Work Text:
Neil
Neil switches on the vanity light above the sink and tries his best to avoid his eyes as he lifts a razor to his jaw. He can make out one of the deeper scars from Lola’s knife, stark under the bright glint of the scruff barely starting to grow.
If he was braver, this would only take him ten minutes, some water, and a bit of stinging. He wouldn’t flinch when he meets a cold blue gaze in the mirror, nor would he start at the burnt skin spanning from centimeters below his eye down his cheekbone. That memory, at least, is something he has more practice dealing with. His scars are a reflection of his survival, he tells himself. They’re not his fault.
The eyes are a little harder to look past.
Nonetheless, Neil focuses on a point above his upper lip as he drags the blade down his cheek, again and again until it becomes monotonous enough that he can actually look at his reflection. He takes in the four jagged scars marking angry lines down one half of his face and the strange patch of badly healed skin down the other. He thinks of Andrew, sitting in the other room and waiting if he is needed, and straightens his spine.
He rinses the blade when he’s done, pats down his stinging cheeks, and faces his reflection.
Neil knows, objectively, that he’s attractive. Hot, Nicky and Allison whisper at the back of his head. Drop dead gorgeous. He knows this, and he knows that, objectively, Nathan was too. He hates the reminder of his eyes, the calculating tilt of his lips, and the reddish curl of his hair. He tries to recognize them as a part of himself rather than as a part of his father, forever alive within him.
Fucking breathe, Neil tells himself, grunting at the tightness in his chest. He’s dead and you’re here.
The snick of the door knob turning draws his attention.
“You’ve been in here for an hour,” Andrew says. Neil blinks. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He watches as Andrew shoulders his way into the bathroom, pausing to kick the door shut. He steps up to Neil, catches his chin in his hand and tips his face. “You missed a spot.”
“I–.” Neil lets himself be pushed against the sink, spreading his legs to make room for Andrew in the small space. “I thought I got everything.”
Andrew makes a small noise in the back of his throat before going to work, clearing the spot and patting down his face with the lemon-scented lotion Neil bought on his last run into town with Allison. His eyes meet Neil’s in a silent question before he leans up to press a kiss to the patch he just cleared.
“Get out,” he mumbles against his skin. Andrew pushes him out of the bathroom before he can answer, pulling the door shut behind him.
Neil stands staring at the closed door for a few seconds, fingers lightly touching the spot where Andrew’s lips touched him. He doesn’t even bother to keep the grin off his face before making his way to his bed.
Nicky
When Nicky first met Neil, contrary to what any of the Foxes would have argued, hot was not the first descriptor on his mind.
It was the second.
The first had been dangerous, and because Nicky considers himself a smart man, he was cautious. He recognized in Neil the same thing he knew existed in his cousins: brute tenacity and the desperate will to live. He saw his rigid posture, cataloged the sinewy muscle and lack of fat as the physique of a runner, focused briefly on the long sleeves and high collar. Andrew was obsessive about keeping himself covered, and though Nicky only had an idea as to why he kept himself covered, he figured Neil had similar reasons.
After Nathan, after Baltimore, Nicky almost wishes he didn’t find Neil attractive. He flinches every time he sees the dreadful scars on his face, has to hold back tears when they change out for practice every morning. He doesn’t understand how someone could be so cruel, even if he understands that cruel people exist. Nicky can admit that, like Andrew, he does harbor some homicidal intent towards anyone who would lay another finger on Neil.
They’re sitting at a team meeting in the lounge, and Nicky can feel Neil’s leg bouncing up-and-down in an obvious display of anxiety. He wants to push his hand against his knee, wants him to be still and know that he’s safe, but he also knows he can’t. Not just because of his fear of his cousin, though there is that, but because Neil may never feel completely safe around anyone that isn’t Andrew. Nicky understands that, too.
“What I don’t understand,” Kevin says from somewhere to Nicky’s right, “is why we can’t put the freshmen on mandatory night practices. If we want to make finals–.”
“For fuck’s sake–.”
“If we want to make finals,” Kevin repeats, glaring at Andrew, “we need to perfect the Raven drills before the Duke game.”
“That’s in two weeks!” Jack looks ready to pounce.
Nicky stops listening after the third insult tossed Neil’s way. He turns his attention to Neil’s tense posture which, surprisingly, relaxes a few moments later when Andrew settles a hand on his knee. He’s tracing the angry red welts on his knuckles, relics of Nathan Wesninski’s cruelty and Neil’s innate ability to survive.
