Chapter Text
After parking on what was possibly the tightest road Neil had ever seen, Neil slid from the backseat of the car slightly disgruntled. The the air hit him like a shockwave and his eyes opened wide. His first thought was of a gym and the salt of sweaty athletes, but this was something entirely different. It was a sweet kind of salt, if that was possible. Sweet salt on a warm breeze. A breeze that carried wisps of moisture and beat away the heat of the overhead sun.
Neil was snapped from his reverie by the sound of Matt laughing. He looked across the street to see Matt standing in a doorway, gripped in the strangling embrace of the man who had just emerged. As soon as the embrace ended, he flung himself at Dan, giving her a similarly crushing hug. As he repeated the painfully cheerful process on Allison, Neil took the chance to actually look at him. The man was exactly what you would expect a beach-dwelling surfer in Portugal to look like. He was tall and lean, with brown skin that had tanned darker with time in the sun. His wavy, jet-black hair fell to his jaw, and an irresistible grin appeared to be permanently affixed to his face.
“Neil, this is Nicky,” Matt said as Nicky stepped back from Allison. “Nicky, this is Neil.”
Nicky whistled. “Which way do you swing?” he asked, giving Neil a once-over.
Neil stood, slightly shocked while Allison laughed and Matt snorted.
A tiny, blonde man emerged from behind Nicky, taking that as his cue to enter the conversation. “You’re disgusting, Nicky,” he said before turning to Neil, “Ignore him.”
Nicky wasn’t dissuaded in the slightest, raising an eyebrow at Neil rather than apologizing for his forwardness, as the blonde clearly expected him to do.
“I don’t swing,” Neil said.
Nicky made a small humph of disapproval, but his overly-cheerful grin never left his face. He left that conversation where it was, but something told Neil it was only a temporary reprieve.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” said Nicky, gesturing dramatically to the door behind him. “Aaron and I can grab your stuff. Make yourselves at home. Allison, there’s liquor in the cabinet above the fridge.”
Allison nodded in approval.
“It’s good to see you, Nicky,” Dan said as she stepped over the doorframe. Neil followed, looking around the apartment as he stepped inside. There was a staircase that spiraled up from the right had corner, and two windows above the kitchen counter on the same side. The majority of the opposite wall was evidently sliding glass doors based on the light that spilled through, but whatever was beyond was obscured by fluttering curtains. It was a frankly decadent space, much larger than it looked from the outside. The floor was made of rouge tiles and the walls were painted a pale cream. It was shockingly color-coordinated for a couple of college-age guys. Blue accents filled the space, from paintings to vases to the furniture of the living room and the handles on the cabinetry. Neil crossed the space, walking past the kitchen and the living room, and pushed open the curtains to find himself on a similarly color-coordinated patio, breeze immediately ruffling his hair.
His breath caught in his throat. Frothy, white breaks crashed over one another against a background of beige and rouge cliffside that stretched out endlessly, disappearing into the ocean mist. White houses with red roofs decorated the first few cliff tops, saddled in mossy green plants that topped the bluffs like icing. The waves below lapped up onto a golden beach only a street away from the patio on which he stood, surfers rolling through the waves and people running through the sand and splashing in the shallows. It wasn’t that Neil had never seen a beach before, but he thought he’d never take joy in the sight of a coastline again after burying his mother’s charred bones in the sand to the soundtrack of waves crashing in the background. This however, was too beautiful to hate.
•••
Andrew was out surfing. Which, although unsurprising, had sent Nicky into a fit when Andrew made to walk out the door that afternoon.
“The Upperclassmen are arriving in 20 minutes!” he’d exclaimed. “The least you can do is stick around to glare at them for a second before you leave. They’ll want to say hi and I’m sure some part of you, deep down, misses them.”
Andrew knew he was wrong. So Andrew was out surfing.
He stopped stretching and paddled past the other surfers and out over the incoming crests, feeling the unavoidable sting of salt in the back of his throat. He breathed deeply, basking in the bitter sensation. When he was out in the waves, Andrew felt nothing but calm. Nothing else could be felt when he was so focused on reading the water and watching the waves come in. It was the reason he had taken so quickly to surfing. Better than any stupid mandated therapy session could’ve been, being out in the ocean stopped the constant inner turmoil that his brain was so insistent on maintaining. Particularly when he had been on his meds, the focus required to survive in the surf cleared away the hyperactive, euphoric intoxication he despised and allowed him to experience brief moments of calm.
He swam to the edge of the surf zone and sat on his board for a moment, feeling the low-hanging mist pushed against his face by the relentless winds. He checked the area around him, watching the familiar faces shuffle around to give him and his intense glare some space. He focused on the churn of the surf and the surge of the water around him, waiting as his brain quieted into the familiar clam. And then he let the waves carry him away.
•••
As Neil stared out at the crashing waves, a low chuckle from nearby startled him. How had he not noticed another person on the patio?
“Pretty nice, right?”
