Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Andrew meets Kevin Day, he decides that Kevin Day is not worth his time.

Kevin is nothing if not persistent, and Andrew hates the man with every fiber of his being because persistence comes too close to forceful and aggressive and that’s right, Andrew, look at you down there, yeah, keep doing that—

“Join the Ravens. You could land Court with skills like that, and we would deeply appreciate it. You could easily become the best,” Kevin politely insists again, though Andrew has done nothing but stare at him, Andrew’s drug-induced haze deterring him from doing anything more than tease and smile and be a general nuisance altogether. There are people within the area that would not appreciate a scene if Kevin decided to get handsy (though Kevin Day has kept quite the record of having such a clever façade when in public), so Andrew knew he was safe enough to keep being an asshole.

“Kevin, Kevin, Kevin,” Andrew starts, his gaze settling right on Kevin’s tattooed cheek, hands at his wrists so that he could thumb the hem of the black cloth by his fingertips. He sees the tattoo and thinks brand, he thinks of the Ravens and thinks another cage. He looks at Riko across the room, having a friendly conversation with a foster home owner that Andrew couldn’t care to remember who (Milo, his brain supplies, ever so loyal with its memory) and thinks captor.

He has questions for Kevin. Questions like: how do you manage to stay caged under nothing but a gaze? How can you manage to live a life with nothing but sports? How can you live with yourself with those injuries and think I will not fight back?

But if Kevin was nothing but persistent, then Andrew was everything but intrusive for his own sake, so instead he asks, “What makes you think I give a shit? If I were you, and I would hate to be, I’d trot back to your master with my tail between my legs and leave. Unless you want me to go up there and tell him to fuck off myself.”

He says it with a smile that leaves no room for doubt or argument, but he knows from the look of disappointment, fear, and disgust on Kevin’s face that he made himself clear.

He wants nothing but to be left alone, so when Kevin walks off to give Riko the bad news, Andrew smiles and preps his middle finger for when Riko will undoubtedly give him a sideways glance.

The second time Andrew meets Kevin Day, he decides to be difficult, because this time, Kevin knows how he functions.

There’s simplicity in rules and deals and bargains of the like. To Aaron and Nicky, Andrew gave his protection in exchange for loyalty. To Abby and Wymack, it was five years worth of goalkeeping in exchange for a scholarship.

To Kevin, Andrew also gave his protection in exchange for a reason: a reason to live and keep living, a reason to play and keep playing, a reason to keep giving away pieces of himself.

It was easier, because if he gave away enough of himself, promised enough to a certain amount of people, he would keep living.

It was harder because if he gave away too much of himself, promised too much to a certain amount of people, it would make it hard for himself when he intentionally disappeared from the face of the earth.

Plus, Kevin made this bargain all on his own, not made out of necessity like a few of Andrew’s bargains, so Andrew always made it a point to wait until the third ball hit the net behind him before taking Kevin’s glares seriously with a nonchalant shrug that does nothing but infuriate the other man more.

The first time Andrew meets Neil Josten, it’s on the insistence of Kevin Day.

Andrew knew that Kevin could contain enough conviction when faced in front of the sport he lived for but he didn’t knew that Kevin could contain enough conviction to drag Andrew on a plane to Arizona instead of crumbling under the pressure of Andrew's insistence towards just driving. Plus, Wymack was making it hard to decline the plane ride by paying for it and saying that they still had to go to classes and that they'd have no time for road trips.

Andrew did not sulk.

Anyway, Kevin was easily a coward, so Andrew didn’t know if this conviction was a welcome change or a rueful mistake, because Kevin’s conviction was faced with the want to recruit this awfully amateur player with no history, who lived all the way in Arizona.

This awfully amateur player, who wore clothes that looked like they’d stayed long enough in the backlog of some Goodwill branch to have been thrown away sometime in the past decade, was becoming a pain in Andrew's ass before they'd even met in person.

Andrew makes it a point to hit particularly hard with the racquet just to make himself feel better about it.

Neil Josten is odd in many ways, because he runs like he’s been doing it for things other than Exy, and he looks at Kevin with enough fear that it makes Andrew think that Neil has seen Kevin before. It makes him suspicious, because Andrew’s bargain with Kevin extends to former acquaintances, and Neil looked with enough fear to have been placed in a time in Kevin’s life that was away from Exy.

Inwardly, he sighed. He’d have to investigate further.

