Chapter Text
I.
The first time Kevin sees Nathaniel, he thinks “How strange”.
Strange is the way Nathaniel seems both vibrating with energy and subdued; like a thin layer of ice hiding tumultuous waters underneath. His eyes shine when he sees Riko and Kevin, or so Kevin thinks; it’s a fleeting impression, quickly replaced by an impassible expression.
Strange is the way Nathaniel carries himself, like he’s trying his hardest to make himself small and invisible, yet his eyes dart around the Nest’s lounge like he wants to touch every cushion and jump on every couch. The blonde woman escorting him - his mother, Kevin assumes - puts a hand on the back of his neck, scowling. Nathaniel focuses then, staring only ahead, and takes the smallest step towards her side - away from the man on his other side, who is clearly his father. The resemblance is almost uncanny. Kevin thinks fleetingly of his mother, who he doesn’t remember very well, but everybody loves to compare him with through videos, photographs, interviews. He looks like his mother, but not this much, and maybe the pang he feels is jealousy - which doesn’t make sense, because he has the only thing that matters in common with her.
The Master greets the family - the Wesninskis - and then he ushers Nathaniel to Riko and Kevin. He knows they’ll do what’s expected of them - they don’t need supervision. Nathaniel has brought his own gear, but Riko scoffs at that ridiculous notion, and he gives him Raven gear.
“Who knows,” Riko says, grin wicked like the reaper’s sickle, “maybe you’ll be my number three.”
Nathaniel isn’t listening to him, though; he’s looking outside the court, where his parents seem to be fighting. Riko moves to shove him; Nathaniel’s reaction is lightning-quick. He brings up his racquet to intercept Riko’s arm, then pushes him away. Riko staggers and falls flat on his ass, and Kevin is so startled, so amazed, that he forgets himself and laughs.
“Oh, sorry,” Nathaniel says as he smiles at Kevin, “I did that on purpose.”
For a moment, Kevin thinks that having this Nathaniel around wouldn’t be so bad. He asks, “Is everything okay with your parents?”
The smile dies on Nathaniel lips. “They just disagree sometimes. My mum doesn’t want me to play.”
Kevin should’ve known better than to ask, he knows, so he just says, “Let’s play.”
Riko bangs his racquet on the floor, scowling. “Let’s.”
Nathaniel studies him. Then he grins like he can’t wait to throw him to the ground again, and they play.
When a Moriyama man comes to fetch them, Kevin has forgotten all about the Master and the Wesninskis and Riko trying to shove Nathaniel. The boy isn’t at their level - no one is - but he’s good , he’s a fury , and it’s the most fun Kevin has had in a long time. He almost protests when they’re interrupted. Even Riko looks like he he doesn’t even remember about being shoved; he looks satisfied, maybe even happy.
The man guides them to the elevator and through the doors of the eastern tower.
There is a man groveling and crying on the floor.
Lord Moriyama is in the room, not watching the man, who is clearly displeasing him. Kevin is only eleven, yet he knows better than that man: you don’t cry in Lord Moriyama’s presence.
Kevin is only eleven, so he thinks that the worst possible thing is displeasing Lord Moriyama, because his disappointment means exhausting drills, a cane to the back, being left out in the night’s cold.
He doesn’t know any better, yet.
Riko and Kevin are made to sit on one of the couches. Nathaniel remains standing, staring at the man. All the happy energy from before has leeched out of him. He looks ashen.
Lord Moriyama calls, and Nathaniel father enters. His icy blue eyes scan the room and ignore everyone but the Lord and the man on the floor. His affable smile turns wrong when he looks down at him. Two men follow him in, menacing like only mobsters can be.
Lord Moriyama greets him politely. Nathaniel slowly approaches his father and stands at his side. He carefully looks from Lord Moriyama, his father and the crying man.
His father looks at him, still smiling in that wrong way. “Where are your manners, Nathaniel?”
The boy jumps like he’s been yelled at. He greets Lord Moriyama. He looks at Riko and Kevin then, and then again to his father, unsure what to do. His father puts a hand on his shoulder and nudges him to the couch opposite Riko and Kevin’s with a shove that doesn’t look light at all. Nathaniel doesn’t make a sound.
Kevin feels a chill running down his spine. Where did Nathaniel’s liveliness go?
