Chapter Text
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster | —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
—Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
When it happens, Kevin presents his throat like an offering to the inevitable. Andrew’s first attempt is slightly off and lands more on his collarbone than his neck. The second has Andrew curling his shoulders in to recenter his thumbs together to kiss over Kevin’s larynx. He drags Kevin closer by the neck until they are pressed almost nose to nose. Until all Kevin can see is his own fish eyed reflection in Andrew’s blown wide iris.
“Did you know?” Andrew asks, and he is so close that a drop of sweat falls from his cheek onto Kevin’s chin. It rolls down Kevin’s skin and reconnects with its maker’s wrist.
Yes or no can mean a lot of things. It can be permission. It can be a promise. It can be a breaking of boundaries or the realignment of others. It can be anything and everything up to Kevin’s soft, “Yes.” before the hands squeeze tighter.
How the other Foxes could possibly think Andrew as unemotional, Kevin has no idea. It was all in his hands. By what Andrew sought out, admonished, threatened, and held onto despite his projected apathy. He knew he had Andrew when he held the door for him at Eden’s or took Kevin’s left hand unprompted to gently pop and bend the still healing tissue.
Even now they say what Andrew can’t, “You betrayed me.”
Kevin's head falls back allowing Andrew the room he needs to work, “I know.”
This might be the last time they ever touch again.
Putting his leash in Andrew’s hands had been a foolish idea from the start. He wanted authenticity when Kevin was purely synthetic. He wanted the truth when Kevin was raised to lie, to omit, to hide. "It’ll be impossible to hide the bruises," he thinks. They’re too high for any collar and will bleed past his throat guard.
Vaguely, through his brain pulsing in his skull, Kevin realizes Andrew is asking him more questions but it takes air to answer. It’s how he knows Andrew is bad at this brand of cruelty. His being far too blunt and reactive. He is no Riko who would give Kevin just enough air to answer before cutting it off again. Who would tease it over hours with his hands and a blanket until Kevin remembered he should be grateful for the air in his lungs and the person who allows it.
He knows Andrew Joseph Minyard will not kill him. He has to believe that. He can’t—
A rainbow breaches the sky to Kevin’s right and a new voice bleeds in over Andrew’s shoulder, “He can’t answer you like this. If you want to know, you have to let him go.”
It is permission for others to act now: grabbing, shouting, and someone’s nails digging into Kevin’s skin where they try to peel Andrew off of him. Kevin wonders if they waited out of shock or if in some way they knew this was inevitable. The same way Aaron would always look Katelyn’s way or Neil being nothing but a faint shimmer on the horizon.
Black dots blur his vision and Kevin knows they are in the danger zone now. His nails drag down Andrew’s arm skidding off the black nylon and land somewhere at his wrists. He hits him twice but Andrew is a hardy, pissed goalkeeper to Kevin’s lean, air-deprived striker. It is nothing for him to jerk against the crowd and press down harder and harder until Kevin’s brain melts.
Desperate answers and questions. Dyed brunette hair and the watery blue eyes of a missing poster. Jeremy’s perfect quick shot to Jean’s consistent and dangerous gaze. Riko’s shoulders shaking under fluorescent bathroom lights and the hollow clatter of a dropped racquet. And Andrew. Andrew playing. Andrew denying. Andrew promising. Andrew protecting. Andrew laughing. Andrew leaving. Andrew squeezing and squeezing and squeezing.
Andrew and Neil and Neil and Andrew and, “Oh God, he's going to kill me—”
Kevin is flat on his back when air crawls down his throat in one choking gasp. He hates himself for it as it hurts worse than Andrew’s hands had. He might throw up. When Kevin turns his face against the seat he feels the wet puddle of his own tears and sweat on the cover. Matt is next to him, still shaking from the residual adrenaline, and offers him a hand that Kevin shakes his head at.
Kevin pulls himself up by the seat in front of him and sees Wymack and Renee hauling Andrew back to the front of the bus. Despite the distance and the annoying shouts of their fellow Foxes, Andrew still hears him when Kevin says, “The Butcher.” It is overdue but he needs to answer him even if the words burn on their way out of him. The whole bus stills but Kevin cannot look away from Andrew. “His father. His father has him.”
Wymack goes to stop Andrew when he steps back towards Kevin, but Renee shakes her head at him, “Let him go. They need to do this.”
“If you hurt another one of my players, Minyard—” Wymack starts, but Kevin tuts at him.
“Don't bother,” Kevin is getting it back now even if the arrogant tilt of his head pulls wrong. “It won’t change anything. It's too late.”
Andrew comes back to him with a face set to a careful neutral. It fits his features more than the manic smile ever did. He doesn’t need to ask for it as Kevin finally tells him his, Neil's, truth. “His real name is Nathaniel Wesninski. At least it is to the people who actually matter. His father is the Butcher of Baltimore—” Someone gasps up front but Kevin keeps going, “And he works for the Moriyamas, a cleaner. Since he was a child, Nathaniel was promised to be Riko's and a part of our Court, but his mother took him and ran. The Butcher has been looking for them ever since.”
“Staying at Palmetto meant being seen especially after Riko branded him. He hoped to see us through to the Championships but," Kevin shakes his head, “it was always going to happen like this. Neil was never ours to keep.” The words catch and he stops to pull it back together. Neil— Nathaniel is no longer his to mourn. Not alone. Not when he had months to do it and then years before that.
In front of him, Andrew is completely still. Head to the right as if trying to hear something from miles away. His voice is soft when he speaks. So soft that Kevin wonders if the other Foxes can hear him at all. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Kevin does not flinch, “Because you wouldn't have respected his choice.” The other Foxes make noise at that one but Kevin can't even begin to care about them. This was between him, a promise in a club’s alleyway, and a plea in an empty stadium. He can almost hear Neil's desperate, "Will you teach me?" against Andrew's scoffed, "You said I have a future, right?" He made his choice and now he has to live with it. He will.