Nicky loves everything about Neil Josten, except maybe his stubbornness and his understandably dishonest proclivities. He’s glad to have him as a friend, and he’s glad that he can have him in his life. He loves that Neil trusts him enough to let him see his scars, his past, in spite of everything that’s happened to him.
He shifts his attention back to the group at large, and doesn’t bother trying to keep his smile to himself.
Allison
“I just don’t understand why you never cut it differently,” Allison says, pushing Neil’s bangs off his forehead. She frowns to herself before carding her fingers through the thick nest of auburn curls. “You’d look good with it shaved in back and around the sides.”
Neil shrugs in the mirror, and if he thinks Allison misses the way his eyes skim from his eyes to hers, he is mistaken. “Do whatever you want. I don’t really care one way or another.”
Whatever you want is a pretty trusting thing to say to someone with scissors and intent. Allison can already see it now; as much as Neil tries to hide behind chunky sweaters and loose jeans, Andrew’s been doing a pretty good job with wrangling him into the skin-tight low riders and high collared shirts that keep the majority of the scarring hidden under a dark grey layer of cloth. Still, his hair has grown enough that he has to wear it in a tie at practice, and when he’s not, he lets it loose around his face.
That, Allison thinks, is unacceptable.
A few weeks before, the girls had hosted an all-nighter to welcome (and put due fear in) the freshmen. Jack, as expected, talked shit until Kevin broke out his Grey Goose, and then he wouldn’t shut up about Neil’s eyes or his mouth even if he was, according to Jack, “the asshole that’s probably going to cost us the season.” Lily and Marge had to be bodily removed from the room after Andrew’s fists clenched a little too tight, his impassive glare leaning more towards murderous, when they rhapsodized about Neil’s good looks and his perfect ass. Ethan claimed not to swing, just like Neil, but even he admitted that if he did it would be for Neil. “Not because of his ass,” he insisted, “but because he’s an amazing striker.”
Yeah, right.
Still, hot as Neil may be with a shabby haircut and baggy clothes, Allison was told she could do whatever she wanted. So, she breaks out the razor.
When she’s finished, she can’t keep the proud smirk off her face. The top is still curly, still shaggy, but tamed. The sides are shaved down almost to the scalp, fuzzy auburn tinted more orange than brown. She brushes her fingers over his forehead and rouses him from his daze.
“You finished?” he asks, blinking himself awake within seconds.
She nods at him in the mirror and admires her handiwork.
Allison would never admit to pride because she’s not a proud person. She will, however, acknowledge a deep satisfaction at the little gasp Neil lets out when he runs tentative fingers through his shorter hair, and she will relish the peachiness of his cheeks when he meets her eyes in the mirror.
“Allison,” he says, fingers still buried in his hair. “Th–.”
She shakes her head. “Nope, not happening,” she says, tugging on his hair to cut him off. “You’re ditching the monsters next Friday to come with me and Renee to Columbia, got it?”
He nods and she lets go of his hair. She doesn’t even pretend not to grin when he sprints out of the room with a quick, “Thanks, Allison.”
Kevin
If asked directly, Kevin would confess to hating mornings.
He’s jogging at a leisurely seven-minute-mile pace, matching strides with Nicky as they jog around the Foxhole track. Neil and Andrew have already lapped them twice, but Kevin can’t be bothered. At least they’re giving an effort.
Nicky’s been trying to start a conversation about Thea for the past fifteen minutes, and every time he does, Kevin shuts him down with a glare. When he realized that he couldn’t get Kevin’s attention that way, he started discussing Neil and Andrew’s sex life, which, unfortunately, Kevin is way too knowledgeable about.
“I mean,” Nicky says. “I just want them to be happy. They both deserve so much, and they’re both so right for each other.” He pauses to take a breath, and then gasps. “Do you think they received sex ed? Oh my god, Neil definitely hasn’t, that poor kid’s been on the road since he turned ten, I–.”
Kevin tunes him out after he starts on a rant about the heteronormativity of public school sexual education.
He does wonder, though, if they are as happy as they seem to be. Andrew never cracks a smile, but Kevin has accepted that that is simply his regular condition. He also knows that that fact isn’t entirely true; the first and only time Kevin walked in on them, he found Andrew with a hand stuck in the front of Neil’s jeans and a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
Kevin didn’t stick around to see what became of that expression; it was more than he ever needed to see of either of them, but he was glad to see them happy.
He watches them, passing him and Nicky once more, and wonders how they can seem so fine and Kevin just isn’t. Neil in particular; he wears the marks of battles won on his skin, and he is still somehow capable of smiling every day, of exposing himself to the Foxes every day. He sees him now, laughing at something Andrew said and pausing to lift the hem of his shirt to wipe at his face.
