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ravenvsfox · 2 years

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Rockband AU Chapter 13

You read that right folks! she's back with lucky 13!! after a short 2 year sojourn :) If any of you still care about this story I am shocked and amazed and GRATEFUL. I truly deeply hope you enjoy this penultimate chapter, ilysm

__________

Beneath the green glare of a neon lotus flower, and a wall-length poster of a sailor tied in bondage knots, Neil reclines in crunchy sterile sheets and polished leather. The artist has his hot latex hands bracketing his work, and his head ducked close to the whirring tattoo gun. Neil focuses on the neat crop of lines as they appear, breathing medicinal tang and warm cologne.

Despite the still-looming Moriyama threat, it finally seems worth it to undergo this final initiation ceremony. He doesn’t feel quite so much like he’s letting the people he cares about stake their claim on a dead man.

He’s been collecting all kinds of physical keepsakes lately: sharpie reminders on the palm of his hand, calluses from late-night bass lessons, pinks and purples from the graze of Andrew’s teeth, and now the promise of ink that will last long enough to fade in the sun.

Neil finds himself in a never-ending charitable mood since his friends brought him home, every conversation or gesture pre-weighed on a scale of immoveable gratitude. It’s why he couldn’t bring himself to turn Nicky down when he promised he ‘knew a guy,’ and dragged Neil to a hole-in-the-wall tattoo shop.

It’s cool and bright inside, full of modern-looking black leather and silver light fixtures, hanging plants and polaroid collages of old clients. Nicky does most of the talking for them both, and the cheerful cadence of his laughter, shuffling of sketches, and testing buzz of the needle are all strangely comforting.

He lets himself be gathered onto the table and rolled up at the sleeves, shaved and wiped down and murmured to. He kind of likes the whole ritual of it, if not the prolonged closeness. The pain is fine and controlled—more like stitching a wound than creating one.

“It looks so goddamn cool,” Nicky gushes, craning to see the shading bleed into the outlines. “Andrew’s gonna lose his marbles.”

“I like it,” Neil says, watching the blood and ink be wiped gently away with a clean paper towel.

“Andrew is the boyfriend?” the artist asks.

Neil shrugs, and the artist has to tighten his rubber grip to keep things even.

Nicky rolls his eyes. “That’s a yes.”

“Ahh, one of those relationships,” he guesses.

Neil frowns. “No.” He’s not even sure what he’s disagreeing with exactly, but he doesn’t like the implication. This stranger has picked up the dangling ends of Neil’s silence and Nicky’s oversharing and knit a warped picture out of them. Neil and Andrew are something different to each other every time they’re together, there’s no way he could have pigeonholed them. “But I think he’ll probably hate that he wasn’t told.”

“Don’t say that,” Nicky groans. “Even his slipped kneecap didn’t save me from his wrath. And I don’t have the pain tolerance that you do.”

“No shit,” the artist says. “He’s sitting like a rock.”

“I’ve had some practice,” Neil says.

The artist’s eyes bounce down to Neil’s armbands and up again. “Oh yeah?” He swipes his thumb over a patch of raw skin thoughtfully, but doesn’t press for details. “Well, she’s almost done, anyway.”

“Finally,” Nicky yawns. “Rehearsal started half an hour ago.”

“Oh—I wouldn't recommend doing anything too strenuous today. I usually prescribe my clients a good old-fashioned nap.”

Neil opens his mouth to argue, but Nicky jostles his free shoulder. “You don’t have to worry, man. He’s our lead singer, so he basically sits there and looks pretty.”

“I doubt that,” he says, twitching a smile. The needle startles a muscle spasm out of Neil when it touches down on the inside of his bicep. “So would I have heard any of your guys’ stuff?”

“Uhhh, If you haven’t, then you’re about to,” Nicky says, fumbling for his iPod.

“Nicky,” Neil warns. “You can’t spring this shit on people who can't leave.”

“A captive audience is the best kind,” Nicky says cheerfully.

“Play me something,” the artist says gamely.

“See, he asked me! Just be glad I’m not making you throw a live performance, Neil.”

“What would possibly make you think you have the ability to make me do that?”

Nicky rolls his eyes. “I guess I don’t have the same persuasive power that Andrew does, right?”

Neil doesn’t bother to reply. He closes his eyes and rolls his neck. Ink sinks its teeth into his arm, and then their new single walks in and pulls up a chair.

I named myself, at the end of the world

dug it out of the fire, before the edges could curl

sang in the mirror, made sure someone would listen

it took an apocalypse for me to be christened

I think I’m going to be a person now

nothing can be worse than how

it felt to be nameless

I was nameless

this pyre is the wildest thing that’s never hurt me

there aren’t any bodies here—you only cut down trees

well, I’ll cut the moon free, give each of you a crater

I’ll live in the seconds after the light, next to the generator

this thing we have is nameless

What we have is nameless

I made myself, at the end of the world

I took a hammer to the shell, and I fought for the pearl

put my shadow back on with a needle and thread

I’m growing up again, this time I’m not already dead

Someone saved me here, in the middle of the game

and I swear, the way you say my name—

It’s like you invented it

“Not what I expected,” the artist says, not unkindly. He maneuvers Neil’s arm gingerly off the table to wrap it. “I’m not usually a rock fan, but you’ve definitely got pipes.”

“We’re versatile,” Nicky says slyly.

Neil remembers writing that song in bed, in the days after, with only half his vision to guide him to the page. Andrew would sigh in his sleep, or the microwave would beep, or Aaron and Nicky would argue over a video game, and Neil would sit through wave after wave of gratitude.

He still feels that hysterical relief all the time, an undercurrent that catches up to him in the quiet moments.

Music didn't come back to him easily after Baltimore. One last robbery from his father, who didn’t quite manage to cut Neil’s tongue from his mouth, but always found new ways to keep him voiceless. Neil might’ve snapped and thrashed his way out of freezing water, sure, but getting up from his knees on ice that wants to break is hardly any easier.

In their first rehearsal back, in the yellow days of pre-summer, Neil had sat at the piano looking sorry for himself until Andrew poked a drumstick into his ribs.

“Play,” he’d said.

Neil had shaken his head until he realized Andrew was asking him to play the drums.

“I can’t,” he’d said, bewildered.

“Can’t hit something with a stick? I thought that was one of the few skills you might have.”

“It won’t be any good.”

“My expectations are low.”

And just like that, they swapped spots.

Kevin had watched them with vague interest until Neil fulfilled his promise and sucked very badly—and then he’d taken an early lunch.

Andrew plonked on the same low note over and over again, watching him over the music stand, and Neil wailed on the kick-drum until his anxious pulse became a rhythm they could all deal with.

It was more like therapy than music, until Nicky started shredding over top, mimicking Kevin’s over-blown I’m-an-artist-and-this-is-my-craft expression, tongue between his teeth. Neil had laughed gratefully, smashed on the cymbal, and then they’d gotten to work.

His damaged tendons throbbed constantly in those early days, the left side of his vision swam, and his consonants slipped and fell on his swollen tongue. But it was good, in a weird way, to focus on those little aches and pains, to see them slacken and fade over time.

Or—it was, but after Andrew came home bruised and crawling from the Moriyama estate, Neil’s healing took a sharp left turn. He had framed Andrew’s mottled purple kneecap with his hands, and realized that his terror from before—when he was stupid enough to misread Lola’s countdown as the next phase of Riko’s threat—was still sharp to the touch.

And it had briefly grazed Andrew.

He knows Riko is still out there, resenting them. Neil is still defying his orders every moment that he stays where he is. And now Palmetto has badmouthed Riko to his own family, compromised Jean, and severely wounded his pride.

And now he knows intimately everything that can go wrong in a day. In a minute. Everything he builds can be unbuilt with the wave of a hand, that’s always been the risk for Neil.

