" Wymack sounds rather baffled. Neil nods and shrugs, writing, long overdue. Wymack snorts, "It seemed to me you were explicitly avoiding Kevin for bodying you with his lacrosse stick." Neil just looks at him expectantly, so Wymack relents. The food is left on the bedside dresser, so Neil dives into it while Wymack is gone. He can't help it, food is a precious resource.
The first person who appears in Neil's room is Abby. She is, as usual, smiling for no apparent reason. But she still asks, "Is everything alright?"
For now, Neil scribbles. From her reaction, it isn't an ideal response, but Neil doesn’t know what else she expects.
Close behind her are multiple other people. Of course. These people are all pack bonded, Andrew has been the only one who seems capable of doing things on his own. Wymack enters the room but settles on the wall by the door, simply watching. Kevin enters with Andrew lurking by his side and for some damned reason, it makes Neil feel a little more at ease.
Kevin's eyes find Neil only a second after he enters, and then he freezes. His eyes track back and forth over Neil's face, his body, flickering through different emotions too fast to catch. Confusion, fear, uncertainty, lack of understanding. He isn’t actually this dense, right? There is no way he doesn’t remember. Did he get free of the Moriyamas and instantly loose all his survival instincts? Unbelievable.
"Kevin?" It is Wymack who says it, because Kevin is silently panicking and Neil is silently staring.
His voice seems to jar Kevin into action, and all he says is, "No way."
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Neil grumbles under his breath. How is it Kevin can be so exceptional at such specific things and flounder so spectacularly at everything else?
Wymack's expression sharpens. "Hold on, do you two know each other?" He demands, narrowing his eyes at Neil, "You said you had heard of Kevin, that didn't know him."
"I lied a bit," Neil replies, with an unstated obviously. "Please tell me you're joking." No one who has had to deal with the Moriyamas was really taking everything a stranger said to him at face value.
"This can't be real," Kevin breathes before Wymack can say anything else. His face is etched with anxiety.
Neil gets as close to a groan as he can, with his throat as torn up as it is. "Don't have a fucking panic attack, I can't deal with that."
Andrew's deadpan cuts through the tension in the room, "Explain." His face is especially flat, which isn’t something Neil knew was possible, but his eyes are intense somehow.
"The Moriyamas are gone," Kevin adds uselessly.
"Apparently," Neil agrees. "Couldn't find anything to indicate you were wrong about that."
"You're a Moriyama?" Wymack bites out.
Neil huffs, "Hardly. I knew Kevin might remember my face, but I didn't expect him to be so..." He trails off, unable to think of a word for it that the others present would like.
"You thought I might?" As he goes, Kevin's voice rises in pitch and volume. "The one and only time I've ever seen you—" He cuts himself off just as harshly as he began.
Despite himself, a bit of humor tugs at the corner of Neil's lips. "We were children and watched by father rip an adult man to bloody bits with his teeth, yes," Neil finishes, "please keep up."
"You're from the Moriyamas," Kevin says next, in this weird place between a question and an accusation. "Your family works for them."
Neil sighs — or, again, as close as he can get. "Not how I remember it."
"Your father was an enforcer!"
Neil pauses, considering. Really, he thinks he need to set Kevin straight about the situation. Neil has no sympathy to waste on anybody else, but if these people actually dealt with the Moriyamas, managed to get Kevin to survive it, he might as well. "My father didn't really do 'working for'. Unless someone was working for him."
"That's not how the Moriyamas operated," Kevin insists.
"Well, they're gone. And my father isn't, so," Neil shrugs. Kevin's ghosts might have been put to rest, but Neil is very much still being haunted.
Kevin’s face goes entirely pale. "That's who you're on the run from." Fucking finally. If the roles were flipped, Neil would've put that together, like, five minutes ago.
"Okay, stop." Wymack pushes off the wall and comes to stand kind of between Neil's bed and Kevin, holding up a hand towards Kevin for good measure before turning to Neil. "You knew of the Moriyamas, and Kevin, because your father is a criminal who worked with them?" Neil nods. "And that's who you're on the run from." Another nod. Wymack clenches his jaw, complicated emotions running through his eyes as he retreats into himself, seemingly to think.