Neil is okay, and he isn’t lying about it anymore.
If asked directly, Kevin would admit to loving the Foxes, and loving their happiness.
Watching Neil, giggling when Andrew flicks at the exposed skin of his belly and darting off with a carefree smile, Kevin thinks he might be able to be fine too, someday.
Renee
The going away party for the leaving seniors began about as well as Renee expected it would.
Allison, Neil, and the Minyards pooled their money to rent a cabin on the outskirts of Charleston, right on the beach. Allison, Dan, and Matt elected to have Neil and Renee run into town for supplies because, according to Dan, they were the only ones capable of running on fumes and putting on a smile.
Neil, living up to their collective image of him, smiled and agreed, and so Renee did too.
They find themselves at a market buying tomatoes together an hour later, and Neil is nervous.
Renee doesn’t understand why he’s still so apprehensive around her. Andrew suggested that it might be his innate distrust of nice people, but that was before he wrapped his legs around her shoulders and twisted her into the gym mats, so it could have been an attempt at distracting her.
“Does Andrew really know how to cook pasta?” Neil asks, scrunching his nose at a noticeably unripe tomato before shrugging and putting it in Renee’s canvas bag. She covertly removes it when his back is turned and places it back on the shelf. “I know what he eats, Renee. I can’t eat spaghetti with chocolate sauce.”
“He can cook,” she replies.
They wander through the booths, stopping to sniff or taste samples. Neil tosses a bundle of daisies at her and turns to a mushroom stand before she has the opportunity to question it. She trails behind him, following as he hops from one stand to the next, occasionally grabbing vegetables that Renee is sure aren’t typical of pasta related dishes.
He eventually makes his way to a medicinal herb booth, where a middle aged woman is showing him some shrubs that can “be used to reduce the appearance of scars.”
Neil blinks at her for a moment, twisting his lips in consideration. “It works?” he asks.
The woman nods her head. “My daughter had a nasty burn under her eye,” she replies, gesturing to her left cheek. “It’s not completely gone, but she says the skin doesn’t feel as tight anymore.”
He nods consideringly before grabbing a pot of the herb and depositing money in her hand.
They finish their shopping shortly after and make their way back to the main road back to the cabin. Renee is quiet; she likes the ambiance of the quiet neighborhood and the smell of breezy ocean surrounding her at any given moment. She knows, distantly, that Neil has had bad experiences with the ocean, but if he’s feeling any emotions remnant of those bad experiences, he’s not showing them.
Instead, he’s fiddling with his phone and taking pictures of the kitschy houses lining the street.
“Hey, Neil,” she says, pulling her phone out of her pocket. He glances up at her, his eyebrows raised in curiosity and his lips curled in a soft smile. She snaps a quick picture before pulling him in. “Come here.”
He leans in when she throws an arm over his shoulders and pulls him in so they’re pressed cheek to cheek. She hardly takes a moment to yell, “smile!” before she’s taking the picture and adding it to her story. Allison and Matt have already replied by the time she’s tucking her phone back in her pocket.
Renee turns back to Neil with a smile. “I’m glad you’re doing better,” she says.
He hums in response; Renee doesn’t push the subject. They walk back to the cabin under the waning light of the sun, content to keep the silence between them. By the time they push through the front door, Neil is no longer trying to hide his yawns, and Renee can’t stop rubbing her eyes.
Andrew meets them at the door with a businesslike expression on his face. He takes the bag from Renee and dutily steers Neil down the hall to their shared bedroom. Renee sticks around to help him unpack, despite her tiredness.
He gives her an inquisitive look, and she can’t help but roll her eyes. “I love Neil too, Andrew,” she says, crossing her arms.
“I hate him,” he retorts, but it’s a lie. “And that’s not what I’m asking.”
“It’s not,” she agrees. “But he looks happier, don’t you think?”
He hesitates a moment before answering, eyes softening slightly though he won’t ever admit it. “Yeah,” he says. “He does.”
Aaron
Aaron does not like Neil Josten.
He supposes he’s the opposite of his brother in that sense; he doesn’t have to lie to claim he hates Neil. He hates the way he’s constantly telling lies; hates the way he makes Andrew lie for him. He hates the cocky way he holds himself on the field, hates that he knows he’s good.
Aaron hates that Neil is actually good, and sometimes he wants to wipe the smug smirk off of his scarred face.