He can’t dwell on it for too long. Like, medically, he can’t. He’s had a handful of panic attacks thinking about Matt punching Riko, or Andrew cruising up to his Nest while he was away. His vision blurs, his scars hurt, and he truly thinks he’s going to die from fear. The same fear that his mother taught him to trust like a weapon.

Andrew can usually pull him back with a hand in his hair. His friends intercept every stressor they can, calling for breaks in rehearsals when he starts to go quiet, showing up at the house with edibles and board games, texting him in a group chat so he doesn’t feel obligated to respond, but he can read their messages and know they’re there.

He hasn’t gotten the hang of relying on people, and he often does it wrong. He can tell, from Nicky’s wobbly disappointment, the nervous exchange of glances between Foxes, the impenetrable look on Andrew’s face which turned out, after all this time, to be worry. But he won’t leave again. He’s branded now.

The muscles in his arm jump and shift when the artist has wrapped him shoulder to elbow in sanoderm. It’s surreal, the ever-shifting landscape of his skin, the stinging humidity under the plastic film—these scars have a story he actually likes.

“Welcome to the monsters, officially,” Nicky says, jostling his tender shoulder accidentally-on-purpose while they square up at the counter. “How does it feel?”

“Good,” Neil says, half-shrugging. He reconsiders, as they jingle out of the store and into a clear, blue day. “But also sort of the same.”

Nicky hums in agreement. “They suit you.”

He’s talking about tattooed monsters, but Neil thinks inevitably of the Monsters; Nicky, Kevin, Aaron, and Andrew, who took him in and gave him the teeth and claws to fight back.

“I think so too.”

______

They arrive back at the studio, and Nicky walks ahead of him importantly, clearly wanting to be the herald that breaks the news of Neil’s transformation. Neil follows the eager slant of his back as he lopes toward rehearsal.

All eyes slide over to the pair of them, but as always, Andrew’s are the ones that stick. He’s rocking backwards on two chair legs, feet thrown up and crossed on the piano bench, and he catches sight of Neil’s hitched up sleeves instantly.

He rocks forward, and the front chair legs hit the floor with a clatter.

“Guess where we’ve been,” Nicky says.

“It’s a mystery,” Aaron replies sarcastically, and reaches over to flick Nicky right in the harpy.

“Congratulations,” Kevin says, pursing his lips in a way that Neil thinks is probably supposed to be a smile. “This was overdue."

Andrew stands, and pulls Neil to him by the wrist, and then the elbow. He frames the fresh ink between his thumbs. Distracted, Neil examines his bowed gold head, the swirl of his unkempt part, and is briefly overwhelmed by affection.

“Nicky thought I should go with the cyclops.”

“Nicky has famously poor taste.”

“Do you remember when you told me that Nathaniel was gone and that—nobody could touch me? And I said—”

“You said ‘not nobody,’” he interrupts. Then, with some impatience, “I’m not Odysseus.”

A flush of satisfaction, as there often is when he can catch Andrew in a conversation without any stakes.

“No,” he agrees, warmly. “I wouldn’t make the mistake of calling you nobody.”

Andrew acknowledges this with something akin to an eye-roll, but he brushes the pad of one curious finger down over rushing water and coiling hair, rendered in piercingly fresh, dark ink.

When he traces the slippery tail around the underside of Neil’s bicep, he shivers perilously closer. Amusement glints off of the stillness of Andrew’s face, a reflection in the dark.

“So you lure men to their deaths,” he murmurs, turning the tattoo this way and that, crinkling the plastic. “When you sing.” He doesn’t really say it like a question, or a joke.

There is a strange giddiness moving trippingly through Neil’s body, and he fights halfheartedly to keep it under control. “Occasionally.”

The siren is locked underwater, hand pressed firmly to the surface as if it’s something solid keeping her elbow locked and her buoyant body low in the seaweed. Her fanged mouth is open mid-croon, eyes closed in apparent ecstasy, and her long muscular tail is locked twice around the barbs of Neil’s scars, which have been transfigured into spiky sea treasure and coral.

She is androgynous, sleek. Her free hand is outstretched towards the place where somebody else’s squarish palm and reaching fingers have breached the surface of the pool.

It’s the slightest bit ambiguous, whether she’ll pull this anonymous sailor down, or let him hoist her ashore. She seems too lost in her song to look at her prey, yet he reaches dutifully down for her. Clutched between Andrew’s left and right, his yes and no, Neil’s siren is a maybe.

After an endless moment, Andrew turns his attention to Neil’s other rolled sleeve.

He makes a tutting noise, and reaches out to reveal Neil's other tattoo—a firebird huddled amongst scar kindling, with flames pouring off of its back and whipping into the night. Its expression is strikingly similar to the siren’s: tipped back, eyes closed, beak cracked with song.

Andrew cups the image of the phoenix, and its talons almost seem to prick his fingers.

“Because Neil was born,” Neil says, “in fire.”

“Twice,” Andrew says.

He tilts his head, thinking of his mother and father, the death of each other, consumed by flame. “Twice.”

“Not very monstrous,” Andrew says with finality, letting the sleeve drift back into place.

Neil shrugs. He reaches up as if to trace one of the gnarled necks of Andrew’s hydra, but leaves his hand floating just shy of his skin. “Neither are you.”

There’s an uncharacteristically generous beat of consideration, as if infected by Neil’s ambiguity, his lovely menagerie of maybes, and churning life cycles. It's the kind of moment where, if they were alone, Neil might put his mouth to Andrew's throat.

“So what do you think?” Nicky calls. He’s perched conspicuously at the drum kit, openly watching their conversation unfold.

“I think you should mind your business,” Andrew says.

“This is absolutely my business! I just spent like six hours making small talk with my ex, just for this moment. I even held Neil’s hand for you,” he says, mock-serious.

Andrew takes an irritated step towards his cousin, and Neil’s raised hand accidentally brushes his turning cheek.

“Can we focus?” Kevin asks, before the room has a chance to explode into squabbling. “End of the month concert. Foxes collaboration. Security at the venue.” He counts each item out on his fingers, aping leadership in a way that would ordinarily make Neil want to get up and leave. But between his new tattoos and Andrew’s subtle, probing approval, his good mood is lacquer, and everything else slides off of him.

“Don’t forget surviving the literal mafia,” Aaron says. “Is that on the agenda?”

“See number three,” Kevin grits. “Security at the venue.”

“Oh yeah, a mall cop should stop an armed psychopath with a grudge.”

“Aaron,” Kevin says. He seems to look for something leader-esque to say for a floundering moment, and settles on, “shut the fuck up. Play the guitar.”

“Pass,” Aaron says. Kevin starts to argue, but Aaron continues, “rehearsal ended twenty minutes ago, and I have a date.” He looks at Andrew, challenging him to bar him from leaving, but Andrew just stares back, chilly.

As Aaron packs up, slinging his soft guitar case around his shoulders, an awareness tickles in the back of Neil’s mind, like he’s groping for a memory that isn’t his.

Some things are lost on him since the day he buried Nathaniel for good. Some friendships seemed to redouble behind his back; some bonds have started to chafe unexpectedly. Neil brushes whispers away like cobwebs whenever he enters a room. He isn’t really sure how to ask about the gaps in his knowledge without rehashing the ugly details of his disappearing act.

“Say hi to Katelyn for us,” Nicky drawls. “And for the love of Christ, invite her to our show. She keeps hinting.”

“That,” Aaron says, “is really none of your business.”

“It’s so hard to be related to you clowns sometimes. If I can’t gossip about your love lives, what do I have, huh?”

“I don’t know about what you have, but you should get a life.” Aaron rolls Nicky’s stool out of his path in a way that’s almost affectionate, and Nicky yelps with laughter.

Andrew catches the stool with his boot, and stares, with his foot cocked on the wheels, until Nicky slinks over to his own instrument.

Kevin looks uncertain, gripping his bass too tightly with taped, callused fingers.

