#but feel free to ask me about any little aspect of this. i overthought everything and there's probably at least one head canon or easter egg

[aknosde]

why, if not for nothing?

This one’s dedicated to drew ( @sunriseabram-death or @drewdrop , take your pick) bc of their tags on this post and bc she was a big part of the reason I read aftg in the first place // Neil Josten & David Wymack // minor Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard // Hurt - Comfort // paranoia // post canon, though the first scene is pre canon // 6.6k

ao3

—————

In Ottawa, Neil slept with his shoes on. It wasn’t uncommon—in fact it had been usual—but they had lived in a proper apartment for nearly nine months and he was particularly thankful to return to the habit that night. The empty apartment they found on the ground floor of the half-abandoned complex was freezing, and even with two shirts, a flannel, and his sweatshirt on, he couldn’t get warm. They were on their way out of Montreal. Mary wouldn’t tell him why besides that ‘it was time’ as she traded the student IDs in his wallet. David, it said his name was, and he had scrunched up his nose. Definitely not his favorite.

They were curled up on the only piece of furniture in the place—an abandoned couch that made his mother wrap her hair in her scarf and pull his hood over his head; they couldn't afford to get lice. She held him against her even in her sleep, deceptively strong arms wrapped around his back, fingers bruising and digging into a groove between his ribs where a knife had caught him nearly a year ago. It wasn’t the knife that sent them back to the Americas, but at the time he thought it should have been. In her hold he worked on getting cold air into his lungs, wiggling his toes in his boots to keep them warm, and waiting for sleep to wash over him so he wouldn’t have to think about either thing much longer.

He caught the movement in the window.

At first it was hard to tell. If it were outside, well, it’d be something to think about but not necessarily something to worry about. The complex was only half abandoned. Several other homeless people—no matter that his mother refused to call themselves homeless—were in units down the line, and the ones closest to the street were properly and legally rented, the best he could tell. From the ground floor window seeing someone walking outside wouldn’t be unreasonable. There was an itch on the back of his neck that traveled up to his brain, though, and he looked harder.

It was a man in the doorway—later Neil would have to think about the silence, how quiet he had been, how far he had gotten—tall and shadowy, a beanie making his head misshapen in the silhouetted reflection of the window. Neil forced his eyes half lidded and squirmed as if he were asleep, shifting his hand to his mother’s side and grabbing his knife before digging his fingers into her coat, hopefully hard enough to make it to her flesh. A second later he was being yanked away.

The feeling of being grabbed by the neck is incomparable. There are too many ways to feel it, too many ways for it to go about, too many reasons and too many outcomes. Neil has them catalogued, orderly, in the vault of his brain—sense memories he’s locked behind doors and into safes.

His mother always caught him on the junction between his shoulder and neck, a rough grasp that brought him into her. His father would pick him up by the scruff, finding where his neck met his back, where pinching the already tight skin could send currents of pain up and down his spine. Lola grabbed him by his throat, securing her hand under his not-fully-formed jaw and pulling him forward. Andrew pulls him in by the soft spot that leaves his spinal cord vulnerable, all carefully measured pressure and callused fingers.

The thing that’s always the same, no matter who, no matter why, no matter where, is the drop. Anxiety, terror, fear, thrill. There’s always a drop, something that falls from the base of his skull and into his stomach. Antacid, stones, butterflies; everything drops.

The man grabbed Neil by the neck of his sweatshirt and Neil’s body reacted instantly, pushing through fear to deposit a coin of confidence into his gut, knowing his mother was already on her feet, gun out. The man took a staggering step back, not expecting Neil to be as heavy as he was, not smart enough to know Neil had been properly housed and fed for the past nine months. Neil used the momentum to let himself swing back in the man's grip, knife meeting thigh and tearing a fault line into flesh before breaking away. There were two shots, then, one at the man and one at the window, and then he was jumping through it, after his mother, duffles clutched to their chests and into the night, broken glass falling into his hood and digging at his shoulders.

