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fuzzballsheltiepants · 7 years ago

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Delayed Reaction (The Fear of Falling Remix, aka the Nicky Remix)

I wrote this for the fantastic AFTG remix/redux challenge, which was an utter blast. It was inspired by this amazing fic, by @sunrise-and-death. It let me explore Nicky’s feelings after the events of the series, especially his role in the Eden’s Twilight disasterTM of the first book. It’s a bit of a departure for me, lol, but I loved writing it. References forced drugging/forced kissing. Read on AO3 if you prefer. (I apologize if you’re on mobile and the keep reading link doesn’t work.)

The second Neil wrenched his arm out of his grasp, Nicky knew.

The alcohol coursing through his bloodstream left him slow and stupid as Neil planted his hands against Nicky’s chest and shoved. Tripping over his own feet, Nicky crashed backwards into some faceless people who were dancing in a tight pack. Cursing, the clubbers bounced away while Aaron got to his feet in what would have been a leap had he been sober.

“What the hell was that?” Aaron snapped at Neil, whose face went from white to red in a second.

“I’m going to get some air,” Neil said, and disappeared, weaving through the crowd towards the back doors.

Aaron grabbed Nicky’s arm and helped haul him to his feet. He staggered over to the table and dropped his head into his hands. He felt more than saw Aaron settle next to him. “Seriously,” Aaron shouted over the thundering base, “what just happened?”

Nicky felt like he was going to vomit, but he didn’t think it was from the alcohol. That had been actual fear in Neil’s face, before anger and embarrassment had swept it away. Neil, afraid. Of him. He let his elbows slide out from under him until his forearms rested on the table, keeping his forehead pressed against them.

For an endless moment he remembered being surrounded by four men, being punched and kicked and shoved; the vicious laughter and taunts echoing in the alley, the desperate need to cry out but the inability to get enough air. It had taken months before he had been able to get in and out of the club without terror, and over a year before he had been able to dance again, to enjoy the feel of other bodies around him.

The sound of a tray full of glasses being set carefully on the table made him bury his face deeper into his arms. Andrew. Oh, God, how could he ever look Andrew in the eye again?

“Did someone break Nicky?” Andrew asked flatly.

“Your boy toy,” Aaron answered. “Nicky wanted him to go dance, and he shoved him into a group of dancers for no reason then took off.”

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Nicky said. The words were muffled against the table and looking up was impossible, but somehow he knew Andrew heard. Heavy eyes bored into the top of his head then disappeared.

“What do you mean?” Aaron asked. Nicky felt perversely grateful that his voice was different from Andrew’s. “He’s gone,” Aaron added unnecessarily.

“I kissed him,” Nicky mumbled into his arms.

“What?”

“Neil.” Nicky sighed and sat up. “I kissed him.”

“Dude. You’ve been sitting here all night, I would’ve noticed. How much have you had to drink?” Aaron laughed.

Too much, always too much and not enough. “Not tonight. His first time here.” The room was spinning and Nicky braced one of his hands against the table. “Andrew…Andrew told me to keep him high.”

“I don’t understand,” Kevin said, downing one of the fresh drinks as if that would help clarify things.

“I kissed him to give him more dust.” Nicky pointed at his mouth to make sure it was clear, nodding at their expressions. “He didn’t want me to.”

All traces of amusement were gone from Aaron’s face. “Andrew didn’t know.” Nicky shook his head. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Neil won’t let him,” Kevin assured them with a confidence born of copious amounts of vodka.

“I am way too sober for this,” Aaron said, reaching for the tray. He was on his second drink—well, his sixth if you counted the first round—when Andrew reappeared, alone.

Andrew didn’t say anything, and neither did the rest of them. Aaron and Kevin knocked back one last drink each before the three of them followed Andrew out of the club in a line, Aaron bringing up the rear. Nicky felt absurdly like he was at an elementary school class trip, following a teacher out of a museum. There was a picture book he had loved as a child, with drawings of the big dark mama and papa ducks, the little yellow ducklings marching in between. He imagined they looked the reverse, he and Kevin with their black hair towering in between the tow-headed twins. He would have laughed if he hadn’t felt like crying.

Andrew pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Kevin fled. Aaron did not; he looked between Andrew and Nicky until he saw something in Andrew’s face that made his mouth tighten. With a venomous glare at Neil, he scooted out of the car and into the house, lingering for a long moment in the doorway.

