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Kevin hears the gunshot way before he ever feels it.
It's maybe one of the most normal post-game fanfares the Foxes have had all season. No jeering crowds or having to hustle straight to the bus. The energy is easy, positive. Kevin's making his way down the line, signing autographs, taking pictures. He's exhausted, but Made For TV Kevin Day is never tired, so he smiles and answers questions and shakes hands.
He glances over his shoulder to see Dan and Matt wrangling Neil away from the news cameras, hopefully before he said something inflammatory this time. Judging from the way Allison is laughing, probably not. Kevin cracks a real smile when he catches Andrew's eye, who rolls his eyes in disdain as Neil continues to try and argue with a reporter. You picked him, Kevin had reminded him once. Yeah, well, you brought him home like a stray kitten, Andrew had countered, so it's your fault. My bad, Kevin had teased as Andrew went to hook a finger through Neil's belt loop to drag him away.
Kevin would have never imagined he would get the chance to enjoy the afterglow of a game like this. Eleven years of spending the aftermath hoping he did well enough that he could have one night of being treated like a person, but not so well that Riko would tip the other direction and carve into him like meat on a butchers block for making him look bad. Either way, he left every exy game knowing he wouldn't feel real again until the next time he was on the court.
But now he watches Neil latched on to Andrew as he and Allison talk shit, Dan and Matt hand in hand and chatting with Aaron about something. Renee waves as she goes by, Nicky bumps into him lightly, reminding him that coach would make them run a marathon if they weren't ready to go in ten minutes. It's simple. It's good. For once, he's good.
He hands back a pen to a fan, and they disappear back into the crowd clutching a newly signed decorated photo card. Allison and Nicky seem to be the only people who actually understand what those are, but Kevin rather reluctantly finds them cute. He's smiling and waving and throwing his bag over his shoulder, the Son of Exy granting an audience while Kevin Day hides away in his own skull until there are less strangers looking at him.
He's thinking about how much kinder fans have been the further he's gotten from leaving the Ravens when he hears it.
Two shots. Kevin's brain immediately switches to something more dumbstruck, vacant, less emotional as chaos erupts around him. The part of his mind he'd needed to make it through the violence of the Nest. Kevin's been around organized crime long enough to know gunshots when he hears them, even though Riko and Coach Moriyama preferred the intimacy of a knife or a cane. The crowd screams and scatters, ducking or trying to see where the shots are coming from. The Foxes less accustomed to violence were being quickly herded into the bus by Neil and Renee, but he loses track of Andrew until a fist balls up in his shirt.
"Get the fuck down, Day," Andrew growls, urgency in every word and movement betraying his carefully constructed detachment. Andrew reached up to put a hand on the back of Kevin's neck, pushing him low and making him harder to hit, and that's when Kevin feels it.
Kevin hits the ground, landing hard on his knees as he doubled over. God, fuck he could feel it now. The epicenter of the pain was his lower gut, a spot that was more scar tissue than skin, which might explain part of the delay. There was a smaller pain in his side, but he can't do much thinking past the pain in his stomach, and what Riko had once told him about how he read that a stomach injury hurts as bad as it does because the stomach acid starts eating at the edges of the wound. And then he had of course put a knife in Kevin's gut to test it.
"-come on, Kevin. Hey!" Andrew snaps his fingers in front of Kevin's face, and the dark of Kevin and Riko's old room disappears, the evening illuminated by stadium lights as Kevin feels a hand press against his stomach. Kevin winces just as much at the sound he makes as he does the feeling of Andrew's sweatshirt pressing into the open gunshot wound to staunch the bleeding. Kevin is dimly aware he should probably be more panicked than this, but right now he just feels tired. The noise around him starts to muffle, and it's getting harder for him to so much as hold his head up.
"Of course there's not a fucking exit wound," Neil spits. Oh, Neil's here. When did Neil get here? Kevin's not exactly functioning well enough to tell if that's a bad thing. And was everything moving really slowly? Or was it just him? Neil finishes his inspection, but keeps his hand pressed firmly to Kevin's back. Kevin finally loses the fight to keep his head up, he's so tired, and lets it fall to Andrew's shoulder. He panics for a second at that. He's not supposed to do that, he's not allowed, Andrew doesn't like to be touched. He tries to pull away but fuck that hurts. Andrew's hand squeezes the back of Kevin's neck.
"Don't move, dipshit," Andrew admonishes. Good enough for him. He sags into Andrew just a bit more, feels Neil's grip tighten anxiously. Oh, this is getting really not good. His vision is starting to dim, and he can't make out a word of what's being said around him until a new voice says something about an ambulance before dropping in front of him. It's Coach Wymack, he realizes. Hi dad, he thinks. Or maybe he says it, because in a flash his father is lifting him and carrying him away, right before everything goes black.
Everything goes very white the next time Kevin tries to open his eyes. He blinks a few times, mostly to give himself time to remember that of course it wouldn't be pitch black waking up, he wasn't in the Nest anymore. Everything hurt, but he wasn't locked in his room or begging Nurse Smalls for an ibuprofen. Right, because he got hurt. Shot, he thinks, as he takes a deep breath, wincing the whole way. So this would probably be a hospital then. That's fine. He's not going to be in trouble.