Nothing more flickers in Andrew's face, and eventually Renee takes him away back to where Wymack waits for them. Abby tries to get her hands on Kevin, but he stops her before she can touch him. He picks up Neil's racquet and threads his fingers through the netting vaguely aware of the fact they will need to buy him a new set before their next game. Only then does he lose himself Abby's sympathy, and the memory of a locked room, a monster, and a soon-to-be missing boy.
—
A shitty motel room, men in black, and a wavering fist all bring Neil Josten back from the dead. He is nearly whole, a miracle all things considered, and Kevin feels like a voyeur to a reunion that never should have happened. Their eyes meet and Neil stares at his throat before carrying onto the next Fox beside him. This is Neil at his most honest, Kevin thinks, collecting and analyzing all he missed while off getting tortured to death. The bright blue fits the intensity of his stare far more than the brown ever did.
Andrew and Neil take off to make a new life, and Kevin sits to the edge of the Foxes in the wake of a tragedy. They go from soft to loud again trying to find the key to getting back to some normalcy. It makes sense that it is gossip that settles them in the end. A debate on when exactly Andrew and Neil became Andrew&Neil.
It is when Matt is piecing together that the late night practices may not have just been practice that Kevin feels Allison's eyes on him. He meets her gaze and lets his lips curl in anger or disgust. Whatever she needs to read off of him to get him out of this conversation. "Can I help you?" He asks.
She takes him in with one long up and down pan. There is something in her eyes that he can't stomach seeing. An awareness he refuses to give her. Eventually, her analysis ends with a long sigh, "No, you can't even help yourself," she concedes, and leaves him for Dan who is already breaking down the division of debts owed for another bet settled.
—
Ever since Kevin crashed into Wymack’s life blood soaked and desperate, he had walked back the decision of ever telling him the truth. In the Nest, Wymack could be anything from a loving savior to just another shade of the Master’s cruelty. In person, Kevin saw a man who loved his Foxes and accepted Kevin in without question. "Telling him would only hurt him," he rationalized, "Why cause him more harm than what my joining already did?"
The fact Wymack still held a candle for Kayleigh was just another point of avoidance between them. Even now Kevin can feel her here. There. In the corner, in the bleachers, in every winning shot, and devastating loss. Watching her son ready to break one of the few things she left unanswered in her death. Kevin squeezes his hands together until the knuckles shake.
“Good boys don’t cry, Kevin. Your mother would not like it. Not on her special day.”
A coffee cup slams onto the table and Kevin is back in the room. Wymack looks better than he had leaving Baltimore. More of a familiar flush to his face under a cool devil may care attitude that none of them believed. "If this is about the season, Kevin, can it wait until after your little vacation? Everything will be fine, I'm handling it."
“No, it’s better to do it now,” Kevin says, "Can you sit down?"
Where there is a Fox there are warning lights and no one knows that more than David Wymack. He looks up from his work and Kevin does not flinch or give anything away. Frozen in the chair, quiet calm, it will be done. Wymack clears his throat, "Is this about the Moriyamas or Baltimore?"
"No, this has nothing to do with them."
"You're starting to stress me out, Kid."
Good, you still have some sense then. "Before I say anything, I need you to promise me that this won't change anything between us as coach and athlete."
“Are you picking up Minyard’s bad habits now?” Too soon. Wymack says it and his eyes drop to Kevin’s throat, and Kevin hates himself for not thinking to change into a turtleneck. Should have known it would add unnecessary weight to this conversation. Wymack’s look of concern is useless to him. “How’s the uh—” Wymack gestures at his own neck, “Did you see Abby?”
“They’re fine. I have clearance to play. This is nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing doesn’t leave a bruise like that,” Wymack says.
“We’re not talking about Andrew—”
“For once.”
Kevin ignores him, “Do you promise me or not?”
“Jesus, Kevin. What more can there be?”
Riko’s eyes in the dark. Jean’s hoarse, “I wanted it.” A freshman’s still body.
“Promise me or I walk,” Kevin doubles down. What from, he doesn't specify. Even he doesn't know if he is bluffing or not.
“Kevin, nothing you tell me is going to end with you being kicked out of this place. You’re a Fox now, one of my Foxes.”
It comes out before Kevin can stop it or find a better way to phrase it, “But you always wanted another Fox, what about a son?”
Wymack’s face jerks and he squeezes the cup of coffee in his hands. Something breaks in his expression and Kevin hates the sight of. An immediate give that is too close to the same look he gives Dan and Neil when he thinks they’re not looking. "Kevin. If you see it that way—"
“No, not like that.” Kevin shakes his head, “I meant, when you and Mom were, when you were...” Kevin can’t say hooking up so he makes a motion with his hand waving off the implications, “Together. She got pregnant. With me.”
A thousand times has Kevin thought of this conversation. A thousand times he has seen Wymack react with joy, anger, disbelief, and denial. He does not expect the choked, "Is this a prank?” that leaves his mouth. Wymack sinks back in his chair, hands shaking, “I don’t know who put you up to this, or if it's one of your goddamn bets, but this isn't funny, Kid.”
I don't want to do this.
“I have a letter.” Kevin pulls it out of his pocket and unfolds it as carefully as he ever did. “She wrote to the Master about it.”
A hot summer had left him emboldened by Riko’s boredom and the Master taking a long trip to see the Lord. They crawled through old files wanting to peek at what the outside world thought of them but found something much more precious. Riko had asked Kevin eight times if it was really his mother’s writing while they reread it over and over again on the Master's desk. Fathers were a tender thread between them and David Wymack became a possibility that, for Riko, turned to jealous hatred. For Kevin, it was a chance at salvation.