Nicky had no idea what Andrew was going to do. Andrew had once told him that he would kill him if he touched Neil; he hadn’t understood the protective instinct at the time, but now it made all too much sense. If Andrew was going to make good on that promise now, Nicky wouldn’t fight him.

He hoped Aaron would understand. He knew Erik would not.

“I am going to make a deal with you,” Andrew said, sounding as if he were making a grocery list. Neil was watching, expression unreadable. There was no trace of the panic that had earlier ravaged his features, but that was still all Nicky could see. He felt his eyes start to burn and dug his nails into his palms to try to drive it back. “You will promise me that you will never touch someone without their consent again. And in exchange, I will not kill you.”

Nicky nodded; he should have felt relief but all he really was aware of was the guilt of getting away with something undeserved. He was pretty sure he was babbling something but had no idea what useless words were falling out of his mouth. Andrew’s expression was getting flatter and finally Neil interrupted.

“It’s okay, Nicky. I forgive you.”

The tears overflowed then. Andrew ordered him out of the car and roared out of the driveway before Nicky could do more than stumble onto the lawn. He watched the taillights glow at the end of the street then dragged his sorry carcass into the house.

Aaron and Kevin were waiting for him. Well, Aaron was. Kevin was technically in the living room as well but clearly on a different plane of consciousness. “We need to talk about this,” Aaron said

“Tomorrow.”

“Nicky—”

“Please, Aaron. Just…tomorrow.”

Aaron gave him a long searching look, then disappeared upstairs to collapse in his bed. Nicky rearranged Kevin so he could breathe and wouldn’t choke if he vomited, dropped a trash can next to his face, and dragged himself into his room. Not bothering to undress, he flopped backward onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

There was dust on the edges of the fan that he needed to wipe off. Part of him wanted to start the fan, see if the dust would rain down all over the room, but that would require getting up. After a while he kicked his boots off. Sleep darted away from him every time he reached towards it.

It was closer to morning than night when he heard the door open again. He went out into the hall to see Andrew half-carrying a sleepy Neil, kicking the door shut behind them. Andrew glanced at him, eyes sharp as his knives, before scooping Neil fully into his arms and heading up the stairs.

*****

It was a silent morning followed by a silent drive back to campus. Nicky knew if he opened his mouth stupidity would spew out so he kept it clamped shut until they were back at Fox Tower and his dorm room door was shut firmly behind him. He barely made it to the couch before his knees gave out.

“Are you ever going to talk to me about this?” Aaron asked.

“About what?” Matt appeared behind him. “What happened?”

“I’m an asshole,” Nicky said. “That’s it, that’s all there is to say.”

“Bullshit,” snapped Aaron. “What happened with Andrew?”

“We made a deal, okay? I don’t touch someone without consent, he doesn’t kill me.”

Aaron snorted. “I can’t fucking believe you. Why would you ever think that was okay?” He was looking at him like he had never seen him before. Nicky could feel his eyes filling. He and Aaron had always been…not good, nobody in their family had good relationships, it was genetically impossible, but they had always cared about each other.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Matt said. “What the hell happened?”

“Nicky kissed Neil against his will,” Aaron answered when it was obvious Nicky wasn’t going to.

Matt looked aghast. “Not last night,” Nicky clarified. “It was the first time we took him to Columbia.” Not that that made it any better, really, but it explained why he was still breathing.

“Jesus Christ, Nicky.”

I know, Nicky wanted to scream. “I’m going to call Erik,” he said instead. Once alone in the bedroom, though, he just stared at his phone. Erik knew about the incident; Nicky had told him the next day, while Neil was missing. He had been disapproving about the drugs but hadn’t worried about the kiss. Nicky wasn’t sure if he could handle his forgiveness about it now. He knew he would get it, but with Neil’s fear burned into his retinas he didn’t think he wanted it.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed; enough that he felt stiff when he got up to answer it. Or maybe that was the exhaustion.

“Hello, Nicky,” Renee said with her usual sweet smile. “I thought perhaps you might like to go get some coffee.”

Nicky didn’t have it in him to say no to Renee. He grabbed his coat.

It was rare for he or his cousins to visit the coffee shop on campus; they usually just made their own. Nicky debated ordering something gross like straight black coffee with a shot of espresso, but caved to his tastebuds and got an iced hazelnut latte instead.

They sat at one of the little iron tables in front of the cafe, watching the handful of summer students straggle by. Nicky was halfway through his latte when he asked, “Matt told you, huh?”

“He told me his understanding of it, yes.”