The looks of his teammates after practice feel something like that glass. Prickling cuts, weeping blood. Sadder, but just as inevitable. They see, he’s sure; the way he’s turning, always trying to catch the movement in the corner of his eye, the reflections in the plexiglass, the footsteps that are too careful. The only thing he doesn’t know is if his team can sense them too.

Andrew walks up to him, taking his time but with a little more power behind his step than is perhaps normal, and they enter the foyer together, shoulders knocking. Neil flinches. Andrew notices, he’s Andrew, he can’t not notice, and once they’re through the doorway he takes two, very discrete and simultaneously very noticeable, steps to the side, otherwise keeping Neil’s pace. To the other’s, Neil’s sure, it looks like Andrew is wearing the same apathetic look as always, but he angles his chin slightly to the left when he looks at Neil, asking, Are you okay?

There are several responses to this, of course. I’m fine, is the first response that comes to mind, like a reflex, but he dismisses it quickly on account that Andrew would likely punch him clear across the face. No, is probably the most accurate, but Neil doesn’t know why he isn’t fine, besides the likelihood of people trailing him, and he isn’t in much of a mood to test his honesty like that. There are words in his throat too, but they’re questions—about the people he can feel all around, about the things he’s almost seeing—and if he asks he’s going to look weird in front of the freshmen, and worse, he’ll make everyone concerned. But he doesn’t want to lie, especially to Andrew, so he opts for not responding and simply holds eye contact until they reach the locker room and then goes to change out.

In the shower stall, he can lock it out. The water drowns everything except his thoughts, giving him a breath to analyze the situation.

He almost regrets his habit of running back to Fox Tower each night, then. Everyone will know, without a doubt, that something is wrong if he asks for a ride back. Without asking, they’ll drive back without him. He’s made it clear that’s how he likes things, and he’ll be left to run in the dark.

For all that he has done it before, it’s still an uncomfortable thought. Having somewhere to run to makes the prospect more promising, but Fox Tower is no fortress or safe house. He hadn’t trusted the tower when he arrived in Palmetto, and now it feels impossible. The safety he’s carved out for himself in his dorm, in his room, by Andrew’s side—it’s decimated by the hundreds of lost student IDs strewn about campus, the knowledge that all it takes is someone with a lockpick and a YouTube video, the possibility that someone with his own skills could scale the brick and hoist themself through Matt’s perpetually unlocked window. He’ll run all night, if he has to, to make sure no one is behind him. He can’t go back to the dorms.

With that decided, he shuts the water off.

By the time he’s dressed and back in the locker room everyone has cleared out. He’s familiar with the bright overheads that tear all shadows from the room, but he feels one anyways as he bends over to tie his shoes. Cold and heavy, it buzzes like a drill bit on the back of his neck, and he whirls around, shoes half on, to face the intruder.

The corner is empty, no looming figure.

“You can stay at mine tonight,” Wymack says from his position hanging onto the doorframe, causing Neil to swivel again—he has no idea when Wymack got there. It’s not a question, not a command, but Wymack’s raised eyebrow makes it feel like a challenge, like he knows that all Neil wants to do is say no and run. Before he can, Wymack says, “Let’s go.”

It’s odd, Neil thinks, doing this again. He had spent the month of his summer break bouncing between weekends in Columbia and weeks on Wymack’s couch after a painful conversation—if he could even call it that—with Kevin, where he admitted he didn’t want to spend the summer awkwardly around his dad’s apartment. Even before summer practices began, Neil had tagged along to the court a few times a week, and Wymack keeps the same closing procedures now as he did then, keeping Neil in front of him as he goes about turning the lights off, refusing to leave Neil in the dark. Neil had always found the gesture kind, but in a way that made him unreasonably uncomfortable, like a cougar was going to maul him from behind at any second. Tonight, his trepidation comes not from kindness, but from a growing suspicion.

