Archive of Our Own ^beta

The world changed, for better or for worse, 10am on a Thursday.

Andrew and Neil were in bed, Neil doing his best to maintain focus on the article he was reading, and failing. The cats lay between them; Sir with his head resting on Neil’s shoulder, which made the whole thing uncomfortable, but he didn’t make any effort to move him. Andrew was wrapped up in blankets, the only sign there is a person under there is the flash of blonde at the top.

His phone shook on the bedside table, before it began to ring.

It was Aaron’s ringtone, Gives You Hell – the one he had chosen for himself in Andrew’s phone, and although Andrew had complained, he had not changed it. There was a grunt, and otherwise no real change from normal. Neil watched out of the corner of his eye.

The phone stopped ringing, eventually. Only to immediately begin again. This time, the lump that is Andrew stayed completely silent.

On the third time, he spoke. ‘He’s not going to stop, is he?’

Neil watched phone continue to shake, Aaron’s name flashing up on the screen. ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

With a huff that could rival any moody teenager, Andrew pulled the bedsheets off, sitting up. ‘If he’s killed someone again...’ He grabbed the phone. ‘What?’

Silence.

‘This is the part where you talk now. You called me.’

Just before it got worrying, Neil heard Aaron sigh. ‘Did you choose not to pick up the first two times?’

‘Neil started a fire in the kitchen, I was trying to save our lives. Apologies your phone call didn’t rank high compared to that.’

‘I know damn well neither of you have even gotten out of bed.’

Neil nodded. Over the years, he had come to understand this as the ‘Hello, how are you?’ ‘I’m fine, thanks, how are you?’ of the Minyard twins. This would be as close they could get to any kind of polite chat.

Ragging out of the way, and both of them confident there was no disaster with the other, they could get on with the problem at hand.

Andrew, as usual, followed through with his usual tact. ‘What is it?’

Sensing Aaron’s nervousness, Andrew stood up, taking himself into the living room. ‘Talk.’ He was halfway out the room before he stopped. ‘Tell me you’re fucking kidding me.’

Neil put his article to the side, waiting. Sir looked at him, and Neil petted his head absently, watching Andrew.

Andrew stayed exactly where he was, listening. ‘Well that sounds like your problem. Have a nice life.’ He threw the phone back on the bed, where it landed on his pillow. With that he was moving, pulling on clothing, fierce, and angry.

‘Do you want to come for a drive? he asked at last.

Neil knew the offer was just that: an offer. It made no real difference to Andrew, it neither comforted or unsettled him more. It was purely on whether Neil wanted to come for the drive. They had practice later on in the day, but he knew Andrew didn’t want to hear about that.

‘Sure, I’ll come.’

As he got dressed, he realised Andrew had put on one of his jerseys again, so he settled for wearing Andrew’s. He fed the cats, and followed Andrew out of the apartment without another word.

They drove for a long time, without Andrew saying anything. The radio was on, and they were content just to listen.

After driving, Andrew pulled into the front of a café. It was through the years of their life together Neil knew without asking what Andrew wanted. He came back to the car with two hot chocolates.

They continued to drive, until Andrew came to a spot that he seemed to like, and he pulled the car in. They drank in silence, Neil watching Andrew out of the corner of his eye, but just continued to wait.

They had almost finished the hot chocolate, when Andrew finally spoke.

‘Aaron’s wife is pregnant.’

It took a long time for Andrew to even call Katelyn by her name, and now they’d reverted.

Neil let out a hiss. ‘Shit.’

He didn’t say anything else. Matt still liked to talk about Neil’s response when Dan and Matt announced their pregnancy: Fuck, I’m sorry, what are you going to do?

‘They’re having twins.’

‘Oh god.’

Andrew sat there for a long time, his hands clasped on his cup. Neil saw a quiver to his fingers when he reached to get a cigarette. ‘He knows better than this. He knows better,’ he muttered.

‘Some people believe having children is a positive thing for life.’

Andrew scoffed. ‘Like he knows anything good about children.’

They sat there for a long time, just looking out at the view. And then when it was over, when Andrew had worked through everything he needed to, he drove them home.

*****

The twins didn’t speak for weeks.

It was Nicky, as usual, who was picking up the slack for it.

Neil knew what to expect when he picked up the phone. ‘Tell Andrew that Aaron and Katelyn have their baby shower, and he needs to get them something.’

Neil fought to not roll his eyes. ‘You told me you were never going to push me into their problems again.’

‘Yet you do it yourself when you want to.’ He was unmoved. ‘Neil. Are you hearing me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aaron’s having kids. This isn’t some minor thing, this is not their childish pacts, Andrew is going to be an uncle. He cannot do this to babies who have no part in this. He’s going to have to grow up.’

‘Yeah, I get why you’re not having this conversation with Andrew.’

‘Neil, come on. You’re going to be an uncle.’

Neil felt almost offended. ‘Aaron’s kids aren’t anything to do with me.’

‘You’re in the family, have some good will. And buy him some baby clothes or something. I don’t care if you have to forge Andrew’s name, just do something. Katelyn has a registry, I’ll be sending it on.’

Nicky had gotten less kindly, over the years. Neil thought maybe being an ocean away from Andrew’s ability to hit him had given him a confidence he didn’t otherwise have.

The day before Katelyn’s baby shower, a package arrived full of nearly all of the baby clothes they’d asked for, with a card very empty except for two signatures, one from Neil, and the other, genuinely, from Andrew.

*****

The next time Aaron called was months later. They’re sat on the sofa, Andrew showing Neil another one of the films he never saw as a kid. Occasionally, Andrew would tell him where he was when he saw that movie for the first time. The vast majority of them are in juvie.

Even though they haven’t spoken in months, Andrew picked up as soon as he heard the ringtone.

‘What?’

He listened calmly.

‘Is Nicky coming?’

More silence.

‘Okay. Call later.’

He put the phone down.

Neil mentally went over all of the sign offs he’d heard, and that was the kindest one he’d ever heard for Aaron. Usually it was some version of ‘Fuck off.’

Andrew stared at his phone. ‘Katelyn’s waters broke early.’

‘That happens with twins, I hear.’ Matt knew so much about pregnancy, much more than Neil had ever wanted to know.

‘They’re going to the hospital now.’

‘Is Nicky on the way?’

‘I don’t know, he hasn’t called him yet.’

Neil couldn’t help but smile. No calls between them in nearly two months, and yet when it came down to it, Andrew would always Aaron’s first phone call.

Without discussion, after their movie ended, Andrew switched to their Exy streaming service and loaded up the first game he found. He realised it was one of Kevin’s games, made a disgusted noise, and switched it.

As they watched, Neil told Andrew about the things he’d noticed: lazy footwork, an idiotic missed opportunity, or a genuinely interesting move. Andrew said nothing, but he didn’t leave.

When the game finished, he picked another game. And another one after that. At some point, the King showed up, blinking at them, as if to say: What the fuck are you two not doing in bed?

At nearly 3am, Andrew got a phone call. He picked it up immediately.

It took him a moment, and then he just clicked the speaker phone, and put the phone between them.

It’s a baby crying.

Nothing else.

Neil paused the game, and they sat and listened to it.

The girls – identical twin girls – stayed in the hospital for a while. They were early – tiny little things. Aaron sent pictures – to Andrew, never to Neil, but Andrew would show him the pictures without comment. They looked impossibly small, with too many wires and tubes coming out of them.

One day, Neil got a message from Katelyn.

He had Katelyn’s number reluctantly. It was a weird chain of months apart, of ‘Did they get into a fight?’

‘What do you think we should get Andrew for his birthday?’

‘Is Aaron going to come to the game?’

But this one was a picture.

‘Aaron would never send this, but I think Andrew deserves to see it! xo’

Aaron was sat in a chair, two tiny babies clutched to his chest. He looked up at the camera, a tired smile on his face. Neil felt a weird tense feeling in his stomach, of invading on a private moment. It’s a look he’d never seen on Andrew’s face, let alone Aaron’s.

The older they got, and the more time he spent with Andrew, the less identical they seemed. They were aging differently, in different cities. Aaron had glasses that he seemed to wear more often than not. And this stupid fucking haircut that looked sensible and older.

‘Hey, Andrew.’

‘What?’

He turned the picture around, and Andrew studied it hard.

‘Do you think he purposely chose the ugliest frames he could?’ he said at last, tapping the screen to send the picture on to his phone.

*****

It was a couple of months before they travelled to meet the babies. One month for the girls to get out of the NICU, another month for life to settle down. Nicky and Erik were there to meet them when they were still in the hospital, and Katelyn’s family had been hovering, and Neil knew that was far too many people for the two of them to handle.

It almost perfectly lined up. There was a game they had to travel for, that dropped them nearby. Convenient enough to make an excuse – to make it known that the babies weren’t the only reason they’re coming, it just happened that they’re in the area.

Everyone knew it was bullshit, but it didn’t need to be said. And in fact, if anyone did address them making a special visit, Andrew would turn around just to make a point.

Neil always found Aaron and Katelyn’s house unnerving. It looked so completely normal. He could not ever reconcile a Fox living in a house this normal. There were flower boxes on the windows, and bright flower beds outside. Their welcome mat had a pug on it, a specially designed one: Welcome to Popo’s house!

For a moment, Neil felt awful for the horrible little creature saddled forever with that fucking name, and then he remembered the cats.

Aaron was the one to answer the door. He stared at them, unimpressed.

‘Oh. Hi.’ As if he hadn’t known they were coming.

Andrew glared at him. ‘You look old.’

Aaron rolled his eyes without missing a beat. ‘And you look like you’re trying to pretend you’re still 20.’ With that he walked off, leaving the door open.

Neil noticed the way it took Andrew a moment to respond. There’s something about siblings, he’d discovered, of being able to home in on one another’s biggest insecurities.

Katelyn was in the living room, and she looked tired, less put together than she usually did. Neil didn’t know what to say to her – he instinctively wanted to ask if she was in pain, and yet knew that was something you shouldn’t say to women who had just given birth. When he had said that to Allison, she had asked him if he knew what an episiotomy was, and then described it in detail.