Seeing her handwriting for the first time in years does something to Wymack. He pulls his arms into himself and squeezes his hand against his lips. “Is that hers?" He asks. His voice is already raw in a way Kevin never heard before. Even the night he called about Seth's overdose or in the wake of Thanksgiving he had been able to scrape himself together. Yet just the sight of Kayleigh’s slant handwriting has him shaking.
He doesn't want to do this. “Yes, Coach. It’s Kayleigh’s.”
As Wymack's fingers close around the edge of the paper, Kevin’s hand twitches at the last second, wanting to take it back. It makes the paper strain between them and he drops it before it can rip. He forces his hands against his own thighs, glancing between nothing and Wymack’s face as he reads. His fingers trail over the paper and Kayleigh’s words.
Kevin can remember it word for word now, “Apologies for the long wait…Kevin is so much like me…Already a nightmare on the Court…All they want is his father as if I’m not enough…If you must know…We have our own dreams…Talk again soon, old friend.”
Wymack sags back in his chair, losing the flush of anger for pale regret. His hand holding the letter drops to his knee and it rustles in the fan’s wind. Kevin stares at his mother’s signature, “K. Day” and feels his throat tighten but refuses to let it go any higher. He can’t break here. Not yet.
“How long have you known?” Wymack asks and Kevin closes his eyes because he is, if anything, a coward.
“The summer before my sophomore year.”
“Your sophomore year?” Wymack croaks, and Kevin tucks his head lower. “...we’ll need a paternity test."
“Yes, Coach," Kevin answers and he sees Wymack's leg spasm.
"Do you want to tell the team?"
Kevin swallows but forces the words out, “Yes, they should know before we go public about this.”
The fan on his desk turns again and again and again before Wymack is able to speak, “What do you mean public?”
“I will be telling the press sometime before our next game,” Kevin says, “It’ll take their eyes off Neil, and give the Ravens something to focus on over the Butcher. It could even save campus from whatever fallout will come from Baltimore.” And their lives too. Riko will want blood for this.
Wymack is a strong man. Strong enough to haul Kevin and his other Foxes from the edge time and time again. He has seen him go through fights, screams, and even elbows to stop them from jumping over it. Which is why the break in his body and hands as he asks, “Is that the only reason why you told me?” feels worse than Kevin could ever have imagined.
I didn't want to do this.
Kevin can’t answer, but the silence speaks for itself. It often does.
The letter leaves with Kevin. He collects Neil from Abby, and allows himself the grace to pause at the passenger door as his mind whispers how easy it would be to twist the wheel into incoming traffic while Neil is driving. Or shove his way into the driver’s seat and be halfway to West Virginia before any of them could stop him. Kevin forces his hand back and gets into the backseat instead.
It is Neil who offers to tell the Foxes and it is Neil who takes what he wants from Kevin's non-answer. Tell them, don't tell them, it feels like a footnote in an overall miserable day. He tries to hate Neil for it but it feels knotted as everything has been since Baltimore. Or maybe it goes all the way back to his initial promise to hide his secret, or before that to their first meeting on the court when he told Kevin he saw him when he looked to the future.
Is this a prank? It lingers longer than anything else Wymack had said during that nightmare of a conversation. As if Kevin would use her to hurt him. As if he would ever use her in the first place. He does not know what he wants from him, and maybe there is no good answer, but alone in the car the pressure and the spiderweb fissures that extends from throat to chest crack in one uniform break. He falls forward, face in his hands, and shakes, aching for a direction or an order. Something to replace the silence that being a person demands.
What use is a puppet whose master cut his strings? A limp doll thrown to the side who can't even listen to whatever picks him up after? He was lucky to find someone who would take him in, another who would protect him, and another who would idolize him. But they all knew the truth now. The reason why he clung to Riko despite the distance and the pain between them. It was not just Riko who wanted it. It was not just him who missed it. Such absolute consuming obsession meant a life without being abandoned. No matter what, Riko would always want him. Even if it hurt. Even if it demolished everything else in his life, at least Riko would never leave him. It was Kevin who did that ultimate betrayal.
"Don't let me go," Kevin begs and grinds out in his mind, "I can't tell him no. I can't be alone. I need you to hold onto me because I don't know how to stay."
Knuckles rap on the window and that is his only warning before Andrew opens the car door. Kevin holds his hands over his neck staring at him. This is not the first time Andrew has found him breaking down in the back of his car, but it feels different in a way Kevin cannot voice. Not when it still hurts to swallow. The waiting game ends with Andrew's hand extending towards him, and he hauls Kevin up and onto the curb like he weighs nothing. There is a cigarette resting on the jut of his lip that he lights in a quick one-two motion. If it was a week ago, this would be when Kevin complains at him and nags him into putting it out. Now he feels settled by the familiar burn of Andrew's vice.
Kevin leans back against the side of the car. In the corner of his eye, he sees Andrew fiddle with the lighter. Flicking it off and on while gazing at Fox Tower. Andrew tucks the cigarette in the corner of his mouth before talking, "So, did you tell him?"
"What did Neil tell you?" It bleeds bitter but Kevin can't reign it in.
"We're not talking about Neil but about Papa dearest," Andrew says, "Did you tell him? Is he going to be a problem?"
"No," Kevin says, already sick of this conversation, "It'll be fine. We'll be fine. He's still my coach."
"Not going to snag him for child support then?"
Funny. Always funny. "I'm over eighteen. It doesn't matter."
"…that bad, huh?"
Ugh— Kevin wipes his face clean of the drying tear tracks and hates the loud sniffle he does at the end of it. He can't look at Andrew and Andrew is keeping steady eyes on the blacktop in front of them. This is the first time they've been alone since Baltimore. He can’t do this. Not after Wymack. “Did you pack already?”