Katelyn has told him that it would be good to learn to love his brother and, subsequently, Neil. She said they might be family one day, like it means anything. Still, Aaron hates the disappointed look in her eyes when he doesn’t do something she wants him to do more than he hates Andrew and Neil together.
So he’s been giving an effort.
After Baltimore, after the first few run-ins with Ichirou’s men, Aaron has taken on a sort of apprentice role with Abby. She does the cleaning, the tests, the difficult care, and Aaron does the stitches and the cleanup. So far the only patient he’s had is Neil, and so far he’s made very little progress on developing their relationship as potential family.
He’s trying, though, and that’s all he promised Katelyn.
“You could try to, you know, not fuck up with the largest mafia family on the east coast,” he says as he tugs a stitch shut. Neil’s shoulders flinch under his hands, but he settles back into his usual tense posture a moment later, so Aaron knows he didn’t hurt him.
“You could try to, you know, mind your own fucking business,” Neil retorts, grunting when Aaron pulls the next stitch through and tugs the wound shut. “It wasn’t the Moriyamas this time, either.”
Aaron hums as he ties the knot and clips the excess thread. He dabs a cotton swab in the little tub of rubbing alcohol by his knee and rubs it over the wound before running a hand down Neil’s spine and pushing himself to his knees.
He does feel some sympathy when he sits like this, Neil between his knees. No matter how much Aaron hates him, he will always hate the people who’ve inflicted the horrible wounds all over his body so much more. He can admit to understanding why Andrew, why the Foxes, have fallen in love with Neil. It takes an extreme will to live to be able to survive that much pain and keep going.
He skims his thumb over the crest of a new, pink scar he helped close three weeks before after Neil was bottled at a bar near campus. Aaron had fun helping Andrew kick the guy’s ass.
“Are you done, then?” Neil asks, glancing at him over his shoulder.
Aaron schools his features into something more apathetic before climbing to his feet. “Yeah,” he replies. “I’m done.”
Matt
“Hey, Dan?”
“Huh?”
Matt knocked back his fourteenth shot before replying. “If I was interested in guys, I think Neil would be my type,” he says, grimacing at the burn of Allison’s bottom-shelf bourbon.
He can feel Dan’s eyes on his face, but he doesn’t mind. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t admit to potential bisexuality. Maybe he’s been hanging out with Nicky and Renee too much; a guy can only be lectured so many times about the fragility of heterosexuality without wondering what it might be like.
Admittedly, this wasn’t the cause of the interest, nor was it the cause of his voicing his interest. Regardless, liquor loosens lips and Dan is a fair listener.
He wishes he wasn’t attracted to Neil some days, but other days he notices the awkward way Neil holds himself, like he’s trying to cover any exposed skin. Matt knows it’s not his place to form an opinion, but he’s glad for the days where Neil is confident enough to wear a tee shirt without fidgeting. He’s also glad for Friday evenings, when Andrew wrangles him into the tightest jeans he could find in town, but Matt’s not about to thank him for it.
Matt likes living.
She hasn’t replied yet, and the hot little ball of tension that settled somewhere in his stomach has grown into a substantially larger, heavier ball of tension. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he should have admitted to some interest in men before dating Dan; maybe he shouldn’t have said anything –
“– I mean, Neil is hot as hell, so I can’t really blame you,” Dan is saying. “Fuck, I have a type that’s completely separate from Neil and Neil is still my type because, god, have you seen those eyes? But it’s not like I’m his type.”
Matt rolls over and blinks at her bemusedly. “What?” he asks.
Dan raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “You have excellent taste, dude. Me, now Neil; I mean, you’re two for two.”
He snorts before reaching down to squeeze her fingers. “Excellent taste,” he echoes, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure glad I fell in love with the most humble woman in the world.”
“Damn right you did, Boyd,” she replies, before swinging a leg over his hips and pressing him into the mattress.
He can hardly keep the smile off his face when she ducks down to kiss the taste of stale alcohol from his lips.
Dan
“Listen, I’m just saying you’d look good with a nose ring.”
Dan lifts a shoulder in a passive shrug before tucking her hands in her pockets. Neil is giving her his best caught-in-headlights grimace and she can hardly keep herself from smiling. It’s almost as good as the time Allison suggested bleaching his hair and Andrew glared at her so hard that Dan was low-key concerned for her wellbeing.
He squints at her, considering, then says, “I don’t like needles.”
Because of course Neil Josten wouldn’t like needles. She’s already sputtering out an apology, her hands fidgeting in the air nervously as she does her best to maintain eye contact. He stops her with a placating hand, and squeezes her fingers.
