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i.
It’s hard to get used to Nicky and Aaron living in the dorm. Though Matt lived with Seth for a long time, it’s hard to adjust to Nicky’s enthusiasm and Aaron’s silence. Neil was a quiet, steady presence, even near the beginning of the year. It’s even weirder to have two of the Monsters in the dorm. Neil, of course, was also one of them, but it was less strange because he was always friends with the upperclassmen, too.
Nicky is loud and excitable. Matt suspects he’s glad to be released from beneath Andrew’s thumb so he can finally spend time with other people, but he wouldn’t dare bring that up. Aaron is at Katelyn’s most of the time, and when he isn’t he barely talks. Matt doesn’t mind; Aaron, though lacking Andrew’s blunt cruelty, seems somehow more closed off than his twin these days.
Today, Matt and Nicky are playing Mario Kart. They’re evenly matched, but unfortunately Nicky plays as Shy Guy, which makes Matt angry enough that he has the motivation to win. Eventually, Nicky says, “We should get Andrew to play. He’ll crush you.”
“I can’t imagine Andrew playing Mario Kart,” Matt replies as he blue shells Nicky.
Nicky curses and then says, “He doesn’t like it that much but he kicks ass.”
When they finish the round, Matt sighs. “I want to see Andrew play Mario Kart. I still can’t believe he’s like,” he waves a hand vaguely, “a real person. He’s in a relationship. With a guy. Months ago I would never have considered him to be someone with sexual preferences at all.”
Nicky shrugs. “You guys just don’t know him. He has a good reason for everything he does, even if his methods are fucked up.” Nicky’s voice is rawer than Matt’s ever heard it. He wonders what it’s like for Nicky to love his cousin so much when Andrew never reciprocates. “You should go get them,” Nicky suggests.
Matt considers this. By them, Nicky means Neil, Andrew, and Kevin. The Neil-Andrew-Kevin friendship was only solidified by Neil moving in with them and Nicky and Aaron moving out, so much so that sometimes Matt feels like the three of them are part of some exclusive club no one else is a member of. It’s better than when it was Monsters versus the upperclassmen because they still hang around everyone else, but it’s like they exist on a different wavelength than the rest of the team.
Matt’s theory is that they are possibly the only three people in existence who have personalities that intense. Or maybe Kevin is secretly dating both Andrew and Neil. They could be part of a cult, but that one’s less likely. Matt says, “I’ll be right back.”
He knocks on the door, but no one answers; Matt can make out the quiet voices of Andrew and Kevin, but they’re speaking too low for him to understand. If Andrew and Kevin are talking, Matt figures it’s safe to assume that Neil and Andrew aren’t in a compromising position, so he opens the (surprisingly) unlocked door. He freezes at what he sees.
Andrew and Kevin are on the couch instead of the beanbags, whispering furiously to one another as they mash buttons on their Xbox controllers. Neil is wrapped around Andrew like a koala. His arms are looped around Andrew’s chest, face pressed into his neck, and he’s firmly seated in Andrew’s lap. His legs, too, are wrapped around Andrew’s waist; it can’t be comfortable for Andrew. The best part, Matt thinks, is that Neil is completely asleep.
Kevin pauses the game and gives Matt a curious look. Andrew stares with his usual blankness, but it’s hardly intimidating when he lets go of the remote with one hand and starts rubbing Neil’s back.
“I was going to—” Matt stops talking when Andrew gives him a fierce glare. He repeats in a low whisper, “I was going to invite you over to play Mario Kart with Nicky and I, but I guess you’re busy.”
Neil sniffles and pushes his face farther into the junction of Andrew’s neck and shoulder. Matt grins. Kevin gives Andrew a quizzical look, and it doesn’t take much for Matt to decipher its meaning. Kevin will only go if Andrew goes so Andrew isn’t left alone, and Andrew will only go if Neil wakes up.
Andrew’s eyes flick down to Neil. Kevin shakes his head at Matt. Just then, Neil groans. He shifts so he’s still entirely wrapped around Andrew, but his cheek is pressed against Andrew’s shoulder. He opens one blue eye. “Matt?”
