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Neil Josten has never looked at anybody. Not the girl who twirled a single strand of hair on her finger, peeking at him from underneath curled lashes. Not the boy who snuck glances in the locker room as Neil discreetly pulled an extra long-sleeve over his head to hide the scars mottling his contorted body.
The risk was never worth the reward. Breathing was always preferable to the apparent ‘spark’ that he never felt when he met youthful arrogance in hidden love affairs—bruising mouths and blotted, purple necks. Therefore, it’s an easy notion to accept that Neil has never thought much of the concept of soulmates. Even if their existence was almost completely irrefutable to argue against.
Sam looked down when the girl tried to speak to him in English class, and Thomas elbowed his way out the locker room as quickly as possible, a boy’s eyes trailing the shadow of his lithe figure. Love was a rocky cliff, and Neil did not plan to fall.
Even if Neil does find his soulmate, one day by chance, matching pain and personalities, he finds it quite hard to believe that his soulmate would want him anyway—a boy built of lies and half-truths, with false words curling around his honey-slicked tongue, slipping and falling into the tumbled web of the universe. There’s a single truth of Neil’s existence within the tightly weaved stories of falsehoods and fabrications: that it’s a tragedy filled to the brim with pain, calamities and fear. What cruel universe would purposefully plant another in his grasp, linked by the golden web of the Fates? Wherever they are, wherever they’re hidden in the cosmic corners of their grand celestial universe, they share the same pain Neil does, and that’s dangerous. Neil hopes, for their sake and his, that they never find each other.
Years later: a mother dead and buried, a boy running from a faint memory and iron words, in Arizona something changes; a racquet slamming into his already bruised stomach, pain ricocheting throughout his entire being. The short, blond man, carved from the marble of the gods, muscles taut, fingers light as he spun the Exy stick in hand and tapped two of those pale fingers against his temple. His grin was manic: untethered, glinting with a danger that Neil has been trying to avoid in the months since he buried his mother. His body itches with the phantom feeling of sand, lingering between his toes and the fabric of his ratty clothes, and bared his teeth—a feral, wild species on the brink of extinction. The last of the Wesninski and Hatford lines combined, and cornered, injured animals are always the most dangerous of the litter.
This was the wrong kind of problem.
But what he didn’t know then is Andrew Minyard would be a part of his solution.
A piece of the equation.
The key to a home.
Andrew Minyard has never afforded himself the fantasy notion of somebody built to be with him. From a young age, he labelled it as trivial, naive and vile lies disguised by the idea of false hope. Casual cruelty perpetuated by those who don’t know any better. The hopelessly naive. Where was his ‘soulmate’ when the world wasn’t listening to the violent screams for help that tore from his young throat? When pieces of him were taken without permission granted? Things that he could never replace. Where were they when the building burned, crackling with the distorted remnants of his childish hope and the ashes of broken promises? When the tally marks grew and the countdown began?
Andrew was quick to learn that there’s nobody to rely on other than himself—promises are meaningless unless you provide equal exchange, and nobody ever wants nothing from you. If they say this, they are lying. But you can learn to want nothing. Nothing is the paradoxical escape. A two-pronged blade. Or a loaded gun.
The world allowed Andrew to continue carrying himself this way; his relationship with Aaron borders on explosive, demonstrating their equaled matched tempers and need for their vices; Nicky is a mere streak of sunlight, a blinding annoyance in an otherwise dull world; and life itself held nothing true.
Where his twin found the spark of life within a white line, track marks lining his inner arm from failed attempts and pills swiped from Tilda Minyard’s medicine cabinet, baggies found all the nooks and crannies within her stashes—Andrew never cared enough. He never wanted anything. Except maybe, for a selective few to burn.
But then in Milport, Arizona, his gut echoed with a similar pain to the boy kneeling, coughing the strangled air from his lungs. Everything about him looked like a lie: the slight colour inconsistencies at his roots of his tousled hair, the brown contacts hiding the true severity of his eyes.
Nothing about him was real, and Neil Josten meant nothing.
Just a name picked out of a phone book and a phantom face lost to the meaningless crowds. The catch? Neil was terrified, a rabbit amongst foxes, but he was just as deadly as Andrew is. Fangs for teeth; knives for hands and weapons for lies—a lethal combination. Andrew knew this from the moment he stepped into that locker room and Neil Josten fled for his life like the rapid animal he is. And he knows a cornered beast is far more dangerous than any other. They reek of desperation. They have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
❖
Andrew tries to ignore the signs. When Neil is checked for the first time by Aaron, and Andrew feels the pain slowly course through his own body—a ghost-like touch, the careful caress of eidolon pain. Not unkind, but instead like a lit match, burning down to the finger’s clasping at its jagged wood.
