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“I’m sick of this corn-fed bullshit,” Wymack snarled, cutting his hand towards the locker room door leading out to what had to be the most violent game of his coaching career. Ohio State’s Exy team was out for blood, having taken two yellow cards and a red in the first half of the game alone. Allison was sporting a split lip and a bloody nose from a particularly vicious check, and Matt was out of the game altogether with a sprained ankle.
Neil though…
David looked across the room from where Neil was sitting thigh to thigh with Andrew, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Andrew looked murderous, elbows resting on his knees, still as death. His hazel eyes were focused somewhere beyond David’s left shoulder, burning holes through the wall. David couldn’t blame him.
Ohio had been gunning for Neil like it was their job, hurling themselves and their racquets towards him in moves that, if they could catch him, would easily result in a yellow or red card. Andrew had been slamming his own racquet against the goalpost in furious warning that the opposing team was clearly ignoring for the entire game.
Still, they were winning, 6-2.
“Keep on them,” David said, “let’s beat these assholes so bad they’re embarrassed.”
And they did.
The final score was 12-3, Foxes favor, and the home team went insane at the unexpected, unprecedented upset. Ohio was the top school in their conference, a powerhouse in the midwest with a team populated with men and women that were far larger than his scrappy little squad. Stadium security struggled with the crowd as it surged and roared at their first loss of the season and on the short walk between the court and the locker room there was already signs of trouble. Empty cans and trash trained down upon them, barely missing striking his team as they rushed into the locker room and hurried through changing out.
Staff from the school had already started loading gear into the bus, attempting to hasten their departure in the face of angry, likely intoxicated, fans.
David stood by the stadium door, listening to the rumbling of the crowd outside and glanced back at where his team, pale and bruised, stared back at him. They’d closed ranks around Neil, eyes hard as the ghost of the previous year settled around them, raising goosebumps on their arms and violence in their bones.
They would not be caught off guard again.
“Eyes open, keep close, move quick, nobody gets left behind.” David barked, waiting until they’d nodded their understanding before settling his hand on the door handle.
“Ohana means family.” Nicky tried. Nobody laughed. Even Renee, who David could usually count on to cut tension, didn't so much as crack a smile.
“Rock and roll.” David said, and threw open the door.
His heart thundered in his chest as he attempted to shield the freshmen, positioned at the end of their little caravan, from the crowd and their anger. There were less of them than there had been at the Riot, but they were still vastly outnumbered. Matt and Dan had taken point, stances defensive as they moved through the channel cutting through the flow of crimson and white. Allison and Renee were behind them, with Andrew's lot tucked in close at their backs. He could see the bus ahead, gleaming like a neon beacon under the stadium lights, her door open and guarded by security.
He honestly thought they were going to make it.
David understood that adrenaline could make time feel like it was crawling by; make seconds turn to minutes turn to lifetimes. He’d experienced it before. But when a man to his left, up next to Andrew's lot, raised a bottle high, red flushed face contorted in a sneer, he felt time slow to molasses around him.
Andrew, with one hand tangled in his brother’s letterman jacket and the other locked in a white knuckled vice around Neil’s arm, looked up and spotted the bottle at the same time, but there was nowhere for him to go. He had his heart in his hands and David knew he wouldn’t dodge if it meant that they were hit instead.
David was already moving.
His pint sized goalie’s face went feral, lips pulling back from his teeth in a snarl as he tried to push his charges forward, but just as quickly, resignation pulled his eyebrows down and he turned his head, shoulder up, trying to protect his eyes and neck.
David’s entire body went incandescent with rage.
He was struck, all at once, with the memories of Andrew, bloodied, bruised, gone. Of Neil, ripped to shreds over and over, so used to being hurt that he didn’t even know how to ask for help, let alone accept it. Of his kids shaking and scared and bleeding on a bus, in a filthy Baltimore hotel room. Of Seth.
He’d been powerless before. He couldn’t protect them from their demons or their pasts. He couldn’t erase the jagged scars on Kevin’s hand, his son’s hand. He couldn’t stop Neil from going to Evermore because he hadn’t known, he couldn’t protect him from his father or the yakuza. He couldn’t protect his kids from a riot.
But he could protect them from this, just this once.
The bottle shattered against his arm and he grunted as the bright, sudden pain threatened to steal his breath before turning and throwing the entirety of his body weight into a furious uppercut. The fan’s bright red ball cap went airborne as his head snapped up with the sharp crack of a broken bone. He hit the ground hard, crumpling like a doll with its strings cut as the crowd shot out of the way of his fall, scattering like cockroaches.
“Coach!” “David!”
“D- Coach, holy shit.” Kevin said, voice shaking.
“Coach, you’re bleeding.” Neil said. He sounded flabbergasted, like the idea that David could bleed had never occurred to him.