Andrew’s hand runs through Neil’s red hair. Matt thinks he might be dreaming. “Sorry for waking you up,” Matt says quietly.
“Mmm,” Neil replies.
Andrew whispers in Neil’s ear and Neil whispers back. Andrew huffs, and Neil pouts at him. Andrew glares. Neil glares back. Andrew sighs. It’s fascinating. What’s even more fascinating, however, is how Neil rolls off Andrew to let him stand up. Andrew picks up Neil in a bridal carry and walks out of the room.
Matt stares at Kevin. “How do you not even blink at that?”
Kevin rolls his eyes scornfully. “It’s not like they’re secretive.”
“Are we talking about the same people?”
Kevin sighs loudly and dramatically. “I know them better than you do. Come on.”
In Matt’s dorm, Andrew was seated on the couch on the opposite end from Nicky. Neil’s sitting against the arm of the sofa, ass wedged between Andrew and the cushions and legs thrown out across the middle of the couch. Andrew’s arm is looped around Neil’s shoulders as he fiddles with the remote. They’re whispering lowly to each other. To Matt’s surprise, Kevin sits beside them, shoving Neil’s legs aside. Neil sticks his tongue out and puts his feet in Kevin’s lap.
Nicky gives Matt an apologetic glance and shifts so he’s sitting cross-legged on the couch so Matt can sit on the ground with his back against it. He could steal a beanbag from Andrew, Neil, and Kevin’s room, but he doesn’t care that much. He doesn’t want to disturb them to ask, anyway.
ii.
Allison wouldn’t say that she is friends with Kevin. She wouldn’t even say that she likes him. Still, she finds herself following him to his dorm. Dan and Matt are out and Renee has a three-hour lecture. Even Nicky is busy. Allison wouldn’t want to hang out with Aaron if she could.
That’s why she ends up on one of the beanbags in the Monsters’ dorm. She asked Kevin to help her with a paper for her introductory history class she’d taken out of curiosity, but they end up watching a documentary on the Salem Witch Trials instead. Despite Kevin’s habit of regurgitating random facts to add to the documentary like an encyclopedia, it’s not… terrible.
At least, it didn’t start out terrible.
After the documentary finishes, Allison decides to actually start on her paper. Kevin takes a look at what she has written and says, “I have a book that would be useful for this. One second.” He turns the knob slowly on the bedroom door, testing if it’s locked, and opens the door. Immediately, he cries, “Lock the fucking door, Christ almighty.” Yet, he still walks in to retrieve the book. He isn’t even blushing when he comes back out and slams the door behind him.
“Kevin,” Allison says slowly. “You just walked in there.”
Kevin pauses his flipping through the book. “So? I couldn’t see anything.”
“They’re having sex,” Allison points out.
Kevin shrugs with a long-suffering look. “They didn’t lock the door. We needed the book.”
“You’re so fucking weird,” Allison mutters.
Kevin is reading over her final draft when Neil and Andrew emerge from the bathroom. They both went in a half hour ago, and Allison only heard the water go on and off once. She smirks at them.
A bright red mark peeks out of Neil’s collar. He stretches and the shirt, slightly too big, exposes more of his chest, revealing another cluster of hickeys. Andrew rolls his eyes and tugs Neil’s shirt up. Neil grins lopsidedly at him and pulls it back down. Allison watches as Andrew collapses onto one of the beanbags and Neil crawls into his lap. They put on a nature documentary.
“I don’t know why everyone thinks they’re so weird,” Kevin says, mostly to himself as his eyes dance over the paper.
“You live with them, you get the juice for free,” Allison says.
Kevin shakes his head. “No one cares that much about Matt and Dan. I don’t get it.”
“It’s weird,” Allison says with exasperation. “He’s Andrew.”
“He can hear you,” Kevin snaps. Allison couldn’t care less. He sighs. “Look, do you want me to read this or not.” She rolls her eyes and lets Kevin finish commenting on her paper. He’s just as harsh as he is at practice, she’s hardly surprised.
On her way out, she glances over at Andrew and Neil. She considers ribbing them about what happened earlier, but she stops short on her way out.