The ice-eyed man turns to the crying man. He asks, “Do you know who I am?”
The man says he doesn’t know. He looks like he has calmed down somewhat; maybe because they brought three children into the room; maybe because the man sees him smiling.
Wrong wrong wrong , Kevin thinks. He looks to Nathaniel. The boy is sitting with his back ramrod straight and an impassible expression on his face. Coupled with how his feet barely reach the floor, he looks uncanny. Disturbing. Dead even, he’s so still. It’s like he’s not breathing.
Kevin understands why when his father opens the bulky leather briefcase he was holding. Light glints off the array of knives spread on the table between the two couches. “I’m the Butcher,” Nathaniel’s father says, and the man starts begging. Kevin’s blood turns to ice. Certainly he doesn’t mean… certainly he won’t…
Kevin turns to Riko. He looks excited, inching forward slightly, like he wants to get closer, see better.
On the other side of the room, Nathaniel looks as cold as ice, the same ice in his eyes, in his father’s eyes.
The man gets up from the floor on shaky legs, looking around frantically - but the room is lined with Moriyama men, and there’s nowhere for him to go. Nathaniel’s father picks up a knife, turning it a few times this way and that, like he’s admiring it. Then he puts it down, picks another, and then another. All the while he’s telling the man all the reasons why Lord Moriyama is displeased with him, all his failures, his mistakes and, worse, his betrayals. The man begs and grovels, tries to justify himself. Nathaniel’s father opens the last flap of the briefcase, revealing an axe. He picks it up, testing its blade’s sharpness, but no blood wells on his finger. “See how dull this has become? To think the first time I used it, I hacked a man’s arm right off,” he says, and the man loses it . The Butcher’s men knock him down to the floor and hold him there.
“Now instead,” he goes on, smile as cold as a snake’s slithering against one’s skin, “I have to bear it down two, three times before it chops off a limb.”
The man screams for Lord Moriyama’s mercy. Kevin wants to run, but suddenly “displeasing Lord Moriyama” has taken a new meaning, and he doesn’t dare. The Butcher holds the axe high, and his smile fills with teeth and glee. Then he bears it down, and Kevin looks away just in time, but he can’t not hear the sickening, sharp noise of a blade cutting through flesh, the agonized scream.
Riko grabs his face and pulls at his hair, forcing him back to watch. “Look, Kevin,” he whispers, and the glee dripping from his voice is like venom, “look what happens to the people who don’t respect us as they should.”
Kevin sees the man reaching out with the bloody stump of his left arm, which is missing a hand. The Butcher shoves a foot on the arm, pinning it to the floor, and brings down the axe again. The man’s screams turn animal. He doesn’t sound human anymore. The Butcher wasn’t lying; it takes three tries to cut the man’s elbow. The white of a bone gleams through the red of the flesh. Blood gushes out, pooling rapidly on the floor. The Butcher carelessly kicks at the chopped off pieces, strewing them around. The hand lands just a few inches from where Kevin is sitting. Kevin stares at it as he struggles not to heave. Riko is too focused on what the Butcher is doing to notice that Kevin isn’t watching anymore. But he’s close, and his hands are still on Kevin’s neck and face, so Kevin feels him trembling. Kevin glances at him. Riko stares at the Butcher, at the man who’s being taken apart - alive and screaming and crying and begging and alive alive alive - and smiles, gleeful, almost manic, but he’s trembling, and a fine sheen of sweat is gathering above his upper lip, at the hairline of his temples. Lord Moriyama is right there, watching the man like he’s nothing, like he’s less than a speck of dust on a shoe. He’s not watching Riko, nor Kevin, but Kevin is watching him and he knows that’s a privilege Riko hasn’t.
Althoug Riko wants to, oh he wants to , Kevin knows, but he absolutely can’t.
What Kevin doesn’t know - and for the first time he wonders - is just where the line is between what Riko is and what he wants to be in front of Lord Moriyama.
Kevin is eleven, and he watches from Riko to the ice-eyed boy on the other side of the room, and he wonders for the first time what it’s like to craft a mask for a father.
Nathaniel is still sitting motionless, his expression rivaling Lord Moriyama’s in impassiveness. He doesn’t jump like Kevin whenever a new piece is chopped, he doesn’t look away from what the Butcher is doing. His eyes are dead. This, Kevin realizes, isn’t the first time he sees something like this.