David shook out his hand and pulled himself to his full height before lifting his left arm to assess the damage.
It certainly didn’t look good. Through the blood he could see where the flesh had been peeled apart by the shattered bottle, leaving several jagged, likely deep, gouges in its wake. The tattoo was almost certainly ruined.
“Get on the bus,” David said, looking up into Kayleigh’s forest green eyes.
The crowd, he noticed, had backed away, apparently shocked by the sudden violence and the blood pouring from his arm. His team however, half of them on the bus and half still behind him, were frozen in shock.
“Did I fucking stutter?” David snarled.
His tone got them moving and Abby was on him as soon the doors closed, tearing the bus keys out of his hand and thrusting them against Matt’s chest. He scrambled to catch them, shocked.
“I can’t drive this thing!” He said.
Abby, hands full of gauze and disinfectant, turned on him with a look so fierce he recoiled. “Matthew Boyd, you can and you will. Get us to the closest hospital in this God forsaken state now.”
Matt leapt to obey, throwing himself into the driver’s seat and tugging his seatbelt on. They were moving in seconds and Dan sat in the seat behind him, her phone out as she took up position as navigator.
“One year.” Abby was muttering, angry tears gathering in the corner of her eyes, “I just want one fucking year where nobody attacks my Foxes. Is that so much to ask?”
She’d thrown down a towel, donated by a crying Nicky, to the seat and used it to catch the mix of blood and disinfectant as she upturned her bottle over his arm.
“Fuck! Ow, Abby!” He jerked backwards involuntary, but Abby's unbreakable grip on his arm kept him from toppling to the floor.
“Sweet Jesus,” Nicky moaned, and David didn’t have to look back to know that Hemmick, queasy by nature, had covered his mouth.
Abby began wrapping his arm, pulling quickly reddening bandages as tight as she dared. David leaned forward and grimaced at the heavy splatter of blood trailing down the aisle and spotted against the sides of the seats, trying to distract himself from the influx of nauseating pain.
“Gonna have to get the bus details again.” He sighed.
“Hold your arm up!” Abby hissed, moving it above his heart.
“I’m okay,” He said, going for a smile even as his arm began to throb in time with his heartbeat. Andrew and Neil had abandoned their usual seats at the back of the bus to sit in front of him, kneeling on the seat to watch as Abby ripped off her gloves.
“Andrew, are you alright? Are you hurt?” She asked. There was a desperation in her tone that she was clearly trying to hide. It was enough that he momentarily snapped his eyes to her, scanning the pallor of her face and the wild edge to her eyes and visibly made the decision to verbally answer her.
“No, I’m fine.” He said. He was gripping the pleather seats hard enough to leech the blood from his fingers.
“That's my line.” Neil said.
“Is everyone alright?” Abby called, standing to survey the rest of the team, “Is anyone hurt?”
There were various negative murmurs, but she didn’t sit again until she’d locked eyes with each member of the team and received a verbal ‘no.’
“Just my feelings that Coach didn’t tell us he was a fucking boxer.” Allison said.
“That was a really good punch!” Matt shouted from the front.
“Keep your arm up, Coach.” Renee said, poking his shoulder from behind. He dutifully lifted it higher, scooting over so he could rest his elbow on the window. He could feel blood dripping down his arm, soaking through his bandages and with a performative sigh he held out his hand.
“Someone give me another towel, I’m not paying to have these damn seats redone.”
One of the freshmen passed theirs up and he stuffed it under his elbow and looped it loosely over his arm.
“You’re awful calm,” Allison said. She was seated next to Renee, turned around to face him like Andrew and Neil.
“I’ve had worse.” David snorted, “It’s fine.”
Neil’s eyes narrowed momentarily, a question David knew he would never ask. Andrew though… His expression matched Neil’s, but the interest was slower to bleed from his eyes.
“I am a Fox.” He reminded them.
Neil sat leaned back and regarded David with blatant curiosity, searching for information that David would willingly give (if the kid would just ask ) and nodded.
After several dozen stitches and a handful of prescription strength painkillers, Patty the nurse patted David on the shoulder and told him that once she brought back his paperwork, he’d be free to go. He was higher than he'd ever been in college, pleasantly warm and fuzzy around the edges. Sitting up made the room swim like a watercolor painting so he paused and took stock. His arm, which had been cut far deeper than he initially thought, judging by the little peek of white he'd spied as they were stitching him up, was utterly numb, wrapped up like a mummy and hanging from the sling around his neck.
They'd wanted to keep him, but Abby's reassurances and his sky high belligerence won the night and they were letting him go. He’d sent the team back to the hotel hours ago despite their protests and yet when Andrew cut into the room after the nurse left, he was utterly unsurprised.
“Why.” Andrew said, apropos of nothing.
“Well, hello Andrew! Good to see you still don’t follow directions, Andrew.” David said. Andrew’s expression remained impassive, and David rolled his eyes.