The sidestep does not go unnoticed but Andrew can be merciful when he doesn’t want to do it either. “You’re done. I put some of my shit with yours. I need room for the booze.”
"You know we shouldn't be going, right?" The snap feels right and Kevin can feel his body picking up old habits. A little teeth, above all this, untouchable. He can be himself again.
"Too fucking bad." Andrew rips the door for home open, and turns so it falls against his back, holding it for Kevin, "I'm not leaving you here alone."
Kevin stares at the stairs and thinks about telling Andrew "no" for once. He feels the word, so foreign on his tongue, and moves no closer. A come or go that could just as easily be leave. But he walks in with only a barbed and well learned, "Don't make it about me when we both know it isn't." The smell of smoke that trails up the stairs after him is the only way he knows Andrew is following him.
—
The cabin is serene and private with trails down towards the town on one side and more rural footpaths on the other. Being in such an open place still sends a flush of vertigo down Kevin's spine, but he is handling it better than his first Spring semester at Palmetto where even the openness of campus would make his head spin. Exploring, unpacking, and a meandering not-promise to Nicky about doing a karaoke night before they leave kills his free time before dinner.
It is as rowdy an affair as it usually is, but the wine is expensive and endless, thank you team card, and Kevin walks away from it with a nice buzz under his skin. A buzz that ends with Dan’s hand on his wrist pulling him away from the other Foxes. She leads him to the back of the property where a fire pit sits unlit and surrounded by stumps for chairs. They’re too wet to use so they hover awkwardly next to each other, waiting for the other to start.
It is no secret that Dan took the news of Wymack and Kevin's "relationship" the hardest out of the team. It has added unofficial fault lines to their vacation as the upperclassmen surround Dan and keep Kevin to the outskirts. He hoped she would drop it or at least shove it aside for the sake of their team, but this feels inevitable.
Except, now that she has him, she seems stuck on where to start. He rips the band-aid off for both their sakes'. “Nothing is going to change so there’s no point in doing this.”
“Actually there is,” Dan says, “I need to be able to share a court with you.”
“We’re professional, we can leave it off the court,” Kevin says and his voice is gruff. Expectant and flippant, already over this. "You should be my captain first. Everything else second."
“I don’t want this to impact things, Kevin. I don’t want this—” She shakes her hand between them, “Hanging over us for the rest of the season. Not when we have the last half of play-offs to worry about.”
“Not enough to actually practice,” Kevin snips and feels the wine-warm pleasure when he can tell it knocks her off balance.
“We needed a vacation,” she argues, “If you even noticed, we almost lost our teammate, and the whole team is recovering from the riot. If we played like this we could risk more injuries.”
“You have enough of a healthy team to do something. You remember how impossible it felt against them in October and that was a regular season game. They’ll be a different beast come Championships. And that’s if we make it there. We still have USC in our way.”
“We will,” Dan says, “We have a good team and… wait no—" Dan waves the thought off, finally seeing what Kevin is trying to do, "This isn’t what I brought you out here for. Is what Neil said true?”
“Yes," Kevin grinds out, "Coach is my biological father.”
Dan is quiet and Kevin can see her already losing ground. Maybe she found comfort in the idea this was just another one of Neil’s lies. Is this a prank? Something to shake off like discovering he has an uncle back home or a family in DC. But here, between them, Kevin has no reason to lie. Especially to his Captain.
Dan’s jaw clicks, “And he didn’t know?”
“No. She told him I was someone else's.” The one time he questioned why he didn’t have a dad like the other boys in Junior Exy, his mother had smoothed his hair back and told him she was his father. In his tiny world where she was the center of it, he had taken it as gospel truth. It was only after she was gone did he realize he might have someone else out there who would want to raise him.
Dan's arms wrap around herself, giving her the support she needs to get through this. “You should have told me directly. I shouldn’t have had to learn it from Neil, and not with the other Foxes around. I know I’m not one of your Monsters but I deserved better than that.”
"Fine, the next time I need to go public about my parentage I'll add your name under Allison's." Its intention is to sting and it works as he sees Dan's head jerk away from him. He is still a scavenger amongst kits and the difference is made obvious when he says, “Then you should know, I’m going public about it.”
“Oh great,” Dan says in a flat voice, “Thank you so much for the head’s up. When?”
“After our next game. Maybe. It’ll take attention off Neil.”
“Does Wymack know?”
“Yes, I told Coach when I told him the truth.”
The choice of title doesn’t get past her. “Not Dad?”
Kevin shrugs his shoulders, “Like I said, it doesn’t change anything.”
“But it does for me. For him. He’s like family to me, Kevin.” Dan gives up on standing and sits down on one of the stumps. At the face she makes, it is probably as uncomfortable as it looks. “God, you don’t even want him and yet you have him anyway.”
Correcting her would just make this worse and Kevin knows that want and need are two different things. It was one of the first lessons the Master ever branded into his skin. “Him being my father biologically doesn’t matter—”
“It always mattered,” Dan interrupts him, “Because you’re Kayleigh’s, Kevin. He isn’t exactly subtle.”
“My mother made her choice and it was for me to grow up at Evermore. If Coach tried to stop that it would have put his life in danger. This was the best way it could have worked out. You still have him, and I have no need for him outside what he can offer me as a coach.”
“You can’t honestly mean that,” Dan says.
“I do. If she told him he would have been another barrier between me and my destiny of being a Raven.” Kevin stops himself, acutely aware of the orange windbreaker he has on. The very same one Dan had commissioned for them as a young captain. “If he tried to interfere when I was a child they would have killed him. There would be no Foxes if he was my father.”