‘Hi Neil, hi Andrew!’ Katelyn had learned to adapt to their strangeness with a kind of flexibility and optimism that must have been incredibly useful in a marriage with Aaron. She was friendly and warm; she kept herself almost instinctively out of Andrew’s reach, but she would never submit to ignoring him. Always polite, always welcoming, always giving him the opportunity, if he wanted it.

‘Hi Katelyn.’ Neil was used to talking for them.

‘I’m so glad you’re here, I can’t wait for you to meet your nieces.’

Nieces. It twisted weirdly in his gut, that word. He knew they weren’t, not really – they were Andrew’s, not his. But they were still family, technically. If Erik was their uncle – and he was – than it meant Neil was, too.

When the new parents disappeared into the corridor, it left Neil and Andrew alone in their strange, normal house. Neil felt distinctly that they didn’t belong in that house. Andrew was dressed entirely in dark colours, as he sat down on their bright orange sofa. For a moment, it gave Neil an intense nostalgia of living in Fox tower. In front of them was a weird round coffee table with fruit shaped coasters.

Andrew sat bolt upright, like he was getting ready to run any minute. ‘God, I want to spill something on this fucking couch,’ he muttered. Neil pressed a hand to his leg, squeezing for a moment before letting go.

‘Here they are,’ Katelyn said, coming in with a tiny little baby in her arms, Aaron following behind her. Instead of just stopping to show them the girls, Katelyn came directly towards them. She stepped into Andrew’s space, and Neil tensed, uncertain what was going to happen, but Andrew put his arms up, and Katelyn laid the little girl in his arms.

It was silent in the room, as Andrew shifted his arms around, his eyes focused on the baby’s face.

‘Put her head in the crook of your arm,’ Katelyn told him softly. He followed. The baby shifted, as she stared up, meeting Andrew’s eyes.

Neil was so focused on watching Andrew he didn’t notice when Katelyn came towards him with the second baby.

‘I shouldn’t,’ he said instinctively.

‘Yeah, he shouldn’t,’ Aaron agreed.

Katelyn continued advancing. ‘He’s her uncle, too,’ she said, with a finality that Aaron didn’t argue with. She had a kind of commanding presence in her own right, and Neil put his arms up. He’d held Dan and Matt’s kids, was aware of the basics of how to hold a baby, but holding such a tiny person filled him with panic.

But he held her, and Katelyn directed him to hold the little thing against his chest. The baby looked up at him with big watery blue eyes, and started making fussy little noises.

‘Her sister didn’t do that to Andrew,’ he said.

‘She probably thinks he’s her dad,’ Aaron says.

‘Well that’s insulting,’ Andrew shot back.

‘She’s three months old, for fuck’s sake. Sorry she can’t tell the exact difference.’

‘What are their names?’ Neil asked, deciding it was better than letting Andrew answer.

‘Freya and Flora. Andrew has Flora, you have Freya.’

‘Did you choose F for a reason?’ he asked, his eyes still fixed on the tiny human in his arms.

‘It’s the letter in the middle between A and K,’ Katelyn said, her voice brimming with pride. Neil heard Andrew whisper, an almost involuntary disgusted murmur: ‘Jesus.’

‘They have middle names, too,’ Katelyn added, undeterred.

Aaron moved closer behind his wife, his arms crossed tightly. His eyes were focused on the twin in Neil’s arms, not trusting him one inch. ‘They’re Freya Nicola, and Flora Andrea.’

Neil looked to Andrew, trying to gauge his response. Andrew hadn’t looked away from the baby.

‘I bet Nicky loved that,’ Neil said, trying to fill the silence, knowing everyone was waiting for Andrew to say something.

Katelyn smiled at him, but she was clearly focused elsewhere.

At last, Andrew spoke, as he shifted the baby in his arms: a deeply awkward move. ‘You’re not giving her much to live up to, are you?’

‘Yes we are,’ Aaron shot back, venom in his voice. ‘Say something else about my family, and I’ll fuck you up.’

It was an empty threat, and everyone knew it, but Andrew didn’t say anything else.

After five minutes, he leaned forward, giving the baby back to Katelyn, and he removed himself for a smoke break on the deck. Aaron disappeared behind him.

Neil keeps hold of his one, Freya, until she starts to cry, at which point he is more than happy to hand her back to her mom. ‘She’s hungry,’ she said, the other twin settled on a mat on the floor.

Neil removed himself from the room quickly, giving the excuse of getting a drink. The back door was open, the smell of Andrew’s cigarette smoke in the air.

‘In some ways it’s easier,’ Aaron’s voice came in through the backdoor. ‘But the more I love them, the more I cannot understand why she did what she did.’ Neil got water from the tap, wondering whether he should be listening or not. He didn’t make a habit of being an eavesdropper.

‘If you’re looking for answers, you’re never going to find them,’ Andrew replies, voice as blunt as always.

‘Do you not ever wonder why?’

‘No. I’m not going to guess why someone did what they did. No reason they have will ever make what they did different. Nor does them being sorry.’

Aaron sighed. It was a long while before he spoke again. ‘Do you ever think about dad?’

‘No.’

‘Not ever?’

‘I’ve got things going on in my life, I’ve no interest in whatever sperm donor was involved, I’ve got more than enough family already.’

‘I get worried about it. Whether he had any more kids. Whether we know them. I’m so fucking worried they’ll meet a cousin or something and won’t know.’

‘And what? What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen – their genetics are already shit, they’re going to be about four feet tall and they’re going to burn every time the sun comes out for five minutes - it can’t possibly get worse for them.’

Neil smiled, leaning against the counter, content to listen.

Andrew stayed completely silent, on the way back to the hotel. A silence Neil knew meant he was formulating what he wanted to say to Bee. Once in the room, Neil started to change. ‘I’m going for a run.’

Andrew stood in the doorway. ‘You don’t have to.’

‘I want to, it’s fine.’  As he went to pass him, Andrew put a hand out, turning Neil’s face so he could study it. After a moment, he let go.

*****

The next time they visit, the babies are six months old. They’re so much bigger than they were the last time Neil saw them, with more blonde hair, their eyes faded to the same honey shade as Andrew’s. They were livelier, bouncier, with hands that reached out to grab. The next time a baby is dumped on his arms, she stared at him, tiny hands reaching out to his hair, his face, clearly confused by whoever is holding her.

As soon as Freya was placed in Andrew’s arms, however, she went to sleep.

He was still holding her, hand gently tucked against her head, when he and Aaron discussed babysitting.

‘Who takes care of them when you’re going back to work?’

‘You and Neil aren’t doing it, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Of course, I’m not asking that, I’m asking you who is.’

‘Katelyn’s family is helping, her sister doesn’t work so she’s able to keep the girls sometimes, and if not, Katelyn’s mom has been amazing.’

‘And you trust them?’

Aaron stared at him, mouth open, so caught off-guard by the question. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m asking if you trust the people who look after the girls when you aren’t around.’

‘Of course we do –’

‘And the people allowed in their houses? The people they know, the ones who are around when the girls are also there?’

‘I don’t know what the fuck you think –’

‘Only 10% of abuse is done by strangers.’ He spoke it so casually, his hand pressed against the baby’s head.

Aaron closed his mouth immediately, watching his brother. ‘Yes.’ He spoke very slowly, very firmly. ‘I trust her family. And we’re going to teach the girls everything about what should and shouldn’t be happening. That we want to know, we hear them. I’m not going to let anything happen to them. And if anyone were to even try – they know I’ve already killed one paedophile.’

Andrew looked down at his niece, not saying anything else.

*****

It’s near Christmas, when Aaron called again.

‘The girls aren’t hearing normally.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘They’re going to be deaf. Both of them, Flora more so, but their hearing is going to decline.’

The next week Andrew signed them up for sign language classes.

*****

Their first birthday, Andrew and Neil visited the week after. Both of them had begun to walk, in that imprecise toddler way. Katelyn signed to girls: ‘Uncle!’ as she pointed to both men, but their small hands just keep signing Dad as they look at Andrew.

Katelyn smiled, and shrugged it off.

The television had ASL interpreters even on the channels not meant for the kids, and there were ASL picture books in the ever-increasing number of children’s books they had. Andrew sat down on the floor with them, awkward and stiff at first as he observed them, before warming up, going through one of their books with them. His face was not expressive – a point which continued to get him in trouble with their sign language teacher.

Aaron was making tea in the kitchen when Katelyn took Neil to one side, touching his arm for a moment before letting go. ‘Does Andrew… is Andrew speaking to someone still?’ she asked very quietly.

‘He still speaks to Bee.’

‘Does he have to, after coming over here?’

Neil immediately leaned away, studying her. ‘Why?’

She bit her lip. ‘Aaron’s… finding it hard, I think… And he’s wonderful with the girls, but I know he’s hurting. I think he sees the twins growing up, and he sees everything he should have had.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what to do. I guess I just wanted to know whether Andrew was the same. Whether they could talk about it.’

Neil watched Andrew, sat with the two girls, his face uninterested, but his eyes fixed on both of them. As one of them tilted, ready to fall, he picked her up, and set her back against his leg.

‘I think they do talk about it, just in their own way.’

Waiting in the airport, Andrew asked Neil a question. ‘Do you have any childhood pictures?’

Neil thought about it. ‘I think maybe in the house in Boston. All from when I was too young to know anything. I guess the FBI has them now. My mom wasn’t really big on pictures, for obvious reasons.’

‘Would you ever want to see them again?’

‘No,’ he answered quickly. ‘I don’t need anything from back then.’ He waited for Andrew to fill the gap, which he didn’t. ‘Do you?’

‘In some of the foster files, maybe. Cass did have them. Fuck knows what she did with them. If you count mugshots, or hospital documentation, then the state has a bunch.’

Neil didn’t need to ask if Andrew would ever want to see them again.

He turned to see that Andrew was looking at his phone gallery. He took nearly no pictures: ugly, blurry photographs of the cats, and saved images from Renee and Nicky, and sometimes Kevin, but he had no real need to keep memories. But the largest portion of his gallery were pictures of his nieces. He was flicking through them, pictures and videos of them playing, being read stories, videos of them making signs in their loose and imprecise way. One of Neil standing, face turned away, with Freya on his hip. Another with a very frustrated and tired Aaron holding both girls, his shirt stained with many mystery fluids. Andrew hesitated on that one for a moment.