Kevin thought his manic grin was attributed to the new player sprawled on the court, silently wheezing. But instead it was the bell that rang true—Neil Josten, a boy of nothing and everything at once, was the person the universe decreed to be his soulmate. They were made for each other.
Andrew plainly refuses to allow his mind to change. Soulmates are nothing. The universe is a sham. Life is a hoax. And all the horror stories are true. There is no hope; no second, third or fourth chances for those left with nothing. And therefore, life went on as if nothing had changed with the realisation. To Andrew the world still felt like a puff of smoke; tendrils climbed the air surrounding him, easily able to disappear with the wave of a hand. Meaningless. Obsolete.
Everything changes again as soon as they stepped foot in Binghamton University, a New York campus sprawling with sharp-toothed students and the jarring words of their more than just competitive spirit. Neil sits near Andrew on the second half of the bus ride there. He chose to, much to the annoyance of Kevin and the thump of his own shoe against his back as Matt hurled it towards him for daring to intervene between Neil and where he wished to sit for the extensive ride.
There’s a moment where Neil wonders who felt the echo of the shoe sole against the back of their spine—a replication of Kevin’s own pain. Who had felt the days on the court and the nights in the Nest? But he tucked it away, like the rest of his questions. There’s no room for those on a tightrope of knives beneath his feet and countdowns on either side. Whatever the countdown meant, he didn’t know then, but he had an inkling of an idea.
The ‘0’ had arrived at lunchtime. Snuggly sat between Kevin’s incessant Exy talk and Matt’s warm body. Neil snaps his phone shut and doesn’t look at it again until he is in the seat in front of Andrew. A shock of red hair, a living warning sign. He snaps it closed again. Neil feels the echo of its force in his fingertips.
Maybe Andrew does too.
Perhaps he should have known. Part of Neil will curse himself later, when he’s battered, bruised and cut up bloodied. For not realising. For letting it go that far. For needing. Neil Josten never looked at anybody. Not the girl who twirled a single strand of hair on her finger, peeking at him from underneath curled lashes. Not the boy who snuck glances in the locker room as Neil discreetly pulled an extra long-sleeve over his head to hide the scars mottling his contorted body.
The risk was never worth the reward.
Not until Andrew Minyard.
It wasn’t entirely his choice—a deadly mix of fate and matching scars. He is nothing. And Andrew wanted nothing. The lies on his honey-slicked tongue; the tightly weaved stories of falsehoods and fabrications that Neil couldn’t give up from the skin of his chest and the scar tissue on his heart. They found each other.
It’s after the game that his phone vibrates, humming in the space of his pocket. It isn’t surprise that causes the plummeting of his stomach to the floor, the contents curling and rippling underneath waves of jittery anxiety.
He saw this coming. He knew the area code: blocky 443 on the screen of his pixelated phone. Neil’s demise was built into him from a young age. His genetics and martyr complex like a loaded gun: his DNA filled the chamber with bullets, Nathan and Mary standing hand in hand as they passed him the gun, but Neil pulled the trigger. The countdown was nothing more than a ticking clock for an already lit bomb. There was no feasible escape this time. No more running. No more hiding. No more identities, ducking away underneath the veil of the night sky—only constellations and the mother moon to light the flickering of his hair as they leave. No more they.
It is him and him alone on the edge of his demise, and Neil Josten would have it no other way.
Forever a martyr. Forever the sacrificial lamb, delivered on a silver platter. But he is the one to cut himself limb from limb—digging the blade through the flesh of his chest, cutting at the muscle and forcing open his ribcage until his heart was exposed, ripe for the taking. He oozed scarlet blood and the dull, grey tar of cigarettes; stricken by the disease of hope and its curled, warm lies.
Neil wonders if Andrew felt the lingering of heartache in his barricaded chest when he approached him for the last time, a “Thank you” on his lips. Thank you for the keys, the trust, the honesty, and the kisses. For the pieces of him that he slowly handed over, and the moments he let Neil in. The facsimile of pain, their matching bruises. And last of all: “You were amazing.” The most truthful omission he’d ever let slip.
❖
It’s an echo at first. The jostled feeling of being hauled through a crowd, an unwanted hand on your arm and shoulders digging into the muscle of your body. It’s an ache, killed by the ferocity of his own elbows jarring into the spines of those surrounding him. Andrew’s briefly forgotten about Neil—driven by age old primal instinct that curls his lip and lit the fire within his hazel eyes. A bottle had been thrown at Aaron. A shoe followed. And then another bottle. Nicky is in the crossfire. So is Kevin. The entirety of Neil’s beloved Foxes have been thrown into the onslaught.
He is separated from the others when the coast clears. Andrew’s knives are still in the safety of his armbands, but his knuckles are bruised. His wrists ache. Something vaguely burns on his upper arm and on his face. He doesn’t notice the difference in their degrees—one faint, like water trickling down a pipeline and the other bloomed from the broken skin of his hands.
