Chapter Text
Neil gazed at his cigarette as it burned down to the filter, breathing in the smoke that reminded him so much of his mother. He felt himself drowning in the memories of the California coast, the smell of burning and the weight of his mother who would never be properly buried. He gazed out onto the exy field, dismayed about how fast the season was over. What felt like his one last chance to play in his lifetime finally slipping away - not easy as he held so tightly on that his hands felt torn and bloody from gripping so tightly onto a dream he could never have.
The phantom hands pulling him down into despair became startlingly real, jolting Neil from his melancholy as Coach Hernandez dropped a hand upon his shoulder. Neil scrambled away, clutching his duffel to his chest but stopped to study his - now former - Coach as he held his hands forward in a placating gesture.
“Neil,” the man started gently, “are you alright?”
Neil just stared him down. After losing his contacts at the last town he was forced to grow comfortable with his reflection and fast. He knows how unsettling his gaze can be, piercing blue eyes that were passed down from a murderer. But Neil relents to a man who’s always looked the other way when he caught him sleeping in the locker rooms, muttering a small, “I'm fine.”
Coach Hernandez gives him a small, disbelieving look but just nods it away, deciding to move on quickly to dispel the tension he created with his careless touch. “Didn’t see your parents tonight, I thought they might have tried to make it this one time.”
Neil gives a one-shoulder shrug, duffel still desperately clenched between his fingers as the lie of Neil Josten flows off his tongue. “Nobody knew it would be the last game, they didn’t think they were gonna miss much.”
“Well,” the Coach said, extending to his full height, “not yet. Someone’s here to see you.”
Those words flooded Neil with cold, sharp dread. Running for years and checking behind every corner can only go so far in the end but Neil still feared the monsters that awaited him in the forms of his father’s men. But, when Neil turns and expects an overly polite smile on a dangerous figure, he just finds a man three steps out of a midlife crisis. Neil almost relaxes at the sight of the unfamiliar man as he begins to speak, taking Neil’s frozen response as a go-ahead.
“Neil Josten, striker for the Millport Dingos?”
“Well,” Neil couldn’t help himself, “not anymore.” Coach Hernandez gave him a light glare from the corner of his eye but could he really say he was wrong? At least the man in front of him - clean wife-beater, flame tattoos, and all - seemed to find it amusing.
“Perfect,” he starts, “I need a striker. Your coach sent in your tapes alongside your file so we could see how well you played.”
“You what-” Neil started, but the man barreled on.
“Which, it was lucky he did considering on paper your track record wasn’t very… stellar.” He finished politely. “Since the incident with my last striker, the Committee has been hounding me to find a replacement in time for the season. Just sign your name and give me five years of your future.”
Neil paused, panic ebbing away before returning full force in a tidal wave. This was Coach David Wymack of the “... Palmetto State Foxes.” Neil mutters out loud, the anxiety swirling in him finally spilling out.
The man looked almost surprised before cooling his expression again. “I assume you saw the news then.”
Neil remembers seeing briefly the spectacle around Janine Smalls and her very near suicide. It was hard to follow exy and not have caught a glimpse. Many reporters harshly wrote it off as Typical for the Foxes, ignoring the very real crisis of the girl. Neil couldn’t wrap his head around the thought of giving it all up himself, but he has also spent his life surviving.
Still, the Palmetto State University Foxes were a team of rejects, the outskirts of the outcasts, a group of people who refused to have much in common other than the team they played for. They often ranked dead last during the season and were notorious for getting into fights and maintaining only just enough members to continue competing.
Neil would have considered it if there wasn’t one, glaring problem.
Kevin Day had a skiing accident - if reports were to be believed - and the exy world mourned the infamous striker. Mourned so much, in fact, that he moved to the Palmetto State Foxes for the next season, and was set to debut once more as starting lineup for the team.
Not that being in the starting lineup for the Palmetto Foxes was truly that difficult.
Still, as much as Neil yearned for the opportunity to play once more, to stop running and start fighting, to drink the water so frustratingly out of reach, he knew it would only kill him in the end. Or worse, place him back into his father’s hands. So, as close as the water is, he would just have to suffer, thirsty for the opportunity but surviving nonetheless. Surviving as he promised his mother. Surviving when that’s all he could do.
“No.”
His word cuts through the smile on David Wymack’s face. Even Coach Hernandez seems to be surprised at the blatant dismissal of this monumental offer. But Neil barrels on just as the coach had before.
