Chapter Text
Andrew
Andrew had never been like other kids his age. When he was smaller it was less noticeable; he was shy or a bookworm or quiet. As he went through middle school, as the scars started appearing and his body involuntarily flinched every time someone came near him, it became glaringly obvious it wasn’t just his personality. The silence, the scowls, they were all defense mechanisms people noticed but never commented on.
And now? By now his classmates, his teammates, his brother, they all knew it was better to stay as far away as possible from the acidic person he turned into over the years. It was why Andrew could be at the court right now, close to midnight the day before his sophomore year began. No one would come looking for him and for a few hours he could be truly fucking alone. At least, that was how his Summer nights had been going for three months. Apparently, one more was too much to ask for.
Andrew paused a few feet from the shut court door, glancing around the empty stands for other strays. Andrew fucking hated strays, especially when they wandered onto the court during his only hours of sanity. Except, here’s the thing: Andrew may hate strays, but he grudgingly enjoyed and understood exy. He knew the game like nobody else,except maybe Kevin Day and Riko Moriyama. Andrew knew the good players from the mediocre ones, and then he could separate those into subcategories of their own: strong reach, but not aggressive enough; good save rate, but sloppy on passing to the strikers afterwards. He had statistics constantly running around in his mind, for both his teammates, their high school rivals, and the college, pro, and Court teams. If nothing else, it was something to think about when the alternatives became too much.
And the boy occupying Andrew’s space tonight? He was good. Maybe even great, if Andrew looked close enough. Yeah, he hated strays, but it had been a long time since he had practiced with someone on his level. Plus, there was no one else around this time of night; no Aaron sending him dirty looks and then filthier curses when Andrew responded with nothing but indifference. No Nicky to hover over him, wondering if today was the day Andrew would snap and kill one of them. No teachers, no students, no one but him and this mysteriously good player.
Andrew had barely turned the handle of the court door when the boy stopped midswing to look at Andrew. The exy ball fell to the ground with three light bounces when it became apparent it’s owner wasn’t going to make the rebound. Andrew stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and tilted his head at the boy in front of him. He couldn’t have been older than Andrew himself, with a lean body and stature only a few inches taller than Andrew. From six feet away Andrew watched him run a hand through mud-dark hair, equally dark brown eyes glancing from the door, to Andrew, to the rest of the court.
Looking for another exit, Andrew realized belatedly.
Andrew could see it in his eyes, the itch to run, mostly because the feeling ran through his own blood most days, too. Andrew didn’t remember the last time he had felt safe around other people, couldn’t think of a time he had gone to bed without his door locked, a chair under the knob and his dresser blocking his only window. He hadn’t said a word to this kid, had only been standing there for two minutes, but Andrew could feel on an instinctual level what the he wanted to do. Andrew had never been a comforting person, even before Drake, and never to a stranger, but that voice in his head, the one that only wanted to play exy and fucking forget about everything else going on in his head told him to make this kid stay. If only to keep him out of his house for a little while longer.
“What position do you play?” Andrew asked. The kid didn’t seem keen on answering him, so he kept talking. “I’m a goalie.”
“Striker.” He replied, rabbit eyes still running around the perimeter of the court.
“Want to do shootouts?” And, as if he had asked a different question entirely, his body relaxed, his eyes meeting Andrew’s as he nodded.
They played for hours, a decision he distantly thought he would have regretted if his mind was anywhere other than the exy court. Every shot Andrew deflected brought a surge of adrenaline through his veins, a hum under his skin that had nothing to do with harsh hands or hot breath on the back of his neck. No, this was something only exy had ever done to him. Andrew felt free in a way he had never felt before. Every time he picked up an exy racket he remembered why he bothered getting up in the morning.
At the end of their…practice, both of them slick with sweat and panting for their next breath, they met in the middle of the court. This close, Andrew could see the color of his racquet, a navy blue and gray that looked suspiciously like his school colors. His theory was only proved further when he looked at the logo stamped onto the exy ball in his hand.
Oakland High Property.
But it wasn’t like Andrew cared all that much about anything, so he didn’t comment. Instead he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Abram.”
“Okay, Abram. I’m Andrew. Same time tomorrow?” Andrew asked.
Abram nodded, leaving him alone on the court. Andrew went to bed at three that morning and didn’t dream of Drake for the first time since he got out of Juvie.
*
Abram, true to his word, showed up the next night. And the next, and the next, and suddenly two months had passed of playing midnight exy. Andrew didn’t know where Abram went to school, didn’t know what his parents did for work or where he lived, hell, he didn’t even know his last name. But, Andrew knew his favorite foods were all fruits-strawberries, mangoes, and peaches-and he knew he had an accent that could only be described as East-coast-british. He knew Abram favored his right hand but knew how to play with his left if he needed to; knew he spoke French and German fluently (the latter because he helped Andrew with it most nights, too).
Abram knew things about Andrew, too. How he used to be a foster kid and his cousin now had full custody of both him and his twin brother, who was the bane of his existence. Abram knew Andrew wouldn’t eat a vegetable if it were up to him and preferred to have a diet of sugar, carbs, and minimal proteins just because he could. Most importantly, though, Abram didn’t force these truths out of him, and for each truth he gave up one was given in return.
Andrew liked equal transactions. He liked it when things made sense, liked it even more when he made things make sense in his head. Abram was, despite the truths he gave up, still one big question mark. Andrew wanted to know where Abram got the thin scar on his left arm from, and wanted to show him his own arms riddled with pink-white scars in return. But Abram never offered and Andrew had too much pride to ask.
So they practiced instead. When the conversation stilted, Abram showed him a new drill or asked Andrew to show him goalie tricks. They were comfortable together. Andrew, well, Andrew was beginning to think he was his friend. *
“Are you sure this is okay?” Abram whispered at Andrew’s back.