Neil whipped around to stare at the dark-haired man sitting on a chair to his left and was immediately thrown into a panic. Kevin Day. The man sitting on the porch to his left that Neil had somehow not noticed was Kevin Day. He wore a trace of a smile as he glanced up at Neil and away from the screen on his lap. There appeared to be some kind of sports game playing on it, and even with the glare obscuring the screen Neil was 100 percent certain that it was exy. He expected Kevin to recognize him, expected to see Kevin’s eyes shoot wide and the trace of a smile to leave his face, expected him to replay the time they stood in the same room and watched Neil’s father dismember a man. Kevin just continued, unperturbed by Neil’s startled silence.
“I moved in with them last year. Nicky bought it a while back and got a right deal when the lady that owned it died.”
Neil’s heart pounded against his ribcage like the footsteps of a sprinting soccer player, but he composed himself externally and attempted conversation. “That explains the decor, I suppose,” he said.
Kevin scowled slightly and turned to face Neil fully, revealing the tattoo on his left cheek that Neil knew would be there. “No, that was me. The others are hopeless at keeping a nice house, but it would have been ridiculous to keep it the way it was originally. It looked like an old lady’s cottage when I moved in."
Even with the wild panic surging through Neil, he had to bite back the urge to tell him it still looked that way. There was nothing to gain from antagonizing Kevin, particularly when he were giving him a place to stay. Not that he would let Neil stay for a second if he knew who he was.
Neil looked back out at the surf, feeling his heart pick up a beat faster. The others hadn’t known about his fear of the ocean when they planned a beach vacation, of course. They were too considerate for that. All they had known was that Neil had never traveled for the sake of vacationing before, and that he had never swum in the ocean. Matt jumped at the opportunity, suggesting to stay at “Nicky’s place,” which had meant nothing to Neil at the time but elicited a chorus of enthusiastic agreement from the others. When Neil protested at inconveniencing the others and whoever’s house they would be staying at, Matt told him to suck it up and said he could call it a graduation trip for the girls if it made Neil happy. That was the end of that argument. Allison threw some cash at the idea and here they were, two weeks later, settling into the beach house of some long-lost friend halfway across the world.
A friend who happened to live with Kevin Day. What were the chances of that, Neil wondered. He’d assumed he was in the clear when the news stations lit up about Kevin’s sudden and unexpected move out of the states. Portugal, they’d said, to be an assistant coach for some poorly-rated team known only for their ferocity and the “difficult backgrounds” from which their members were recruited. Neil had watched from afar as Kevin became a world-renowned exy star, always wondering if he’d see him again. If he’d been religious, Neil would have prayed that he wouldn’t. And yet here he was, 22 identities later, standing not three feet away from the star himself. Maybe he should’ve been religious, Neil thought bitterly.
He gave Kevin a last glance, heart still hammering in throat, before retreating from the patio. If Kevin hadn’t recognized him then, he was unlikely to in the following days. Or he had in fact recognized Neil, and was waiting to corner him with the ugly truth when Neil least expected it. Surely no man had that kind of composure, Neil thought. But what if he’d already been prepared for Neil’s arrival? It was Neil who hadn’t known what he was getting into when he boarded that plane, not Kevin.
“Oi, Forest Gump, want to stop running your brain around in circles and enjoy the freaking beach?”
Neil’s internal debate was shattered as he realized Matt was talking to him. He finally focused on the scene, finding the whole group (minus Kevin) crammed into the living room with drinks in their hands. Five faces tilted up at him expectantly. Neil gave his best impression of a smile and stepped forward toward the seat that Dan was indicating to him. Allison shoved a drink in his hand as he stepped past her and he made a noise of protest, trying to give it back.
“Oh shut up,” she said, forcing him to take it, “we made you a non-alcoholic one.”
The moment Neil’s butt hit the seat, the questions started.
“How long have you been playing exy? They tell me they met you through the team,” Nicky spouted excitedly. “What position do you play? Are you sure you’re not gay? Why don’t you drink? This is a really great place to learn how to surf. Have you ever surfed before? Andrew teaches people. I think he hates it but you can never really tell. Did you meet Kevin out on the balcony there?”
Nicky paused for a moment, looking at Neil expectantly. Neil just sat there, eyes wide and arm frozen with his drink halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowered his drink and opened his mouth to speak, but hadn’t even processed Nicky’s first question yet. Suddenly Aaron, who was perched on the couch beside Nicky put an arm on the excitable man’s shoulder and gestured behind him to the kitchen.
“Lets give the man a second to adjust and make a second round of drinks,” he said. “The rest of us are ready for more.”
Nicky shrugged and grinned as he looked around at the Upperclassmen’s empty glasses.
“Okay,” he acquiesced, shooting Neil a flirty smile and a wink. “I’ll have to dig up all your dirty little secrets another time. How does tonight sound?”
“Nicky, you have a boyfriend,” Aaron reminded him, dragging him out of the circle of chairs.
Neil watched them walk across the room, relieved by the escape from the questioning, slightly disturbed by the idea of Nicky discovering his secrets, and utterly confused by the whole encounter.
Dan laughed. “It’s good to see not much has changed.”