This was why he loved Renee. He took a deep breath, and in as spare language as he could manage, told her about that first trip to Columbia and the morning after. About the arbitrary lines he had drawn in his own head about what was okay and what was not. How he had succumbed to the Hollywood idea that forcing a kiss on someone would win them over in the end. How at the time he hadn’t really thought that what he did was any worse than what Andrew did; how he had never thought about what he might have been taking from Neil until that weekend before Thanksgiving.

He didn’t tell her about the months of regret he’d been dealing with since he had walked into his parents’ guest room and seen Neil tenderly wrapping a bloody and battered Andrew in a blanket. Or how he had been struggling not to regress to the habits taught him at conversion camp, to the self punishment that was seen as just penance for his sins. But she saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice anyway.

When he finally went silent, she sipped her iced tea for a moment. “Did you apologize?”

“Yes, as soon as he would let me. He wasn’t ready to accept it then.”

“Have you talked about it since?”

Nicky shook his head. It had taken all of his courage the first time, he wasn’t sure he had enough left.

Renee hummed and then was quiet while they finished their drinks. They were walking back to the dorm when she touched his arm. “Nicky…I may be out of line to ask this, but have you found a church here?”

He shook his head. He had been to several when they had first moved to campus two years prior, but none of them had been right. Slowly he had been forgetting what it felt like to seek that sort of peace. He couldn’t recall the last time he had prayed; maybe during that terrible vigil the whole team had held on the bus after Binghamton.

“Would you like to come with me tomorrow?”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“It’s not a Catholic church.” He looked at her in surprise. “I didn’t find the parish of the local Church very welcoming, so I found an alternative.”

“Yes,” Nicky said, not really sure why he felt so hesitant. “I’ll come with you.”

“I go to the early service most of the time,” she said, and he wasn’t sure if it was apology or warning. “I leave at seven-thirty.”

He groaned internally; after his sleepless night he had been looking forward to spending most of the next day in bed. “I’ll be ready.”

*****

The church was like nothing Nicky had seen before. There was no ornate glass, no crucifix, no organ. It almost looked like a business building, but off the vestibule the bulk of it was one large room with pews. A friendly man in a blue suit greeted Renee by name when she entered.

“Reverend Pawalek, this is my friend Nicky,” she said, and the minister held out his hand in greeting. His grip was warm and solid. He reminded Nicky of Erik’s father, though he couldn’t have said exactly why. Something about his eyes, maybe. Or the generous cut of his mouth.

They entered the sanctuary and sat in a pew near the back. Nicky’s gaze was immediately caught by a small pride flag sticker on the otherwise plain podium. He glanced at Renee; she gave him a nod. All around him people were filtering in, men and women and children, black and white and brown. There were piercings and tattoos and wild hair and wilder clothes. Some, like Renee, wore crosses; he spotted two hijab, and a yarmulke. The only thing they all had in common was the attentiveness with which they turned towards the podium when Reverend Pawalek took his spot.

Afterwards Nicky could not have recalled a single sentence of the sermon. He knew that it was about how to help God’s love manifest here on earth, but the specifics were washed away in the rhythm of the minister’s tenor voice. He felt embraced by that voice, cocooned by it; for reasons he could not have told, tears fell until his hands and shirt were damp with them. Around him the other people were smiling and laughing and crying too.

He had never felt so loved outside of Erik’s arms. He had never known faith so uncorrupted by religion. At the end, as Reverend Pawalek put up a prayer about love and acceptance, Nicky prayed as he hadn’t in too many months. He prayed for forgiveness: Neil’s. God’s. His own. For once, he did not even think about his father, standing over him pallid and stern. His father did not understand God like this; was incapable of understanding a God that was not a stand-in for his own judgments. But this—this was the God Nicky had always sought, the one Erik and Renee so freely opened their hearts to.

An hour had passed in the thrall of that voice and those words, but it felt like days later when they stumbled out into the heat of a South Carolina morning. Renee took his hand, threading her fingers through his. They didn’t speak as they headed back to campus in Allison’s car. Nicky didn’t think he had any words anyway.

*****

He went back the following Sunday. Andrew had not allowed him time alone to talk to Neil. He might’ve tried while Andrew was at Bee’s but he didn’t want the rest of the team listening in. Neil kept catching his eye, and Nicky took hope from that. Fitting, then, that the sermon was about hope. The way hope can keep us alive when all else around us is trying to drag us down. The way hope can erase fear, can erase hate, can fortify against the judgment of others. That hope can help us let go of the fear of falling. That hope is just a different word for faith.

