Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Sasha Vyacheslav remembered with a certain fierceness the day in which he was scouted out for the Edgar Allan Ravens, remembered it like the bitter pills he takes everyday. His heart had been a beating, rioting symphony as he lit up the goal with his last score, winning the game for the Henkshaw High School Sparrows. His team had formed a wave around him, lifting him up and jostling him with their victorious shouts and pumping him up and down. His face had contorted into an expression of joy, he knows, a smile pushing against his cheeks forcefully. He had been happy.
"Oh, man! That was an amazing game, you were like— unbelievable!" Gabriel, his teammate, told him afterward as the rest of the team pooled out of the locker room in a flurry of good cheer and promises for parties. Sasha smiled again as he pulled his shirt over his long-sleeve top and elbowed Gabriel playfully.
"You had no doubt, arrogant bastard," Sasha said, Russian accent draping itself over blunt English vowels. Gabriel chuckled and slung his bag over a shoulder.
"You'll be at Shawn's house, right? He's hosting the party, says there'll be some surprises," Gabriel winks and mimes snorting cocaine— Sasha winces. His teammate sighs dramatically and pushes Sasha's shoulder in a friendly way. "No pressure, dude, just wanna see you loosen up. One of these days you'll crack!"
Sasha bids him goodbye, the familiar cloying feeling of irrational contempt and rage building in his gut as he watches him go. He closes his eyes against it, and prays so very hard for it to settle. His meds are probably losing their speed, so Sasha unzips a pocket in his backpack and pulls out the Prozac bottle his psychiatrist proscribed for his IED, Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Once he swallows two of them down, he grabs his backpack and pulls it over his shoulder and turns to leave, before he pauses.
"Hello, Sasha Vyacheslav," a man said, standing in the entry to the locker room calmly— his tall form held together with the tight rubber bands of elegance, hands in front of him very primly.
Sasha cocks his head warily, and narrows his eyes— he knew this man. Remembered watching the news last exy season, as transfixed as millions across the nation, as one after another, players of the Edgar Allan Ravens kill themselves or attempt to. An epidemic of death and breakdowns from the conditioned athletes. It had been horrible to witness.
This man… this man was Joel Coer, former assistant coach and present head coach of the Ravens. Immediately, Sasha was repulsed and allured all at once— at the sheer presence of the man, while desperation poured from him simultaneously in aching waves despite his proud stance. There was nothing powerful about the man, not really, but still Sasha paused and slowly nodded. Shifted.
"Mr. Coer? What… what are you doing here?" Sasha asked, eyebrows pinching as he studied the man, the man who stepped forward and allowed a thin smile to stretch on pale lips, before it broke entirely and Coer took Sasha's shoulder.
"You play very well, Vyacheslav," Coer's voice was severe and blunt as he said this, hand tightening on Sasha's shoulder. He paused, his eyes growing distant and grave as he seemed to take in Sasha wholly, his mouth drawing into a pleading tightness. "I want you to join the Ravens. I believe you are what we need, what the team needs. I want you to…"
Sasha waited for him to finish, his shoulders tense and rigid with the intensity of the man's stare, the panic in the corners of his mouth, the misery in his eyes, but Coer didn't say anything. The coach only drew his hand back and reached into his inner suit pocket, and pulled out a silver necklace. He pressed it into Sasha's hand, imploring and infringing. Sasha closed his fist around it and brought it up to see what it was— what made it important.
Hanging from the chain was a single number.
1.
SASHA
Sasha could not do it. The ache in his side matched the insatiable pounding in his head, it pounded, God it did. Luke Cardy had hit him with his racquet for the tenth time that day, and Sasha was beginning to feel tender, like pounded, raw chicken, not to mention getting some stubborn flashbacks to Russia.
How does someone like Sasha, a young man with a mood disorder, get instated as the captain of a Big Three team right off the bat in his freshman year? He didn't know. He supposed, maybe, it was his skill in his striker position, but that didn't account for the thin line Sasha treaded every day with this god damn broken team, broken players, broken coaches, broken, broken, broken! Sasha gripped his exy stick and prayed to whoever was listening to not let him be the next Raven who had a nervous breakdown.