Neil is taller than Andrew, but he looks tiny in his boyfriend’s lap. Neil is curled up on Andrew with his head resting against Andrew’s shoulder, eyes closed and breathing even. His arms are loosely wrapped around Andrew’s neck. One of Andrew’s hands is entangled in Neil’s curls and the other runs gently up and down his back. Andrew glares at her. Allison just grins at him, secretly happy to have been acknowledged.
iii.
“Is everyone here?” Dan hollers over the noise of her team. It’s movie night for the Foxes, freshmen included. There’s a few noises of assent.
“Neil, you’re up to choose the movie,” Matt says. His voice is loud in Dan’s ear.
Neil sighs with indecision. He doesn’t like nights where he has to choose, but the Foxes force him in order to make him develop a taste in movies. “Kev, what was that documentary you were talking about? The one they interviewed you for?” Neil, Andrew, and Kevin are sitting on the couch. Neil leans on Andrew’s shoulder while Kevin sits as far away from them as possible.
Protests break out on how they can’t watch a documentary, but Dan zeroes in on Andrew’s minute huff that can only mean one thing. “Don’t tell me it’s an exy documentary,” she says, raising an eyebrow at the strikers.
Neil snaps, “You wanted me to pick the movie,” at the same time that Kevin says, “It’s the one that came out two years ago, they just put it on Netflix.”
“Andrew?” Nicky pleads, because while Movie Night Law says that Neil gets what he wants, Kevin and Neil are the only ones who want to watch the doc and Andrew is the way to change Neil’s mind.
Andrew’s blank stare doesn’t change. Neil whispers something in his ear, and Andrew whispers back. Andrew probably hates that they’re about to watch an exy documentary more than anyone else, but he says quietly, “Put on the movie.”
“He’s so whipped,” Matt whispers in Dan’s ear. She grins. Andrew gives her a lethal scowl, but she’s used to it by now.
One of the freshmen is tasked with putting on the documentary. It’s about the history of exy, and Kevin adds little anecdotes and tidbits that the documentary missed out on. Kevin is in the documentary, and while Neil said Kevin was interviewed for it, it’s still odd to see him on-screen. Neil makes fun of him relentlessly with a gleam in his eyes. It takes a second for Dan to recognize it as glee; it’s strange and unfamiliar to see it on his face.
“Can’t you shut the fuck up?” Jack demands, interrupting Neil and Kevin’s bickering. “I thought you wanted to watch the movie.”
Neil glares and opens his mouth to fire out a no doubt scathing retort, but Andrew says smoothly, “I thought you didn’t want to watch it.”
Jack pauses momentarily, surprised at being spoken to by Andrew. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Dan treats all of her players equally, but no one likes Jack much and Andrew’s distaste for him is especially obvious. Someone pauses the movie, and the silence makes the tension more obvious. “You don’t want to hear your idol talk about how your sport started?” Andrew asks in his signature monotone. Jack opens his mouth when Andrew says idol, but Andrew cuts him off. “How ungrateful. And don’t think we can’t see your little crush.”
“I’m not fucking gay, I just don’t want to hear Josten’s shit—”
Andrew takes a knife out of his armband, so quickly it blurs. Dan notes how he keeps it well away from Neil at his side. “I don’t think that attitude is conducive to team building, but what do I know?” Andrew says, flipping the knife casually. Neil is having a silent conversation with Kevin that Dan can’t decipher.
Jack doesn’t reply in favour of glaring viciously at Andrew and Neil. Andrew puts his knife away and Renee unpauses the film. Dan looks over at Andrew and hears him say, just quietly enough that no one would pick up the sound unless they were listening, “Maybe I did it for Kevin, junkie.”
Kevin’s gaze flicks over to Andrew at this. Neil grins and kisses Andrew on the cheek. His words are impossibly quiet, but Dan reads Neil’s lips as he says, “Maybe it was for both of us.”
Kevin smirks at Andrew. Andrew glares venomously, but the expression melts back into his usual disinterest when Neil runs a thumb over his cheekbone. Kevin’s eyes flick between the two of them before giving Andrew a meaningful look. Andrew flips him off.