"Your father was a shifter?" Abby asks quietly.
"I did mention the bloody-murder-using-teeth, right?"
"He was," Kevin answers with a small glare at Neil. "But— both your parents, it has to be. That man wasn't—"
"This small? No," Neil laughs humorlessly, "He was not." And he never forgave Neil for being what he is.
"If he's not a Moriyama, who is he?" Everyone turns to look at Andrew, all equally caught off guard. Andrew looks only at Neil.
Once more, Neil says, "I mentioned the bloody-murder-using-teeth, right?" Because he can't truly answer that question. He survived on secrecy all this time, this is all that his mother taught him. He has already gone against so much of his mother's teaching. Leaving a trace of himself here would be so far beyond idiotic. He can explain himself, but he is almost positive that Kevin doesn't know much about him. Probably doesn't even remember his name, wouldn't that be nice. All these people need is... the gist. "My father is a violent gangster. He has a mountain of bodies to his name, and he basks in it."
"Present tense," is all Andrew says.
"Like I said: the Moriyamas are gone, my father is not." Neil knows he is showing a lot of his cards, but he isn't looking for pity or understanding. People tend to have questions about these things, and everyone will be more settled if Neil just gives them some choice non-answers.
These people know about shifters, about the Moriyamas. Kevin knows him, and from his reaction probably has a very skewed understanding of events. And Neil, despite everything— these people gave him food, and clothes, and medicine, and protection. That is worth something.
"Your father poses a threat to you?" Wymack asks, breaking the silence.
Neil blinks at him for several seconds. "I promise there is nothing more he wants on this earth than to tear me limb from limb." Abby flinches, and Kevin does too, although smaller. It startles Neil. "That is why people go on the run from things, right?"
Wymack's face grows even more tense, but he continues, "So why aren't you dead yet?"
"Like, after all this time, or right now?" He doesn't respond, and Neil can respect, even if he doesn't respond to, fishing for as much information as possible. He goes for right-now. "From what I can tell, my father is in prison."
"From what you can tell?" Abby manages, strained.
"According to anything I could access freely on the internet," Neil shrugs. "As far as the department of correction can tell he is still serving his sentence where he's supposed to be. I didn't realize until now."
"So you're not running anymore," Kevin realizes.
Neil stares at him like he is stark raving mad, because he must be. "How the fuck did you survive the Moriyamas?" Kevin seems so taken aback he actually takes a step back. Neil barely holds himself back from spewing way more than he should. His father is the most powerful criminal in the fucking state, he's been running a gang for thirty years. The man's body count is probably in the triple digits by now. They can't know any of that, but still, Neil kind of wants to punch Kevin. "You do not know my father. A fucking felony tax evasion charge is not going to be his end."
"How do you know he is even hunting you?" Abby cuts in. "He could have cut his losses. You've been hiding out in your fox shape, who's to say he doesn't think you're dead?"
Neil shakes his head, only slightly given the current state of himself, though. "He won't stop." Until he sees a body, until he has Neil's blood on his teeth, it all goes unsaid. "He isn't a man known for his mercy."
"Fuck's sake," Wymack mutters, rubbing his hands over his face.
"You're telling me." Everyone turns to look at Neil again, not that they've really been doing much else. Their attention baffles him. "You think I wanted this? You think I planned to stick around the second I saw Kevin Day?" Kevin's face twists again, this time almost offended. "I don't need the Moriyamas on my ass. I didn’t know whatever went down with them and you all. The last thing I need is a fucking injury like this weighing me down—" he breaks off in a coughing fit, hunching over as his body is wracked with tremors. He knew he had been pushing it with how much he was talking, but this is miserable. His voice is weak from disuse without the pneumonia, and now the infection is making it so much worse on his throat and lungs.
Abby rushes over to crouch next to him, forcing the glass of water from his bedside into his hands. She supports him as he swallows a bit down, only to eject it right back up tinged pink. "You're bleeding again," she mutters.
Neil, obviously, can't answer. He can barely get breath in his lungs. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus on calming the spasms so he can regain his breath.