"Enough!" Sasha snapped, his fingers twitching for a Prozac, a cigarette, or a gun— whichever was most convenient. He slammed his racquet into the plexiglass three times to catch their attention.
Sergio Perez bodied a freshman— Richard Lloyd- out of his way, sending the kid into the wall with a dull thud. Sasha closed his eyes and breathed in and out like Dr. Howard told him, before striding across the court while the Ravens slowly stopped what they were doing when he parted their ranks with his walk and some shoves along the way. When he got to Perez and Lloyd, he pushed Perez away from the freshman and stepped up to him.
Let's make this clear— Sasha was in no way, shape, or form tall or big. He was a lean 5'4 with the Slavic genes his mother had so benevolently bestowed upon him. He was a blonde, blue-eyed joke, but, he was Russian.
"This amuses you?" Sasha asked in a low tone, looking up at Perez with boredom encroaching on his features as the Raven chuckled.
"It kinda does, y'know," Perez leans on his racquet which wasn't tall enough for the gesture to look cool the way Perez was hoping. Sasha nodded mutely, and reached up a hand to wrap around the dead man's necklace he wore. Riko Moriyama's necklace.
"This will not change," Sasha told him softly, a murmur only Perez could hear. "Every day, I tell this to you, yes? 'This will not change,'" he repeated, and Perez said nothing even if his expression was annoyed. Sasha stepped closer, and raised the number on his chain, dropped it, and pointed at the '01' on his uniform. "Watch yourself. I am not him, but his number is mine now, and I am your captain. This will not change. You will join the pile of dead Ravens, or you will heel."
Perez sniffed in disgust, and crouched to Sasha's height, staring him dead in the eye. Sasha met his gaze, and stepped closer, closer, closer, until they were nose-to-nose. Perez narrowed his eyes and stared long and hard, and Sasha stared back. This, like many of his battles with the few Ravens on the team who were present during Riko's reign, was a crucial moment. Sasha did not look away, not for a single moment, didn't even dare blink. He stared Perez down until Perez clenched his jaw, took a shaky breath, and averted his gaze.
"Fuck you," Perez scornfully hissed.
"Good boy," Sasha smiled mockingly, and patted Perez's cheek. So they had a fear of the number 01, so they had a natural ingrained fear of their captain, and so Sasha would use that until he no longer required it. Or, you know, wing it.
Sasha scooped up his racquet, and turned to the rest of the Ravens, rhythmically gripping and loosening his hold on the stick to keep his irritation at bay.
The Ravens stood around aimlessly, trapped in the suffocation of tension and awaiting their orders like obedient soldiers. Sasha narrowed his eyes. He'd only been on the Raven lineup for two months and his patience grew frayed at the edges when faced with the utter rigidness and adhesiveness of the prior brainwashing the Ravens were subjected to by Tetsuji Moriyama, including Riko himself— but Sasha would not, would not allow himself to be one of them, nor add to their increasingly alarming litany of triggers and trauma reactions.
I can't get angry. I won't get angry. It was a mantra in his head.
"What." His tone was held tight by whatever will Sasha still held, and he shook out his hands and jerked his head side to side to clear it. "We will continue."
Sasha felt the blood rushing in his head and got into position as slowly, the other players followed suit. Lloyd passed by him, and gave a grateful, shy smile and a brief brush of their hands— intriguing and distracting. It was good karma, and by all that God was, Sasha dragged the eye contact in the most sensual way he knew how until Lloyd was blushing and limping his way to position merrily.
"You are a slut," Perez bit out, shaking his head with disgust, and Sasha raised his eyebrows with flippancy.
"Am I? You could join," Sasha tipped his head to the side, and felt himself smile when Perez whipped his head to him, blanching. The other striker shook his head rapidly then, curling his lip in aversion.
"What? Fuck, dude, no!" Perez gritted his teeth and faced forward again, waiting to resume their practice round again while he maintained the fact that he did not get flustered— Sasha rolled his eyes.