*****

At a year and a half old, the twins (Neil had no idea how it happened, when ‘the twins’ had stopped being Andrew and Aaron, and had begun meaning Flora and Freya) made an appearance at one of their games. They were obviously uninterested, and they didn’t stay the entire game, but it was enough for Neil to see Andrew turning his head to check on them, several times during the game.

After the game, they had surprised the team with a visit, both girls wearing tiny team jerseys with Andrew’s number on them.

‘I had to do some work to make them, but when I realised they made baby jerseys, I couldn’t resist making them special for their uncle’s game. I would have made a Josten one, but Aaron really put his foot down,’ Katelyn said, adjusting the green bows in her daughter’s hair.

‘I would rather shit in my hands and clap than see my kid in Josten’s number,’ Aaron murmured, deliberately loud enough for everyone to hear.

Neil didn’t mind. Their frustration with each other had faded over the years – maybe because they’d both shown the other one was wrong. Aaron did care – despite everything he said about what Andrew had done, he had stayed close, making the effort to reach him; and Neil, much to Aaron’s surprise, had continued to stand by Andrew, to love him, and as much as he would never understand their relationship, had come to understand that Neil was here to stay.

Neil saw their teammates watching, half confused, half in awe as Andrew held one of the girls, showing her the awards cabinet, signing words to her, spelling things out as he pointed to them. His reputation as cold and stoic had become almost legendary in Exy: his unrelenting blanks to increasingly desperate interviewers, and his blunt refusal to shake hands with opponents he didn’t like. Neil could see their teammates smiling, watching the side of Andrew they never saw. He felt, as he often did, increasingly lucky that he shared his life with this man.

One photographer, there to take celebratory photographs of the team, brought his camera up. Andrew spotted, and immediately shoved one hand in front of Flora’s face. ‘You try and take any picture of my nieces ever, I will break your camera and more.’

The photographer apologised, and slunk off. Andrew continued to watch him as he beat his escape. Once he did, he turned back to Flora. He moved his hand, spelling out one word, before showing her the sign: ‘Asshole.’

Flora did mimic it back, and Katelyn gasped, taking the girl out of his arms. Neil didn’t miss the smirk of pride on Andrew’s face.

*****

For their second birthday, they visited Neil and Andrew at home, and they decide to go on a walk. It’s cold, and the twins are wrapped up warm in matching sets. Neil couldn’t tell them apart – babies looked very much like one another to him, but Andrew could tell the difference immediately.

As they walked, Neil had one of those moments where he was overcome with the reality that this life was his. He had a family, of people he didn’t always like but he did value, where he could go to the park in the bright morning air and he did not have to hide.

‘Neil.’

He turned, and Andrew was facing him, wrapped up in his winter clothes, hat pulled down over his brow, his cheeks and nose flushed from the cold. Freya was on his hip like it was the most normal thing in the world. Andrew was older now, they were both more filled out than they were in college, but he had changed in other ways, too. No longer needing to cling to his brother and their shared identity, he had begun to change his appearance in ways: a nose ring, tongue bar and earrings, as well as some tattoos. Neil found him more beautiful the longer they were together, the more Andrew had seemed to settle into himself, the tension he held in his shoulders had eased somewhere along the years.

Neil imagined trying to explain this to a younger him: how he will see that boy who hit him with his own racket all the way back in Millport, that he will worship the ground he walks on. The girl on his hip stared at Neil with an expression that is so familiar, there is this crashing wave of love and adoration he thought he would never feel again.

He understood, however briefly, the concept of baby fever, and made the note to not scoff quite so much the next time Nicky mentioned it.

Something in Andrew’s face told him he knew what he was thinking about. Neil blushed, as he caught up to walk besides him.

‘A combination of you and me is how you make a psychopath,’ Andrew said.

‘I didn’t say anything,’ Neil muttered.

*****

‘Did you know that football huddles were invented by Deaf people?’ Andrew asked, as Neil helped him with his gear.

‘No?’

‘They didn’t want their opponents to see them signing their strategies out. If you think about it, there’s really no point in Hearing people doing it, is there? Unless you can lipread.’

From that point on, Neil and Andrew started using ASL on the court, as best as they could with the gloves and the rackets. It felt incredible, to be so openly scheming across the pitch, knowing it was frustrating everyone around them. Neil loved it.

*****

The twins were toddlers the next time Neil and Andrew saw them, and they were chaos incarnate. Neil felt a niggling anxiety, as he watched them let loose in his apartment. Andrew’s lip curled, and he could tell he was thinking about about those sticky hands grabbing their stuff.

As much as Aaron insisted he didn’t trust Neil and Andrew with his girls, he didn’t follow them around anymore. If anything, Katelyn and he seemed to be thrilled to just sit on the sofa with the cats and talk to each other. Neil followed Flora around, making sure she didn’t walk into all of those corners that seem made to fuck up two-and-a-half-year-olds specifically. She crouched down to pet the cat, but her hands were clumsy and uncertain. He leaned down, showing her to pet the cat, moving her hand out of the scrunched fist to the flat hand.

She followed his lead, looking at him like he was magic. Their eyes were honey coloured, although their hair was getting less pale, more golden. Flora didn’t smile, just studied him as he stared back at her. What he would give to know what was going on in their minds. She put her clammy little hand out, and touched the scars on his cheek, fingers prodding, testing.

There was something so innocent in the curiosity of it. Adults looked at Neil as something broken or something dangerous. Half of the Exy athletes thought he must have done something to deserve those injuries, the other half looked at him and his scars and saw something to be pitied. But Flora’s hands were curious, testing how it felt compared to the other skin on his face. He imagined briefly what it would be like, for there to be a human who would grow up never knowing him as anyone other than Neil Josten. Anything other than what he was now.

At last he picked her up, and asking her what she wanted now.

‘Juice?’

That got her attention. ‘Juice! Please!’

When he got into the kitchen, Andrew was there, the other twin sat on the counter as he was spooning out ice cream into a little bowl.

‘You know what Aaron said about not giving them a lot of sugar?’ Neil asked, signing with his free hand.

Andrew shrugged, signing dismissively ‘Not my problem.’

It wasn’t a great shock that Flora wanted some too, and Andrew obeyed. The girls would babble to each other, signing things to each other, totally focused on controlling their hands. Andrew nodded as they talked, like they were making good points. Neil stood beside him, and Andrew gave him a spoon, offering to share his bowl.

*****

Wymack’s 65^th birthday got the entire team back together, with all their extended families. Every time Neil saw them, there seemed to be more of them. Aaron’s kids were the youngest at that point, but Renee’s youngest was only a couple of months older.

Eleven fox kids total by then, produced within the ten years out of the college team. More popping up as each generation graduated and settled down. Neil never really got used to it, to see these brand-new people who would never know what their parents had gone through to give them the lives they had now. In some ways he struggled to have anything in common with them. Looking at them reminded him what he never had.

But he understood that children weren’t exactly complicated creatures. You asked them what they were doing, repeat whatever they say back to them as a question, and you were basically friends.

Aaron and Katelyn hovered around their children, ready to translate. Anything someone said, the girls turned to their parents. Neil could tell they were itching for time away, to be able to talk to other people, and he silently went over to pick up Freya, and to take Flora by the hand, walking them over to him and Andrew’s corner. Katelyn smiled, whispering a thank you to him that Neil shrugged off.

The twins were four, and excited to play with other kids. For kids, charades seemed to be a second language anyway, and they didn’t exactly need to say anything complicated to one another that couldn’t be acted out, but Neil stayed close enough to step in when the language barrier was too much.

He wondered, in a twisting, shameful way, how old they would be when the world would stop trying to talk to them.

Later, the kids inside watching a film with Renee and her husband, the adults were sat in the garden to relax.

‘Are you going to get them cochlear implants?’ Allison asked, after Aaron and Katelyn had given their update on getting the girls into a Deaf Kindergarten class.

Aaron sighed, his shoulders tight. Katelyn put a hand to his back, rubbing it as she replied. ‘We’re thinking about it, but it’s major surgery, and we’re not wanting to put the girls through anything just yet.’

‘It’s just that it’s easier for them to learn to talk the earlier they get it, right?’

Aaron took offense. ‘Maybe they don’t need to learn to talk. Maybe everyone else needs to learn sign language. We’re waiting so the girls can actually tell us what they want, I’m not putting shit in my kid’s head just because everybody else thinks it would be easier for them if they had it.’

It shut the conversation down immediately, and Neil watched Aaron as he sat, his hands grasped together, waiting for someone else to question his kids. It made Neil respect him, just a touch more.

‘Are you going to teach them Exy?’ Kevin asked – a question he seemed to level at any parent as soon as their kids started walking.

‘I don’t think they should,’ Andrew said, surprising everyone that he would insert himself into the conversation. ‘Teach them ballet or something. They could be cheerleaders.’

‘Are you being fucking sexist about your nieces? Aaron spat back.

‘Their mom was a cheerleader, I don’t think it’s sexist.’

‘Why don’t you think they can play Exy, though?’

‘Surely in your profession, Doctor Minyard, you know how many head injuries there are in Exy. You’ve met Kevin and Neil, you want your daughters to be stupid like those two?’

‘You don’t think Neil’s stupid.’

‘I do. I live with him and I work with him, I know he’s fucking stupid. I’m trying to spare you producing more idiots.’

‘I’m sure I can do better than producing another Neil or another Kevin, but thanks.’

‘Hey,’ Wymack shot back, warning.

‘Oh please, give me an example – outside of Exy – where Kevin’s done anything intelligent.’

Wymack stared at Andrew, a smirk on his face. ‘Kevin, what did you end up graduating with again?’

‘Summa cum laude,’ Kevin answered easily, his arm around Thea.

Wymack stared back at Andrew, who didn’t say anything else.

Neil uncrossed his legs. ‘I see no one’s tried to say I’m not an idiot.’

‘Some of us have our own skills, and there’s no shame in that.’

Neil shifted, turning his head - wouldn’t take condescension from Kevin of all people.

