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Neil woke, as he often did, with a sudden jolt. There was no hazy fade into wakefulness, just the abrupt transition from a blood-soaked basement in Baltimore to Andrew’s warm bed in Fox Tower as Neil forcefully ripped himself out of the familiar nightmare.
“Neil?”
It wasn’t a question so much as reassurance from a still mostly-asleep Andrew. You are Neil Josten. Your father is dead. Even in his own head, Neil heard the familiar words in Andrew’s deep voice. He repeated them silently to himself like a mantra until they started to sound real and his heart slowed to a normal rhythm.
Andrew was already asleep again, his blond hair shining almost white in the stray beam of moonlight that cut across the pillow. It had been a long time since Neil’s broken sleep patterns had triggered a violent reaction from Andrew, but Neil still wouldn’t have been surprised to catch an unintended elbow to the stomach in response to the sudden shift of weight on the mattress. That Andrew seemed to trust him – to feel safe around him – even when the other man was at his most vulnerable made Neil feel something he hadn’t yet discovered a word for.
On any other day, Neil might have been able to ride the soothing cadence of Andrew’s steady breathing back to sleep. But it was not any other day, and Neil remained wide awake as he stared up at the ceiling, silently tracing the cracks in the plaster until the sun began to rise on Nathaniel Wesninski’s 20th birthday.
Neil Josten went for a run.
He sprinted all the way to the sign that welcomed visitors to the city of Palmetto, and the urge to keep going until he’d left the entire state behind was like a physical itch under his skin. But he’d already run farther than was normal for his morning jog, and if he was gone any longer Andrew would be concerned – not that the man himself would ever call it that.
Sure enough, there was a telltale crease around Andrew’s eyes when Neil returned to their dorm room just after eight o’clock. Andrew was almost certainly aware of what day it was, but he didn’t comment on it. Neil hoped that the rest of the team would follow their goalie’s lead; if no one asked how he was, he wouldn’t have to lie to them.
“We’re going to be late for practice,” Kevin fretted, as though he wasn’t the one who slept through all five of his alarms every morning.
Neil rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy but hurried through his morning routine anyway, accidentally pulling on one of Andrew’s sweatshirts instead of his own. He thought about changing but decided it wasn’t worth the time, and he was gratified to see Andrew’s eyes turn briefly hungry when he emerged from the bedroom in the slightly-too-short black sweatshirt. Neil’s self-satisfied little smirk was almost (but not quite) wiped off his face by the protein bar that Andrew chucked at his head on their way out the door.
“Oh my god, Neil, are you wearing Andrew’s swea–” Nicky’s loud exclamation was cut off by his cousin’s sharp glare and the threat of an equally-sharp knife. Aaron looked mildly revolted but wisely chose not to comment, and Kevin gave no indication that he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary as they all quietly piled into the Maserati.
Neil slowly began to drift away from reality during the silent ride to the stadium. It was like unintentionally slipping behind a thin curtain of water; he was observing a rippled reflection of the rest of the world, unable to reach out and breach the barrier that suddenly existed between him and everything else. Neil knew that his muscles were working as he pounded his way down the court during morning practice and he could hear the distant reverberations of balls hitting plexiglass, but he didn’t feel any of it.
Neil blinked and found himself sitting in a lecture hall with only a vague recollection as to how he’d gotten there and a dim awareness that something was probably not right; it was too similar to the weeks after Evermore, when he’d lost hours of time in the space of what had felt like minutes. He was cognizant of being asked questions and giving answers in response, but as soon as the words left his mouth he struggled to remember what he’d said. The day dragged on and on and tiny pieces of Neil kept leaving his body, escaping into the atmosphere like the carbon dioxide molecules he’d learned about in his environmental science class.
By the time evening practice rolled around, the only things keeping Neil tethered to earth were the soft rub of cotton against his scars and the faint scent of Andrew’s aftershave that lingered on the stolen sweatshirt.
And then practice was over and Neil was letting himself be pushed into the locker room. Neil looked up at Andrew from his seat on the couch in the lounge and lost himself in the familiar hazel eyes, blinking dumbly as Andrew said something that he couldn’t hear over the buzzing static in his head.
Andrew looked away, and the sudden absence of his attention was oddly distressing in a way that nothing else had been that day. Neil stared at Andrew’s profile and saw the corner of his mouth pull down almost imperceptibly. He tuned back into the world around him just in time to hear the tail end of one of Jack’s typical post-practice rants.
“–he’s practically a vegetable, why is he even here?”
Andrew was mildly irritated now, his worsening mood betrayed only by the slightest upward twitch of one of his eyebrows. Anyone who didn't watch Andrew as closely as Neil did – which was to say, everyone – would have missed it.
“Jack!” Dan’s sharp reprimand grated on Neil’s oversensitive ears.