A lifetime passes, slow and agonizing, and after being reduced to wheezes and feeble squeals, the man finally dies. His limbs are scattered in a hundred pieces around the floor. The Butcher hands the axe to one of his men, and then he beckons Nathaniel forward. His arms are covered in blood to the elbows. When his son stands by his side, he puts a hand on his shoulder, and the blood starts to seep into the boy’s shirt. Nathaniel goes rigid. His fingers twitch, like he wants to ball them into fists, until he spreads them on the side of his thighs. Kevin can’t see his face now, so he can only wonder how his mask is holding up.
The Butcher says, “I’m grateful, Lord Moriyama, that you’re giving my son this chance to be useful.”
Lord Moriyama stands, completely disinterested. “It is my understanding that the boy needs to find a purpose indeed. However, I am not directly involved with these small matters. My brother will decide whether he gets to join the team or not.”
“Of course, Lord Moriyama.” The Butcher’s fingers dig into Nathaniel’s shoulder, and the boy’s fingers grip the fabric of his pants.
Lord Moriyama leaves the room. Before following him, the Butcher shoots his son a glare full of loathing. It’s so at odds with the smile he’s worn until now that Kevin thinks, for a moment, that he imagined it.
“Don’t be useless,” the Butcher says lowly, and then he exits the room. He crosses the Master on his way out, but he doesn’t even acknowledge his presence. The Master ignores the bloody mess on the floor and looks down on Nathaniel.
“I watched your scrimmage,” he says, slow and deliberate.
Nathaniel is drinking every word.
“Only one isn’t enough. You will come back for a second,” the Master finishes.
“Yes,” Nathaniel rushes to say, and Kevin stares at him. He sounds so lively , suddenly, and it’s so strange. Like he’s coming back to life.
“Be sure not to bring your mother next. I will not have my game disrespected in my court.”
“Yes, sir,” Nathaniel responds, and then he turns to Riko and Kevin.
His smile is enthusiastic, like he can’t wait, like nothing happened. Like everything is fine.
II.
The first time Kevin sees Neil, he’s coolly unimpressed with him. What idiot refuses a contract with Kevin’s team?
“I’m not good enough to play on the same court as a champion,” Neil says, and he’s right only partly, because it’s not a matter of being good (not that any of the Foxes - save Andrew, when he can be bothered to make an effort - are good enough to play with Kevin, or with any class I team, really). It’s a matter of talent and a matter of dedication, a matter of putting exy always first and always striving to be closer to the unattainable - perfection - and that? That is the only thing that matters to Kevin, and very few have it.
It’s not something you can see in game statistics or videos either, and yet.
As Neil points out, there are thousands of strikers out there who would sign anything - up to and including a deal with the devil - to play with Kevin. Neil is skittish, he’s evasive, and Wymack might care about his circumstances and be his own personal brand of kind all he wants, but Kevin doesn’t care.
Kevin cares only about one thing.
He came way too close to losing it to let this fearful boy oppose him. His protests are inconsequential; Kevin has chosen, and that is it. Neil Josten will bend. After all, what else does he have anyway? If Wymack chose him, he’s probably in desperate need to get out of Millport, Arizona, as fast as he can.
The only thing that matters to Kevin is the passionate, desperate drive that leaves one trembling and on fire at the end of a game.
And no matter how pathetic Neil looks right now - clutching his duffel’s strap like he was ready to bolt - Kevin has seen it.
He cuts Neil off with nonchalance when he says, “I won’t play with Kevin.”
“You will,” Kevin says, and there’s no doubt in his mind he’s speaking the truth.
Wymack shrugs at Neil. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re not leaving here until you say yes. Kevin says we have to have you, and he’s right.”
We have to have you , Kevin thinks as bile and fear clog his throat, and he watches Wymack, watches his reasons and his resolve to try again and again and again, no matter how many times he’s let down, and he doesn’t let himself think that word.
I have to have you , Kevin lets out, before shutting that thought down, and with it the dark pit of despair where Riko’s gleaming teeth and sadistic laughter lie.
The only thing that matters is that Neil has the kind of drive that Kevin can mold into what the Foxes need.