“Can we run one?” Neil asks, stepping through an entire root system of wires towards the piano. “I can stay late.”

Kevin’s brow smoothes, and he offers Neil a true smile. Some things are lost on Neil, definitely, but some things are easy in a way they never were before. He can offer more now, more attention, more time, more honesty. He can see past the mind-bending shape of his own fear.

“From the top.”

______

Later, Matt is noodling on his guitar in the early evening sunshine, and Neil is stretched out in socked feet on the living room carpet, crossed hands resting warm on his own stomach. They’re at the Foxes dorm, and they’ve been jukebox singing through Matt’s entire repertoire like this, in between turned pages and idle conversation.

“Can I ask you something?”

Neil cranes his head back to look at Matt upside down. “Ask.”

“Do you think you’re the happiest you could be?” he asks. His left hand is drooping from a soundless bar chord.

Neil knocks back onto his elbows. “Is this about Andrew again?”

“No,” Matt says immediately. “No, I just. Wonder sometimes. About all of us, I guess. Is it better to be with the sort of people who will always get it, but who we might be more likely to lose? Would Renee be happier in I dunno—Carnegie hall or something? Would Nicky be happier in Germany full-time?”

“I doubt it,” Neil says. “This is the life they found. None of us would have fought for it if it wasn’t important.”

“Yeah,” Matt hesitates. “Of course. But Neil—can I say something kind of fucked up?”

Neil's brow furrows. “At your own risk.”

“What, you gonna pull a knife on me?” Matt jokes, nudging Neil’s closest armband.

“Nah,” Neil says. “but maybe I’ll decide to finally go find this perfect happy life that I’ve been missing out on.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Matt says fondly. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that before.”

“I was on my best behaviour before.”

“That was your best? Goading the mob was—what—you minding your p’s and q’s? Trying to beat Kevin’s ass was like dinner at nana’s to you?” He laughs helplessly, and Neil hits him, upside down, in the shin. Matt doesn’t flinch, but he does put his guitar down as a barrier between them. “God, you monster. Okay, anyway. Don’t you dare take this personally, because it’s about all of us, okay?”

Neil sobers instantly. “Okay.”

Matt takes a deep breath. “So, when one of gets hurt, or goes missing—”

Neil’s expression wavers, like fire buffeted by sudden wind. Matt puts a hand briefly on the crown of Neil’s head, a brotherly gesture that has probably lived in him since birth.

“I have to see Dan take the hit. She’s tough for everyone, she always is, but I see—“ He searches for words, and his face looks too bright, like a sunny, humid sky before the storm seizes. “She pulls away from me, and I can tell that she’s trying to slow her fall, so it doesn’t hurt so bad, right. And I’m always like—why do we do this to each other?”

Neil eases the rest of the way down onto the carpet, eyes closing.

“And I do know why, man. Because we don’t have a choice. That’s what caring is. But still. I wonder if we could’ve spared each other some heartache.”

“I don’t know,” Neil whispers. “I think that might be my biggest fear.” Now that his old ones are burned to ash.

“Sorry,” Matt says, wincing. And then quieter, “it's mine too.”

“But I do know that the way you all fought for me, when it would have been so much easier to let me go—nobody else would’ve done that. And for me, there’s nothing, and nobody, that could mean more than that.” He shrugs, and opens his eyes to the ceiling. “I have to trust that it’s the same for everyone else.”

“It is,” Matt says fiercely. “For me, it is.”

“Okay. Okay, good.”

“But also,” Matt says, “anyone who knew you would’ve done that for you. You don’t just—let Neil Josten go.”

He tips back to look Matt squarely in the face again. “That hasn’t really been my experience.”

“It will be,” Matt says simply.

Neil sits up, back to the couch, his ribs jostling Matt’s leg. “So I guess, yeah. I’m the happiest I could be.”

“Until tomorrow,” Matt grins. “We’ve gotta keep one-upping our game.”

“Not if you keep instigating the most depressing imaginable conversations,” a voice says from the doorway. Allison, uncharacteristically casual in dark jeans, and behind her, Renee.

Neil can tell immediately from the look in her eyes that kind-faced Renee is absent, and there’s someone else driving.

“It’s called emotional maturity,” Matt says.

“Between you and Josten? I seriously doubt that,” Allison snarks.

Neil looks past them both, and says, testing—“Renee?” Her eyes clip in his direction, then down distractedly to the slender silver watch on her wrist.

“Sorry Neil, I don’t have time to talk.”

“What’s happening?”

Her lips purse, and she reaches for Allison. “Kengo Moriyama is dead. I just got the call.”

The hairs on the back of his neck curl up, and he starts to get to his feet. “From who?” And then, cold with realization. “Is Jean…”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Allison interrupts. “You’re not invited, public enemy number one. Just think helpful thoughts.” She strides past him, strung to Renee by the hand, chunky shoes clattering hard against the fake hardwood.

Neil starts to make for the door behind them, and Allison shoots him a warning look. “Goodbye,” she says pointedly.

“I can help.”

“Neil,” Dan calls, appearing from the kitchen. “They’ve got it. They’re resourceful as hell. You know how Renee gets.”

He doesn’t, really, but he doesn’t point it out.

“It’s my fault that Jean’s at risk,” Neil says. The front door closes hard behind his friends, and he turns in a frustrated circle, towards the door, then towards Dan, and back again.

“Jean knew how risky it was to help us,” Matt says. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s Riko’s fault, and no one else’s,” Dan says firmly.

“Well, maybe Kengo’s too, for dying,” Matt says.

“I know what Jean did for me, and what it cost. The least I could do is get him out.”

“Riko’s like a dog with a bone,” Dan says. “I’m not keen to offer up his other favourite chew-toy unless I want it destroyed. You wanna be destroyed?”

“What do you think?” he retorts.

“Neil,” Dan says, holding his eye. “Do you want to do that to us again?”

He looks away, feeling crumpled and warm with remorse. “No.”

“Self-sacrifice is fucked, man. I’m tired of it.” Now that he’s stopped his frenetic two-step between logic and instinct, she crosses the hall from the kitchen and collects both of his hands in her own. “Jean was okay enough to call. And he knows he has allies here because of you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you kind of bring people together.”

Neil shakes his head, blinking at Dan’s warm brown hands between his own scar-notched ones.

“You don’t give yourselves enough credit. Palmetto was a team before I got here.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dan shrugs, “but we weren’t really a family.”

He breathes out hard, and remembers that first dinner at Abby’s, when everyone was fighting, sharing food, and prying shamelessly into each other’s business. “You felt like one to me.”

Dan ropes him close enough that their foreheads clunk together, the pair of them warmed by the sunset through the living room windows. “Neil,” Dan’s voice trips, then rights itself. “I’m glad you didn’t leave.”

“I tried,” he reminds her. “None of you ever let me.”

“So maybe I’m a bit like a dog with a bone too.” She pulls away, and pats a little bit clumsy-on-purpose at his cheek. “You don’t ‘just let Neil Josten go,’ right?”

Matt winces. “You heard that?”

“I hear everything. It’s my job.” She goes to Matt, and he reaches up automatically to hold her, his face crushed against her sternum. “Also, idiot,” she says, gentler, “I’m the happiest I could be.”

“Yeah?” Matt says, looking up, the point of his chin pressed to her stomach. His eyes slip closed when she leans down to kiss the top of his head, and they stay that way.

Dan cards a hand through his spiky hair, and looks over at Neil. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’m not really one to settle.”

“Me neither,” Neil shrugs. “I play with the best.”

______

When Renee and Allison haven’t come home four hours later, and the three of them have made their way anxiously through a Tupperware of spaghetti leftovers and two six-packs, Neil walks himself home. He needs the time to worry, systematically, about worst case scenarios.