Darkness surrounds his left eye, and his lip is split, bleeding onto his chin. He looks rabid, the perfect companion for Neil Josten. Andrew’s head and ears pound as he moves through the concrete jungle of Binghamton’s campus parking lot until he finds the bus, Wymack and the majority of the team.
All without the martyr. Because noticeably, a firecracker red-head with a distinct affinity for violent trouble is missing. There is an itch underneath his skin, his wrists hurt and there is a voice that screams: something is wrong.
Andrew find Neil’s bag, abandoned, flip-phone tucked into the netted pocket. That tells Andrew all that he needs to know: Neil didn’t leave on his own accord. Alone, he hiked the bag over his shoulder and let his memory become a guide back to the bus. Neil had not run, he is missing. A part of Andrew wants to hold onto the bag, blatantly gate it from the prying hands of others that wanted to touch.
But he doesn’t hold it closer. He holds it like its lathered in poison.
Andrew schools his expression—teeth clamping together and the muscles of his jaw taut—and dropped it to the bus floor in front of Wymack. He can't answer the question that their coach spits out.
An onslaught of “Where is Neil?” and “Why do you have Neil’s bag?” erupts from the Greek chorus behind him and the words grind against Andrew’s skull. He didn’t have eyes for Wymack or the upperclassmen, or even the majority of his monsters. His eyes are on Kevin.
Andrew kicks the duffle underneath his seat as Wymack walks off to call hospitals. Rage, simmering and bubbling, threatens to break through the ironclad barrier that he had created between him and their torment. Don’t come crying to me when someone breaks your face. This was the closest to losing control that he’d felt since before his meds. Andrew refused to yield. He could feel his own face breaking.
It takes 15 minutes for Wymack to return to the bus without hope. Andrew hadn’t expected anything different. Neither has a pale Kevin. But the other Foxes’ shoulders sag with the inevitable disappointment. The goalkeeper remains silent, and hooks his shoe through the strap of Neil’s duffle to kick it back out. Renee regarded him curiously as he pulled Neil’s phone free of the net and flips it open. There is a call, moments before the riot, and a thread of texts, a countdown, dated back to January 19th. He doesn’t recognise the area code.
Andrew throws it to a heaving Kevin. Fuck, he needs a cigarette. Hands shaking, Andrew thumbs the packet in the pocket of his jacket. Somewhere in the buzzing of his ears, Andrew hears the distinct noise of Neil’s phone opening, but he didn't look over. Instead, he focuses on pressing his fingers into the stick of nicotine, nail-shape forever indented and pops the filter. A curse fires from the bitten lips of Kevin, face pale. Andrew’s head snaps up.
“He’s gone,” Kevin said.
The noise that slips through Andrew’s mouth is one that he’s never made before. Usually silent, all consumed in his rage, Andrew Minyard cracks beneath the words and the world sags against his Atlas-like shoulders.
Andrew is on Kevin within seconds. Not even Renee could catch him as Andrew’s hand slides around Kevin’s throat and the muscles pull taut. The grimace that contorts his face is cruel and all he could think was: Thank you, you were amazing. About how it was goodbye. The last piece of truth that Neil Josten has given him is a fucking goodbye.
“My patience is running out, Day.” Andrew almost didn’t recognise his voice over the sound of Kevin’s choking noise for an answer. “Talk. Before I make it so you can’t.”
A tale stumbles from Kevin, voice raw and harsh from the grip that Andrew has on him. How they’d actually known each other as kids and Kevin hadn’t found out until the Banquet. That at the root of it all, how Neil Josten is the son of the Butcher of Baltimore—Nathaniel Wesininski—a boy born of red hair and startling eyes, knives and criminal enterprises, Exy and ownership. The pieces of a missing plot that Andrew had already been given.
And he feels himself burn like he never had before.
It is everywhere. Thin, sharp slices to the cut of his cheeks and fiery sensation that consume him. There is a faint echo within his knees as they hit the floor of the bus. Another as his hands came to his face and his nails claw.
In the end, it is Renee who dragged his hot hands off the coldness of his skin. She is the only one unwavering enough to get close enough, to pry Andrew’s nails from his cheeks and curl her body protectively around him without quite touching. It was always an eventuality that Andrew knew was going to occur, and one that he let happen.
There is no denying that in his normal capacity, Renee would get nowhere close but Andrew could feel his systems begin to run out of order. Cracks in the code, cogs unleashed to the rapidness of their ferocity. No longer was it: This is nothing. A shift had occurred without him realising—a moment in time where the word nothing became everything without his permission. Andrew is losing control and it is Neil Josten’s fault. He hates it.