"Enough," Abby declares, and for one delirious moment Neil thinks she is talking to him. "He can’t handle any more of this right now. We can settle this later." Neil wants to protest, or say something, but the fit refuses to subside. Abby is doing more to keep Neil upright than he is. Over her shoulder, she barks, "David, make some tea for me." She rubs a hand in delicate circles on Neil's back, "Just focus on breathing."
A strange heat pricks the corners of Neil's eyes.
~~~
Neil sits in silence, staring at the opposite wall, trying to make a plan. Realistically, he needs a plan. And soon. Even if Kevin is pretty ignorant, it's still too much visibility. But Neil is in a really shit position.
He's way too injured to shift back to his animal shape. It would be stupid, likely exacerbate his injuries as well as generally leaving him much less fit to survive. The pros of being a fox are avoiding detection by more or less avoiding government and capitalism in general. But in his current state, he's better off buying and stealing food than trying to scavenge or hunt.
He has been left alone for a while now, since what happened earlier, but he hasn't come up with much. He's in no state to be plotting an escape because he's in no state to be executing an escape.
Suddenly, there is knocking at the door, so quiet that if Neil wasn't sitting alone in silence, he might have missed it. He frowns at the door, "Who's there?"
The door creaks open slowly, with great hesitance. The reason why is explained a moment later when Kevin comes into view. Neil tenses, but Kevin shouldn't be much of a threat. He's bigger, physically stronger than Neil, but he just isn’t going to start a fight. The question is, then, why is he here? What does he know?
Kevin enters and closes the door behind him immediately, and he leaves half the room between himself and Neil's bed.
Neil's patience starts to wear. "What is it, Kevin? You're here, the audience is gone. Just say it."
"You weren't—" Kevin starts, brow knitted with concentration. Or frustration? "You didn't tell them everything?"
"What do you mean?" Neil asks evasively.
Oh, yeah. Frustration is definitely an accurate assessment. "Your name is Nathaniel," Kevin huffs.
Neil crosses his arms, "Not anymore."
"Am I supposed to keep your real name a secret?" Kevin presses, starting to gain steam.
Yes, Neil doesn’t say. "I left that name behind," is what comes out, and it's not entirely a lie. "I don't want it anymore." Even more truthful. "Why does it matter to you?" Nathaniel is one thing; Wesninski is another.
"I would guess you don't have any sort of legitimate identification. It's all fake?" Kevin phrases it like a question, like Neil is going to answer that.
"What's it to you?" Neil repeats.
Kevin clenches his jaw, "Are you just going to run forever?" Alright, so he definitely doesn't know the name Wesninki. Good to know.
"Not forever," Neil shrugs, "My father is going to drop dead sooner or later." He would generally be of the belief that its a miracle no one has dropped the man yet, except he doesn’t really think Nathan Wesninski can be killed. When he eventually dies, it'll be by no one else's hand. Maybe a heart attack, from the stress of being evaded by a bitch and a brat for years on end.
"You're serious?" Kevin grinds out. His flippant attitude pricks at Neil in a way he wasn't expecting. Surely, Kevin can't have lost all logical thought since being freed of the Moriyamas.
"I don't know what the world looks like filtered through your useless brain," Neil replies, "But if it's a matter of survival, then generally I tend to be serious." Somehow, that response is not satisfying to Kevin, but after today's showing Neil doesn't much care. He doesn’t know a lot about the lives of those on the other side, the 'normal' folks, but it must be utterly blissful. Because these people are completely devoid of intelligent thought. "I don't know what you're trying to get out of this conversation," he continues, because Kevin doesn't leave, "but if it's to get me to play house with you all, then I'm happy to say you’re shit out of luck."
Kevin glowers and scoffs, "Fine." Then, he's back out the door again. He had closed the door when he came in. Perhaps that means he will be keeping Neil's secrets. Especially because he doesn't seem to have Neil's secrets.
Still, Wymack is probably used to researching people and Andrew actually has half a brain. They might be more capable of doing something with the name Nathaniel and a criminal paternal presence than Kevin is.
It's funny; Neil hates his father, hates his name, and yet his identity is his most prized possession. His most closely guarded secret. Even if people see him human, see his face, see his scars, they can not see who he really is. If they do, then he'll really be in trouble.