Kengo dead, Riko unleashed, Tetsuji with Andrew’s name in a ledger somewhere, and Ichirou lording over it all. Something cataclysmic is happening to the Moriyama family, and it’s not going to happen without Neil in the blast zone, not anymore.

It’s been a long time since he’s had both a clear head and a sense of self-preservation at the same time, and frankly, it’s tiring.

He lets himself into the house after midnight, armbands damp with late-season humidity, fresh tattoos stinging, and finds himself profoundly dizzy in the sudden cool darkness.

He takes two floating steps and catches himself against the doorframe.

“Hey,” a voice snaps. Unexpectedly, it’s Aaron’s unimpressed expression that melts into his line of vision. “Eat something. I can smell your low blood sugar from here.” He smacks him on the nearest arm, between his tattoo and drooping armband, and Neil puts a belated hand out to bat him away.

“I’m fine,” he says irritably.

“Didn’t ask,” Aaron replies, already halfway out of the room.

“What happened to you?” Andrew asks, replacing Aaron in the doorway from the living room out into the hall—a maneuver which does nothing to help Neil’s dizziness. He focuses on the collar of Andrew’s white shirt, which is bleeding grey where his recently washed hair wasn’t dried properly.

Neil shakes his head. “Kengo is dead. And Riko's taking his anger out on whoever’s nearby.”

“I know. Not what I asked.”

He thinks backwards. “What happened to me?” Neil considers this like it’s a sort of abstract crossword clue. “I don’t know. I drank, a little.” He slouches to the chair closest to where Andrew’s standing, and sits heavily. “I’m not sure if I can keep choosing the things I want if they get other people killed in my place. I have to think about it. I really don’t know. Jean—I don’t—we don’t even know each other, really.”

Andrew watches him closely as he struggles to put his half-crisis into words.

“I should feel guilty, but mostly I feel bitter. Why would he compromise himself like that? What was his game? I doubt I would have done the same, would you?”

“Told the truth to save your life?” Andrew’s eyes are darker than dark, and his answer is obvious. When Neil says nothing, floundering, Andrew sighs. “Come here.”

He rolls out of the beanbag chair, and just barely manages to get his feet under him again. He steps up sort of accidentally into Andrew’s personal space, but Andrew just steadies him without complaint.

“Your coping mechanisms are bad.”

“It would be more surprising if they weren’t, I think,” he says, feeling exhaustion start to sap the energy from his body, joint by joint.

Andrew’s eyes roll in the dark, a quick fan of blond lashes, and then a hand is hauling Neil into the hall by the scruff of his shirt. He lets himself be dragged, grateful not to be holding the full brunt of his body and his thoughts.

The bathroom air is still post-shower thick when they open the door. Andrew props him up on the edge of the countertop. He picks hours-old sanoderm away from Neil’s new tattoos, tugging experimentally.

“Can I?”

“Sure,” Neil says easily, enjoying the cool mirror at his back, the wet swipe of the back of his head over steamed glass.

It’s bandaid-quick on the right arm, and the fresh air against his ink-muddy skin is a surprisingly potent relief. He hadn’t realized how much his arms had started to feel divorced from the rest of him. Andrew tosses the plastic into the sink, and peels the other bandage halfway free before Neil can register the belated ache of the first.

“You knew about Jean already,” Neil murmurs.

Andrew bows his head in acknowledgement, wetting a washcloth and squeezing it out over the mess in the sink. “Renee called me. Told me you might get it in your head that you should follow them into the Nest. I told her you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know how close I got,” Neil says.

“Oh, I don’t?” Andrew gives him a look so glacial it could burn. “You would not have gotten far with Dan and Matt there. They know better than to let you out of their sight nowadays.” He hands Neil the sudsy washcloth, and slouches against the counter next to him, tense, but warm and close.

“You went to the Nest alone,” Neil says tightly. “I don’t know why your odds were so much more favourable than the three of us together could’ve been.”

He dabs vaguely at his own tattoos with water from the still-running tap, enjoying the way the monsters press their faces up through soap bubbles, stark and clean.

“My name isn’t on Riko’s most wanted list.”

“Alone,” Neil reiterates. “You took a bat to a hornets' nest, and barely made it home with both your legs.”

“And you, what? Miss the thrill of dislocation?”

“I told you, I don’t want to put people out in front of me like a shield. I’ve tried that, it’s bullshit, and it’s pointless. I won’t let you take any more punches for me.”

“You don’t get to decide what we do for you,” Andrew says, in that conversation-ending way of his. He takes the cloth from Neil’s limp fingers, and starts wiping at the foggy blue stencil still staining his skin. He holds him steady by the ball of his arm, right before it slopes off into his shoulder.

From his side of the counter, Neil nudges his thigh outwards until it makes brief, exhilarating contact with Andrew’s.

“Don’t,” he says mildly, without looking away from Neil’s phoenix, and the sparks and freckles which slurry down his left arm.

“I can do that myself,” Neil offers, reaching for the tap, but Andrew catches his hand and deposits it back in his lap. He folds Neil’s sleeves back over the curve of each shoulder, then rolls both sets of armbands off, revealing his own pale old half moons, and then Neil’s coarse, still-pink bramble.

He thinks, as he often does, of the first time he saw Andrew’s scars, here in this bathroom. With hair dye drying dark between his fingers, and their eyes getting caught up in the mirror, Andrew had promised Neil that he could leave Ausreißer any time he wanted to.

Now he’s asking, in his own way, for him to stay.

Neil watches him smudge mild lotion over stinging raised lines, and he lifts his face until their noses nearly bump, bobbing canoes in still water. Andrew goes still, but he doesn’t move away.

“I wouldn’t have left you again,” Neil offers. “Not because of Dan or Matt. I just—couldn’t have done it.” Then, at the look in Andrew’s oil-lamp eyes, he’s the one who whispers, “yes or no?”

A slippery hand climbs from Neil’s shoulder to his neck, and Andrew guides him sideways until his wet bangs stick to Neil’s temple, his cheek, his collarbone. As they kiss, side by side against the mirror, monsters snaking up from their arms and necks, it feels crowded somehow—bigger than just the two of them.

They separate, barely. Andrew drags a thumb over Neil’s cheekbone, and says, “Jean Moreau was fine, without you trying to die for him. I would not have been,” he struggles to say, “if you had—”

“I know,” Neil says, painfully, thoughts eating their own tails too fast for him to identify any one. Something Dan said earlier bobs past, and he struggles to grab ahold of it. “I think—I think self-sacrifice is usually selfish.” It’s as much as he can muster. At some point in the past year he’s learned that love can’t just be about burning the body. It can’t be. It has to be about keeping something alive.

The shower light is on, but the overhead ones are still off, and there’s something comforting about the shadows, the full-bodied fluorescence tempered by muggy darkness. Andrew holds him consideringly, like he’s pinning up laundry, blinking into the uncertain light.

Neil lets himself be watched, close-up, cocking his head back to accept the full impact of Andrew’s unrepressed interest. His eyes keep returning to the black shape of their armbands, tangled together on the countertop.

“These mean something—” Andrew tells him, the loose grip on his neck sliding down towards Neil’s siren. His palm is an obvious fit over the small, matching sailor’s hand. “—more permanent than our contract."

“I’m aware,” he says. “The all-day session would be overkill if it washed off in the shower.”

“You’ll excuse my disbelief, considering your track record for not thinking things through.”

Neil catches a glimpse of his own scarred cheek in his peripheral vision.

“I used to have to overthink everything. It was paralyzing. Nothing ever felt like the right thing to do, even when it was the only way.” He doesn’t know why he says it. He regards Andrew’s stoic face. They always end up drawn together, in mirrors and grey places, telling secrets; it’s like a release valve they keep pressing by accident. “But decisions come more easily now. I trust my gut, since some lunatic bashed it in with a guitar.”

After a long moment, Andrew says, “sometimes I’m not sure whether we made you into a monster, or you made us tame.” He seems vaguely unsettled by the prospect. Domestication, after all these years of fighting to keep himself alive and apart.