Wymack finally lets him drop behind when they reach the parking lot, where Neil alternates between staring intensely at the shadows for any sign of movement and the reflective piping on Wymack’s windbreaker. The breeze ruffles the fabric of the jacket, swishing along in the night and covering any footsteps Neil hoped to hear by masking his own. Why anyone, the Moriyamas or his father’s residual men, would bother being this discreet now that everything between them and Neil is out in the proverbial open, Neil doesn’t know, but it rankles him.

The safety lock of Wymack’s car comes undone with a cheerful chirp, cut off almost immediately by the closing of Neil’s door. He pushes the child lock back down manually, before Wymack can press the button, and stares tentatively out the window. The lights of the parking lot are just bright enough to almost completely dampen Neil’s reflection in the window, leaving him with an unobscured view of the lot. Nothing is standing under the nearest lamp posts, no one is toying with a knife between their fingers. Neil fastens his seatbelt blindly and doesn’t stop looking until they’re on the road.

Wymack is taking the back streets to his apartment, a track that Neil is more familiar with than anyone ought to know. He doesn’t know what Wymack thinks is going on, but they’re more likely to lose a tail here regardless, which Neil appreciates. The glow from the dashboard is enough to throw light into the backseat and Neil shifts to catch a glimpse in the rearview mirror, making sure no one is back there and cursing himself for not checking before getting in.

Wymack glances over to him when he settles back down, finally on a longer stretch of road that lets him shift his attention. Still, he barely holds eye contact before turning back to the windshield. “At the stadium, what was wrong?” he asks, not without his gruff tone but sounding suspiciously careful. Neil focuses on the smooth roll of wheels on asphalt, distributed evenly under his feet.

“Nothing.”

Wymack makes a sound like a buzzer and side eyes Neil. “Try again.”

This is monumentally stupid, Neil thinks to himself. His mother would kick his ass into the next state for telling anybody, spreading his own mess around and making it uncontainable and impossible to deal with. But Wymack knows about everything else, the important parts at least, so Neil turns to the passenger window to hide how hard he’s biting the inside of his cheek and forces out, “I think someone found me.”

Wymack keeps his gaze on the road ahead, but Neil knows that if he weren’t driving he would be looking Neil in the eye, brows pressed up in the way that means he wants to raise an eyebrow but purposely isn’t. “Okay,” he says slowly, as if absorbing Neil’s confession.

“I felt someone, in the stands.”

“Felt or saw?”

Another bite. “Felt.”

Wymack sits on that one for a moment, tilting his head from side to side like he’s trying to remember more clearly. “I could see the stands from where I was watching, the only people in the stadium were the team and the cleaning crew.”

“Like nothing has ever escaped your attention.”

“Campus cops were outside and they didn’t report everything.”

“I’m supposed to trust cops now?”

“I’m trying to help you, kid.”

“Sorry.”

Wymack sighs, bringing a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Don’t apologize,” he says, and then lowers his hand to activate his turn signal. “What do you feel right now?”

Neil searches for a second, then shrugs. If they had a tail, they lost it. Anyone watching him will know he and Wymack are heading to Wymack’s apartment, but before then there’s not much to worry about. “They can’t catch me when we’re driving.”

“Right.”

The rest of the drive passes relatively quietly. Wymack tries turning the radio on, but even at the low volume it echoes in Neil’s ears and scrapes down his neck, making it impossible for him to listen for warnings of anything happening outside the car, and before he can control himself, he shuts it off. Wymack doesn’t comment. He turns the air down too, like he can follow Neil’s train of thought, like he’s done this for Neil dozens of times, each of his decisions measured like Neil’s always are, as if him doing it means Neil won’t have to. That’s not how it works, Neil wants to snap. Wymack doesn’t know an ounce of what it took for Neil to keep himself alive this long. But Wymack is already aware of that, isn’t he? That’s why he’s the type of coach he is. That’s why he follows the Foxes’ lead.

The walk from the curb to Wymack’s apartment marks the return of the pre-mauling feeling, a billion flies buzzing behind his head, just out of sight. He repeatedly gets in Wymack’s way, scouting ahead and then doubling back to check the locks on everything as discreetly as possible. He’s using his peripherals more than he has since his last game. Wymack says nothing, merely quirking an eyebrow as Neil breaks one of his biggest rules and purposefully locks himself in with a man his father’s age, sliding the chain lock closed for the first time.