Dan leans forward and buries her face in her hands between her knees. “Is that really the only reason why?” Dan asks but Kevin does not look at her. Her voice cracks, “Kevin—”
Dan waits and Kevin makes her wait and wait and wait as his mind scurries between the truth and Jeremy Knox’s stats in the last year. He closes his eyes and tries. “All I need right now is a team I can carry to Nationals. Anything besides facing the Ravens in April is meaningless to me.”
Several times Dan tries to reply but comes up empty. In the distance, Kevin can make out their teammates settling in for the night. Muffled music and the sound of someone’s laughter. Kevin can imagine they’re playing some drinking game now that their stomachs are full. He daydreams about the bottle of Belvedere he had slipped Nicky the money for. A rare indulgence against the more affordable and guiltless chug of Absolut that Andrew had introduced him to. It’ll be a nice balm to cap off this night.
Dan clears her throat, “Fine. And for the matter you’re still one of my Foxes. Just… just give me space this week."
The reply comes easy, “Aye aye, Captain Wilds.”
Dan laughs and it's a wet thing that chases Kevin back up the path to the warm oasis of the house. Inside, the Foxes are indeed playing some game and Dan goes to Matt while Kevin goes to the edge of the circle. He drinks and drinks and drinks until the party is over and someone who smells like whiskey and cigarettes helps him up to bed. He reaches for them but the fingers pull back fast, wrong wrong wrong. “I should have told you—”
“Not now.” The hand is gone. Kevin pretends he can still smell tobacco on his clothes.
—
The other Foxes leave Kevin alone during the rest of their stay and he is thankful for it. He splits his time between catching up with some reading and drinking whatever Nicky mixes up while bored. Taking time off is still not for him, and his body sings for the court, but he silences it for the sake of peace. For not wanting another fight when everything still felt so raw between his demands and the team’s ability to bend.
But there is enough left of the Belvedere for one last glass that he savors between pages of Tolstoy. The fire is warm at his back, and, in the silence of his teammates slinking off to fuck or sleep, he can even admit he kind of enjoys the peace. The wide windows and warmth of familiar eyes on his back that he chooses not to keep track of. He lets body sag under the weight of booze and dense text, losing the plot more than he would like to admit.
Then fingers snag his glass off the table to shoot it back in one clean gulp. Andrew licks his lips as Kevin sighs, “What a waste.”
“Alcohol isn’t meant to be savored, Day. Loses its burn.” Andrew sprawls on the couch next to Kevin. “I’ll make Nicky do a run if you want another bottle so bad.”
“You finish it, you buy it.”
“Neil will.”
“Don’t use stolen Yakuza money.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Kevin gives up on reading to stare at him. Andrew’s face gives nothing away but his hands fiddle with the empty glass. They have not been avoiding each other per se, but it would be wrong to say things did not shift between them. A controlled explosion, sure, but the rocks were still settling and Kevin was choking on the dust. When Andrew double taps Kevin’s knee for his attention it feels more inevitable than surprising.
There is a question in Andrew's face that Kevin answers by leaning his head back and going limp against the leather of the couch, a pale echo of plastic bus seats. He watches Andrew shift his weight to sit up and over him, free hand resting on the back of the couch to keep his balance as he tugs Kevin’s collar to the side to look at his creation. Kevin falls back against the arm, thumb keeping his place in the book while scars rest on the cover. Andrew’s fingers walk over each bruise making a path around Kevin’s throat. He lingers on the larger welts, still purpling days later, but only brush over the smaller yellowing marks on his skin.
Never an apology, not Kevin to him nor him to Kevin. Only Kevin’s soft, “Admiring your work?”
Andrew's fingers drag over the worst of it under Kevin's Adam's apple where Andrew had dug in his thumbs to silence him. “Shut up.”
“Y'know the best way to do it now.” Kevin replies south of dry. He shivers when Andrew's nails scrape the sensitive skin by his ear. He tries to catch Andrew's eyes but he's too focused on his neck.
Andrew sticks a finger in his face, "First it was the Ravens coming South," another fingers goes up, "Now Baltimore. You got a nasty habit of keeping things from me, Day. I know only Exy exists in that head of yours, but it’s three strikes and you’re out.” Andrew’s hand settles in his own grooves. It forces Kevin still so he can stare hard at him. "You lied to me."
"I lied for him," Kevin counters. He can still feel Neil's desperation in the wake of that nightmare of a banquet. The burn in his own chest over leaving such a career unfinished. For truly beautiful talent to be hidden away or left to bleed out like a pig in some monster's basement. But he still kept Neil's promise securing that his last months of life, as Neil, would be on his own terms.
"You chose him over me," Andrew drawls, "After everything I did to keep you alive."
Kevin lets go of the book to wrap his left hand around Andrew's. He pushes his pinkie just under the cuff of his hoodie exposing the edge of black nylon. It is as much a test as Andrew's hand against his throat is. "I guess we're even then." The hand presses down even harder, and it is only when it ghosts towards too much does Kevin’s chin jerk up, “Let go of me.”
Andrew’s hand pulls away but Kevin does not let go of his sleeve. It’s Neil’s hoodie, one of the new ones they bought him as a fresh rescue. Kevin is not an idiot. “How about your deal with him then?”
“None of your business.” Andrew stands to leave, “Now read your fucking book.”
An order is an order but as hard as Kevin tries to read he keeps getting distracted by the layover warmth on his neck. He presses on the after image of a burn. He wishes he had choked him again. He wishes he never touched him. He wonders if Neil's cheap cologne still clings to the hoodie.
He doesn’t know what to do with open doors. He doesn’t know how to close them either.
—
“Kevin— C’mon. Wake up.” The bed shakes and Kevin tosses his arm out aiming for what would be chest height on a normal person and hits shoulder instead. They grunt at him but try again, “Seriously, you need to get up.”