But the question was: would Andrew have it any other way?
“He was never supposed to be here,” Kevin babbled through gasping breaths. The skin of his throat was red raw and the imprints of Andrew’s fingerprints started to show. “He was never supposed to be here.”
Andrew snarled, all the animal they thought him to be.
“Minyard,” Wymack’s voice broke through the noise in Andrew’s head. “Leave it.”
His hands shake. Behind him, Renee fumbled with a cigarette packet from Neil’s discarded bag. She held it out to Andrew. He looked at it, briefly, eyes unfocused, snatched it from her hand without touching a single sliver of skin and bolted from the bus.
Two cigarettes had been pulled from the packet, put to Andrew’s mouth and squashed to the ground before Wymack stepped out the bus.
“He’s alive.”
Andrew remain silent. He knows Neil is alive. He could feel it.
❖
Both phantom and real handcuffs rest on Andrew’s wrists as he drags Wymack from the bus in the hotel parking lot and through the door. He can feel him, like the pain gets stronger the closer he steps to Neil, even though that doesn’t seem physically possible. His blood is hot, pulling at the strings of his muscles in an attempt to go faster.
Andrew crashes through the door. He registers the gun, almost pulling his arm out of it’s socket as he wrenches Wymack through the last part of the doorway. Wymack shoves himself between the goalkeeper and the first FBI agent at the door.
Andrew feels the echo of pain, Neil reaching to grasp the hand holding the gun before Andrew can even react. The attempt to throw the agent off balance works, but only just and at the cost of his hands that scream from the moment the pulled at the agent’s jacket.
“Don’t,” he says.
Gritting his teeth, Andrew pushes through the agony, planting a firm hand on the back of Neil’s neck. The redhead is hunched over, almost as if that will dull the fire burning from his fingertips to his elbow. He tries straightening out his tense body but Andrew shoves him to his knees before he can get very far.
Neil doesn’t argue. He has no weapons, no words and no will to.
He lets himself be moulded to Andrew’s fingers pressing into the bandages on his chin. Faintly, he registers Wymack’s command to leave the two of them alone. He’s angry, but Neil knows it isn’t directed at Andrew or him.
Andrew kneels in front of him unchallenged, unwaveringly but beneath that something simmers.
“They could’ve blinded you,” Neil says through short breaths. “All that time fighting and you never learned how to duck?”
Andrew’s glare hardens. His teeth clamp together, jaw locked. Letting go of him, Andrew trails his fingers along the lines of the tape. He picks Neil’s right cheek first, tearing the tape and exposing what lies underneath the bandages. With each wound, he only takes a small amount of time to gather his stare from hot to cold before moving to the next tape and ripping off the next bandage. With each wound, the aching in his own face becomes worse.
It’s the burns that bring him to a halt. Andrew’s expression doesn’t change but Neil eyes the new tension in his shoulders, rage continuing to simmer underneath the surface.
Two fingers hook underneath Neil’s chin, moving his head from side to side. Andrew’s hand drops into the dark fabric of Neil’s hoodie, bunching it with white knuckles and an unyielding grip.
“I’m sorry,” Neil says.
The winding back of his fist is instantaneous. The palms of Neil’s hands burn from Andrew digging his nails into his own. It actually shakes with the effort it takes to not knock Neil down right where he kneels.
Neil says nothing.
And Andrew unfurls his fingers.
“Say it again and I will kill you.”
“This is the last time I’m going to say it to you,” the FBI agent that had been blocked by Wymack says, “If you can’t stow that attitude and behave—”
Neil’s warning look only just beats his cutting words, “You’ll what, asshole?”
“The same goes for you, Nathaniel,” Neil withholds a flinch, “That’s your second strike. A third misstep and this,” the other agent motions to the Foxes, “is over. Remember you are only here because we are allowing it.”
Andrew shifts.
Neil moves quicker, sliding himself between them, he’s careful enough not to touch Andrew’s face but frames it between his bandaged hands. The goalkeeper settles again. It’s only then that Neil levels another icy stare at the second agent.
“Don’t lie to a liar,” he says. “We both know I’m here because you have nothing without me. A pile of dead bodies can’t close cases or play the money trail with you. I told you what those answers would cost you and you agreed to pay it. So take this handcuff off of Andrew, get your man out of our way, and stop using my twenty minutes with your useless posturing.” A rigid silence lays itself over the room.
And for the first time since Andrew and Neil met, he explains himself.
❖
The phantom pain in Andrew’s body aches less in the backseat of the SUV.
Neil looks at Andrew, asking in German, “Can I really be Neil again?”
Andrew watches out the window. All he can think is: Thank you, you were amazing. He still wants nothing.
“I told Neil to stay,” Andrew replies. “Leave Nathaniel buried in Baltimore with his father.”