Wymack doesn’t say anything as Neil scopes the rest of the apartment, either. Instead he comes to a natural stop outside his living room and waits for Neil to come back to him. It’s a tad infuriating, but Neil returns anyway.

“You left sweats in the bookcase,” Wymack says when they enter the room together, gesturing to the cubby Neil had kept extra clothes in over summer break. He has no idea how he left them there, he’s never left clothes anywhere by accident. “I’ll get water.”

Neil doesn’t take his sneakers off as he changes pants, folding up his running shorts into a tight ball and passing them between his hands several times before he relents and puts them back in the cubby. He sits in the center of the couch, surveying the room before resting his gaze on the window.

Wymack comes back into the room a minute later, clearly not missing the way Neil’s gaze jumps to him but acting nonchalant nonetheless, and sets a glass of water on the coffee table in front of Neil before settling into his own chair. Neil stares at the water.

It takes Wymack exactly three minutes—Neil wonders if he was counting the seconds as well—to speak again. “You gonna drink that?” Neil shrugs.

He’s thirsty, hadn’t realized until Wymack had brought out the water, but now it feels like the second he takes a sip it will be choked out of him. The glass is tinted pale blue and it makes the liquid inside look more like a child’s drawing of water than anything else. “Do you need to get it yourself?” Wymack asks after a few more seconds, voice just a touch softer in a way that makes Neil’s spine prickle.

“No.” There’s nothing in this water, nothing hiding behind the tinted glass. He reaches out a hand to grab it.

Neil keeps his posture, alert but designed to look relaxed, and Wymack keeps leaning back in his chair, casually watching Neil. A stalemate, then. Neil returns his focus to the glass.

Turning it nonchalantly in the low light, he examines it for anything matte or opaque. A swipe of his finger ensures that nothing is lingering around the lip. He brings it up like he’s about to take a sip in order to smell it. Nothing. He lowers it and switches to holding it with both hands, like one might hold a warm beverage. The water is cold through the glass, soothing the itchy-hot feeling that’s been coating his palms all day, but it’s almost too cold, like it’s from the fridge. Lots of things are kept in fridges. Water, chemical solutions, limbs. His hands begin to shake.

“Neil?” Wymack asks, concerned again, and Neil flinches. Wymack doesn’t surprise him, he can’t when Neil’s counting every second that passes in the back of his head and when he can tell by the position of Wymack’s hands, the direction his feet point, exactly where and how he will move, but Neil flinches anyway.

“Sorry.” His voice doesn’t shake—it’s steady on principle, but something about it scrapes through his throat. “I have to get it myself,” he says, it feels like a confession, and then sets the glass back on the table before he can drop it, shoving his hands in his pockets as he stands so no one watching can tell what type of energy is coursing through his veins.

“Do you want me to come with you?” He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t want Wymack to come with him. But there’s a hope, that flighty creature that he can only grasp when his hands shake until he thinks that his torn skin will fall off in carefully cut pieces, that if it’s Wymack in his peripherals then he won’t have to worry about anyone else.

“Not too close.”

It takes more effort than Neil cares to admit to keep himself from scrubbing over every inch of the kitchen with his eyes. Wymack steps away from him when they enter the room, leaning against the wall closest to the door with his arms crossed. He’s in the room, but it doesn’t feel like it, and he becomes another one of the odd art pieces tacked to the wall as he watches Neil move about the kitchen. Neil goes through the entire shelf of glasses, working to the back until he finds a perfectly clear one, and then with a touch light enough to prevent leaving prints he puts the rest back, in order, with the gap for his hidden.

Washing his glass is another procedure, involving finding a clean sponge—impossible, he ends up with a washcloth—and checking the faucet’s aerator. Wymack’s changed his dish soap since Neil last used his kitchen, the floral scent that made him nauseous is gone, and he wonders if Wymack switched because the new stuff is cheaper before pushing the thought aside. He rinses his cup out to a countdown of ten, flips the tap to cool, and then fills it up.