“No,” Neil repeats. “I am not playing for you, I can’t play for you, you signed Kevin.”
“Kevin is signing you now-”
That’s all it takes for Neil to get his feet under him and bolt towards the locker rooms. He doesn’t stop for the startled calling for his name and is too late to stop for the swinging racquet but can brace nonetheless.
It does nothing to help the pain that crumples him.
He can vaguely hear yelling as he gains enough of his bearing to glance at the blonde boy above him. Andrew Minyard stood five feet even, but his presence and strength more than made up for his lack in height. His penchant for collateral damage also made for quite the spectacle. Andrew Minyard was dangerous to most for a very different reason than he was dangerous to Neil. Neil had met monsters in all shapes and sizes, but none were as scary and ever present as the beast of memory.
Especially when he locks eyes with Kevin Day.
Before the sunny shores of California held the skeleton of a car and the bones of his mother, before the drive across state lines and before the cornering in another city so far from her final resting place, Neil Josten was still Alex and his mother had just received their contacts, and the signs of his father’s men catching up. In the mad dash to escape, Alex had realized that one name was severely overlooked in their trusted contacts, and this carelessness is what costs his mother her life. Since then, Neil has been unable to trust the binder he has kept protected, and unable to get new contacts when the old ones ripped.
“Nathaniel…?” Neil hears, the softness of Kevin’s voice was drowned out by the tidal wave of panic that overtook him. Heads snapped in Kevin’s direction but their gazes were locked on each other.
There was a standstill. Neil might have taken a racquet to the guts but Kevin is the one who looks like he got the wind knocked out of him. Kevin takes a small, disbelieving step forward, gazing into the face of a ghost long forgotten, and it’s all Neil needs to scramble away, panicked out of his mind.
Neil isn’t the most proficient in throwing punches, but evading and running are his specialties. He can hear shouts and exclamations but his focus right now is purely survival. He ducks under the arms of David Wymack and manages to snag the keys to a rental car from his belt. He bursts from the doors he entered previously, rerouting his escape while the others were hot on his tail.
Neil spent eleven years of his miserable life running and he was not ready to waltz into his father’s hands now.
It takes no thought to follow a path around the school and into the parking lot. The coaches had a little trouble keeping up, but Kevin Day remained a good bit behind him, and Andrew Minyard had a penchant for popping around corners on occasion. Once Neil spots the car, he hops in but hesitates - these are not his father’s men, these are likely innocent people - and that hesitation is why he is quickly surrounded on all sides, costing him the easy escape.
The doors are thankfully locked as they pull helplessly at the handles, but it leaves Neil only one last option for escape. The sunroof pops off quickly and everyone stares as he climbs quickly to the roof of the car. There is another standstill where Neil takes the briefest moment to consider his options.
There is no way Neil will jump for Kevin Day. He may be injured but his reflexes are still likely fast and precise. David Wymack looks perfectly capable of taking whatever is thrown at him - literally. If Neil chanced either of them it was almost a guarantee that he would be caught.
So Neil makes his decision, and he stares at Andrew Minyard just long enough that everyone is fooled by the fake-out that Neil performs before using Coach Hernandez as a vaulting pad when the poor man begins scrambling over.
Neil uses his shoulder to roll forward before getting his feet under him and launches himself forward, letting them take him down the street at his top speed. He doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s left his pursuers in the dust. Neil then proceeds to do what he has always done - run.
It’s not until the sun has fully set that Neil lets himself take it easy. He pauses in dark alleyways to regain his bearings and snack on something light. He needs to skip town tonight, graduation no longer an option. He has to leave Neil Josten behind with the unattainable promise of exy, and…
And Neil mourns himself.
This was the closest he has been in years to feeling fulfilled. For that empty pit in his chest finally felt like it was bursting with something akin to joy. He has still lost quite a bit, but the last hurrah was to graduate and be able to pretend he had a future full of something other than surviving.
But so be it. If life was fair at all then he wouldn’t have been running in the first place. And, as he walks the empty streets of abandoned shops and run down motels, Neil allows himself, for the briefest moment, to get lost. He picked Millport because the town was dying and soon to be forgotten.
Maybe it was the perfect resting place for Neil Josten.
Neil startles at the hand on his shoulder, the grip is strong and unwavering and determined. He snaps his head to the now familiar blonde, who just smiles at Neil’s obvious panic.
“Found you rabbit, ready to stop running?”