It’s possibly the most candid thing Andrew’s ever said to him. The idea of being any kind of influence other than bad is foreign to Neil.

He’s overwhelmed, as he is more and more often these days, by something he doesn’t have the right name for. Being close to someone without alarm bells ringing; the ending of blood-pounding survival, and the beginning of something else. Tame, he considers, might not be far off.

______

It’s funny, how the wound starts to close while the blade is still skewered inside.

Jean, battered nearly beyond recognition, is ushered into Allison’s expensive little car out on the front lawn of the Nest. Or so the story goes. Neil never learns exactly what Renee said, what leverage she could possibly have had over his captors, or what she saw in Jean from the get-go, but she manages to pluck him from Evermore like a moulting feather.

The media erupts, of course. Blame is bandied vaguely in Neil’s direction after the grand reveal of his murky past, and the tabloids put bold red X’s between shady-looking Jean and tender, grieving Riko. It’s despicable, and Neil says so, on the rare occasion that the press asks for his opinion.

The Moriyamas find a replacement musician somewhere in the Nest, and Riko remains the face of the band, the voice that people remember, and uncontested number one. Fans mourn the imagined dynamic between Jean and Riko, wondering avidly in online forums what might have truly gone down between them, and slandering Ausreißer’s name. The rest of the world just inhales the drama like a stimulant, and buys the new album.

Renee often comes to rehearsal with fresh status reports on Jean, who is starting to heal, with Abby’s help, up in the Foxes guest room.

Last Neil heard, there was an indie band called Trojan Horse sniffing around Jean’s temporary door, and one of their vocalists was coordinating a contract from the middle of tour. His is the face on half the vinyl in Kevin’s room, and the voice he cites (incessantly) when he’s trying to get Neil to aim for a different, more melancholy tone.

Neil sometimes finds himself wide-awake by the glow of the computer in the basement, watching tour clips on the Trojan Horse website. It’s an unusually large ensemble, featuring the usual synth, drum kit, couple of guitars, and a bass, but also three alternate vocalists.

The singers fluctuate between their own instruments: occasional banjo, muted trumpet or melodica, tambourine, woodblocks, or strings. Jeremy Knox is usually front and centre, but he seems to like to coax smaller units out of his band, and their stages change all the time.

There’s a still photo of a hollering percussionist, and the singer with the trumpet is holding a microphone up to her face, while pointing at a sweaty, golden Jeremy with one of the fingers not curled around her instrument. The caption reads:

Al, Laila, and the Captain tearing it up in San Fran.

Neil reviews their rapport with a level of interest that one might reserve for conducting a job interview. He’s not sure what they’re going to do with grim, obtuse Jean, and his deferent performances. He’s always played second fiddle to Riko, and Neil’s not sure he truly has anything else in him.

Once, in the murky recovery days, Neil encounters Jeremy on his way down through the towering Foxes apartment complex. He’s buttoned up in red, and his hair is blonder than blond.

“Oh,” Jeremy says when he sees him, stopping short. “Neil Josten, no way! I’ve heard unbelievable things.”

He holds out a hand and Neil, cautiously, takes it. “You’re here for Jean?”

He smiles with absolutely all of his teeth. “Yeah, you know. Gotta give the sales pitch in person.”

Neil raises an eyebrow. “How’d that work out for you?”

“Well, I hate to sign and tell, but it’s looking good.”

“Congratulations,” Neil says, “although I’m amazed you have any room in your line-up. Don’t you already have two guitarists?”

“You’ve done your research,” Jeremy says, clearly pleased. He leans himself halfway up against the wall by the elevator in a way that might be obnoxious on someone less charming. “I appreciate that. But Jean’s not playing guitar for us.”

“No?”

“Nope. We’re kind of hoping we can get him to sing.”

“Sing? I didn’t know—“ Colour moves over Jeremy’s face as he relishes good-naturedly in Neil’s surprise; he has the sort of skin-tone that goes ruddy pink at a moment’s notice. “I didn’t know anyone could find a use for four singers at once,” Neil finishes, changing course. “At this point I can’t tell if Trojan Horse is a band or a choir.”

Jeremy laughs. “You know, Neil, you’re not wrong. We’re going for musical chaos. Some artists are sensible, and some want to throw a four-piece quartet in the mix, just to see if they can.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

He shrugs. “I kind of thrive on logistical nightmares. Plus, I’ve heard Jean’s demos in the original French and they kick ass. You should listen, you might learn something,” he teases. It’s overly familiar in a way that Neil can’t quite bring himself to resent.

“I already speak French,” he deadpans.

Jeremy snorts. “Not quite what I meant, and I think you know it.”

In truth, Neil’s still buffering a little. It’s not what he expected out of Jean Moreau—who, to Neil’s knowledge, was never allowed to pick up a microphone at Riko’s side. But for whatever reason, it’s all he needed to hear in order to let go of whatever twisted debt he’s been harbouring. If Jean has a stage, he’ll be okay. That’s how it always works for Neil.

“I’ll listen to his new stuff,” Neil says. “I figure someone can only get better the farther away from Riko they get.”

Jeremy’s mouth twitches in appreciation. “You said it, not me. Hey, say hello to Kevin for me? I miss him at Trojan shows, he's my favourite groupie.” He says it with that same joyful quality as before—clearly a well-worn punchline.

“I’ll make sure to lead with that last part.”

"It'll be good for his ego." He gives him one last conspiratorial smile, and starts walking towards the stairwell.

“Hey—thanks for stepping up,” Neil says, and Jeremy stops with his hand on the doorknob. "One Evermore reject is more than enough for Ausreißer.”

“Hey, we’re happy to have him. I can never say no to a great voice,” he replies, bright-eyed. “Speaking of—let me know if you’re ever in the mood for a feature, okay?”

“One stray at a time,” Neil says, and Jeremy chuckles his way out onto the stairs.

“No promises!”

The next night, Jean is gone from the apartment, and his name is in headlines again.

Evermore ‘Murder' Claims its Latest Victim, Will Moreau Fly Solo?

The Evermore Curse Strikes Again: Jeremy Knox to Pick up the Pieces

Music Industry Chess Game Continues: Moreau Trades Black Plumes for Red

He imagines Riko’s blood boiling, unable to control Jean’s image from afar, unable to cope with the Moriyama regime taking hits on every side, unable to stomach the idea that he might lose. For the first time in a long time, Neil’s satisfaction roars louder than his fear.

______

The moment he indulges in the feeling that everything might even itself out, Ichirou sends armed negotiators to Palmetto.

It’s less than a week before their return to the stage, and Kevin and Neil are walking back to the studio with lunch. A black town car pulls up to the curb next to them, and Kevin’s bag slips through his fingers, french fries spilling out into the street.

He takes a staggering step backwards. “Neil?” he says, sounding eerily like a kid who’s just lost his parents in a department store.

The passenger side window rolls down, and Tetsuji Moriyama regards them both, grimacing.

“Get in."

They exchange a tense, disbelieving look. Neil puts the food down gingerly on the curb, and takes Kevin by the shoulders. “Go.”

“But—“

“Now.”

Kevin seethes in his direction, but ducks into the backseat without any further argument. Neil goes around to the other side of the car, head spinning with that rare, crystal clear, gun-in-your-face focus. His only option is to tread lightly, and correctly. He gets inside.

As the car pulls out into sparse traffic, Tetsuji turns in his seat to look piercingly at Kevin.

“Master, I apologize,” Kevin starts, but Neil puts a crushing foot on top of his.

Tetsuji blinks. “Lord Ichirou sends his regrets. Neither of you are high enough on his priority list for in-person correspondence.”

“What correspondence are you delivering, exactly? If it’s so trivial.”