‘And Neil’s skill is Exy. And crime!’ Nicky added, brightly.

‘And Mathematics, which was my actual major.’

‘Eh,’ Andrew added, shrugging. Neil stared at him. ‘What?’ Andrew asked, tilting his head in the way he did when he was excited by the possibility of a reaction. Neil huffed, turning away. But he couldn’t help see the smiles on the other Foxes’ faces

*****

When Neil, Andrew and Kevin won gold at the Olympics, the twins were there in the crowd, behind Andrew’s goal.

They meet them back at the hotel where they were staying, away from photographers and crowds and cameras. Andrew brought his medal, kneeling down as he showed it to them.

Their mouths hung open as they brushed their hands over its intricate design. Even at nearly 6 years old, they knew they were in the presence of something incredible. He turned it in his hand, showing them every angle.

Aaron waved his hand in the air to get their attention when he spoke. ‘Girls, try not to get it dirty. You’ve got to give it back.’

Andrew shook his head. ‘No, they can keep it.’

Everyone stopped. Freya froze, her hands grasping the ribbons on either side of it, her eyes wide.

Aaron drops his hands, staring at his brother. He spoke in English. ‘You can’t do that, it’s yours.’

Andrew rolled his eyes. ‘Neil’s going to keep his, and the normal thing to do is put them in safety deposit boxes anyway. I’m not going to miss it, am I? You keep it. Remember which of us is better.’

Freya put the medal on, and while it is absurdly big on her, Neil understood that look she had when she looked at herself in the mirror. There was that glint of obsession that he knew in Kevin’s face, in his own face.

It was not long after that they want to learn the game.

*****

Andrew started collecting the balls from their games, carefully writing the date and teams of the match on them, before giving them to the twins.

*****

When they were eight years old, they made the decision to get cochlear implants. Andrew and Neil were kept up to date with their surgeries, how things were going, but kept their distance, knowing they were fuck all use in that situation, other than just adding irritation.

They made the effort visited them a few weeks after they got the implants turned on. Their devices were green and black – Andrew and Neil’s team colours – and Flora had Andrew’s number stuck on her left transmitter, and their mascot on the other.

‘How are you finding the noises?’ Neil asked as he sat with Flora, watching TV on very low volume. They had been told to slowly introduce sounds, so he used ASL.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I hate it. Why does it all make so much noise?’

‘Luckily Uncle Andrew doesn’t make much noise. Our house is pretty quiet.’

‘For you! You have no idea what quiet is, how good it is. Right now it’s all just noise, I don’t like it.’ She shook her head, her hands flying with irritation. ‘Mom and Dad are so fucking loud.’ She made a face, staring at him: he understood the look: Don’t tell my parents I swore.

Neil smiled. ‘Your parents don’t care about you swearing – your dad swears five times a sentence.’

‘He said you have to go to college to be allowed to swear.’ She said it so seriously, Neil couldn’t help but smile.

‘When I was younger, my Mom told me that any time I lied my eyes changed colour, so I just never lied to her.’

‘Do they?’ Flora asked, very seriously.

‘No, she just wanted me to not waste her time. Sometimes parents just lie to make things a bit easier. But don’t tell them I told you that.’

She nodded, absorbing the information. He loved her, watching her. He thought to himself about what Andrew would have been like at this age. The idea that anyone may hurt them in the future made him want to fight.

As the girls began to discuss their new sounds and sensations, Neil started to believe they were just making things up.

It was when they started excitedly talking about the sound of leaves moving on the floor that he got pissed off.

‘They don’t make a noise,’ he signed, frustrated.

The girls stared at him – unused to his frustration, but it wasn’t only the girls. Aaron, Katelyn, and even Andrew were staring at him.

‘What did you say?’ Aaron asked.

‘Leaves don’t make a noise. Footsteps don’t make a noise.’

They continued to look at him.

Aaron shook his head. ‘You need to see a fucking audiologist, man.’

As loathe as he was to admit Aaron had any kind of intelligence, the neurosurgeon qualification did sway him into making an appointment.

He sat with that clicker in his hand, waiting for the noises to start. He waited for a long time. Andrew sat in the chair opposite him, watching.

After the test, the audiologist took his headphones off. ‘How do you think that went?’ Neil signed.

Andrew paused, and then shook his hand: So-so.

The audiologist asked him a lot of questions about his medical history: increasingly about the frequency of his head injuries, which made her pause each time he added another one. In the end she suggested he consult a neurologist about other possible long-term effects, but she confirmed one thing: Neil had hearing loss: moderate on one side, milder on the other.

She recommended hearing aids.

They didn’t hear the end of it.

‘Andrew, you’ve lived with Neil how long and you didn’t know? You didn’t know your boyfriend was fucking hard of hearing?’ Aaron shook his head.

‘It’s a mild hearing loss, we all probably having some,’ Andrew said, pointedly not looking at his brother.

‘Okay, sure.’ Aaron let it slide easily – he was on his home turf, he knew he had the upper hand. ‘So let’s talk about the other thing – which is that you have this incredible health insurance but you’ve never even thought to consult a neurologist about Josten’s what is it at this point, fifteen concussions? Like ever?’

‘There was nothing wrong with me,’ Neil added – he was speaking lowly, he hated the loudness that came with the increased hearing.

‘Nothing wrong with you! You are a fucking medical study waiting to happen. I have dozens of colleagues who would pay you just to have a chance to look at your brain and the black spots I have no doubt its riddled with.’ Aaron shook his head again, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his lips. ‘You seriously couldn’t fucking hear. Everyone thinks that you have such a mesmerising, close relationship, you two are so in sync – you couldn’t fucking hear what he was saying!’

‘I’ve never had problems hearing Andrew,’ Neil snapped. ‘It’s higher voices I struggled with, and Tinnitus. But not Andrew.’

Aaron cracked a smile at that, and at least tried to cover it.

‘Could you look less like you’re enjoying finding out I have permanent damage from head injuries?’

Aaron thought on it for a little while, but shook his head, smiling to himself.

The girls found Neil’s new hearing aids fascinating. He got them in black – a vague nod to his team without being overwhelming. They suggested he get a nude colour – to blend in. But he thought of the girls, of their green colours, their sign language – they would never blend in. Why would he? What did it tell them?

They went out with him into the garden, pushing the leaves around. ‘You hear it now, right?’

They asked him about what he thought about the sounds, and when he admitted, he hated how loud things were, they got so excited. ‘Uncle Andrew isn’t quiet, you just couldn’t hear him. Now you get to turn the sound off, though! You know what it’s like.’

Neil hated noise, if he was being honest with himself. He was pulling them out at any opportunity – during games, during press questions. He stopped doing it so obviously when Matt sent him a video compilation people made of all the times he’d done it on camera.

There were some things he didn’t take them off for. Sex was one of them – having discovered the softer sounds Andrew made, he didn’t want to lose them again. But also, less intimate things. He liked the cats meows, and he liked the echo of an Exy ball and racket in an empty court. He liked hearing Andrew talk – really talk.

He could lose all the rest.

*****

When they started playing, Freya was a striker, and Flora started as a goalkeeper, but quickly got frustrated. She spent much of their time together crowding Andrew, her signs getting bigger and wilder as she got more and more mad. ‘How do you just stand there and watch all of the idiots! People are so stupid, but I can’t do anything about it!’

‘I don’t ever care that much about what anyone else is doing,’ he told her. His signs are small, sharp to her large wildness. ‘I picked goalkeeper because I didn’t want to run.’

‘But I want to do what you do. Freya gets to be a striker, because she’s quick.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘I can’t be a striker, because they don’t like that they can’t tell us apart.’

‘Why does it matter? You can do it if you want, doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.’

‘But you’re a goalkeeper!’

‘And?’

She stared at him. ‘I want to be like you.’

Neil watched Andrew’s face, as he studied hers. He pressed his lips together hard, and clenched his hands for a moment, before unclenching them to talk. ‘Don’t do that, Flora. That’s not how you want to do this. Don’t waste time in goal and get mad at me over it.’

She sighed, unhappy with it. ‘But I’m a Minyard.’

‘Your dad was a backliner. So was Uncle Nicky.’

She looked at him. ‘You won’t be mad at me for quitting it?’

Andrew stared at her, and then reached out a hand, and flicked her forehead, but much more gently than he had ever done to anyone else. ‘No, I’m not mad at you. Better you don’t bring our name down by being a shitty goalkeeper.’

She opened her mouth – in awe of the bad word. Andrew shooed her, and she obeyed, turning around and running off to her sisters.

Neil stared at Andrew, until he looked at him.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

Neil smirked, not trying to cover it.

‘Just observing.’

Andrew’s eyes passed over Neil. ‘You’re an idiot,’ he murmured, rolling his eyes and looking away.

*****

Their Thanksgiving was strange that year. It was taking place on the actual official day – usually they delayed theirs, Aaron would go with Katelyn’s family, and then the next day there would be their now traditional dinner that they had started in college, going to visit Wymack and Abby.

But in September, Kevin and Thea had just had their daughter, and everyone was allowing them to have the holiday together as a family. It seemed very altruistic, until Neil remembered Andrew’s out and out dislike of every child who wasn’t part of his family, and figured it was convenient for everyone involved. Nicky and Erik had still made the effort to come, although it was a much smaller affair, with no one quite as ambitious as Abby had been.

As they sat, with Nicky talking – he signed more in English order than ASL order, but it was an effort – about everything that had happened to him since they last saw him, even though he kept everyone updated anyway. Nicky thrived on the visuality of sign language – able to actually present his stories, not just describing.

Neil noticed Freya looking at him across the table, not watching her uncle. He stared back at her, and then put his knife and fork down. ‘What?’ he asked.

She put her own cutlery down to sign back. ‘What happened to your face? Why does it look like that?’

Neil was aware that the table went silent. Nicky’s eyes darted between the two of them, and he was aware of Andrew shifting to face them. He was trying to figure out what to say, when Katelyn waved from the head of the table. It was one of the ways of getting the girls’ attention: a lot of hand waving, but he’d also seen them using the dimmer switch to turn the lights up and down to get their attention from the other side of the room, but his least favourite one was their stomping on the floor or slapping the table. For people who couldn’t hear anything, they could sense the vibrations, but the aggressive sound made him jump.