“He’s fucking weak, just because you’re all scared of his rabid guard dog…”
The insult couldn’t touch Neil, not when he’d been through so much worse, but he studied Andrew’s dangerously blank expression with apprehension. Jack didn’t seem to pick up on the sudden increase in tension in the room as Andrew turned to fully face him, his fingers dancing lightly over his armbands.
“What? It’s not like the psycho can actually do anything, he doesn’t even fight back. He had to get his brother to do his dirty work for him,” Jack sneered.
Neil barely heard the angry shouting of the others over the rushing of blood in his own ears. He became fully aware of his surroundings for the first time that day as an intense wave of rage forcefully slammed the jagged pieces of his consciousness back into his body.
It was undeniably his father's temper that coursed through his veins when he turned to Andrew with an expectantly outstretched hand. “Knife,” he demanded in Russian, every muscle in his body tightly coiled with barely-repressed fury.
Andrew’s gold eyes flickered with lazy curiosity as he withdrew a simple throwing knife from beneath one of his armbands and handed it over wordlessly.
Neil weighed the blade in his hand for a brief moment, testing the balance. Without warning, he threw the knife directly at Jack’s head in one fluid, practiced motion. The blade found its mark a hair’s breadth from the freshman’s left ear, lodged quiveringly in the wall behind him. Jack’s cruel laughter cut off abruptly as he turned with wide eyes to see the knife that had nearly impaled itself in his skull, and the room fell instantly silent.
Neil let the Butcher’s smile creep slowly over his face, his ice blue eyes turning dead and cold as he stared down the freshman.
“Have you forgotten who I am?”
Genuine fear flitted briefly across Jack’s expression before he managed to school it back into haughty anger, and Neil observed the striker’s poorly-hidden terror with satisfaction.
“You’re a fucking psycho, you and that monster deserve one another,” Jack shot back, but his voice wavered slightly.
Neil slunk toward the boy with the grace of a born predator, his usual attempt to fade into the background entirely abandoned along with everything else that made him Neil rather than Nathaniel. He commanded all the horrifying presence that was his birthright as he leaned into Jack’s personal space to tug the knife loose from the drywall.
Neil twirled the blade between his fingers just inches away from the freshman’s face, admiring the way the fluorescent lights glinted dangerously off the steel.
“My father preferred a cleaver,” Neil said casually, as though he were discussing nothing more consequential than the weather. “Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly nostalgic, he’d pull out his old axe. It was so dull from use that it usually took a few hacks, but it did the trick.”
Neil backed slowly away from Jack but kept his lethal eyes locked on the freshman. “I was only ever allowed knives. You can do a lot with a knife though, they’re very versatile. I watched my father’s assistant slice open a man’s stomach with a steak knife once. It took him nearly seven hours to bleed out.”
“That’s enough, Neil.”
Neil didn’t spare so much as a glance for his captain, though he did pass the knife back to Andrew. “Do not forget what I am capable of,” he warned smoothly.
“You’re seriously threatening me in front of a room full of witnesses? How fucking dumb are you?”
Neil merely laughed – a cold, bone-chilling sound that was deeply at odds with his usual humor. “This is a promise, Jack: if you so much as look at Andrew again, I will personally ensure that the short remainder of your life is as painful as possible. And not a single person here will be able to do a thing about it.”
“He’s insane,” Jack said, looking around the room at the other Foxes in a quiet plea for backup. None of them met his eye.
“Maybe I am,” Neil said calmly. “But I do not break my promises.”
“So dramatic,” Andrew murmured in Russian.
Neil felt his father’s smile slide off his face at the sound of Andrew’s voice, and at last he broke his gaze away from the freshman. “Are you alright?” he asked Andrew quietly, his tone switching from cold to concerned so fast it was likely to give anyone listening a bad case of auditory whiplash.
Andrew flicked a hand dismissively and cocked his head in Jack’s direction, as though to ask are you done, then?
“I know you could’ve taken care of it yourself, but he’s been pissing me off for weeks,” Neil offered as an apology, the fire of his rage entirely snuffed out by Andrew’s familiar irritation.
“Hear, hear,” Nicky piped up from the back of the room, his voice bright with forced cheer. “Although the whole murderous monologue thing felt a bit Hollywood. Not that it wasn’t still totally badass!” he reassured quickly.
The tense silence in the lounge broke abruptly under Nicky’s words, and the familiar sounds of slamming lockers and friendly chatter resumed.
Neil was losing his grip on himself again, the sudden confrontation leaving him drained and shaky. It had been so long since he’d needed to be the Butcher’s son that he’d forgotten what it felt like – how good it could feel. He wanted to vomit.
Andrew seemed to sense his impending breakdown and herded him out to the car. “If you’re going to puke, do it over there,” he said casually, gesturing to the row of bushes that lined the parking lot.
Neil shook his head and clenched his hands into fists, willing them to stop trembling. “Can we go?” he asked, desperation turning the request into a plea.