“You will not speak,” Tetsuji snaps. Neil swallows, heart hammering with rare humility. “I requested to come in Ichirou’s place. I tire of this game. My brother is dead, and you are a dangling thread from an era that can no longer exist.”

“We can get out of your way,” Kevin whispers.

“You will get out of our way,” he corrects. “I am figuring out how best to remove you. Ichirou would have you culled, and consider it fair payment for the trouble you’ve caused.”

“With all due respect—” None. “—the disintegration of our band will draw more attention than you probably want,” Neil says.

“You truly think Lord Ichirou cannot make you disappear, undetected and unmourned?”

“I know he could, but I also know that his brother has been making a mess that even Lord Ichirou may struggle to conceal.”

“So I have been told,” Tetsuji says. In front of him, between the gearshift and his seat, his hand twitches on a familiar cane—with a sizeable chip missing. “By another child,” he spits, “who spoke out of turn.”

Neil goes quiet, putting all of his focus into remaining immobile. Tetsuji turns stiffly to face the windshield, and they sit in uneasy silence as the car glides down a side-street and rolls to a stop.

“Do you feel that Riko is a liability, Kevin?” Even through the filter of the rearview mirror, Tetsuji's gaze cuts deeply, invasive as a medical procedure. But Kevin’s face is a slab of stone, and it seems impossible that his mouth could move. Neil wills him to say something usable, something that isn’t an ill-timed apology or wasted plea for freedom.

“He has been…” Kevin begins carefully, miraculously, “unsubtle about his interventions into Ausreißer’s affairs. The fans are watching closely.”

Neil blinks at the side of his face, eyes wide. Emboldened, he says, “Riko isn’t thinking about the game the way Ichirou is. He’s thinking about bloody revenge, and he will misstep sooner rather than later. He’s in an industry which thrives on scandal, and they will find it in the Nest.” He adds, lowly, “he shattered Kevin’s hand—”

Kevin shivers violently, and he presses his foot upwards into Neil’s.

“—and if you’ll excuse me, reacted to his father’s death by beating his bandmate senseless. The more he bullies talent out of Evermore, the more public sympathies will wear thin. His image is on the rocks, and the supremacy of the Moriyama empire may follow.”

“I fail to see how this is of any consequence to you. Your father ran in adjacent circles, but I have yet to be given a reason why his limited credibility should extend to his disloyal son.”

“I have a debt to pay,” Kevin says, wavering with weedy, undeveloped courage. “And my income will always be tied to Ausreißer. Neil—Nathaniel knows the world we come from well. He understands what it will take to repay you.”

“He bargains for you, as Minyard bargained for him. So many layers of defence. You must truly be a coward.”

“Maybe,” Kevin says, possibly trying to mimic Neil’s low, unshaken tone. “But Ausreißer’s sales have been on the rise. Nathaniel has proven to be an asset. I cannot return to Evermore in good conscience, in a position where my talents—talents you honed—can’t possibly be utilized. But I can do my best to ride out our success as it is, and donate our earnings back to you.”

“You are not the first men to beg me for their lives and call it negotiation.”

Kevin takes this critique with his head bowed. “I just want to settle my debt. You raised me, and any wealth I see in my lifetime belongs rightfully to you. Your investment doesn’t have to dry up because I’m playing under a new label.”

Neil seethes in painful silence. He realizes when Kevin’s jaw tics, and his eyes dart in Neil’s direction, that he’s been leaving white nail marks in the dark leather seat between them.

“Your impudent bandmate suggested a similar bargain. But Evermore has garnered notoriety that your pet project certainly has not.”

“Give us time,” Neil says evenly. “Between us, and Jean Moreau’s fresh contract, we can cover your losses and then some. Riko’s fame is unstable right now. His fans pity him, but the headlines are suspicious of his inability to share the stage. Unlike him, our negative press doesn’t reflect poorly on you, it only increases our visibility. We’re stronger and more profitable as allies than we are dead.”

Tetsuji turns again to face them both. “Do you understand what you are promising? Lord Ichirou will not take such a deal lightly, if he deigns to consent. He will not forget. You will not be released from his service. You will be held to a standard of performance for the rest of your careers, and if the whims of the public change and your value decreases, we will terminate you, Moreau, Minyard, and anyone else who you have implicated in this life-debt.”

“We understand,” Kevin says, whisper-thin.

“And if Lord Ichirou is unimpressed, as I can only imagine he will be, then I will kill you myself, today, and consider it a more immediate and satisfying payment.”

The driver has a sleek cellphone to his ear already, and he’s speaking precisely in Japanese. His eyes flit up to the rearview mirror and then indifferently to the alley they’re still cradled inside. Concrete and brickwork and big blue garbage bins, and criminals threatening criminals just behind tinted glass.

Neil waits, hand sweating into the leather, bones feeling dislocated from one another, bad eye squinting against phantom pain. He thinks stupidly of the food they left out in the street. He wonders if someone from Palmetto will come out to see the fries smashed flat by tire tracks and piece together what happened.

Tetsuji and the driver speak, briefly, and Neil hears just the shine off of the silken voice on the other end of the phone. Something cool and uninvested, and in between it all, their names: Wesninski. Moreau. Day. Minyard. Wymack. Knox. A shortlist of the indebted.

Neil feels a slice of awful regret when he hears Andrew’s name in amongst the damned; Ausreißer was always going to be implicated in this power struggle alongside Kevin, but Neil was marked when he challenged Riko that first time, and the Butcher’s history was dredged up. If Andrew hadn’t gone fishing for deals, maybe he wouldn’t have been so high on their priority list.

But then maybe Tetsuji wouldn’t have come himself, already primed for this arrangement. Round and round they go, protecting each other to the point of impracticality.

Tetsuji makes a ‘tsk’ing sound, taking the phone from the driver, and Neil sees his nearest hand—age-weathered and vaguely bruised around the knuckles—clenching into a fist on the console. He says something clipped, and then his expression changes entirely, and he nods as if chastised.

There are few more short words exchanged, and then Tetsuji claps the phone closed and deposits it in a cupholder.

“You are lucky, today,” he says, without looking at either of them.

Kevin slouches back into the seat, his impeccable posture warped by relief. Neil’s ears are ringing with disbelief so acute it’s physically unpleasant. His life has never been kind enough to offer him a first floor window in a house fire. It’s always fall from the twentieth storey or burn.

“80% of your earnings will be adequate, for as long as your record sales replicate what Day and Moreau might have achieved in direct service to Evermore. Lord Ichirou wishes, as I do, to square this away quickly; arrangements will be made to funnel royalties between our agencies. I assume you can broker such a deal with your father?”

Neil frowns, confused. “My—“

“Yes,” Kevin says hastily. “Palmetto has never been stingy with our cut of the revenue. I’m sure he—we can adjust our contracts accordingly.”

Neil’s universe reorients itself for the second time in a minute, some personal gravity flicking off and on and off again. “Jesus Christ,” he mouths, but Kevin is busily tensing and relaxing his hand on the door handle as if deciding whether or not he needs verbal permission to leave.

“Thank you,” Neil says, belatedly. He feels slow with unexpected victory. He feels like all the life he never thought he would live is rushing at him all at once. He can’t possibly believe their luck, it’s lunacy.

“You are dismissed,” Tetsuji says. “If one of you comes to the Nest again without being summoned, you will be executed.”

“Understood,” Neil says, unlocking his own door and prodding Kevin again to follow his lead.

“Thank you,” Kevin says, one leg out the door. “Thank you."

“Do not thank me,” Tetsuji says, turning to look at them one last time, hatred cooling in his eyes. “I would have had Riko discipline you as he saw fit. And then I would have taken my turn.”

Kevin wobbles out of the car, and Neil follows, trying to temper the full-body urge to sprint down the alleyway. The car engine turns over. He waits for Tetsuji’s window to roll down, for him to deliver some last threat or stipulation, but the car just grumbles to the end of the street and out of sight.