The second time Andrew meets Neil Josten, it’s to drive the younger man to Wymack’s apartment. He has exactly one duffel bag as luggage, and he’s wearing the same jorts that Andrew saw him wearing the first time.

Andrew resists the urge to grab something and smack Neil in the stomach, but the urge is there, underneath his façade.

Until they're out of the car, Neil is nothing but suspicious and wary, and Andrew feels mutual. He asks too little questions, observes far too often.

Then he has a weird zone-out moment in front of Wymack's apartment that looks, to Andrew, a little like a panic attack. When Nicky asks him what he'd said to Neil on the way over, in German, Andrew says the truth.

He decides that maybe the awfully amateur player, who was very much a pain in the ass, had more layers than he'd thought.

That was interesting.

The third time Andrew meets Neil, situations have changed.

He is sober, and Neil has a shit ton more scars than he last remembered, and Neil has a patch on his cheek high enough to look like it bore the same mark that Kevin had.

Andrew confirms his suspicions once the feeling is back in his veins. He sees the tattoo on Neil’s cheek and thinks, again, brand, and his blood boils hot along with the initial feelings in his veins.

It’s too much feeling, and it’s too much anger, but then Neil tells him that he went to The Nest, he faced the Moriyamas, and he took all of this pain in.

All for Andrew's safety.

It’s too much feeling and anger and something else and Andrew wants to feel the familiar upchuck he feels along with the withdrawals, but he hasn’t eaten yet and he was sober, and there wasn't going to be anymore throwing up until he had enough alcohol in his system to be wasted.

“Do not make the mistake of thinking I need your protection,” Andrew says, feeling like every molecule on his body was vibrating, the heat collecting in all the places. He is anger, he is denial, he is—

He is not used to this. Whatever this was.

“I had to try,” Neil replies, his eyes unbearably blue and honest and grounded, all things that Neil wasn’t when they’d met the first time, and the second time. It was some of the things Neil was when they went their separate ways seven weeks before, when Neil had told him of Abram and promised to protect Kevin while he was gone. “If I had the chance to stop it but did nothing, how could I face you again? How could I live with myself?”

But Andrew was still denial and anger, the feeling was bubbling underneath his skin. He was too sober for this.

They exchange more words before Andrew delivers another denial, another no, you can’t protect me. “The next time someone comes for you, stand down and let me deal with it. Do you understand?” Because Andrew is not to be protected, Andrew will not be taken care of, Andrew has no one watching his back for a reason and it is because Andrew does not want anyone to protect him. Because protection is too much like hands lingering in places he did not want it to linger, too much like weakness, too soft, too fragile. Andrew was not any of those things.

But Neil was stupid.

“If it means losing you, then no,” Neil said with enough conviction and something else in his eyes to make Andrew want to shout over the rooftops then jump.

“I hate you.”

The last time Andrew will ever let Neil walk out of his sight without permission, they meet in a hotel room with Neil wrapped up like a mummy and Andrew handcuffed to Wymack.

Andrew has been feeling more often than not, and this is different from being sober before Palmetto, this is different from wanting to sleep forever. It is too much like standing on a rooftop and feeling gravity pulling him towards the ground.

And it is exactly that.

He is standing in a doorway and feeling something pull him towards Neil and he never wants that something to let go.

Only, he’d walked towards Neil, and when faced with the analogy of the rooftop and him and gravity and the ground and being willing, it sounds a little too close like choosing to jump and accepting the fall.

Andrew’s bargain with Kevin Day is done once they win against the Ravens, and both he and Kevin know it.

Andrew knows that his bargain with Kevin has been done once Neil told them that Kevin and Jean were free from Moriyama rule, that they only had to offer their Exy income for their own freedom, but Kevin’s bargain with Andrew hasn’t been fulfilled up until Andrew realized it.

After the game, Andrew watches Neil get whisked away by bodyguards, and Kevin had enough prudence to tell him, this time, that it was for Neil to meet with the Moriyamas.

Together, they sat in the lockers, waiting for the other Foxes to finish showering, waiting for Neil to come back.

“You took me with you when you recruited him,” Andrew muttered, but he knew Kevin was listening.

They both knew that it was the closest Andrew could get to a thank you, so they both kept quiet.

Kevin sighed, scratched at the tattoo on his cheek, now a chess piece queen instead of a number. Andrew looks at it and does not think that it is a brand.

When the Foxes were done showering, Kevin left.

When Neil came back, he was still sweaty and dressed in his gear. Nicky made a comment about Neil’s smile, and Andrew didn’t care.