“I’m not saying I’ll do it,” he says. “But let me think about it.”
So she left him alone to think about it.
Almost three weeks later, after Dan has pretty much forgotten even mentioning it to him, Neil knocks on her door. She opens it and finds him nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot, his eyes focused on his toes. “I thought about it,” he says without preamble. He jingles the keys in his pocket. “I have to be back by nine, but if you’re free we can go now.”
So they go.
Dan has a consensual history with needles that Neil doesn’t have. This is made especially clear when the piercer directs him to a chair, and he stiffens up and jerkily makes his way to it. Dan takes his hand in her own as he’s prepped with rubbing alcohol, and shakes her head when they ask if he needs something to hold on to while he does it.
“It’ll hurt,” the piercer warns.
“I’m fine,” Neil replies.
It takes all of ten minutes for the process to actually be finished, but by the time it is, Dan’s fingers are starting to bruise in Neil’s grip. She doesn’t acknowledge the furtive way he wipes his watering eyes on his shoulder as the piercer situates the tiny silver ring, but she does give him a thump on the back when he’s finished.
They’ve paid and are making their way back to Andrew’s maserati when Neil turns to her and asks, “how do I look?”
She snorts. “You look hot, kid.” And, because she’s his captain and because she can, she reaches up a hand to ruffle his hair, uncaring of his indignant squawk or the way he insists he’s most certainly not a kid because he’s a twenty-year-old man.
By the time they’re back at the dorms, Andrew is leaning against the doorway to the staircase tapping an impatient foot. Dan clears her throat and grins when Andrew looks up. She knows he doesn’t see it, but she can’t help but laugh at the faint pink tint spreading across his cheeks.
She pushes past him and makes her way to her room, but she’s not quick enough to miss the “holy shit, Josten,” before the door bangs shut.
Andrew
Andrew hates Neil Josten.
He watches him from across the locker room, contorting his body into uncomfortable shapes to pull his hoodie over his head. Andrew knows he does it so he can hide his scars, despite his insistence that he doesn’t mind the team seeing them. The one time one of the freshman strikers saw the raised bumps of old road scraped along his spine and voiced a question no one wanted asked, Neil mumbled an excuse and made to sprint out of the locker room. He would’ve run if Andrew didn’t catch him around the collar and nudge him into one of the stalls.
“I hate them,” Neil had said, after, safe under Andrew’s sheets, safe against Andrew’s body. Andrew hummed and ran a hand down Neil’s spine before pushing his face into the space between his shoulder and his neck and burying his fingers in his hair.
Andrew despises his physical interest in the guy, hates Neil’s interest in him. He hates his eyes, his careful smile, and his mussed hair after a night of practice and banter shared with Kevin. He hates the strong line of Neil’s back, and he hates the soft line of what’s below it.
He hates that Neil notices his wandering eyes. “103%,” he says when Neil catches him watching as Neil tugs on one of the too-short shirts Allison insisted on buying him the last time they were in town.
He hates the flash of Neil’s abdominal muscles pushing against his skin, too.
Mostly, he hates how much he doesn’t actually hate Neil Josten.
In the morning, sleepy and soft, he watches the flutter of Neil’s eyelashes against his cheek, brushing almost too delicately against the tight pull of the scar tissue under his eye. His nose wrinkles before his eyes flash open, too bright, too blue, too much in Andrew’s opinion. His lips curl around Andrew’s name, and he almost smiles at him, even though Neil has horrible morning breath, even though Neil has a hand pressed against his chest. Maybe, he thinks, it’s because of the morning breath and the contact.
“Morning,” he says. He hates the warmth in his voice. Still, he asks, “Yes or no?”
Neil nods and Andrew ducks forward to kiss the corner of Neil’s mouth. He hates the curl of Neil’s grin, hates the timid way his fingers brush over the softer hairs at the back of Andrew’s head. He leans into Neil’s touch, despite this, and grunts when Neil deepens the kiss.
When they break apart for air moments later, Neil’s flushed pink around the ears and over the bridge of his nose and Andrew can’t help but notice the light smattering of freckles, too faint to be noticed otherwise.
This, Andrew thinks, would have never been as good if he was still on his medicine. The drugs left him uncaring, though nothing would have been able to leave him completely indifferent to Neil’s attractiveness. The drugs dulled it, though, and Andrew realized when he came back from rehab what he was missing. Up close, every morning, he is reminded.
“Hey,” he says, because he can. He hates that he wants to.
Neil grins back at him, all scrunched up eyes and beautiful happiness. “Hey.”