Andrew looked at him for a long moment and then nodded, climbing into the driver’s seat without another word.
“The others?”
Andrew just shrugged and pulled out of the stadium parking lot at his customary breakneck pace, and Neil sagged in relief; there was no way he could handle Nicky’s fake exuberance or Aaron’s general disdain without trying to hurt someone. He only trusted himself around Andrew, who was armed with knives and knew how to use them. But even Andrew wouldn’t really be a match for Nathaniel, who’d grown up with a blade in his hand and another at his neck.
The knowledge that he could break Andrew if he wanted to made it hard to pull in air, and suddenly Neil found himself with his head pressed down between his knees, Andrew’s ever-steady voice commanding him to breathe.
The panic attack slowly ebbed away as they drove farther from the stadium and the collegiate chaos of Palmetto gently gave way to rolling green hills. Neil felt his chest expand back to its normal size with the realization that Andrew planned to keep driving rather than return to Fox Tower.
They were a good twenty miles outside city limits when Andrew dug out a pack of cigarettes from the glove box. Neil took the offered cigarette wordlessly and inhaled deeply. He could still feel the cool weight of metal in his hand and hear the thunk of the knife embedding itself in the wall, meeting its target with pinpoint accuracy. Jackson would be so proud, Neil thought grimly. Only his father’s most loyal people had been entrusted with Neil’s training: Jackson had taught him to throw, Lola had taught him to maim, Romero had taught him to kill.
Neil's hand twitched involuntarily around a phantom blade at the memory of past lessons. Andrew noticed the aborted movement and glanced over at him.
“It felt good,” Neil managed to choke out in response to the unasked question, his body curling into itself under the weight of his guilt.
“You’re not him,” Andrew said, his eyes focused on the stretch of asphalt that spread out before them.
“I don’t know, sometimes,” Neil said quietly.
“Nathan is dead. Nathaniel is dead. You’re not them.”
“It’s my birthday.”
“I know.”
“My dad was twenty when he met my mom. She told me about it,” Neil said absently. He hadn’t thought about the story of his parents' first meeting in a long time; he’d only heard it once, when he was still young enough to want to know the people who'd given him life and stupid enough to ask questions.
Mary Hatford met Nathan Wesninski, then a promising low-level enforcer for one of Baltimore’s organized crime families, through mutual friends at a party. It'd always struck Neil as a surprisingly normal story for two such relatively abnormal people. He could almost picture it – a woman barely out of her teens, raised on violence and bloodshed, falling in love with a young, ambitious man who promised her an empire.
“She must’ve seen something in him. He couldn’t have always been bad.” Maybe he was like me once, Neil didn't add.
Andrew seemed to hear the unspoken words anyway. “No,” he said sharply. “He chose to be evil.”
“I could’ve killed Jack,” Neil said matter-of-factly, horrified only by how little the prospect bothered him.
“But you didn’t.”
“The other Foxes…”
“Don’t care,” Andrew finished for him.
“How could they not care?” Neil asked, sudden panic rising in his throat once again. The Foxes were all he had; he could handle their anger, but if they were afraid of him...
Andrew rolled his eyes and used the Maserati’s bluetooth function to pull up his phone contacts.
It only rang once before Matt’s worried voice flooded the car. “Andrew? Is Neil with you? Is he okay?”
Neil found himself at a loss for words. Matt wasn’t angry, he was concerned. He was concerned for Neil, even after everything he’d seen.
“He’s here,” Andrew said when it became clear that Neil couldn’t or wouldn’t respond.
“Can he hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Neil, buddy, are you okay?”
There was a brief pause before Matt continued, his tone transforming from worried to determined. It was the same voice he used in the locker room during halftime, when he wanted nothing more than to beat their opponents to a pulp.
“Neil, it’s okay. No one is mad, or scared, or whatever it is you think we are. Wymack doesn’t even care about the hole in his wall. Jack is an asshole and he had it coming, no one blames you.” Another pause, then softer, “We know what day it is, Neil. It’s okay if you need some time. But we’ll be waiting for you when you come back.”
Neil found it difficult to swallow around the lump in his throat. The underlying command in Matt’s words was clear: stay.
“Take care of him,” Matt spoke up again, this time to Andrew.
Andrew grunted in what was basically an ironclad promise, coming from him, and ended the call. They sat in silence for another twenty miles, Neil staring out at the passing scenery unseeingly. The Foxes wanted him to stay. They had confirmation, now, of what he was capable of, and they still wanted him to stay. For once, Neil let himself believe that they meant it.
He redirected his gaze to Andrew. “Do you think Jack will at least leave us alone now?”
“No.”
Neil sighed. “I hate that guy.”
“So aim a few inches to the left next time.”
Neil looked over at Andrew’s perfectly stony expression, threw his head back, and laughed until he could barely breathe. He could’ve sworn he saw the hint of an answering smile on Andrew’s face.