Something behind him shifts, and he remembers everything he hates about the feeling of somebody watching him.

For someone so flighty, Andrew had taunted once, shortly after a rendezvous with a reporter, you pick fights a lot.

Under this panic, there’s no fight or flight. There’s just the movements of his body turning mechanically smooth, the careful detachment of his brain, connected by a thin wire reserved for emergency action, the rest left to cataloguing his surroundings. Everything comes into such a sharp focus that it makes Neil’s eyes hurt.

The kitchen is a mess, he doesn’t think it’s ever not, but it’s familiar uncleanliness now feels like a high stakes spot-the-difference. The coffee cup resting on top of the fridge, a minor earthquake from crashing to the floor, is the same one Wymack left there four months ago when Neil came back from a run. The wooden spoon resting on the edge of the sink is the one Neil found on the ground outside of Fox Tower that Aaron said was too good to go to waste. The ‘kiss the coach’ apron slung over the handles of the cabinet by Neil’s knees was a gift from Abby. Wymack’s kitchen is so naturally unorganized, and it makes looking for something wrong take ten times longer.

Neil knows this kitchen, he knows the grease on the backsplash and the stain on the floor and the chipped paint of the windowsill and he knows how Wymack thinks—most of the time, at least, he’s relatively predictable—and it’s the only reason that finding something off is even theoretically possible. He’ll have to trace everything back to it’s beginning.

The grease is a mottled, solid layer, evenly spread across the wall behind the stove and built over time, no splash pattern to suggest it being weaponized and flung, just caused by enough heat to sear flesh. The stain is worn, some of it scraped off, meaning it’s actually residue; dark red and old, it’s turned from its liquid state to something stickier and more viscous under time and pressure, like blood. The glare coming from his left means that the window is closed but the blinds are open, the overhead light reflecting off the glass and copying the kitchen in reverse. A mass adjusts behind Neil’s back, reaching out for him, his neck prickles, the wire courses with electricity.

He flings the glass.

It shatters in an explosion of shards and water against the far wall, falling to the linoleum with a wet crunch. Around it, time has frozen.

Wymack’s hand is resting on a chair back, a good several feet behind and to the right of Neil, still like a statue when their eyes meet. He was pulling a chair back, Neil thinks, the rest of his body finally shaking like his hands as he stumbles a step away from Wymack, to the door. His hamstrings have snapped like rubber bands and it’s all he can do to keep from collapsing against the table or in a chair. Don’t sit, his brain screams, don’t sit because it says he isn’t strong enough to stand and don’t sit because it means he isn’t smart enough to know what’s good for him.

Wymack never looks back to the glass. “I’m sitting down,” he says carefully—seconds minutes hours later, Neil’s finally lost track—and then pulls his seat back the rest of the way, lifting it slightly so it doesn’t screech against the floor. Wymack’s chosen the chair farthest from the door, leaving the exit unattended, and under Neil’s watchful eyes he leans back in his seat—not arrogantly relaxed but not tense—and rests his hands visibly on his thighs. The glass is too far away for him to be able to reach back and grab smoothly, there are no mugs on the table for him to bash over Neil’s head, there are no knives for him to throw, and then, feeling hollow, Neil forces himself to remember that Wymack doesn’t do that. It doesn’t fit in his brain, he can find the spot where this knowledge used to click but it’s been replaced by another thought: yet. He hasn’t done those things yet.

There’s a voice, though,—a carbon fucking copy of Andrew that Neil didn’t know was there—goading, a man can only have so many issues. He can’t handle this type of anxiety and his issues with his father at the same time, he’s never had to, he doesn’t know how, so he pushes the latter away. Neil shoves yet into a lockbox and turns away from the vast vault that stretches into the recesses of his mind.