"No rules about not going to hospitals anymore." Neil reads his thoughts before his eyes are even all the way open. He scoffs in annoyance. Why can Josten never let him just wallow in peace. He looks over at him now, and finds that he must have been doing something to wake Neil up. Neil's arms are crossed on the edge of the bed, body leaned forward and hair pushed up where it must have been resting on his forearms. Andrew is sitting next to him, leaned back with his arms crossed and eyes closed, seemingly asleep.
"How late is it?" Kevin asks dumbly.
"Late," Andrew answers gruffly, giving no other indication he was awake.
"Let me know when you feel up to phone calls," Neil grumbles, "I'm tired of Moreau calling me every fifteen minutes."
"He knows?" Kevin asks with a cringe. He still doesn't like Jean knowing he's hurt. He doesn't want him to worry about him, even though he's pretty sure Jean doesn't think about him enough for that anymore.
"Fucking of course he knows, Kevin," Neil sighed with frustration, "The son of the founder of exy and the most talented, famous player in the whole sport just got shot after a high-profile playoff game. Fucking everybody knows."
"Right," Kevin mutters, sagging back into the pillows. Kevin Day was supposed to be indestructible. Untouchable. Kevin Day wasn't real, he was the platonic ideal of an exy player, he was a walking advertisement. Hard to advertise with a bullet in the gut.
"Knock it off," Andrew cuts in. "You're human. People get fucked up sometimes." Oh, fuck them both for being professional Kevin mind readers. He knows that. He's been working on it in therapy. But a bullet wound would be a great physical reminder, he supposed.
His thoughts are immediately interrupted by a loud snore. He sits up, wincing again, to see David Wymack, fast asleep in a chair on the other side of Kevin's hospital bed, Palmetto State ball cap pulled down over his eyes. Kevin wonders if Wymack is where he got his ability to sleep anywhere from.
"Kevin-" Neil warns, right before the effort of holding himself up starts to tear at Kevin's stitches. Kevin barely makes a noise before his father is awake and alert, already reaching for him.
"Knock that shit off," Wymack scolded, trying and failing to get Kevin to lay back. Wymack's voice got quieter, both of them always a little nervous to broach a sensitive subject. "What happened out there?"
"You'd know better than me," Kevin admitted with a tired shrug. His energy wasn't going to last much longer. "I didn't even realize I was hit until Andrew got me on the ground."
"Two shots, one shooter," Neil cut in. "One of 'em got you in the gut, clipped the bottom of your stomach. They had you in surgery for awhile trying to fish the bullet out, so you'll live, but it'll scar. We'll match," Neil finishes with that wicked sharp grin of his. Kevin stopped finding it disquieting awhile ago. It was a violent thing, but a protective one.
"The other bullet grazed you in the side," Andrew added in a monotone, "But that's much less exciting." That would be the other point of discomfort Kevin had been feeling.
"So they were… aiming for me, then?" Of course they were. There were plenty of reasons they would. And Kevin had come to terms with death a long time ago. It rattled him anyway.
"It was an ex-Raven," Wymack told him slowly, reluctantly. Kevin felt a good portion of his strength drain away at that. Of course it was. They'd never forgiven him for escaping Riko. They still blamed him for how Riko died.
"Yeah," is all he said, sinking into the bed.
"Get some rest, kid," Wymack insisted. "I'll be here as long as they let me, and the Foxes have a schedule to start rotating through once they let people other than family visit." Kevin looks at him. Then turns to squint at Neil and Andrew, who have slowly started to slump into each other as they always do when they're in the same proximity too long.
"How'd you chucklefucks get in, then?" Neil barks a laugh at that. It even gets an eyebrow raise out of Andrew.
"I've worked bigger lies than telling people you're family, Day," Neil mocks with just enough fondness.
"We're getting dinner," Andrew decides suddenly. "Don't kill yourself doing something stupid and get some fucking sleep while we're gone."
"Isn't it more like breakfast at this point?" Neil points out, starting to gather their things. Don't go, Kevin thinks, or take me with you. Neil turns like he can hear him. "Don't give me those puppy dog eyes, we'll be back soon."
"We weren't going to risk not being here when you woke up," Andrew added, leaning over to flick Kevin in the side of the head in a very oddly warm way for him. "And we're not animals who are gonna put Waffle House in front of your face while you can't even take a glass of water." Kevin groans. He's going to be thinking about Waffle House all night now.
"You won't be thinking of hasbrowns if you're asleep," Wymack suggested. Fuck all these people for knowing Kevin so well.
"I'll dream of them, swear to god," Kevin whined. But he was starting to fade out again, he hated to say. He blinked slowly a couple times, before waving them away with faux exasperation as he leaned on his dad's shoulder.
"Back in thirty," Neil reiterated as he and Andrew both hover. "And I will be making you take my next call from Jean. Your weird hate-but-not-really/codependent relationship is exhausting to play go-between for."
"I promise, it's more exhausting to be in."
"Oh, I believe it." The couple spend a couple more seconds fussing and finding excuses not to leave before they finally disappear. Kevin's left alone with his father and his thoughts.
He turns the day over in his mind, trying to see if there's a face in the crowd he recognized, could have stopped. Considers every angle, everything this might mean for his career and his image and his ability to go out in public. And then he lands on the most chilling consequence.
"If you try to bench me-"
"Do not even start with me, Kevin Day."