“Are you hurt?” He asked.
Andrew crossed his arms, but otherwise didn’t answer, every muscle in his body held tight. David could see the muscle in his neck jumping as he ground his teeth.
“Are you bleeding?” David made a show of checking, taking in his crisp, spotless Fox hoodie and track pants, even leaning forward to see if there was blood droplets on his white sneakers.
“No? Exactly. That’s why.” David said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“I could have dodged.”
“You could have,” David agreed, “But you shouldn't have to.” The nurse took that moment to walk back in, holding the discharge paperwork for David to sign off on for him as his dominant hand was in a sling.
“Take care now.” She chirped.
“You too, thanks.” David replied. He gestured to the door and Andrew turned on his heel. He walked beside David all the way out, slowing his pace to match his sluggish coach.
“Does nobody know how to follow directions?” David sighed.
The entire team was waiting outside the double doors, faces just as pale and nervous as when he'd been dragged back to the ER. Abby was in the middle of the huddle, her arms wrapped around both Nicky and Renee, pulling them close.
“Eyes open, keep close, move quick, nobody gets left behind.” Andrew quoted. It caused a ripple of nods through his little crowd.
“What, are we going to hug or-” It was meant to be sarcastic, but David thought that perhaps the slight slurring of his words made him miss the mark as the second the word left his mouth, Nicky pounced. His black hair, usually styled into purposeful dishevelment, was a chaotic mess, as if he'd been running his hands through it and David instinctively brought his hand up to smooth it down as Renee carefully tucked herself around his injured arm. Allison threw her arms around his neck from behind and Dan wrapped one arm around Renee's shoulder and the other around Nicky's, thunking her head against his chest with a shaky sigh. Matt pressed in behind her and Abby threw her arms around Allison and Renee, carefully protecting his injured side.
“Seriously?”
Kevin cautiously came forward, filling in between Nicky and Allison, his forehead touching David’s shoulder. It left Neil, Aaron and Andrew standing before him, as wary as feral cats.
Neil tentatively slotted himself in next to Matt, who lifted his arm to curl it around his shoulders.
“Goddammit.” Aaron said, but he stalked forward and positioned himself between Neil and Nicky, leaving just enough space for Andrew.
Andrew who looked at the group hug disdainfully, cast his eyes up to the sky and moved to grip the back of Neil neck and his brother's shoulder.
“Fuck yeah, group hugs.” Allison said.
“We should do this more often,” Nicky sniffed, “Without the hospital visit, obviously.”
“Yeah, Coach, you're not allowed to get hurt.” Dan said, voice muffled.
“The only reason that y'all aren't already signed up for a marathon is because I'm high as fuck right now.” David said, “Now, get the fuck off me so we can go home.”
Dan, who'd let out a startled laugh, was the first to pull back, pushing the rest of the group off. They kept close to him on the walk to the bus, closing ranks just as they had before. Once onboard, they sat surrounding him, leaving the freshmen sleeping in the back. Abby slid into a seat and pulled him down next to her, then down again, until his head was resting on her coat in her lap.
“Go to sleep.” She commanded, resting a hand on his head. And the prescription painkillers meant he couldn't disobey.
He woke hours later as the bus hit a particularly rough pothole. He was still sprawled along the length of the seat, head in Abby's lap, but Boyd and Wilds had thrown their letterman jackets over him sometime during the ride. Abby's head was pillowed against the window by Renee's. He wanted to sit up, to count his ducklings and see who was driving but Abby's hand against his chest, centered like an anchor over his heart, kept him down.
The street lamps flashed buttery light into the bus and as they passed under another, he caught the flash of something bright in the darkness. He blinked, forcing his eyes to focus and found the glint again.
Andrew was spinning a silver lighter between the fingers of his right hand where it dangled at his side. He was sitting sideways on the seat, one leg on the floor and the other straight out before him. His other arm was wrapped around Neil, keeping the striker stationary where he was slumped against his chest, scarred arms curled against his chest. David smirked and lifted his eyes to meet Andrew’s, flicking his eyes down to where Neil’s face was mushed against his neck and back. Andrew raised an eyebrow and flicked his eyes up to Abby’s face, slack with sleep and back down.
David shrugged a single shoulder, stealing Andrew’s own gesture, but hissed sharply as it jostled his arm, momentarily greying out the corners of his vision. Abby stirred, wiggling a little before settling with a sigh, her hand curling into the fabric of the jacket on his chest. Andrew’s expression soured momentarily, then cleared.
“Go back to sleep, Coach.” Andrew said, voice so quiet that it could have been a whisper, but David could hear the unspoken I’m watching them clearly.
David huffed a laugh, but closed his eyes, letting the hum of the bus, the rocking of the road and the flow of painkillers lull him to sleep.
The kids were alright.