Dan looks away, focusing on the documentary. Though the team is closer now than they were before, Kevin, Neil, and Andrew seem to live in another world some days. It usually frustrates Dan because it’s another fracture in the Foxes, but maybe they’re not pushing everyone else away, exactly. Maybe they’re just friends.
iv.
“I do not get paid enough to deal with you shits,” David Wymack snaps when Jack walks onto the court with a bloody nose. He notes Andrew and Neil’s absence and sighs. “What happened?”
“Josten and his boyfriend are skipping,” Jack snarls, voice nasally from his nose.
“And that is your problem how, exactly?” David asks, crossing his arms.
Jack glares. “You just let the captain do whatever he wants? He has a responsibility to the team. He can’t just take off practice so he can get fucked by—”
“Enough,” David interrupts. “What happened to his nose?” He addresses this to Matt, whose hand looks suspiciously red.
Matt shrugs. “You heard the shit he’s saying.”
David drags a hand over his face. Neil is the best at keeping Jack in his place, and he really should be there. “Kevin, where are they?”
“Not coming in,” Kevin says curtly. He usually tolerates Jack’s behaviour as long as it doesn’t interfere with the game, but there’s a sharp look in his eyes.
“And why didn’t he let me know?” David presses. Jack looks smug at that.
Kevin looks away. “He’s not feeling well.”
David sighs. Neil Josten has come to practice with a fever of one hundred and four. He knows Kevin isn’t saying that Neil is sick, and from the look on his face, Jack knows it too. “Why is that stopping him from coming to practice?”
“Neil works his ass off,” Matt interrupts. “He deserves to—”
“I just think it’s suspicious that Andrew is gone too,” Jack says.
“Leave it alone, Jack,” one of the other underclassmen, Claire, hisses.
“Kevin,” David says in a voice that invites no arguments, “Are they alright?”
Kevin’s gaze turns poisonous. “Have you checked the date?”
Wymack frowns. “It’s the nineteenth— oh.” January nineteenth, Neil Josten’s real birthday. The two year anniversary of the locker room incident.
“What’s so special about today?” Jack demands, looking up at Kevin.
“Fuck off,” Kevin says. “Come on, let’s get started. No slacking because Neil’s gone.”
David lets Kevin take control and sits in the stands. He dials a number on his phone.
Andrew picks up after a few rings, but doesn’t greet him, just waits for him to speak. “Is he okay?”
There’s a rustling sound, like Andrew is rolling over, and then, very quietly, “I thought this was above your paygrade.”
David is about to reply, but a soft, barely-there voice filters through the phone. “Drew, come back, I need— oh.” There’s a sharp inhale, the kind that usually precedes tears, and then the line goes silent. Minyard hung up.
He watches Kevin shout at the team for a few minutes more, but just before he stands up to take charge, his phone rings again. It’s Andrew.
“Hello?” Andrew doesn’t reply to that, but the ambient noise from the other line lets David know he’s there. “I just need to know if my captain is in one piece.”
“We should be back at practice by tomorrow,” Andrew says, sounding practiced. Neil probably told him to say it.
“Don’t force yourself,” David says after a moment’s pause. He looks up at Kevin on the court. “We’ve got it handled here.”
Andrew says, “Kevin isn’t as good a pseudo-captain as you think he is,” and hangs up. David walks back onto the court and finds Jack running laps with a murderous look on his face while everyone else runs drills. He glances at Kevin, who shrugs, but there’s a satisfied look on his face. He thinks of Andrew, who knew very well what Kevin would do faced with no captain, and he thinks of Kevin, defending Neil with determination to even David himself.
He grins. “Alright, little shits, get over here. Not you, Jack, keep running.”
v.
Jessica Devereaux is the captain of the New York Roughriders. She’s not unknown in the exy world. Yet, when Kevin Day shows up in the stands of the stadium during practice, she has to admit she’s a little starstruck.
He’s no doubt here to see Josten and Minyard. They have antisocial tendencies, and while Josten has done is best to reach out to the rest of their team since he was traded to New York at the end of last season, he and his boyfriend are still a bit of a mystery. They come out with the team and they talk to the others (well, Josten does), but Jessica can’t confidently say that they’re friends.