“You play like you have everything to lose,” Kevin says, and he sees Neil’s recognition. He knows what Kevin is talking about. “That’s the only kind of striker worth playing with.”
III.
The first time Kevin recognizes Neil, it feels like being plunged into ice-cold, churning water. Jean’s venomous words eco in his ears:
I suggest you speak with him if you do not want everyone to know you are the Butcher’s son.
The Butcher.
Kevin remembers.
A man with ice in his eyes.
The glint off an array of knives.
An axe, a snake’s smile, and then the axe bearing down, and down, and down.
A man screaming and begging until only the crying, animal part remained.
Blood pooling on the floor.
A polished shoe kicking, a hand rolling at Kevin’s feet.
The Butcher smiling, the Butcher with blood up to his elbows, the Butcher scaring his own son to an ashen, fearful thing whereas before, when they had played together, he had been so lively, so fearless.
Neil shoves Kevin away from Jean and the table, and Kevin remembers something else, something he had long buried. He remembers a smartass boy, a boy who didn’t have the slightest idea how things worked, stopping Riko and then shoving him to the ground, and then doing the unthinkable. Kevin can’t remember the words, exactly, but he remembers the challenge, the fierceness of them. His lungs seem ready to collapse at the thought.
“That’s not true,” Kevin says, even as he pieces his single memory of Nathaniel humiliating Riko and all the times Neil antagonized him, consequences be damned.
How could he not see it? How could he not recognize him? Of all the exy players, of all the files, of all the most improbable people, he just had to find the one who should’ve never been found? If he wasn’t drowning in panic, Kevin would laugh.
What the fuck is Neil - no, Nathaniel, thinking? Has he fucking lost his mind? Why did he even accept a place in the Foxes, under the spotlight--- oh God, God , that time at Kathy’s, Kevin insisted, Kevin forced him to , and Nathaniel was so against it and he was right , what if his father finds him now, what if he already knows, what if---
“Shut up,” Nathaniel says, if to him or Jean, Kevin doesn’t know. “Don’t say anything else.”
They’re shepherded away from the Ravens, and Kevin would be relieved if his mind wasn’t ringing with the notion of Neil being Nathaniel. When they sit down he uselessly takes Nathaniel’s chin, studies his face better, but the truth is he truly doesn’t remember what he looked like. He had seen him only that day, and for an hour, maybe two, and for years, in Kevin’s mind, that horrifying day was the moment he truly understood who the Moriyamas are.
But the Butcher. You don’t forget a man like that.
Kevin has seen him, after that day, still a trusted man of the Moriyamas. Kevin has heard the murmurs, too. Of his disgrace - the wife running, taking the son with her. Of his dishonor, both because his wife took Moriyama money from him, and because the son who slipped away had been paied for already - one fourth of his value, if he ever was really drafted, in advance.
Kevin has been lucky enough to avoid the Butcher, staying well out of his business, but he has seen him nonetheless, and now he searches his features in Nathaniel’s. He’s back at that night for a moment, when Nicky told Nathaniel they all knew he wore contacts anyway. Under the artificial - boring, forgettable, of course forgettable - brown, his eyes are blue.
Icy blue.
Kevin wants to know so many things - where is Nathaniel’s mother, why did he run, what the fuck he thinks he’s---
“No, Kevin. Not here. You and I will talk tomorrow,” he says, and he’s so controlled, regardless of how shaky his hands are half-hidden under the table, of how sick he looks. Kevin almost has enough clarity left to envy him. There is no control in how his thoughts churn. When he leaves, followed by Abby, his only clarity lies in how quickly he downs drink after drink. Everything else is chaos.
Riko, who knows about it all. Riko, who hates Nathaniel. Riko, who will stop at nothing to crush them.
Kevin downs another glass against the phantom noise of bones crushing, of blinding pain.
Lord Moriyama, who does not forget.
The Butcher, who’s been searching for his lost son. The Butcher, loudly declaring he was going to have his revenge on his wife by chopping their son to pieces in front of her.
The Butcher that day, cold and unforgiving, selling his son away, knowing, maybe hoping that failure would mean death.
Kevin remembers a boy with fierce eyes and a smile on his face as he plays, and feels laughter chocking him.
Of course Neil plays like he has everything to lose. How right Kevin had been, and God he needs another drink.
Neil is killing himself to play exy.