Wymack tilts his head in silent question—Neil’s been standing by the table for at least three minutes, that’s when his internal stopwatch picked back up—and Neil takes his first breath in just as long, realizing his hours of breath training had kicked in and left him completely inert, like a corpse post rigor-mortis. His head pounds and his throat aches and he gives in, turning the sink back on and checking the aerator again before drinking straight from the faucet.

“Sorry,” he says when he’s finished, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You can clean it up tomorrow. Sit down. Tell me what happened.”

Wymack’s directions are clear, he leaves Neil no out, no it’s alright, no I’m fine. Part of him hates it, wants to brush it off and run, wants to clean his mess up now and not say a word for the rest of the night. Wymack is watching him carefully, though, in a way that reminds him of yet, so he goes about picking a seat, taking his time and trying not to look like he’s calculating every angle and obstacle. He ends up in the chair farthest from Wymack on the same side of the table, nudging it back as far as it will go so he can see all of the room, Wymack, and the door. He checks the lock on the window—that and the fridge being the only things out of his immediate view—before he sits.

There’s a tense eighteen seconds after he takes his seat, Wymack keeping his hands visible on his lap but clearly itching to rest them on the table. Neil can see Wymack staring at him in his peripherals, counts down from ten in German, and then turns to meet his gaze.

“Talk me through it,” Wymack says, leaning further back. Neil takes a breath.

“There was— I thought there was someone behind me, trying to grab me.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“It’s happened a lot.”

“No that’s—” Wymack looks lost for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek before releasing a breath. “I mean just now. What happened that made you think that?”

“The reflection in the window. I couldn’t tell what or who it was and it looked like—yeah.” Neil turns to the window again, staring at the dark outlines he and Wymack make against the brightness reflected by the rest of the room. They look like voids. Nothing. Any trace of the person he is, the man he knows, lost in the night. It’s easy to forget Wymack exists in the reflection. It’s easy to forget Neil’s anyone at all.

“Neil—” Wymack says, but the next thing feels hastily tacked on and out of place, like he was going to say something else. He speaks like someone who has come to a painful realization a second too late. Neil wonders what the realization is. He wonders if he sounded like this in Luther’s guest bedroom. “Hey, stop it. Neil, look at me. Not through the window, look at me.”

There’s movement in the window, the man behind him—or in front of him, maybe, hidden by the illusion of glass—is looming closer. There’s a snap behind his head, close. He tears his gaze from the window, a painful and wrenching feeling like ripping open the upholstery of a chair. He doesn’t want to face this man and he doesn’t want to sacrifice the sight the window grants him. Panic swells over his shoulders and promptly comes crashing down. Wymack is staring at him, fingers in the air.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he orders, typical gruffness embroidered with something deeper.

“There’s someone behind me.” Neil knows, tries to say it in an even tone—for all their unfairness, truths are even things, and should always be delivered as such—but his voice betrays him, his fear, when it cuts out the last word with a jagged edged knife.

“No one is behind you,” Wymack says, he stares over Neil’s head. “I am looking behind you and no one is there.”

“They could have hidden outside the window.”

“There’s no fire escape out there, Neil. Who could be there?” He takes one look at Neil’s face and sighs. “Right, people like you. I’ll look out the window and check the lock if you can keep yourself from looking at it every other minute, deal?” Neil nods and keeps his eyes looking forward as Wymack disappears behind him. He hears the click of the window unlocking, the swish of the pane being raised and lowered, and then the lock clicking closed again. There’s another sound, some sort of whoosh, and then Wymack is back before him, sitting in his chair and scooting closer to Neil, abandoning the five feet of distance.

Neil counts, as high as he can before he feels the blade of the guillotine a millisecond away, and then he rips around to face the window. The blinds are closed.

“Neil,” Wymack sighs, “We had a deal, come on, let it go.”

“I can’t,” Neil snaps, and whips back to face Wymack, the white blinds imprinted on his vision. “I can’t,” he repeats, and it’s less of a shout now, more like acid eating through the tissue of his throat. There is enough of this awful feeling in him to submerge the western seaboard, to start ‘The Big One’ Andrew mentions and fold all of the earth into its fault line. He can’t let it go. “I can’t,” he says again, everything choked away.