‘We don’t ask people those questions,’ Katelyn was saying. ‘That’s not nice. It’s how your uncle looks, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people look different, and they want to get on with their life and they don’t want to be asked why every five minutes. Like how everyone asks you questions about being deaf, or why you’re deaf, it makes you mad, doesn’t it?’

Freya nodded.

‘It’s the same with your uncle, that’s how his face looks, and he deserves to live and not be bothered about it all the time.’

It was silent, for a long time.

‘Sorry Uncle Neil,’ Freya said.

‘Thank you,’ Neil replied, just trying to get the situation over with. ‘Maybe one day we can talk about it, but I don’t think any time soon.’

Neil knew that Andrew was waiting for a sign that everything was okay, so he focused on his plate again. After a moment, he looked back at Katelyn, who was expertly moving the subject on.

Things had changed with Katelyn after Aaron’s trial. She was there to support Aaron, but she had heard everything about Andrew: his life, his trauma, and everything that happened. Neil had expected her to pull away, to look pitifully on Andrew and him. Instead, she had a forcefulness to her, that she continued to look at them without flinching, refusing to see them as anything else. She looked Neil in the eyes when everyone else couldn’t look away from his scars. He knew that she was a doctor in paediatrics, dealing with children with life-changing injuries, and he felt certain that her confident, almost protective fierceness in her choice to give dignity to people was no doubt incredible for her patients.

*****

When Freya complained about her hair coming loose under her helmet, Andrew began to experiment plaiting Neil’s hair. He focused on different things: mousse, gels, hairsprays, trying to see which one had the best hold. Andrew’s hands were tight, unforgiving.

‘Are you trying to pull all my hair out?’ Neil whined, sat on the floor in between Andrew’s legs, his head resting against his stomach.

Andrew smacked him on the shoulder. ‘You’re being a fucking baby.’

One of their teammates watched, amused. ‘It’s like watching me and my mom circa 2004.’

‘Oh, that’s the kind of relationship dynamic Andrew and I have been wanting to develop for years,’ Neil snapped.

Andrew popped him on the back of his head. ‘Stop moving, you’re messing them up.’ He yanked harder, making Neil grimace.

‘You grow your hair out, and we’ll practice on you, see how you like it.’

‘Would take too long,’ is all Andrew said, tying off the first braid.

By the end of the week, Neil’s scalp was burning, but his hair had never looked better, as it fell in soft curls from the plaiting. Andrew was able to show Katelyn the method he had picked up. They didn’t speak – the girls were sat on kitchen chairs as he went through, Katelyn watching over his shoulder at a careful distance.

He separated Freya’s hair, brushing it through. Neil watched her face as she twisted under his grip.

‘He’s pulling my hair out, Uncle Neil!’        

‘I know.’

Andrew popped Freya lightly on the back of her head, pushing her head down so he could focus. She growled – a real guttural sound – but relented. Andrew sprayed their hair down, finishing their plaits, tying them tightly. Their hair was shoulder length, not too much longer than Neil’s, so he was able to show them how to tuck them back. He also got them bandanas in their team colours to get their bangs out of their face, and once they were done both of them start shaking their heads, testing it out.

When they grabbed their kits ready to leave, Andrew and Neil hung back.

‘What are you doing?’ Aaron asked, carrying Freya’s stuff over his shoulder.

Neil looked at Andrew.

‘For fuck’s sake, I don’t understand your little looks. Talk. Speak. Sign.’ He finished the sentence in ASL.

‘We don’t want to distract from the game,’ Andrew answered.

Aaron rolled his eyes. ‘And you think people are going to notice you two out of everyone?’

‘You remember that my face makes people tell me about the great plastic surgeons they know?’ Neil said.

Aaron stared at him. ‘Wear some fucking sunglasses. You’re not missing the game.’

They got into the arena late, and would leave early. Neil wore sunglasses, although he knew it wouldn’t cover the scarring on his cheeks and jaw. They were ugly and red: evidence of wounds that were never meant to be stitched back together. He kept putting his hand to them, trying to cover them.

Andrew was scanning the crowd, his own sunglasses on, and a hat pulled low on his head. Neil thought it was entirely pointless. ‘You know people probably just think you’re Aaron.’

‘Oh, because famously you and him hang out all the time, right?’ Andrew kicked his leg up, crossing it over his other one. ‘Idiot.’

When the match started, Neil had to admit they were brilliant. They were quick – they had the makings to be very quick when they were older. Part way through, Flora was shoved by the striker she was marking. Once she was got up, even though she was only up to his shoulder, she turned around, and managed to shove him to the ground. Quickly the referee was coming over, but she was signing at the boy, fast and filled with rage: ‘If you ever touch me again, I will fuck you up.’ The referee got between them, and gave them both a yellow card: him for starting it, but her for being so aggressive in her response. Neil could tell without even looking at Andrew that they were both filled with pride.

*****

It happened slowly over the course of a couple years, for Neil to realise they were getting into the tween angry years. It started with Matt and Dan’s eldest, when suddenly being the cool uncle who let you do whatever didn’t get him as far as it used to. There were strops, with real disinterest in everything else around them. The headphones are on nearly all the time, looking down at their phones. He didn’t know what to do to talk to them, like this.

In one trip to see the twins, he watched Flora sneak up on Freya, only to clap right next to her cochlear implant, and Freya snatched the unit off her own head to throw at her sister.

Another time, Andrew and Flora were arguing – about film, of all things. Andrew didn’t actually care, Neil knew that, but he had also learned that Andrew enjoyed fighting with people. He wasn’t allowed to actually throw punches anymore, so he stuck to starting pointless arguments. They continued back and forth, Flora getting more and more wound up as Andrew just stonewalled her. He was gentler than he was for others, but Neil could tell he was getting under her skin.

And then Flora sighed, as Andrew started signing his response, she just shut her eyes. Andrew went still, his hands hanging in the air. She keeps her eyes shut.

‘Flora,’ he started, very careful.

She removed her implants, standing there, eyes shut.

Neil had never known Andrew to just stop in the middle of an argument. But he was there, studying his niece as she stood in front of him, completely shut off to his bullshit. After a long minute, she opened her eyes again, staring at Andrew with this smug look. She knew she’d won.

Andrew stared at her, and then after a moment, he moved his hands. ‘Don’t do that again,’ he said eventually.

‘Or what?’ she asked.

Andrew didn’t have an answer for that.

*****

They stayed with Andrew and Neil for a week in the summer. It had been strange, when they realised that they had guests so often they actually needed a guest room in their house. It was not how either of them was used to living.

Flora came on Neil’s morning runs with him, and they jogged along silently, Neil making sure to keep her in the side of his vision, keeping his pace matched to hers.

It was strange: every time he saw them, they looked more and more like real people. Their nose, cheeks and jaw were from her mom, but their eyes were pure Minyard. Their hair was darker than her dad’s, a more golden colour, and Flora kept it tightly plaited back in one braid down her back.

When they stopped to get drinks at the end of their run, he could tell Flora was distracted. Neil was used to it – Foxes weren’t the most open with speaking. He remembered being a young teenager, being her age. So many adults trying to get through to him, telling him they were open to talking about anything.

He hated it, he hated their presumption that they could have ever understood.

He assumed – hoped, really – that Flora’s problems weren’t as complicated as his, but he remembered what helped him, and he hoped it was working the same for her.

On the third morning, as they waited for their drinks to be made, she turned to him. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

It was never a question he enjoyed. ‘You can ask it, sure.’

‘It’s about my dad’s trial.’ Their drinks order was called, and Neil went to get them a table. They usually walked back with their drinks, but he thought it would be better to sit and talk.

‘Why are you asking about that?’ he asked.

Flora tapped the side of her drink, considering. ‘I looked it up.’

‘Why?’

‘Someone at school… some people aren’t happy that Dad’s around. They’ve asked me about it and I don’t know anything about it.’

‘Did you ask your Dad about it?’

She nodded. ‘He said it was something that happened a long time ago, and that it was something that’s really hard for him to think about, but it’s also not something he’s sorry for.’

‘And that doesn’t make sense to you?’

She fixed him a look that wasn’t entirely comfortable. ‘When I read… it said you were there. That it was you, and Dad, and that it was your racket.’

‘It was.’

She was struggling with it, Neil knew. ‘It was your racket. You kicked the door in. You brought Dad with you.’

When Neil thought of the trial, he felt this pain in his nose: the air conditioning was so dry in that courtroom, it gave him a headache. He felt like he was back there, as he formulated his answer. ‘It was one of their strategies of his lawyer, to highlight that I was the one who made the decisions, that Aaron made… that I put your Dad in that position.’

He made eye contact with Flora, and she stared at him, this fierceness in her eyes. ‘But you weren’t tried?’

‘It’s not a crime. None of the things I did were crimes.’

She was careful, and quiet with her signing. ‘How do you feel about being blamed?’

Neil shook his head. ‘I felt nothing.’ He didn’t know how to explain it for her. He was aware most people would feel something at being blamed for making the decisions that led to a man’s death. But those weren’t the decisions he regretted, it was the ones that led to Andrew being there at all which still wore at him. ‘I made the choices I did fully aware of what the possible outcome was. The only thing I wasn’t expecting was that Aaron would get there first.’

Flora took a long sip of her drink, her face twitching. Neil thought that was over, until she exploded with her next question: ‘But why?’

‘Did your reading not tell you anything?’

‘All it said was Uncle Andrew was very hurt.’

Neil felt a piece of relief in that. They had managed – with some encouragement from Neil’s remaining funds – to keep Andrew’s testimony largely to court alone. It was devastating enough for him to go through it once. Neil would not – could not – have it be all anyone thought of when they talked about Andrew.

‘Yes.’ It was simple, explained nothing, but he would not expand on it.

Flora considered it, looking away. ‘My Dad falls asleep in front of the TV. He carries our dog on walks, so he doesn’t get his feet wet. He buys Mom flowers every week, and remembers our favourite snacks. He drives me and my friends to school and to practice. But he’s also killed somebody.’

Neil nodded.

‘How does that happen?’