They were climbing up the stairs of his house a little past two in the morning. It was Friday night and Andrew’s team had just won a game that put them in the running for championships. Andrew’s blood was hot under his skin, the adrenaline still burning little fires all over his body. If this was a shit idea, which he really didn’t believe, he would blame it on the post game energy and hope Abram believed him.
“I’m sure. Aaron’s out at one of the after parties and probably won’t be back until tomorrow and Nicky’s asleep.” Andrew assured his friend.
“What if he wakes up?”
Andrew scoffed. “He won’t wake up.”
At the top of the stairs, Andrew waited for Abram to catch up before leading him into his room. Andrew had never shown anyone his room that wasn’t related to him, besides the probation officer, of course. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have risked it, Abram’s disgust or rejection to a part of himself he had never voluntarily given up, but tonight was different. Abram had showed up to the game.
He had shown up without Andrew asking.
Andrew couldn’t remember a time when anyone had shown up for him. Nicky only went to games to see Aaron, and Aaron only went because he was more likely to get into college with exy on his application. But Abram didn’t sit in the stands for any reason other than Andrew and, well, Andrew didn’t exactly know how to make that an even transaction. The only thing he could think of was to make himself as vulnerable as Abram had been tonight as he sat huddled into himself at the top corner of the high school stadium.
It was more than that, though, even if Andrew hadn’t yet admitted it to himself. Abram tried to hide as best as he could, but Andrew wasn’t blind. He could tell when he hadn’t gotten anything to eat before their night practices, when he couldn’t sleep from the midnight colored circles under his brown eyes. Andrew could see how Abram deflected when their conversation moved from the light topics to more serious ones, ones regarding his house and his family. Andrew wouldn’t push, but even he could tell when someone didn’t want to go home.
Mostly because he felt the same every day.
Andrew adjusted the plate in his hands, watched as Abram clung to the two bottles of water with weary eyes. Andrew, briefly, wondered when the last time Abram slept was. Then, less briefly, he wondered what he went back to after their practices. If he went home after their practices.
“You’re safe here, Abram.” Andrew reassured.
And, not for the first time, he wondered when he became the type of person to reassure instead of hurt. When Abram had become, not gentle, but something close to it. Something other than rough and psychotic.
Abram took a breath. “Is there a lock on your door?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Andrew smirked back.
With Abram’s shoulders relaxed, Andrew felt like he could breathe again. Andrew unlocked the door to his room with the key hanging around his neck, gesturing for Abram to go in first before he closed and locked the door once more. Andrew’s room was sparse, mostly because he didn’t hold attachment to many material things, but also because he didn’t actually have many material things. Most of his belongings were gifts from Nicky or hand-me-downs from Aaron, which really shouldn’t have constituted as “hand-me-downs because” Andrew was two minutes older than Aaron.
His bedding was black, sheets, pillowcases, comforter and overlaying blanket. His floors were a musty cream color that Andrew thought might have once been white but were now too soaked with both Andrew’s cigarette smoke and Tilda’s…whatever. (He didn’t know what his room had been before he moved in with them). The walls of his room were painted a light gray, and other than a single poster of the US Court logo-an exy racket with the American flag draped lavishly around it-were empty. It wasn’t home, and it only rarely felt safe, but it was all Andrew’s.
“I like it,” Abram announced after spinning in a circle just inside the threshold of the room.
“I live to please,” Andrew said, setting the plate down on his desk between his school’s playbook and an English essay riddled with his teacher’s red ink.
“Do you read a lot?” Abram ran a thin finger over the spine of Andrew’s books, the only possessions that had stayed his throughout the years of foster care, juvie, and now Tilda’s.
Andrew’s bookshelf wasn’t full, not even close, but he had more books than he had outfits in his closet. His brother thought they were for show, though Andrew didn’t understand how his brother hadn’t figured out that Andrew didn’t do anything unless he wanted to. Showing off wasn’t in his nature and, if someone believed that, Andrew figured it was more their problem than his. Andrew thought Abram would understand, though. Behind his mask of apathy he had around everyone else, Andrew felt everything in such perfect clarity it was agony more often than not.
Reading, going to school, playing exy, they were all distractions for what was going on inside his head. Alcohol helped sometimes, but Andrew was too small to feel anything other than obliterated after a few shots most nights. What helped Andrew the most was something that required critical thinking, required focus. If his focus was on a striker’s statistics or a book’s alternate world he wouldn’t be thinking about handprints stuck on his body or bruises on his hips.
“Sometimes,” Andrew said. Abram met his eyes and, just as Andrew thought, looked at him with complete understanding in his muddy eyes.
“What’s your favorite?” Abram asked, turning back to the shelf.
“Catcher in the Rye,” Andrew said without thinking, joining him at the shelf and nudging the book from its place. The cover was bent, its pages yellowed with age and riddled with Andrew’s messy annotations.
“Makes sense,” Abram snorted. Andrew knocked his shoulder against Abram’s, his eyes rolling to the back of his head.
“Do you have a favorite?” Andrew asked.
“No,” Abram seemed to shut down at the question. “I have more interest in that exy playbook and the sandwich on your desk.”
Andrew gestured for him to have at it, flopping on the bed as Abram started eating. Later in the night, as Andrew helped make a bed of blankets on the floor facing his bedroom door, Andrew would think it was the most peaceful night he could remember in Tilda’s house. He would remember Abram throwing potato chips into Andrew’s mouth from across the room, remember the sound of Abram’s laugh as he fell out of Andrew’s spinning chair, remember the cadence of Abram’s deep breaths as he slept through the night.
For years to come, Andrew would remember dreaming that this could last forever.