Another week passed. Aaron and he went back to their usual brand of “good,” and Matt seemed to have forgotten about all of it. Andrew’s vigilance did not falter, but Nicky had never thought he would forget. Though he would have loved Andrew’s forgiveness, it didn’t really matter in the end; it had been Neil he—no, they—had wronged.

Aaron and Katelyn were cuddling on the couch and Matt was just starting a movie when there was a knock on the suite door. Matt answered it; Nicky got to his feet when he heard Neil’s voice, though the words were quiet and indistinct. Then Matt called his name and he walked to the door.

Neil still looked guarded, but there was something other than fear behind it. Hope, maybe. Or determination. He followed Neil into the suite he shared with Kevin and Andrew. It was empty, so Nicky assumed the others were out somewhere. He leaned against the door. Somehow it felt safer.

“I wanted to talk,” Neil said.

“Me too. I’ve been wanting to since that night.” Nicky hated the quiver in his voice. “Oh, Neil, I’m so, so sorry. That look on your face…I never wanted you to have to look at me like that.”

“I’m fine.” Neil’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile after he said the words. “It just made me remember, you know? Being drugged and not able to control myself.”

Nicky’s heart ached. “I still can’t believe I did that.”

“Honestly, the being drugged thing bothered me more than the kisses.”

Somehow that made Nicky feel worse. “I tried to justify it so many different ways, you know? All of it.” He slid down the door so he was sitting on the floor, looking up at Neil on the beanbag chair. “Andrew was so certain. God, he’s always so certain that he’s right. It’s easier just to go along with it.”

“I know.”

Nicky’s lips twitched at Neil’s wry tone but the smile wouldn’t quite form. Neil didn’t know, not really; Andrew gave ground over and over to him in a way he never did for anyone else. And Neil had never sought the easier path. “It seemed like such a clever idea. Honestly I was so freaking proud of myself for thinking of it, you know, a way to keep you high without getting caught.”

“It was creative,” Neil said thoughtfully.

It was hard to keep back the ready tears at that. “The thing is, though, I also just really wanted to kiss you. I was lonely, I hadn’t seen Erik in forever, and you’re hot. I guess I just thought you needed to lose some inhibitions or something. Like that’s for me to say. What the hell made me think I had the right to decide that?”

Neil shrugged. “I think a lot of people think like that.”

“It wasn’t until everything went down before Thanksgiving that I got it. I mean, Jesus, what kind of an asshole am I? Like, I had to see that in order to understand?” He thought again of dazed Andrew, frantic to make sure Aaron was okay, the blood and worse from the dead body on the floor, and Neil so…so gentle. Not for the first time, he wondered how he hadn’t seen it then, the love they had for each other. His sniff was embarrassingly loud.

“But you understand now,” Neil said.

Nicky nodded, feeling a bit like a bobblehead doll. “Absolutely.”

“I think a lot of people wouldn’t. I think a lot of people would say it was totally different.”

“You might be right,” Nicky said. It didn’t really make it any better. It didn’t change that he had taken advantage of someone he cared about, someone who was compromised. He didn’t understand how Neil could be so vicious sometimes, and yet find forgiveness too. For some reason, Reverend Pawalek’s words about hope popped into his head: he had talked of hope not for a better world after this one but for making this world a better one, for making it a world of justice, of peace. In his own way, Neil was fighting for that.

Somehow, somewhere in that terrible year since that first night in Columbia, Neil had let go of the fear of falling.

Nicky dashed the tears from his eyes and stood on shaky legs. “Ugh, everyone’s going to know I was crying,” he said, trying for normalcy.

“You look fine,” Neil said, getting up too. Of course, Neil’s definition of that left something to be desired.

“Can I?” Nicky asked, holding his arms open in invitation. Neil hesitated just a moment, then stepped into the circle of Nicky’s arms. Nicky pulled him in and held him close. Not tightly, but—close. He knew Neil would never understand, really. He never seemed to see it. Outsiders never did either. They just saw a fucked up kid with a smart mouth.

But for the rest of them, for the Foxes, he was hope. Precious, and fragile, and a reason to keep going on. A reason to let go of the fear of falling.

#aftg #all for the game #tfc #the foxhole court #neil josten #nicky hemmick #andrew minyard #aaron minyard #renee walker #aftg remix redux #my writing #tw forced drugging #tw forced kissing #fanfic

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