That was the question, Neil thought. He didn’t have any answers – for his part, there was never any other choice for him to make. He had no other option in life. ‘The life we had when we were younger, we weren’t in control of the things that happened to us. The man he is now, the man he is with your Mom, with you – that’s the life he chose. It’s not all of that before. That was what he was forced to be.’ It made him feel ill, to be complimenting Aaron, but it wasn’t untrue. It was part of the reason he didn’t like Aaron – why he thought him unambitious, boring, and a waste of skills – but he had to admit it made him a safe person to be a father.

‘What about you? This is who you really are – not… all of what they say?’ she asked.

He tried to remember how much the media had come to know. ‘I guess all the FBI stuff comes up?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘That you went missing from your home aged ten, and you were discovered living under the identity of Neil Josten ten years later, and you were an FBI witness against mafia members, because your dad was a serial killer.’

Neil relaxed slightly, that she didn’t know everything. ‘It was a long time ago. I don’t think about it much anymore.’ Only when the FBI called him to tell him what they had seen him do that day, just in case he ever thought about straying.

Only when he saw himself in the mirror at the wrong time, and saw his father.

Only when he saw irons, fires on the beach, dashboard lighters, a certain type of car, or the city of Baltimore, when he heard one of his old names, when he heard about the Ravens, when he saw Jean and Kevin. When he had to hear about the Moriyamas. When he made the payments that kept him alive.

Really, it wasn’t so much.

‘It’s like you all lived in a different world.’

‘I guess we did.’

*****

The upgraded Minyard-Mackenzie house was even more stereotypical suburban American than the previous one. What Neil couldn’t get over, when he saw the house, was there were so many rooms: the den, a study, a basement, dining room, two guest rooms.

‘What life are you living that you need this fucking house?’ Neil asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe it’s that we actually have friends we like to host. You could try it sometime,’ Aaron retorted.

‘We have friends.’ He knew it was defensive, but he fundamentally refused to let Aaron have the last word on anything.

‘No you don’t. You have ex-Foxes, and mafia ties.’

‘Those two things can be friends.’

Aaron stared at him, strong judgement clear in his face. ‘You ever tried having a co-worker round or something?’

‘Why would we do that?’

He sighed. ‘You two are fucking impossible.’

Andrew and Aaron made dinner together. They were working in silence, but stood close enough together to pass things. It was a quiet harmony, something Neil watched with awe, even all those years later. There were times he’d thought there was no coming back from the hole they’d dug themselves into. And now they were cooking together.

Andrew saw him watching, where he sat at the breakfast bar. ‘What?’

Neil shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just watching.’

‘It’s weird,’ Andrew told him, turning away.

When the girls came home, they brought friends. Neil shrank away from them: he’d never been keen on large groups of teenagers. Unfortunately for him, his face made him stand out, and it wasn’t long before he was identified. No one did anything to help – Andrew skulked out onto the deck, leaving him to fend for himself. The questions were quickfire: what was it like being at the Olympics? Does he see Kevin Day often? What was retirement like? He tried to answer their questions as clipped as he could – as much as he didn’t want to be here, answering those questions, he also didn’t want to be known as one of those players who acted like dicks to younger players. He already had a reputation for having an attitude with other players and the press.

The teens seemed to be well acquainted with the house, they knew where the fridge was, and didn’t wait to ask if it was okay. When one of them announced she was going to get changed, and left to go upstairs, Neil turned to look at Katelyn. ‘They live here?’

 ‘We are pretty much always hosting some of the team at any point.’

‘Why?’

Aaron leaned back, putting his arm around Katelyn’s shoulders. ‘You know how many of these kids have parents who know sign language?’

Neil did not.

‘They play in a team of fifteen players, all Deaf or with some kind of hearing loss. All of them use ASL as their primary language. There’s us, and there’s two other sets of parents who know sign language. One of them are Deaf themselves. Everyone else doesn’t have a language in common with their kids.’

Neil sat there, trying to comprehend it. His mother hadn’t always been a good mother, but she had always wanted to speak with him. She didn’t always approve of his answers, but she at least wanted to know.

‘So what are they doing at home?’ Andrew asked, standing in the doorway, hovering now the teenagers were gone.

Aaron’s shoulders were tense. ‘They’re shouting at them, trying to get them to hear, making them lipread. Or they’re texting them. Most of the time they’re just not having conversations. They have other kids, who are Hearing, and they talk to those ones, but their Deaf kids have no one to talk to. We’re so crowded on the weekends, because most of them don’t want to have to face two days where they don’t speak to anybody. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. And it’s normal.’ He twisted in his seat – actively furious. ‘And then we had a nightmare just getting people to be okay with their kids being here. Because of me. Because I was a Fox, because I’m a Minyard, because of my record, and they don’t think their kids are safe with me. But they don’t even talk to their kids. So we have to send our girls over to their house, where there’s no adaptations for the Deaf, where if something was wrong, the girls wouldn’t be able to tell them anything, just to prove that we raise good kids. I have to do so much leg work to prove I’m a good enough parent to people who don’t even know the name sign their kids are called by. Who don’t know anything about what their kids talk about.’

‘Why are you surprised that other parents are assholes? You of all people should know what that’s like,’ Andrew said.

‘Because I see how good these kids are, and I don’t understand how they think they deserve this.’

‘It has nothing to do with how good the kid is. It’s everything to do with the parent.’

It was something they came back to a lot. First in therapy only, and slowly, slowly, it dripped into their conversations at large. Aaron still felt like there must be some reason for Tilda. Andrew was beyond caring whether there was one at all. Aaron clung to this contradiction: that he must have done something to deserve it, despite having his own children and knowing they could never do anything to deserve to be hit. And Andrew would be there to remind him he never deserved it – a loud, constant response to all of Aaron’s doubting. No matter what Andrew thought or said, he was fierce and unrelenting in that.

In the evening, Andrew and Neil had retreated to the deck outside: Andrew smoking, and Neil holding his cigarette close to smell it. The door opened, and one of the teenagers stepped out. Her name is Yumi – or at least Neil thinks it is. She spelled her name back at the beginning, but her sign name was a combination of the letter Y and the sign ‘Late’. Sometimes the blunt nature of sign language felt confrontational, even to someone as ready to argue as Neil. The sign name he’d been given was okay – just a combination of N and Strike, although more informally he’d seen himself be referred to by his facial scarring and his position: an indication of the burns on his cheek, and then his number. He hoped that one wasn’t his public name. Andrew’s name from the girls was A-Uncle, but Neil had seen more than once him be referred to as the short goalkeeper.

‘Can I ask a question?’ Her hands were stiff, held in a small, tight signing space. He had watched her signing with the others, she was usually more verbose, less serious.

‘Depends what it is,’ Andrew replied. He was focused on her, in his intimidating way. He found most fan questions a personal affront to his peace, and tended to try to stare them down to stop them from approaching.

She did not retreat. ‘What was it like when you got outed?’

It had happened maybe three or four years after they had joined their team. They’d never had the conversation with their teammates or coaches – no one seemed to care that much. They showed up to practice together, they left together. No one ever visited their apartment, but it was common knowledge they lived together.

During one game, Neil had been slammed so roughly his shoulder had dislocated, and Andrew was running before time out was even called, pushing the offending backliner over before anyone else could get between them. It had earned him a red card, but Andrew didn’t care about playing when Neil had to be subbed out. From then on, the press continued to ask questions. Neil liked to pretend he was confused by their questions. He liked to see them dance between the rumours, trying to talk in such a way that it wouldn’t necessarily count as asking blatantly about their sexuality. Andrew to his part completely ignored any question he didn’t like – but that didn’t stop them trying to get a response out of him.

They still weren’t sure who took the picture. Whether it was a random person who just happened to recognise the two Exy players, or whether some sad bastard of a press photographer genuinely thought it was worth following them, or whether someone they knew had just slipped up and told someone else.

Whatever it was, a photograph of them appeared in the press. It was them sat in Andrew’s car, Andrew’s hand on the side of Neil’s face as they leant over the middle to kiss.

They both agreed on several things, as they tried to formulate their responses: there had been worse things they could have been photographed doing in the car, that they needed to have window tinting put in on both cars, and that they were not going to deny it.

They had expected the reaction to be worse than it was. They had never been – nor would they ever be – popular players. People found Neil too disrespectful, too interested in starting fights, too smug, and Andrew had exactly zero public presence outside of his blank staring and rude responses. But Kevin Day and Jeremy Knox put their support in early, and the rest of the Exy world seemed to follow their lead. Neil denied nothing. Yes he and Andrew were in a relationship. No he didn’t think it was anyone’s business but theirs, and no, it would not be changing anything about how they would act. ‘We were never hiding,’ he told the press. ‘We just prefer to keep our relationship between us.’

And yet still, it was a violation. Another thing Neil had had just for himself that he had lost the rights to. It made him second guess himself whenever he reached for Andrew, made him check their windows, even in their non-intimate moments, he felt observed. The picture had been taken on one of their road trips. They would sit in the car for hours and drive, and they would talk about their past, and Neil would tell Andrew more and more about his mother, and their time on the run. They would visit old places and make new memories. The car had been an important place for them, and now they would always have to think about who was watching. He didn’t know what it was like for Andrew, he only remembered that his sessions with Bee got longer. For three months, they didn’t touch each other.

Ultimately, if people thought it would cause drama, it didn’t. They were never a very public couple anyway. They didn’t kiss in public, or hold hands, and they weren’t going to start now. The best that it would ever get was Andrew’s manhandling inspection of any injury Neil got when he forgot he wasn’t invincible. After the new joy of knowing something potentially embarrassing about two of the most private players, nothing actually changed.

Neil didn’t know how to put that experience into words, let alone for a teenager. He didn’t know how to explain any of his experiences, he never really let himself vocalise anything. He put things away in boxes in his brain, as soon as it stopped happening, he tried to put it away. He’d never been given the chance to truly try to consider and explain his past. He tried to do it for Andrew, but he didn’t know how to do it for other people.