Kevin turns liquid; he falls back two stumbling steps out of sheer blind relief.

“Oh god.” He’s not quite crying, but his whole body is trembling and swaying like he is. He grabs blindly onto Neil’s shoulder, and Neil grabs back, bracing. “Am I free? Did that—am I actually free?”

“For now,” Neil says, struggling a little to hold them both upright. “As long as we make half-decent music, we’re assets to the main family. We’ll stay safe. Riko can’t touch any of us.”

“He can’t touch us,” Kevin echoes hoarsely, but he still looks cornered, searching frantically for an exit he’s already gone through.

“It’s going to be okay,” Neil says quietly.

Kevin shakes his head. “I can’t believe it.” He says can’t, but his darting eyes project shouldn’t. “There’s always a punishment for leaving the Nest.”

“You’re not part of the Nest anymore,” Neil says. Sometimes when he’s losing it like this he just needs someone to tell him something obvious, something irrefutable. “You’re not on Riko’s contract. You’re out, for good.”

Kevin digests this, still shaking his head. “How is that possible?” he whispers. “One conversation and I’m out? After all this time?”

“Something good had to happen to us eventually,” Neil says.

Kevin finally looks at him instead of through him, if only to gape disbelievingly. “Says who?”

“Says math. It’s a statistical certainty.”

“And yet look at us,” Kevin says sardonically, gesturing at the alley where they’ve been dropped, the latest in a string of depressingly habitual near-deaths.

“I'm looking," Neil says, exasperated. "We just bought back the rest of our lives. We won, for once. ”

“Yeah, well, I want a receipt.”

Neil rolls his eyes, instantly losing his sympathetic streak for this slightly less pathetic version of Kevin. He lets go of his shoulder, walking back towards the mouth of the alleyway and into the sunny open street. “Come on. Back to reality.”

As soon as they’re out, and Kevin’s gate is almost normal again, Neil asks, without looking at him, “when was I going to find out that Wymack is your father?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin flinches so hard he nearly trips. “It wasn’t your business.”

“Does he know?”

Kevin’s mouth twists. “I tried to tell him the day he signed me, but Neil, you don’t know the kind of heat that was on me back then. One wrong move and Ausreißer would’ve been done before it started.”

“Uh huh. And you had to protect the band, right?”

“Actually yes,” Kevin says fiercely, seeming to shock himself as much as Neil. “I didn’t know what the public would do with a confession like that. You know what it’s like as is, the accusations we get, the way news travels back to the Nest. You wouldn’t have told us about your father and I wouldn’t have told you about mine.”

“My father was the Butcher of Baltimore, Kevin. Yours fosters strays.” Neil looks to the shape of Palmetto, just another squat building against the mild blue horizon. “It’s never going to be the right time to say something, but it will be too late, eventually.”

Kevin shakes his head at the ground, but a flash of dark humour curls his mouth. “First I’ve got to tell him that we just tanked our profits forever.”

“Maybe he’d take it better from a long lost son.”

Kevin shoots him a look, and Neil turns his face into the sun to mask his smile.

They find their abandoned food exactly where they left it, cooling on the pavement. Neil shrugs, and crouches in the gutter to collect their bags, to Kevin’s disgust.

As Neil wrestles a wrapped sandwich back into its grease-damp bag, Kevin says, “you know Riko won’t let us go quietly.”

Neil examines a fry that’s been squashed into a fat, white streak on the pavement. “I know.”

______

When Neil’s days were (literally) numbered, every moment was measured against Lola’s countdown—a thousand small goodbyes, splinters of time he could only think of as memories even while they were happening to him.

The week before tour restarts is like one continuous arc into the unknown. He feels like he went hurtling over the edge of a cliff, found himself unexpectedly, thrillingly airborne, and now he’s waiting to see if he’ll touch down on the far side.

The prospect of performing without searching for his father’s face in the crowd is wildly gratifying, but even that small freedom is tempered by the possibility that Riko is just unhinged enough to take a swing at them in public.

Ausreißer and Foxes, together at one of their final, dwindling rehearsals, react to the details of their liberation from the Moriyamas with nearly uniform support.

Andrew spends most of his limited energy moderating Kevin’s post-adrenaline tremors (and his exhausting new resolve to succeed). He seems only mildly dismissive when Neil comes to him with a lifetime of Ausreißer on a platter, which is how Neil knows that his disinterest is mostly for show.

Wymack yells for a while, tells them that they should’ve come to him a long time ago, and that the paperwork hangover he’s about to have will last him until his early grave. He’s grey with anger, but Neil can tell that it’s only the thinnest layer on top of endless striations of worry.

He looks between Wymack’s pacing and Kevin’s furrowed, sullen silence, and wonders how the truth of their relationship could possibly have eluded him.

Jean is coarsely dismissive until they’ve faxed him all the signed, orderly details of their deal. In the silence crackling over the line, he makes a small, anguished noise that Neil will remember for the rest of his life. Kevin stays on the phone with Jean for a long time after that, murmuring in French.

Renee accepts the news with a beneficent smile, as if she orchestrated the deal herself; Aaron makes snide comments in Neil’s direction until Kevin interjects, to everyone’s surprise, that they would be down two band members if it wasn’t for Neil’s bargaining; Allison, meanwhile, insists on taking everybody out for drinks.

The dust is still settling, now that Palmetto's two worlds have collided.

Most days, they feel more like a single entity than two bands under the same label. Matt shows up to the monsters’ rehearsal and sits, rapt, in the booth; Wymack pulls Dan and Neil for biweekly meetings that devolve into late-night drinks; Nicky starts getting weekly sushi with Renee, and once, while they’re fine-tuning their feature and handing out solos, Neil sees a text flash up on Allison’s phone screen from Katelyn:

Thanks girl! Aaron never tells me about any of this lol. Thanks for the goss :)

He doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s unused to these new factions amongst them, the little alliances that come from spending non-stop time in the same rehearsal space.

He thinks it’s probably the sort of thing that happens in big families: taking sides, arguments for the sake of arguments, good-will with a secret agenda. He doesn’t take any of it for granted—being in each other’s business makes it feel like they’re never dealing with anything alone.

Plus, they’ve never played better than they do when they’re together.

They rehearse more than they need to for the one and a half songs they’ve co-written, but their combined mess is sort of irresistible. Renee usually plays dirty, stomping the kick drum like it owes her money; Neil and Andrew perform up front together, sharing a microphone like a cigarette; and one day, Kevin un-tapes his fingers and starts playing bass solos that sing like flaming arrows through the air.

Foxes is at the pinnacle of their career, and their sound has evolved, mutating and absorbing the monsters, absorbing the world. Their new album has the broadest appeal Neil’s ever heard from a pop group, fresh and complicated, operatic and catchy. Ausreißer’s song was scribbled into the sheet music as ‘to die quietly,’ and that’s the title that made it to the track-list.

It’s a song that sounds like a power struggle, and it’s also the most fun Neil’s ever had singing. Neil takes point, Kevin and Matt share harmonies, but there’s a fast-talking verse that’s all Andrew:

We don’t know how to die quietly,

fighting not to be who they thought we’d be

took pesticide to your family tree

and swallowed down all of my apathy

I wish you had never happened to me

now we’re at terminal velocity

Evermore we’ll be victims of gravity

or else hitting the ground is what sets us free.

Andrew’s been writing more lately, easy, like it doesn’t take anything out of him anymore. They both understand that their old deal is forfeit; Andrew writes about Neil, Neil writes about Andrew, they sing each other’s confessions, and they never talk about it.

Neil writes almost exclusively about finding a home, although he wouldn't say it outright: phoenix’s alighting on outstretched arms, sirens climbing the mizzen to join the pirates they’ve watched all their lives. He admires the rich colours of freedom on Kevin, the responsibility heaved from Andrew’s shoulders, the way they’ve only redoubled their grip on the things they actually want.