“Fuck off,” Kevin groans. His mouth tastes like sandpaper and his head is still spinning from the too sweet shots Nicky (Was it Nicky?) poured down his throat. Did he sing karaoke last night? He vaguely recalls ABBA blaring at one point. He rolls onto his stomach and shoves his face into the pillow but they don't leave him alone.
Another harsh shove and they hiss, “You won’t want Nicky and Aaron to hear this.”
Neil.
Kevin forces his body up and peeks at his phone through one eye. It is barely 4 AM. Why the fuck would Neil need him before 10 on his vacation. “Someone better be dead.”
There’s a twitch in Neil’s face that Kevin knows is him holding back. “Hurry up. We’ll talk downstairs.” Neil heads for the door and Kevin slips on sleep pants to follow him. Neil is already moving around the kitchen with the coffeemaker going. He shakes a bottle of whiskey at him. “You’ll want it Irish this morning.”
Kevin is too tired to be offended so he yawns in Neil’s face and slumps over the bar, “Just tell me.”
“Nope, drinks first.”
“I swear to god I’ll go back to—”
The grin slips off Neil’s face as fast as Kevin expects it to. The joking false twitchiness gives way for as real as Neil Josten can be. His whole body sways to the side. “Kengo Moriyama is dead.”
Kevin’s left hand shakes and he slams it back down to the bar with his right. “No. The Lord is not dead.”
Neil pours a cup and fills more than half of it with whiskey before passing it to Kevin’s hands who takes the burn two ways. He stares at Kevin until he drains half of it, both of them knowing he can't handle this conversation remotely sober. Not anymore.
Lord Kengo had been a half formed figure in Kevin’s childhood. He never met the man directly but the Master would be called away to bend and kiss the ring occasionally. The visits always left his body bent remarkably like Riko’s, and it was the only time Kevin could really see any family resemblance between them. They both revered and despised the man in equal extremes.
But it was not the Master that Kevin thinks of. It's Riko. With Kengo dead, Ichirou would now hold the empire Riko always felt somehow owed to him. It happening after Kevin and Neil's betrayal would be salt in his open, rotting wounds. Kevin could only imagine what Riko would do after the funeral.
What he would do to Jean.
Kevin chugs more coffee to ground himself against that yawning black hole such a thought opens up. Since he left the Nest he knew it was at the expense of Jean's life. He had signed his death warrant the moment his knuckles hit Wymack's door. If Kevin was a good person he would have turned Riko's abandoned racquet on Jean before he left them for the Foxes. At least by his hands it would have been some brand of mercy.
"How do you know?" Kevin asks.
"Renee," Neil answers and that makes sense. Kevin knew that Jean had been texting her, and Kevin had forced himself to form absolutely no opinion about it. "Jean messaged her before Riko got his hands on him." Kevin's left thigh starts shaking and his nails dig into the muscle trying to keep it under control.
Neil's eyes move away when Kevin looks up to catch them and he feels his stomach drop. When Neil is breathing Neil lies, but when he's avoiding he hides. His gaze darts for any exit and Kevin has him by the wrist before he can escape, "You're not telling me something."
"You can't change it, Kevin. It's already happened."
"Tell me or I'll never let you touch my court again," Kevin promises because that is what it'll always come back to for them. One of the last pieces of leverage he has over him.
Neil's face pinches and he relents, "Renee went to Edgar Allan to get him. She left two hours ago."
“You let her go?!” Kevin’s cup smashes to the floor and soaks the carpet in hot coffee. He stands up and his vision doubles. Jean is hurt. Jean is dead. He is already dead. Renee will die with him. “You sent her to the fucking Nest?”
Neil shakes his head, “I didn’t send her anywhere. She left on her own.”
“Does Andrew know?” Kevin demands. As much as their relationship baffles him, the list of people Andrew keeps to is a very short one. The people he willingly lets put their hands on him even shorter.
“She took the Mas,” Neil says, “And he wouldn’t stop her anyway. It was her choice, Kevin.”
There is something bitterly ironic about that, but Kevin doesn't have the capacity for it right now.
“They’re going to hang her from the rafters," Kevin shouts. It's not just Renee he is thinking of. They would find her messages on his phone if Riko got to him before he deleted them. The Romeo and Juliet of Exy, the doomed lovers, a mockery to the end. He can hear the sharp whispers of the locker room as clear as when he was eighteen. Gossip is a commodity in a place robbed of so much else, and such a scandal for one as already infamous as Jean Moreau would charge it for weeks.
Her death would be a joke. His inevitable. Kevin almost falls to his knees. He wants to vomit.
Neil's face is passive again, only watching him, “He has a chance if Renee can get to him in time."
"There is no time," Kevin snarls because this is Jean and the Nest and the darkness robbing rainbow dappled light. If Kengo is dead then Riko would be merciless. It should be Kevin sharing the weight of his hatred and grief, but Jean is there to handle it alone. Kevin rakes at his hair feeling the panic close his throat, “Jean is beyond our help but you could have limited Riko’s fallout. You sent one of our Foxes to die.”
“I didn’t do anything, and you don’t know he’s dead yet,” Neil argues but Kevin can’t hear it. Can’t look at him. All he can see is hollow gray eyes lingering long after they should have turned away. Long after he should know Kevin would never turn back for him. He stands up and gags, having to haul himself steady by the counter top.
He sees a half finished bottle of vodka on the bar but before he can lunge for it, Neil holds it down by the neck out of reach, “No. We need to make a plan for when she gets back.”
“People don’t come back from the Nest,” Kevin says. “Best case, she will be turned around at the gate for being an outsider. Worst case, Riko will see her as one of our own and invites her in.”
“We came back," Neil argues, "Renee has a plan. She'll be fine."