In the end, it was Andrew who spoke. ‘If someone tries to embarrass you, it’s up to you how much shame you actually allow them to take from you.’ Andrew held his cigarette between his fingers, the smoke moving around as he signed. ‘Out of everything they could have tried, I don’t know why they thought that being gay was going to be the most terrible thing they could say about me. Maybe it was because it was Neil.’

The girl smiled at that. It was something that Neil never understood – how could anyone claim that Andrew wasn’t compassionate, empathetic, or funny?

‘But things were okay, weren’t they?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

It was one of the things Neil had learned about Andrew over the years that made him love him more. He never lost his temper at teenagers, or children. Even when they were asking annoying questions. At times, when the girls were smaller, louder, and more irritating, Andrew would stop what he was doing and retreat for a cigarette. But he never shouted, never grabbed them. Neil could tell sometimes it took him physical effort to not do anything, but Andrew would not – could not – be one of those people who made kids feel unsafe.

When the girl retreated, leaving them alone, Neil reached out his arm around the back of Andrew’s seat, his hand finding the edge of his hair. Andrew looked at him out of the corner of his eye, and lit another cigarette. Neil took it from him, holding it close. Andrew reached back for it, and Neil grabbed his hand. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked quietly.

‘Just looking.’

Andrew sighed, ever dramatic, but didn’t move away as Neil leaned in.

It didn’t matter if it was the first time, or the millionth time, kissing Andrew was still as magical as it had ever been.

*****

The next day, Freya came home with a septum piercing.

Neil was sat at the counter and got a front row seat to the looks she got from Katelyn and Aaron.

All he could think was that Aaron seemed to display more upset and unease at the septum ring than he had to any of Neil’s torture injuries.

‘Why have you done that?’ It was almost as much emotion as Neil had seen when he had kicked a hole in Aaron and Katelyn’s relationship.

Freya shrugged – irritated by the overreaction.

‘Uncle Andrew has his nose pierced.’

Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before continuing. ‘Andrew doing something should never be an encouragement to do something. He’s the worst possible person you could be taking influence from.’

‘He’s a gold medal Olympian.’

‘Statistically, he has to have at least a couple good things in a shitshow of life experiences. You know he pierced his nose himself because he didn’t trust someone else to do it? Don’t follow that example.’

She huffed, rolling her eyes at her dad. ‘It’s just a nose ring.’

Neil felt a kind of awe for how the Fox kids spoke to their parents. He could never imagine talking to his mom like that. She would have ripped the piercing out of his face had he tried to do anything. Any kind of retort or sass would have gotten him slapped at the very least. It had made him uncomfortable for a while, until he realised it was a mark of safety – that they weren’t frightened of their parents. It made him miss his mom, and also made him want to shout at her. He wanted to fight her, for all of the things she’d done to younger him. He hadn’t seen her in over twenty years, but he would miss her, and be angry with her for the rest of his life.

*****

When retirement freed them up to travel, they took the girls on trips with them. Short trips – only a week – but they picked them up in the airport, and dropped them back off after, and for a week they did normal touristy things that they usually avoided. In the summer they went to Ireland, and Neil watched as all three of them managed to get sunburnt, despite the constant cloudiness.

Neil coached them on Exy, too. He didn’t rush into becoming a coach when he retired – he got offers, but he remembered butting heads with all of the new players in his time as captain, and he just wanted a break from the fighting.

He liked coaching the twins, though. Flora was an impressive backliner, but Freya was an amazing striker. She was clumsy at points, and easily frustrated by her own losses, but she was good. Every so often she would manage to shake off her clumsiness and inexperience, and would make a shot that made Neil’s mind go completely silent in observing its genius. She could be brilliant, he knew that. When the twins were visiting, they would go to the closest Exy court, and he would teach them Raven drills from back in the day, and they worked doggedly at them. Andrew would be there, although he wouldn’t contribute – and it filmed him with nostalgia for their nightly bootcamps with Kevin.

*****

When the Fox kids started considering colleges, Neil suddenly felt terribly, terribly old. In a way it was amazing – he never expected to be old enough to see this happen – and in other ways, it reminded him of how much his back hurt, how he was edging closer and closer to needing a knee replacement, that he couldn’t run so far anymore. His feelings on it changed every day – from the joy of getting to grow old and see his family thrive, and the horror that he was never going to play the game again. He and Andrew went on hikes and walks to try and replace Neil’s running, and he didn’t mind the slower pace when they were together.

The twins only really had their eyes on one university: Gallaudet university, and the Gallaudet Bison Exy team: one of the only Deaf varsity Exy teams.

Andrew and Neil went with the girls when it came to touring the facilities: they knew what to look for, what kind of things they wanted the girls to have access to. Their tour guide kept looking back at them, and Neil knew they were making him nervous. Even more so when Andrew would break away to inspect something, and then silently return to the group without saying anything.

The girls were more than good enough to get a spot on the team. They’d been trained by two Olympians their entire careers, any team would be grateful to have the opportunity to house the next generation of Minyards. And this is where they wanted to be.

It was shortly after the girls accepted their offers to Gallaudet that the Exy team and stadium was given an anonymous donation of $1 million to refurbish and upgrade their facilities.

Neil didn’t need to ask where it came from. Andrew gave a simple shrug. ‘They need to update if they’re going to train champions.’

*****

With two kids to take, not just one, it really did require the entire family to help them move. Nicky had taken a flight all the way from Germany just to be an extra hand, and Andrew had reluctantly hired a truck for the day to help carry everything that didn’t fit in Aaron’s sensible navy people carrier. It was a surreal situation, seeing just how much stuff the girls were taking with them, when Neil remembered he brought one single bag of things with him to move in.

The campus was already crawling with families and new students ferrying things to and from their car.  It was overwhelming, and Neil and Andrew were more than happy to stay in the car as the others left to try and find registration.

The twins were sharing a room, near the top of their tower. Two beds set out at each end of the room. The girls clasped at each other, jumping up and down as they saw their dorm room for the first time.

Neil and Andrew quickly set about the practical tasks of carrying bags from the truck up to the room. Neil quickly broke into a sweat – his body wasn’t used to having to work so hard. Retirement had made him soft.

Andrew stopped, dropping the bags in the pile they had been making in the centre of the room. Neil could see him trying to hide his breathlessness.

‘Enough to make you think about quitting smoking?’ Neil asked.

Andrew whipped his head around to glare at him. ‘Fuck off.’

Smiling, he waited, fussing around collecting the bags, making it less obvious he was waiting for Andrew to catch his breath.

Andrew silently accepted it, and after taking a moment, set off down to get more bags.

Watching the girls run around, introducing themselves to their different roommates was bittersweet. He would never get over that twist of pain when he watched them, of what could have – and should have – been his life, and the lives of everyone he loved.

Katelyn and Aaron set about setting the room up, as they left the uncles to continue bringing bags in. They got the new bedsheets out, and went about making the beds in a practiced quality which felt surprisingly intimate.

The girls came back near the end, to put their finishing touches on things. Everyone kept slowing down as it got to the end of things, not wanting to be the person who suggested leaving. Aaron was standing in the doorway, his eyes focussed on his daughters. Neil saw it, and immediately looked away – it was far too vulnerable a look to be observed. It took Katelyn – who had always been the bravest of the two of them – to be the one who initiated the goodbyes.

Neil kept his distance the family give their goodbye hugs. He watched how Katelyn brushed her daughters’ hair, how she smiled as she held them. He saw Aaron squeeze them, like he was terrified to let them go. It made him think of his Mom, of their last day together.

He was very surprised, when after stopping to hug a crying Nicky, that the twins came towards him and Andrew. He didn’t get the words out before Freya was hugging him tightly.

As he rested his head on the top of her head, he saw Flora hugging Andrew. Andrew’s his arms were frozen mid-air, not quite touching her. It took him a moment before he slowly hugged her back.

When they got back in the car, Andrew sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, just looking at the campus. Nicky was catching a ride back with Katelyn and Aaron, and the hired van felt strange and empty. ‘They’ll be fine,’ Neil said, wondering which one of them he was reassuring.

*****

Neil and Andrew lived fairly close to the university, and ended up being the primary caretakers of the girls. All of the uncertainties and things they wanted help with fell to them, but also the problems they didn’t want their parents to know about.

Neil got a text late at night, before going to bed.

Locked keys in car can you call and interpret for roadside assistance?

He got in his car and drove out.

Flora had gotten stuck with some friends at a bar. She looked at him, embarrassed. ‘I haven’t been drinking,’ she said defensively. ‘Don’t tell my Mom and Dad.’

Neil shrugged. ‘If you haven’t been drinking, I don’t have anything to tell them.

She nodded, relieved. He so deeply wanted to tell her about the fact Aaron would go clubbing underage all the time, but he knew he shouldn’t.

‘Did you call roadside assistance?’

‘No need.’

Neil hadn’t broken into a car for a while, but the skill came back to him quickly – it was like riding a bike, you never truly forget.

It took him a couple of minutes to pop open the driver’s door and pull out the keyring to give it back to her. She stared at him, not properly able to take in what she just watched him do.

‘Don’t tell your Mom and Dad about this,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget your keys again.’

*****

They visited the girls sometimes, at their dorms or at training. They started taking them out for brunch on the weekends, letting them talk about whatever., they wanted: classes, new people, friends.

One weekend, there was a new person joining them: a smallish girl about Andrew’s height, with long braids, who twisted her hands nervously in front of her.

‘This is Holly,’ Flora introduced. ‘We’re, um… we’re seeing each other.’ Freya leaned against her sister in support, and all three sets of eyes focused on Andrew and Neil.

Neil nodded at them. ‘Nice to meet you, Holly.’

‘It’s really incredible to meet you as well, I… yeah.’ She trailed off.

‘You’ve both got a very intimidating reputation,’ Flora added, leaning her shoulder against Holly’s.

‘Well, you know most of it’s not true.’

‘To people you like! To everyone else, you’re scary!’ Flora pointed at Andrew’s face, which remained solemn. He shrugged. ‘You just have to not be a dick about things, I don’t think it’s that hard.’

Their conversation went as it always did – the girls sharing everything, Neil asking questions, Andrew observing mostly. Holly stayed at the sides, watching. Neil kept an eye on her, but some people just didn’t like to talk.