He wants—he doesn’t know; his mom, his duffle bag, to run away, to be right. It would be so much easier if he were right.

“Scared?” Wymack asks after a still moment. How long is a moment? Five seconds, ten, fifteen? Neil’s clock says it’s been twenty four.

“Anxious,” he responds.

“What’s the difference?”

He pauses. “There isn’t any.”

Wymack nods, like that makes sense, bent forward in his seat in order to keep eye level with Neil even though Neil is staring at his shoes, flexing his toes to make sure the laces are tight. He feels awful, and he can’t tell if it’s just everything he’s been thinking about all day finally surfacing or if it’s how hard Wymack is trying to help him, and the fact that he can’t take it.

“Look at me?” Wymack says, too soft. Soft like all of the animals Neil has dismembered, piece by piece, limb by limb. Soft in the way he hates even when he loves. It tugs at him, the way he responds instantly, meeting Wymack’s eyes. Wymack puts his hands before him in plain sight, like he knows. “It’s alright, Neil. I think you’re a bit paranoid right now, but it’s alright.”

“I’m not paranoid,” he says.

“Okay,” Wymack responds, nodding, but Neil can tell he doesn’t believe him.

“I’m not paranoid,” he insists, louder. “This shit saved my life. It’s not—It’s not paranoia if I’m right, okay. I can’t even tell you how many times this— Watching windows, checking water, sleeping with my shoes on, it’s not wrong. When there were people out there, looking for me, chasing me, waiting to capture and torture and kill me, I had to do it. It’s not wrong. I needed it.”

Wymack purses his lips, brows furrowed, but Neil sees more sadness in the expression than anything else. Why, he wants to shout, the taste of desperation tangible on his tongue, why are you sad? What is there to be sad about?

“I understand,” he says, and Neil can hear something in those words, the faintest grasp of the situation, fingers brushing against netting. He doesn’t understand like Renee, like Andrew, especially not like Mary, he doesn’t comprehend, but he knows. “But you said it yourself, Neil: you needed it. Past tense.”

This is vertigo. This is whiplash. This is suffocation. This is beheading. This is his world tumbling out beneath his feet, his memory failing, his vision decimated, his hearing gone, senses destroyed. He thinks, as he’s falling, that it left a long time ago, and that he just didn’t notice until now. It makes him feel sick to his stomach, nerveless fingers scrabbling for rock he can’t feel. “They—” he says, feeling like his dinner will come out with his next word.

“Those people are gone now, Neil. You know that, the rest of your body just hasn’t caught up yet. It’s okay. Here—” Wymack’s hands, which he had been holding loosely in front of him, he now turns, palms up, towards Neil. It only takes a second-long look for Neil to grab on, desperate to recognize ground. “I’ve got you. No one else is here. The only people that can get in are Abby and Kevin. It’s alright.”

“Okay,” Neil responds, like a promise. His jaw trembles, threatening, making him feel out of control, but he grips Wymack’s hands harder, focusing on the calluses as rough as his own and warmth and strength far greater. He understands, now, why last winter he didn’t wake up as Wymack carried him from the car to the couch. Neil locks his jaw and looks Wymack in the eye. “Okay.”

The corner of Wymack’s mouth twitches, almost like a smile, but also not. He hauls Neil to his feet before letting go. “Sleep,” he commands, and then frowns at Neil. “Not feeling great?”

Neil nods, faintly, piecing the linoleum beneath his feet into the ground of his mind. His eyes hurt, shutting them still feels risky, but keeping as aware as he had been is making his head pound. Exhaustion. He hasn’t felt it like this in a while.

“You’re lucky I went to the store yesterday, “ Wymack says, pushing them out of the kitchen and back to the living room with a hand lightly placed on Neil’s back. He pushes Neil into the living room where he sinks onto the couch, tracking Wymack’s movements via sound; the bathroom door opening, the cabinet opening, the shake of a bottle, the cabinet closing, the door closing. When he comes back it’s with a bottle of off brand Advil, which he tosses onto the cushion next to Neil.