They began their game, Sasha shooting forward and cutting through his marks, weaving as Perez- from what he can see at the corner of his eye- had the ball already and was racing toward the goal. He was good, Sasha couldn't deny that, and played with ferocity and ruthlessness. He knew all of the player's stats, and wow, that had been a busy weekend of binge-watching replay after replay. When Perez was just moments away from getting clipped in the shoulder by goddamn Luke Cardy, he made a beautiful pass to Sasha, to which he took with no hesitation and launched it toward the goal. The goalie fumbled around, missed it, and the goal lit up red.
Coach Coer nodded approval from where he stood in the stands, arms drawn across his chest tensely and his expression severe. He had a cigarette between his fingers, and deciding they were finished, Sasha pulled off his helmet and shook his sweat-damp hair to dishevel it back into shape.
They'd been practicing for hours, and Sasha didn't care what Coer thought anymore, he was tired. He waved at his teammates to change out before he waded across the court and joined Coer's side, back facing the court and leaned against the glass.
"You have?" Sasha pointed to the cigarette, and Coer fixed him with a look so dark, Sasha was pretty sure he would wrap his hands around Sasha's throat and start strangling him. Coer stubbed the cigarette out on the ledge and regarded Sasha again.
"I don't know what they permitted at your old school, Vyacheslav, but you will not damage your health here. First it's cigarettes, then it's fentanyl," Coer said to him, and Sasha raised both of his eyebrows with a startled chuckle.
"Quite a jump, no?" Sasha smirked, and searched him before plucking the cigarette pack from Coer's front pocket. The coach sputtered and nearly growled, but Sasha merely waved him off. "Relax, you sound like mother hen. You have a lighter?" Sasha stuck a cigarette in between his lips where it nudged his tongue piercing.
Coer glared absolute hell at him, but he probably realized he wouldn't get anywhere with Sasha and just pulled out his lighter. The court was empty of players at this point, all of them having trudged to the locker rooms to shower and change out, and there Sasha lit up.
He wasn't a big smoker, but with his disorder— it helped. He was more of a drinker than anything, but since he was nineteen he decided to keep that to himself. Shitfaced Sasha was better than Temper Tantrum Sasha, as he liked to think. In fact, Shitfaced Sasha was right up there with Stoned Sasha.
"The Fall Banquet is in a week," Coer told Sasha once he got his seething under control, and Sasha slanted a bored look at him. It was phrased in the same way as the presidential election, which was curious.
"Okay." Sasha felt the sweat intimately now, and waited for Coer to get his point across so he could shower.
"You will need a suit— a tuxedo, ideally. We'll get you fitted tomorrow," Coer said, taking out his phone and presumably putting a reminder for the day's plans. Sasha nodded curtly, pursing his lips at the suit type. Bowties made him antsy, and he blew out a breath.
"I do not want a tuxedo— a suit and tie is fine. Were you even going to ask?" Sasha glowered at his coach, hands clenching. Trust a Raven to be a control-freak asshole. "It is a wonder you have lasted so long without person decking you in the face, you're annoying."
Coer blinked at him, his trim beard twitching with his lips as he parted them open and closed again. The coach eventually recovered himself and swipes the cigarette from Sasha with a gruff scoff.
"Go take a shower and cool off, Vyacheslav," Coer dismissed, and Sasha took it to mean storm off— which he did.
It was only upon stepping into the locker room that he realized he had lost his temper. Lost his temper was such a mild way of saying it, it was more like his temper gunned him down and took off in a stolen car. Lost his temper! What a funny way of saying he acted like a bitch. Ah… damn it. He would rinse it off.
Every day, stopping in front of his locker was an experience of a haunting nature. Every he was reminded deep within his mind— the softest whisper— Riko Moriyama was here. He had been right in Sasha's shoes, standing before his locker with all the coiled talent that was passed onto Sasha along with his number and rank. Before Sasha had become acquainted with the locker, he had wondered if there was any trace of the boy left behind— there wasn't. It was empty, utterly vacant, as if a Japanese boy named Riko Moriyama had never been alive. So completely temporary for someone so fixed in the cluttered hull of sports media, but Sasha never could articulate that, so it was reserved for his inner-ponderings. Most things pertaining to his predeccesor were.