At the end of practice, Kevin comes down. Jessica is too far to hear him clearly, but it sounds like he’s criticizing Josten. From the story she’s heard of Day, it’s none too surprising, but still strange to see in action.
Later, when everyone’s showered and ready to go, Josten says, “We’re going for lunch.” The rookies look like they’re about to ask to tag along, but they hold back.
“What are you doing in New York, Kevin?” Jessica asks
Kevin shrugs. “We had a game in New Jersey last night and the next one is only on Monday, so I figured I’d drop by.”
Josten prods him in the side. “You can go right back home if you’re going to try and correct my grip.”
“It’s not my fault you—”
“Boys, behave,” Minyard chides, but it sounds incongruous in his monotone. It’s the most open Jessica has seen either of them around anyone but each other.
“Anyway,” Josten says forcefully with a sideways glare at Kevin, “we’re gonna do something tomorrow if you guys want to come along.” Minyard scowls as if he wishes the team wasn’t invited along, but Josten kisses him on the cheek and he stops glowering quite so hard.
The next day, half the team piles into Andrew and Neil’s apartment. No one on the Roughriders except for Jessica has been to the apartment before, so while the others explore, she sits on the empty armchair. Minyard and Kevin are already on the couch, the former sprawled across most of it and the latter crammed into the corner. Josten comes from the kitchen and puts a few glasses on the coffee table before staring down his boyfriend. “Move.”
Minyard shakes his head. “Find somewhere to sit.”
“I can’t lie down with you. The team is here,” Josten says. Jessica holds back a laugh at Josten’s disappointed face.
“There’s a loveseat over there,” Minyard pushes. Jessica thinks she spots a tiny smile on his face.
Josten pouts. “I guess I’ll just sit in Kevin’s lap instead.”
“Sure,” Minyard says. He and Josten stare each other down, but Minyard doesn’t relent. Josten shrugs and makes himself comfortable sitting on Kevin’s legs. Kevin’s arm wraps around Josten’s waist like this is a normal occurrence. Josten throws his legs onto the couch on top of Minyard’s and kicks him lightly.
“Fine,” Minyard sighs. Josten grins blindingly and Minyard sits up. Josten crawls off of Kevin and ends up half on the sofa and half on Minyard.
“Comfy?” Jessica asks with a smirk.
Josten nods. Minyard whispers something in his ear and he replies. Kevin snaps, “Don’t be gross, your team is here.”
“Wishing you had a special someone of your own?” Neil gloats, leaning farther into Andrew’s side.
“Wishing I were somewhere else,” Kevin mutters.
“Aw, tired of us already, Day?” Henderson, a backliner, asks.
“Not you,” Kevin replies easily. “Just wondering how you survive with them,” this is said with a nod toward his friends, “on your team.”
“Fuck off, Kev,” Josten hisses. “If you ever get traded to the same team as us we’re switching teams.”
Kevin shrugs as if he’s heard this all before. “As if I would ever want to be on your team.”
If Kevin wanted to be apart from them, he wouldn’t have taken one of his rare off weekends to stay in New York, but Jessica doesn’t mention that.
vi.
“What do you think about the popularity of your bromance among fans?” The reporter asks with an easy smile.
Neil frowns. “Does it count as a bromance if me and Andrew are married?”
Kevin gives him a look that says You are unbelievably stupid. “I’m certainly used to the press, but it’s new for me to have everyone so focused on things like what kind of video games we play when we see each other.”
The reporter asks, “And what kind of video games do you play?”
Andrew looks at Neil. “Yes, Neil, tell us.”
Neil glares. “I don’t know what kind of video games they like because I’m not allowed to play with them.”
“Why not?”
“He’s terrible at it. You’d think an exy player would have better hand-eye coordination,” Kevin says. It’s not quite his polished press voice; to Neil, it sounds like he’s having fun.
“The internet is dying to know. Why are you three so close? Multiple sources say you were stuck to one another in college,” the reporter says with a glint in his eyes.
Neil shrugs. “It’s not like, some big secret. We’re just… best friends.”