Chapter Text
He had been Neil Josten for too long now. His bag was packed and at the bottom of his gym locker. Too many people had started asking questions, including the exy coach. He seemed harmless enough, but Neil would rather be safe than sorry. Familiarity was dangerous. People were dangerous.
The coach had tried to convince him to play a few times, but that was one of the last promises his dying mother had extracted from him.
~~~
It didn’t look like the worst day of Alex’s life, but not only did it feel like someone had cut into his head with a chainsaw, now it felt like his heart was being torn from his chest. His mother was dying in the passenger seat of their stolen car. She had risked everything—lost everything just to save him.
He watched the blood stain spreading across her shirt and the sticky, red liquid ooze it’s way between her fingers.
He pulled over. They were out in the middle of nowhere, thank God.
“Abram, look at me,” his mother’s voice was weak. The name was unfamiliar to him, but then again, after his latest go-‘round with Lola and his father, most of the details of his past lives were fuzzy, if they were there at all.
“Promise me,” she says, “promise me that you’ll never step foot on an exy court ever again. And for the love of fuck, stay out of the spotlight.”
So he had played exy before. Rather than waste precious moments questioning her odd requests, he concedes, and the relief in her eyes is worth any sort of sacrifice he might be making.
She died not long after and it felt like Alex was dying along with her. Something in the back of his mind told him what to do, how to clean up the mess and move on with his life.
~~~
That was how Alex found himself in Millport, going by the unnoticeable name Neil Josten. To accompany his unnoticeable name, he had a bland hair color—black—and a bland eye color to go along with it—muddy brown.
Something in him itched to pick up an exy stick, but those haunting words stuck with him. Just like he felt the innate urge to pick up an exy stick, something in him also told him that his mother would come back from the dead just to beat some sense into him.
More cars had been circling the block where the house he was squatting in was located, so Neil had started sleeping in the gym. One evening, he gave into the urge to play. To feel the crisp night air in his lungs as he raced down the field.
Millport didn’t have an actual exy court, so instead they modified the football field. The walls were still up from practice the prior evening. The second he stepped inside the walls, something in his soul settled. This was something he didn’t realize that he missed.
The coach had conveniently left a bucket of balls out so Neil helped himself to them and an abandoned stick that was leaning against one of the sides. He lacked finesse, but it felt so nice to feel the burn in his arms, to hear the satisfying sound of the balls ricocheting off the walls and the floor.
He was sweating and breathing heavily by the time the bucket was empty but it was worth it.
Clapping from the side of the court draws his attention and he whirls, raising the exy stick above his head.
The exy coach was standing there with another man standing behind him. The sight of the unfamiliar man makes Neil want to keep the stick above his head defensively, but he knows that a normal 18 year old wouldn’t do that, so he forces his shaking arms down to his sides.
“Coach,” he says, trying to sound chagrined as he goes around and flips the balls into the bucket with the exy stick in a practiced way that says he’s done this many times before.
“Mr Josten,” the coaches voice floats across the field to him, “this is Coach Wymack.”
The ball Neil had just pitched back towards the bucket bounces uselessly on the ground. Even Neil knew who David Wymack was. He coached the Palmetto State foxes. New home to Kevin Day and resident home to any and all broken children Wymack thought he could save.
“Neil, do you play exy?” Wymack’s voice is much louder and it reaches Neil clearly.
He clears his throat uncomfortably, “nope.”
Wymack turns and raises an eyebrow at Neil before looking to the comfortable stance he had taken, leaning on the stick partially as the heavy bucket of balls swung idly in his other hand. “It sure seems like you’ve got an aptitude for it then.” The tone of his voice told Neil that he thought Neil was lying.
“I guess you could say that.”
“I did say that. Would you like to play? There’s a striker spot open on my team, if you’d like to be a fox.”
Something in Neil’s chest tugs harshly. That sounds amazing, it sounds perfect, it sounds too good to be true.
It was too good to be true. Neil couldn’t play on the same team as Kevin Day. He’d be breaking both of his promises to his mom in one fell swoop. He cautiously approaches the exit to the court, hesitating while he waits for Wymack to move out of his way.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to take your offer.” He skirts around Wymack cautiously, not sure if he was the kind of unstable man that Neil was constantly on the run from.
“Your coach here—er he mentioned that you’ve been having some problems at home?”
Neil’s heart stops. He’d been found out. He shook his head quickly. “No. And frankly, I don’t see what business of yours it is.”
Wymack raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s not, I was just wondering if that was your hang-up. I can go talk to them if that would help.” He takes a step towards Neil, and even though the rational part of his brain knows that it probably wasn’t going to be harmful, Neil drops the bucket of balls and takes off running. His grip on the exy stick so tight that it turns his knuckles white.
A brutal force slams into Neil’s abdomen and he falls on the ground, forcing all the air out of his lungs. A pale blur swims into focus above his head.
“Stefan?” The aforementioned blur is grinning at him manically and Neil’s heart starts to race even faster as he scrabbles away on the ground.