Sasha stripped off his gear and put it in his locker in a semi-somewhat-barely neat fashion, and within his bag went his boxers as he procured new ones and set his normal clothes out before he left them to go to the showers.
They were empty by now, he had watched the Ravens leave after they showered and got their casual clothes on again, having gone to the dorms, no doubt— the actual dorms now, not the recently blocked housing under the Exy stadium or the Nest, since those were under investigation.
Sasha had read about a particular string of theories one late night concerning what went down in the Nest and resolved to avoid thinking of it from that point forward. The hot water that greeted him flushed out that very thread of thought and he was thankful for it, washing his aching limbs that he knew would hurt tomorrow— at least they didn't have practice or classes.
Under the spray of water, Sasha admired— observed was a better word- the marks on his body that were from a variety of stun devices like tasers, stun batons, and a shock collar.
Sasha brought a hand up to his neck, feeling the smooth skin where scarring had completely faded. It was the least extensive of the injuries he'd contracted during that time when he had been in Russia and what— fifteen years old?
Most of it was an insignificant blur, just a group of older boys who had found Sasha sucking off their leader, Ivan Yaschkov, and had kept him in their basement for weeks and just beat the shit out of him in any way they knew how— which for arrogant Russians— was a lot. Sasha wasn't even sure he put up much of a fight, between the seizures from electroshocks and the time spent locked outside of their house at night when snow was strongest and the weather was unbearable, he somehow didn't think there was much left of him to protest.
Ivan was the one to put a stop to Sasha's agony, in the end. He made Sasha promise to leave the country and never return, holding his face like Sasha was something precious, and then he had called the Politsiya.
His father had not taken the news well, but they'd ultimately left the bastard behind— he, his mother, and older brother, and they had found relative peace in America. Life was good. Sasha had been diagnosed with IED and more than manageable depression, his brother Yakov had been diagnosed with BPD, Jesus Christ, and he and Yakov were on the path to forgiving their mother for maintaining her volatile relationship with their father and subjecting them to his ruthless violence. That was his story, for the most part.
Yeah.
That was about it.
Sasha suddenly wondered if he liked hot, scalding showers so much due to the times he was cruelly exposed to Russian winter. Huh.
Sasha finished his shower and wrapped a towel around his waist, sighing out loud as he dragged fingers through his wet hair and reinserted the silver stud into his nipple piercing that he'd taken off at practice.
Soon enough, he was dressed in a black hoodie and his brother's baggy navy tracksuit pants that Yakov had mysteriously lost, and on his way to the dorms in his black Ford F-350. He loved the truck like a daughter, and with his IED, she had seen the maw of the occasional tree and rear-end, coming away with scrapes and dents. But, he loved her.
It wasn't a long before the university dorms came into view and he parked in his designated spot before the entrance and stepped out. One of the football players was taking a walk with his girlfriend and gave Sasha a friendly wave. Sasha blew him a kiss, earning a chuckle from the other man. He got his book bag from the car and shrugged it onto a shoulder before entering the dorms and getting on the elevator.
When Sasha unlocked his dorm room, he was greeted by Sergio Perez's unhappy countenance as he looked up from where he was trying to purge Sasha's contribution to their pantry and refrigerator for the fifth time since they'd been assigned a dorm together. Sasha had bought a six-pack of Pepsi and Bud Lights respectively, along with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, hot dogs, potato chips, and so on. Someone had to, since all Perez ever brought to the dorm were an array of vegetables, fruits, and some kind of store-bought protein shake pack. It was abhorrent.
"Hm. Hello," Sasha greeted flatly, and put down his bag by the door along with his shoes.
Their room was mostly decorated by Sasha, since Perez didn't seem to want to live a life of anything but pitch black furniture and Sasha forbade him.