Neil adjusts his posture, taking the bottle in his hands and twisting the top off. He’s surprised, though pleasantly so, to be met with a seal. It settles something in his stomach he couldn’t tell apart from everything else, but the rest seems to be following suit, now. He peels the seal off and swallows two dry. “Thanks.”

Wymack merely nods in response, relaxing into the chair across from the couch. Neil fiddles with the bottle, taking his time putting the cap back on and playing with the seal in his hands, bending it, folding it, flattening it. He hesitates. “Can I ask you something?”

“I don’t know, can you?” Wymack returns, then groans, “God, I’ve been spending too much time with Aaron.” Neil snorts. Wymack twirls his hand, motioning for Neil to get on with it.

“Stuff like this,” he says, “I thought it was above your paygrade.”

There a question in there, somewhere? he expects Wymack to respond, but Wymack furrows his eyebrows instead, dropping his hands into his lap and giving a long, considering, look. “This isn’t interpersonal,” he says eventually, picking his words deliberately. “It’s you.”

“I’d argue that I have enough issues for them to be their own person.”

Wymack huffs something like a laugh, far more bitter than anything Neil has when he considers his own life, and then says as a whisper, more to himself than to Neil, “Jesus, I don’t know how to say this.” He hunkers down, elbows on his knees, and stares at the floor so long Neil thinks that the conversation will be forgotten. When he looks up though, he’s eyelevel with Neil.

“Your health is as important to me as your playing, Neil,” he says, “If not more so. That’s physical and mental, by the way. Last year, Dan said we would deal with everything as a team. Nicky said as a family. I’m doing this”—he swirls a finger through the air— “because I’m your coach, and I’m doing this because I care about you, as a person, not a player, and I’m doing this because there’s no way you would be able to fall asleep at the tower tonight, and that matters to me.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Does that answer your question?”

Neil thinks for a moment. He hadn’t known exactly what he was asking, what he wanted or needed to know, but some of the buzzing at the back of his head, the itch crawling up from between his shoulder blades, has faded. Family. The team is as close to that as he’s ever gotten, but the only people who had ever noticeably reciprocated, verbally or not, were Nicky and Andrew.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. Stop making that face.”

“What face?”

“The one that looks like no one has ever told you they care about you. I’ve seen it enough tonight.”

Neil laughs, a choked and hurting sort of thing, tight in his throat and a pain to get out, but it feels better than keeping it in. “I thought Nicky was joking about that.”

“He’s not,” Wymack says, traced with something sad even as he offers Neil a tight smile.

“Good to know,” is the only thing Neil can manage to respond.

“Get some sleep,” Wymack says, settling back in his chair once again. “I’ll keep watch.”

Neil’s protests are drowned out by the heavy blanket and pillow Wymack throws at him and a stern glare, daring him to talk back. For once, Neil decides to keep his mouth shut. He lies back on the couch, propping the pillow behind his head and tugging the blanket half across himself before staring at the ceiling and beginning to count himself to sleep.

“You can take your shoes off,” Wymack says when he’s moved through Spanish and onto French, eyes beginning to blur.  

It takes Neil a minute to realize what Wymack means, but when he looks down at his feet he realizes that he still has his sneakers on. The laces are tight and double knotted, cut as short as possible while still capable of being tied, the fraying ends taped together so they can’t unravel and trip him. He digs his nails into his laces and pries the knots loose, lining his shoes at the bottom of the couch. Wymack gives him a final nod, and Neil falls back against the cushions.

It’s not the best sleep he’s ever gotten. He loses track of his internal clock during the first bout, and wakes up repeatedly, always flying up to sit and look around. The third time he wakes up, when Wymack tells him that no one has entered the apartment, that all of the doors and windows are still locked, Neil realizes Wymack was right: he never would have been able to sleep at Fox Tower.

He doesn’t know if that makes being here worth it, but Wymack clearly does, and maybe that’s enough.