“I was thrown away and you were rejected! You can’t compare her to us. She is important to Andrew and Jean, and thus collateral to Riko. All because Andrew is…” The phrase "precious to us" almost leaves Kevin's mouth but he swallows it down. Lets it sit in his bruised throat next to Neil's begging eyes and the other feelings that will one day ruin him. “Killing her will hurt him which will hurt us. It’s all he wants.”
Neil's beat of consideration gives Kevin a chance to rip the vodka out of his hands. He shoves it against his chest, feeling his heart hammer through the glass. He uses his height against Neil, leaning as far away from him as possible. When he tries to take it away from him again, Kevin aims for one of Neil’s tender spots from Baltimore and earns a glare for it. Despite the cruelty, Kevin begs, “Don’t take it away. I need this. I can’t do this without it. If he’s dead—”
No. Kevin’s brain comes to a screeching halt.
He has to remember how to breathe but all he can smell is the human rot of a storage closet with Riko’s smile in the corner telling Kevin to open the box. That he had a gift for him. Jean Moreau had looked dead until his eyes slowly rolled to Kevin, except there was no relief at his rescue. In them a single request: please kill me.
At that point Kevin had known the brutal edge of Riko’s cruelty far better than his own mother’s voice, yet this broke him more than anything his First had ever done to him. Enough to shatter his careful wall of emotional control to reach past the ruins and towards Jean himself. Will you teach me?
He hopes this time it will be a quick death. He hopes Riko is so mad with grief he does not make him suffer. He hopes he overplays his hand and Jean’s blood spills before he realizes what he has done. He hopes Jean will be buried somewhere quiet and far away from Evermore. Somewhere there is sunlight.
Kevin blinks in the now and realizes the bottle is far emptier than it had been when he first grabbed it. Neil is sitting at the bar staring at him, whole body tense like he will take off at any second. Kevin sets the bottle down between them. His voice is a slur when he speaks. “If Renee calls, you will convince her to come home."
Neil shakes his head, “She’s not mine to order around.”
Giving up, Kevin stands and Neil is there taking half his weight as he hauls himself back upstairs. It is probably agony having Kevin’s pressed against his still healing wounds from Baltimore, but all Neil gives is the occasional hiss when Kevin leans too hard on him. Before the door, Neil says, “We never talked about it.”
“The Nest?” Kevin mumbles.
“Baltimore. You didn’t tell them.”
Kevin laughs and shakes his head, “I didn’t know until they did. I thought you ran your mouth to the wrong fan and got your skull caved in.”
There is more they can say. More they should say but Kevin is out of words and out of time as Neil opens the door. Aaron glares at them half dressed and fiddling with his suitcase. Nicky’s bed is empty but the shower is running with some pop song Kevin doesn’t know blaring. Neil pushes Kevin into the room, “Delivery! He’s drunk.”
“Great,” Aaron sighs. “What the fuck did you do to get him wasted at—” He squints at the clock, “Five AM on a Wednesday?”
“Just have that effect on people.”
“Fuck off, Josten.”
Neil shoos Kevin into the room and grabs the doorknob, “I’ll tell Andrew you said hi.” The door slams shut before Aaron’s projectile shirt can reach him.
The bathroom door opens and Nicky is out drying his hair. He spots Kevin and gives him his usual brand of salacious smile, “Hey Kevin, are you swaying over little ol’ me?”
“Get out.”
Aaron stiffens and Nicky tilts his head. “What?” Aaron asks but Kevin needs them gone. Now.
“I said get out.”
“What the fuck—”
“Get the fuck out!” Kevin shouts and Aaron slams his suitcase shut and leaves, pulling a still dripping Nicky behind him. Kevin finds a bottle in his luggage and twists the lid off chasing the memory of gray eyes and rainbow hair down the rabbit hole.
—
The floor is wet under his head and the bottle's smooth glass feels nice under his fingers. He hums and taps along the label tracing each letter once, twice, and back again. Tries to sound it out, long and slow tasting the missing "e" on his tongue. Abolut, absolut, absolut. A silly decision to get around trademark and sell more bottles.
Andrew likes to drop the "n" in his name when he teases him. Eats into Kevin's space and says, "Kevi," all put-upon and drawn out with a tsk on his tongue. What was he gonna do with him? Kevi, Kevi, Kevi. Will he still call him Kevi?
Hand coming up to rest on his throat, Kevin falls back onto the floor and stares up at the bland ceiling. He mops his face clean but it is disgusting between his breakdown and the heat of the room. The residual steam of Nicky's shower and the Cabin's heating system working overtime to cook him alive. He should get up but the idea of it makes Kevin's stomach churn. He lets go of the bottle and watches it roll into a corner that he knows is empty even if it doesn't look it. Maybe it's an offering.
The thrum so learned he tunes in mouthing the words as they come, “—pathetic has-been long past his prime,” his voice coos. “One break and you turn into this?” The voice slinks closer along the shadows dripping across the floor with the cloud cover. “Do they know what you are?”
Kevin moans and rolls onto his stomach, shutting his eyes against the phantom sight of him. He should ignore him, that's what Bee says to do, but it is too nice to have another voice again. To press back against it, "You made me leave. I would have stayed. I was loyal."
"You left. Even in this state I would have found a use for you. Do they still want you?" It rests like a weight around Kevin's shoulders and he sinks into it. It is a fantasy he only indulges in at his most desperate, the peace of what returning to the Nest would mean.
The door code has likely changed since he left, but someone would recognize him soon enough. Would know better than to stop him. He would count each stair as he had for ten years until he stood in the cool familiar light of home. So different from Fox Tower's flickering florescent and bright white cement walls. It would be quiet in the way only the Nest could be, and Riko would already know as he always did. Some inherent connection as well made as an iron chain linking their lives together. Each day he tugged it and waited for the pull back.