Their kitchenette was paired with a small living space where Sasha threw a bunch of quilts and pillows on the university-standard couch given to all dorms along with a small flatscreen TV which was airing the match between the USC Trojans and UT Longhorns. It was their second year with former-Raven Jean Moreau and they'd won Spring Championships last year, the final year with their beloved captain, Jeremy Knox. The rumor was that he'd been scouted for the professional team Columbia Dragons, but they wouldn't know until they had their first game.
Nearby was the short hall with a door on the left wall and a door at the end of the hall— the left leading to their bathroom, and the other leading into their shared room.
They had- childishly- split the room in half, two lofted beds with desks under them and their wardrobes right beside each other where they had- again, childishly- drawn a line down the room to split it in half. Their sides were drastically different, with Sasha's side littered with posters and pictures of himself and his brother as little Russian boys, or celebrity close-ups (yes, you, Hugh Grant), his desk cluttered with textbooks, notebooks, and magazines (featuring, yes, Hugh Grant). His bed was a mess of duvets and pillows, but mostly his side was a controlled chaos, fun and neat. Perez's side was downright dour— he had black sheets, black pillows, black comforters, a black wardrobe, black notebooks, and even a black-light lamp. Perez usually had a small mess going on that got cleaned at some point.
"Nutella? Are you trying to kill yourself?" Perez asked, steering Sasha's mind back to the present, holding a nutella jar in his hand.
"No," Sasha answered, snatching it from him and inspecting it. "You have never had this?"
Perez paused before huffing sharply, "Well— no, I had it when I was a kid. Y'know? Spreading it on toast."
"No…" Sasha said softly, his wide eyes flicking up to Perez's. He had never tried doing that before. "I do not know."
Perez stared at him for a long moment before sighing again and clenching his jaw. He looked to the side moodily before taking the nutella jar from Sasha and then debating further with himself on whatever he wanted to do. Eventually, sentiment must have won out and Perez nodded to the pantry.
"Get the bread, kid," Perez grumbled, and Sasha perked up, smiling winningly. He went over and plucked up the sliced bread, putting them in their cheap, Disney princess toaster since they couldn't afford anything else (Sasha sold the university-issued toaster on eBay to get his tongue piercing).
Sasha watched, transfixed, as Perez took out the two pieces of toast on a napkin and began to use a butter knife to spread the hazelnut on the bread. Sasha grinned and scooped one up, taking an excessive bite out of it.
"Ah, Jesus, man— how are you still so lean?" Perez gawked, cringing back. Sasha gave him a flat look, licking nutella off of his fingers.
"You worry too much about the wrong things, Sergio," Sasha pointed out, before he stretched his arms over his head and gestured to the other piece of toast. "Eat."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Do it."
"Fuck off," Sergio spat, and poked the center of Sasha's forehead. Sasha grabbed his wrist and twisted, and soon, they devolved into a fight— wrestling on the ground of their little kitchenette ruthlessly.
"You are impossible!" Sasha hissed in Russian, and Sergio took a hold of Sasha's hair and tugged it back. Sasha jabbed his elbow into Sergio's gut, causing the other boy to rear back with a choked inhale.
"Speak English, brat," Sergio scowled, though after a moment of just staring at each other like wary animals, Sergio offered Sasha his hand.
Sasha took it and allowed Sergio to pull him to his feet, where he immediately crossed the room and fell dramatically onto the couch, grabbing the remote and considering it. He put the channel on 'Say Yes! to the Dress' and watched it flippantly while Sergio angrily tore into his nutella toast.
Eventually Sergio joined him, passing one of Sasha's Pepsi cans more at him than to him, and they spent the evening in that relative calm with Sasha rising only to make them a pasta dinner and then promptly drape himself back onto the couch.
When night came, they both retired to their rooms to sleep. Sasha pretended he didn't hear the quick sounds of Sergio's encroaching nightmare, and Sergio pretended he didn't notice Sasha layering blankets onto himself to remain warm.