At the end of it, as they were all getting ready to go, Neil nudged Freya. ‘Is this something you’ve told your parents, or are we keeping this between us?’

‘Between us, for now.’ She smiled nervously. ‘I don’t know how to say it. How to make everything… I don’t know. I know nothing’s going to go wrong – all of Dad’s family is gay. But I just… don’t want to have to explain anything to people. That’s why you two, it’s not an explanation, you just get it.’

‘You didn’t have to explain it to Flora.’

‘Well that’s a twin thing, though. She knew before me.’ They walked them to their car, watching as the girls got into their car, and drove away.

He was thinking about it, when he and Andrew got home. ‘Do you think you and Aaron have any twin connection?’

Andrew gave him a withering look. ‘Twin connections aren’t real, most of it is just the fact that you’ve grown up together. I met him when I was 16, what connection could we possibly have?’

‘But he’s been in your life longer than he’s not been in it.’

‘By that definition are you and Kevin going to develop a twin connection?’

‘Sometimes I notice you have the same mannerisms. You roll your eyes at the same time when Nicky says something you hate.’

‘No we don’t.’

‘You both eat the same things. Their fridge has mostly the same stuff as ours does.’

‘You don’t think they shop for groceries knowing we’re coming?’

Neil shifted, turning to look at Andrew, smirking. ‘Why does it make you mad? The idea that you and your brother might be similar?’

‘Because I don’t like him.’

‘Bullshit. You pay for his kids’ breakfasts weekly.’

‘Just because I like his spawn doesn’t mean I like him.’

Neil shook his head smiling. ‘Sure.’

*****

It was late in the evening, as Neil lay on the sofa with the cat on his chest, his feet in Andrew’s lap, when they felt Andrew’s phone shake. Andrew took it out of his pocket, and stared at the screen.

‘I’m going out,’ he said simply, removing Neil’s feet as he stood up.

‘Okay.’ Neil knew Andrew would tell him if he wanted to.

He waited for a long time, and it turned to night, and he heard nothing. And he waited.

It was morning when Andrew came back. The cats came crying to him, desperate for an early breakfast, and he waved them away, taking his shoes off. Neil was on the sofa, waiting. Andrew went straight to their kitchen, to the whisky. Neil followed him, seeing how his hands shook, before he placed them on the counter.

‘Flora’s drink got spiked. At a bar off campus.’

Sudden rage pushed through Neil’s body. ‘No.’

‘Freya went to the bathroom and she was gone maybe five minutes, but…’ His cheek twitched. ‘They tried to ask the bar staff to call someone, but they heard their voices, and thought they were drunk. So they couldn’t even ask if someone saw something happen.’ Andrew’s voice was barely even. ‘So I have to stay, and I have to translate. And at the hospital, despite the fact I’ve said she’s Deaf. She’s said she’s Deaf. The notes say she’s Deaf, they all come in and try to talk to her, and then when she can’t get it, they try to shout at her. And then after that they just look at me, not at her. Like she’s an idiot, like she doesn’t know what’s happened to her.’ He took a sip of his drink. ‘I dropped them back off at their dorm. Mostly… she wasn’t so bad after the last hour, she just wanted to sleep. She doesn’t remember anything. Yet.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know yet. I wanted to go to the bar, see if they have CCTV, but probably not. Maybe if I tell them if they don’t find the person who did it, I am going to set fire to their bar with all of them inside of it.’

‘Did Flora want you to do that?’

‘No.’

Andrew was barely concealed rage, upset. Neil had been with him long enough to know what kinds of memories and images were moving behind Andrew’s eyes, who he was thinking about. Neil moved closer to him, careful not to touch, but close enough to be a presence. Andrew turned his eyes to him, his eyes brushing over all the points of Neil’s face.

‘Help her, first. Be there for her, first. Burn the world down second.’

They stayed close to the girls for the next couple of weeks. Flora was noticeably jumpy. When they went out to brunch her eyes were skipping over everyone else in the restaurant. Freya flanked her, pushing into her side, being the one sat on the outside of the booth.

‘It was embarrassing, mostly,’ Flora said to Neil, once they’d convinced Freya and Andrew to go see about drinks. ‘They asked me questions, like ‘when’s the last time you were sexually active?’ and my uncle has to be the one to translate that to me. Neither of us want that.’

Neil could see passed her need to make a joke out of everything. He didn’t smile at her joke. ‘Andrew doesn’t care about that.’

Her eyes became shiny for a moment, and she shut her eyes for a really long time. Before he could do anything, she looked up again, moving quickly. ‘Something really bad happened to him, didn’t it? Like… like that. I saw it in the way he wouldn’t look at anyone. I know it.’

Neil shook his head. ‘You have to have that conversation with him.’

‘But he won’t, and you know he won’t.’

‘He might.’

Neil wasn’t there for Andrew’s testimony – witnesses couldn’t observe each other’s testimony in case they influenced each other, which was stupid, because they already lived together – but he had seen the effect it had had on Nicky as he walked out of the courtroom afterwards, the paleness of his face, the tear-soaked tissues, the trembling of his hands.

It had made Andrew almost completely unavailable, the weeks before and after. He sat completely frozen for long periods of time. He didn’t sleep, didn’t really eat, just smoked cigarette after cigarette. He visited Bee every day.

It was like living with a ghost, and Neil tried his best to help pick up the pieces. Picking the clothing he would wear. Giving him food and water. Dragging him on drives, where Andrew sat in the passenger seat staring out the window. Eventually, he pulled back to himself, more so after Aaron was found not guilty.

He knew Andrew and Aaron spoke about it in their sessions, it was part of what had helped them grow closer: finally understanding each other’s histories. And whatever had haunted Andrew, it seemed to lessen slightly, the more he let people in.

When they dropped the girls off, Freya and Neil went on a walk through the campus, and Andrew and Flora went for a drive.

Freya looked at him, confused when the door shut without her sister leaving. Neil shrugged. ‘They need to talk about some stuff.’

It was maybe half an hour, where Freya and Neil discussed recent Exy games and technique as they walked through the orange fallen leaves on the campus floor, until the car pulled up again.

Neil could see tear stains on Flora’s cheeks, and she pulled across the middle of the car to hug Andrew. He was still for a moment, before he rested his cheek on the top of her head: something he’d done since she was a little baby.

As they drove back, Neil kept studying Andrew, the twitching. ‘It doesn’t change anything about how she sees you,’ he said.

‘It does,’ Andrew shot back, without heat. ‘And that’s the point. That she knows I understand it.’ His hands shook, and Neil held his hand, and squeezed it.

Andrew called Bee, when they got home.

Flora and Andrew had developed a closer relationship after that. Her distance from Exy seemed to suit them both. Neil didn’t exactly know what the two of thing did, or talked about when they were out. But he was glad for whatever they did – the relationship they were able to form from it.

He hadn’t expected to feel so paternal towards the twins, hadn’t expected them to become such a big part of his life. But the saw them nearly every day – when Andrew and Flora would go out, Neil and Freya would run drills at the Exy stadium. A couple of her teammates began to join in – it became an almost weekly thing, Neil teaching them all the drills he could practically do in his sleep. It was a little group of the strikers, and he had begun to learn their names, their quirks, and in particular, their weak spots.

Sometimes the coaches came out to take notes, watching this little class going on. ‘Have you considered becoming a coach?’ one of them asked Neil afterwards.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re basically doing it for free anyway. We can’t thank you enough, for taking your own time to teach them.’

‘I don’t care about the money,’ Neil shrugged off.

‘But you live close by, and the kids look up to you. I’d like for you to consider – maybe even a part-time position, just with the strikers.’

He thought about it, on his drive back to the apartment. It really didn’t seem so different from what he did now.

*****

Their first official game of their year, everyone showed up. Wymack had come, Abby by his side, with Kevin and Amalia in tow. Dan and Matt and their youngest had come, the older two away at college on their own. Rennee had come, although she couldn’t guarantee staying the whole time, and Nicky and Erik were jet-lagged and barely conscious but were there. Allison sat beside Dan, and her only welcome to Neil and Andrew was: ‘Are you going to dye all that grey hair?’

Katelyn and Aaron were the centre of the group, everyone congratulating them on their girls’ work. They both had versions of the girls’ jerseys. MINYARD spelt out in ASL fingerspelling, with the English letters underneath. When Aaron saw Andrew, his eyes fixed on his brother with such an intensity, Neil thought he was going to hit him. When he started marching his way towards him, he was certain it was to start a fight. But then Aaron grabbed his brother, and pulled him into a hug.

Andrew didn’t hug back. He just stood there, confused.

‘Thank you.’ It was the only thing Aaron said. ‘For being there with her. Thank you.’

Neil was so used to seeing them practice, he knew which shape was who, as the teams entered to warm up.

Flora was more distracted than her sister, searching the crowd for her family. She saw them easily – a huge block sat there, waving to her. She smiled, bouncing up and down. Her hands coming up in one easy sign: I love you! shaking it wildly.

After warmups, and the teams got off the court, the stadium got quiet in anticipation. There were large screens, filled with close up images, but also captioning and a feed of ASL commentary. All were preparing for the teams to make their first official entrance.

Neil looked over and saw that Aaron had grabbed Andrew’s sleeve, and was holding it for dear life. After a moment, Andrew moved his over hand to grab his brother’s arm.

‘Now entering for their first official match, representing the Gallaudet Bisons, the protégées of Olympic gold medallists Neil Josten and Andrew Minyard, graduating from their high school careers with two championship wins, is number 17, freshman striker, Freya Minyard and 19 freshman backliner Flora Minyard.’

Their block were on their feet cheering before their names were even finished, stamping their feet to make as big a rumbling as possible, waving their hands. The camera cuts away from the inner court to the stands, the block of orange that were waving their hands in celebration. Neil studied the image on the screen, saw Katelyn and Aaron jumping, half in each other’s embraces. He saw Kevin steadying Wymack as he stood, holding his shoulders. Matt and Dan self-consciously waving, checking they’d gotten the Deaf applause correct, Renee smiling, and Alison cheering, and Andrew standing beside his brother, clapping his hands in his own lowkey way. Neil put an arm around his shoulders, smiling.

This was his family. Here to see the next generation.