"I miss you," he whispers. It is a slur and a hazy dream as he reaches for nothing. "I'll never leave again. I promise, I promise—"
"Why would I believe your promises after what you've done?"
Kevin's hand climbs into the air and tries to haul Riko closer, begging for him to be real. Until the dark of the bathroom could be the shadows of home if he squints.
—
Dan is sitting alone when Kevin finally drags himself downstairs. Their other teammates are missing and her phone is face up on the table in front of her. She has her face in her hands and shoulders pinched, the world weariness of someone tasked with managing the worst team in the sport.
There is a history between her and Renee that Kevin only knows second hand. The most he sees of it is when Dan points at Renee’s place in the net after practice and they settle in for a volley of two. Dan can be merciless, a strong example of a dealer able to swap between offense and defense as smooth as breathing. Renee is not the impossible wall Andrew turns himself into but rapid response. She matches Dan’s transformation beat for beat, round for round, and they always leave the Court after with matching fox smiles.
Kevin nods at her phone on the table, “Anything?”
“She updated Andrew an hour ago but nothing else. Stephanie promised she would tell us if anything happened.” Dan sits back, “...is the Nest really that dangerous?”
If Kevin was someone else he would pull up a chair and try to comfort her. He would have the right words and say the right things to find any way to make it easier. But he doesn't. He drinks and sits as far from her as he can, avoiding any lingering shadows in the corner of his eye.
He lets her read the answer in his eyes: it's worse.
Eventually, the other Foxes wander in wanting some update or news about their missing teammate. When they get none, they dance around Renee’s name and make halfhearted plans for the last of their vacation but the time has passed. Their escape from reality shattered with Renee’s absence. The morning fades and Andrew slips a new bottle of Belvedere into Kevin’s hand before heading out to smoke with Neil.
Kevin is numbly dozing on the couch when Andrew comes to check on him. His clothes stink of tobacco and he has one of Renee’s butterfly knives dancing in his hand. He snaps it over his thumb and ring finger before flicking it open and reversing it to close in his palm. Kevin watches him spin, “You’re not as good as her.”
“Always a critic.”
Kevin shrugs. His arm is trapped under his chest and his face is warm where it’s been pressed into the cushions. He can feel dried spit on his cheek where he had been drooling, not really asleep or awake but fading between. “Any news?”
The blade slips back into Andrew’s sleeve. “Renee’s alive. Your back liner too. They just made it to Palmetto.”
Oh. Kevin stares at Andrew and Andrew stares at him and there is a loud whining in Kevin’s throat that gives way to something between a gasp and tear. He throttles himself to choke it back, which prompts Andrew to click his tongue at him, “Let go. C'mon Kevin, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“How is he?” It feels foolish to hope. It feels worse to realize that he could have abandoned him again.
“Let go.” Andrew squeezes Kevin’s wrist until he unlatches and holds him by the hand. “Nothing specific but we were told to ‘pray for him’ so I imagine pretty fucking bad. But he’s alive.”
“He’s alive.” Kevin repeats and Andrew sighs at him. He pulls until Kevin relaxes enough that Andrew can softly knead the always tender scar tissue.
"Jean is out of the Nest,” Kevin whispers. It feels like tempting fate to say it out loud and he wants to snap the words back out of the air almost as fast as he speaks them. Andrew just hums at him. He pulls at each individual finger until they crack in a line. Then he squeezes the tips of them before massaging to the base knuckle in a rhythmic up and down pattern. Soothing. Good. Familiar.
"He’ll try to run,” Kevin realizes.
“Probably,” Andrew mumbles, “But you gave Wymack enough practice I’m sure he can handle it.” Could he? While Kevin was all striker made for speed, Jean was a back liner the same as Wymack had been. Jean would know each of his weak points by now. Would be willing to exploit them in a way Kevin, even at his most desperate, couldn’t.
Andrew squeezes tighter and Kevin tries to pull his hand back but Andrew holds on, “No. Turn it off.”
"I can't."
"Well you have to. Neil plans on making you handle him."
Ha. The laugh barks out of his chest and he bares his teeth at him hoping his eyes are clearer than his mind. "Is he giving me orders too?"
"I'm giving you a head's up, asshole."
Kevin's knees press tight against his ribs as he snaps, "Jean is not Neil's to deal with. Neil is not his partner. I am not his partner. Neither of you understand what it means to be someone's partner."
"I thought I was your partner?" Andrew is looking carefully to the left of Kevin's head and it is a warning.
"I thought so too."
A beat. “You’re pissing me off, Day.”
“What? Are you going to pull a knife on me?” He hates it in himself, this pettiness in the wake of a breakdown. Wanting to snap at something until it withdraws.
“Should I?” Andrew asks and his head is at a too far angle. The old clock in the corner ticks at them and it seems to draw every second longer than the last.
A butter knife is not something Kevin would ever be scared of. It is the gray area they've been dancing in that keeps him up at night. Not knowing if he is back in the fold or he's at his own will again. He doesn't know how to reset this. What kind of neutral even exists for people like them? "It's not like we have a deal stopping you."
Andrew leaves and takes Kevin's bottle with him. Kevin’s teeth catch on a loose bit of flesh of his inner cheek and bites until iron hits his tongue.
Drunk and alone, Kevin could admit that there was something more to the moments his eyes lingered on Andrew. Drunk enough to say the same about Neil, about Jean, about the glossy pages of Jeremy Knox. He only vaguely remembers that first night at Eden's when he whispered, "Would you fuck me?" into smokey air and only got Andrew's dead eyed stare back for it. They never talked about it. He wishes they would talk about it. He wishes he could talk about it. He wishes he had told him to choke him again to remind him of his place if only to assure him he still has one. He wishes he had left him something to fucking drink.