He still suspects that Riko must be mobilizing some kind of punishment for dodging his wrath, but he can’t find the chasm of dread that used to live inside him. It’s filled with something else now. When he faces Riko, it won’t be alone.

______

The kickoff to Ausreißer’s revived cross-country tour is in New York, on a Saturday in the middle of summer. After a brief rehearsal for their guest spot—a surprise encore designed to make their audience fully delirious—Foxes sets out to waste time in the city, getting good and day drunk while Kevin drills the monsters’ soundcheck into the ground.

It’s sweltering hot backstage, and Neil's been distracted all day, trapped in sense-memories of their last gig: the leaden zero in his pocket, the body crumpled in the dressing room, and Lola’s Halloween mask grin.

He’s also conscious of how different he looks now—his dark hair threaded with auburn, his eyelid split and mended, and his arms half hidden in black cotton and half flooded with ink and scar tissue. He doesn’t really care how he’s perceived, but he knows the band’s image will change, people will ask difficult questions, and he won’t be able to protect his friends from any of it.

He focuses on chord clusters, empty seats, and the whir of electric fans. He watches Kevin on the edge of the stage, one leg kicked up, playing Matt’s acid green electric guitar. Neil’s never seen him like this, straight-backed, laser-focused, and playing just for the sake of it.

“I’m tired just looking at him,” Nicky says, dropping down on the piano bench next to Neil so its legs creak.

“He has an exhausting effect on people.”

Nicky laughs, “yeah, just kind of an aura.” He pats the back of Neil’s neck. “So are you ready to take another stab at this tour thing? Oof, stab. Pretend I said something more sensitive.”

“I’m ready,” Neil says, walking both hands through a quick, dextrous warm-up as proof.

“Good, because I just walked past our lineup, and it’s unprecedented.”

A spike of excitement that swerves hard towards panic. “Do any of them look like they might belong to the yakuza?”

Nicky snorts. “No Moriyamas in trenchcoats.” A fan blows his dark bangs up out of his face when it oscillates in their direction. His fingers are still tapping absently along Neil’s shoulders. It’s actually comforting, in this moment, to be crowded.

“Hey monsters,” Matt calls, picking his way out towards them with a trio of full glasses balanced between his hands. “Huddle up.” The girls follow him out on stage, each with two of their own drinks.

“They bear gifts!” Nicky crows, standing. “See, this is why we asked you guys to come.”

Allison rolls her eyes and hands him a glass. “We’re toasting.” She passes one of Matt’s remaining drinks to Aaron. “Pretend to have a gracious and optimistic outlook for a minute.”

Renee holds a glass out to Andrew at a questioning distance, and Neil is surprised to see him accept it. Kevin reaches up to take the last spare glass from Allison, and they congregate around him at the lip of the stage.

“We didn’t have champagne, so vodka tonics are going to have to do. Don’t make that face at me Minyard,�� Dan warns. Neil glances at Andrew, then Aaron, and finds them sporting almost identically grim expressions. Dan holds her drink aloft. “This year has been fucked up.”

“Inspiring,” Aaron says, and Nicky flicks him in the ear.

“Actually, it’s been batshit insane, most of the time. I know we’re pretty different from each other, but we all have a history of losing shit that matters to us, and I kind of feel like we all dug our heels in this year, and decided enough was enough.

Wymack is always talking about giving out as many chances as we need, and I thought that was this rare, cool thing. But lately, with Neil joining us, and the rest of us kind of falling in line, I think we’ve all been giving out a lot of chances to each other too, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon.”

She pauses, thoughtful, licking her lower lip.

“I like that when it looked like we might lose one of our own, none of us would accept it. I like that we can fight together, and work together, even when you’re all pissing me off. I hope that this is the tour that you deserved, before everything went to hell. I hope you take this second chance and run with it. Cheers, to all of us monsters.”

“Here here,” Nicky says, eyes bright.

“Cheers,” Aaron agrees, quieter.

The rest of them chorus their agreement and knock glasses, sloshing vodka and laughing—and all nine of them drink together.

______

As soon as Nicky walks on stage, adoration rushing all around him like water, and says, “honeys, we’re home!” into the mic, they are.

He thought Foxes were at the top of their game, but when Kevin opens their first song with a nimble bass solo that lasts nearly ten minutes, Neil can’t help but stand aside and cheer alongside the rest of the fans.

The whole theatre is packed, the audience stacked up to the walls, barely held back from the stage where their feelings are being drawn up and administered back to them like a blood transfusion. Many of them are wearing armbands, holding up bobbing ‘We Love You Neil” signs, cheering and breaking to pieces trying to sing along.

Neil orbits his bandmates, ringed giants and blue-hot suns, staggering from microphone to microphone and feeling, as always, like he’s singing his way towards something. The shining thread in the maze is what Andrew wrote for him, and he’s almost, almost there.

With unexpected extra rehearsal time, physical therapy, and Foxes’ coaxing influence, every song hits the audience like it was dropped squarely from above.

He thought he’d played his last, best concert. He thought he’d taken his talent to the very edge and let go. But he knows now that he’ll never have enough, even if he lives sixty more years on stages like this, and dies at the end of a crescendo.

He keeps watching Andrew, tattoo clutched around his throat like the physical embodiment of his voice, relentless and multiple. He moves savagely to the music, leg bouncing, hands flying, the indifference in his face tempered by the physicality of the rest of him. He so obviously belongs here, setting the pace however he wants, dragging everyone after him without exerting any pressure at all.

Neil forgot how active Nicky is on stage, crouching down to bore deep into a solo, jumping up and down through a group chorus, coaxing Kevin into head-banging, or twirling Neil under his arm.

Beyond the reality that Kevin is playing better than he—or possibly anyone—ever has, he’s also exhilarated when he manages to push past his previous limits. His hands pretzel, the amps shake, and he laughs.

Even Aaron is getting into it, experimenting daintily with improv, sweaty hair raked back from his face, the sphinx on his forearm lounging over his streaking hands. Neil knows Katelyn is in the crowd, because Aaron keeps playing directly to her accidentally, rocking the headstock of his guitar out in her direction.

When Neil reaches for a screaming riff, and tears down all the curtains and walls with it, the responding roar is just as deafening. He plugs lyrics into Andrew’s microphone, and Andrew plays fills back at him, and it’s like they’re talking. Evermore couldn’t play like this if they tried, because they couldn’t feel like this if they tried.

By the time they invite Foxes out on stage, the room is already euphoric, exhausted, raging. Nicky asks if they’re emotionally stable enough for a surprise, and there’s immediate commotion, shouted no’s, drunken laughter.

Kevin calls, “hey, Foxes, do you mind coming out here?” and the crowd explodes, a high shock of disbelief spidering through the noise, like they’ve just been promised an onstage brawl.

Why would Foxes be guesting at an Ausreißer concert? What would that even sound like? Since when are our monsters capable of playing nice?

Allison strides onstage first, mini skirt swishing. She’s about six feet tall in high heels, hair twisted up above the crown of her head to make her look even taller. Renee is close behind, grungy in overalls and boots, her frothy rainbow tips swapped out for split-dye black and blue. Matt comes out with Dan on his back, already blowing kisses to the crowd.

The backstage crew hauls a second drum kit out on stage, piece by piece, and a ripple of excitement clamours for their attention. Renee sits opposite Andrew, each of them safe in their own set-up, drums spread out like an arsenal around them.

Allison cheers’s the neck of her bass with Kevin’s just to see him flinch away, holding his own instrument protectively. Dan sits at her keyboard, cracking her knuckles and winking at Neil, and Matt toggles the settings briefly, throwing his guitar on over his chest. He leans over to Dan’s microphone and says,

“Sorry to crash your concert.” Renee smashes the hi-hat as punctuation. “We’re here to play synth at you against your will.” The crowd hoots and yells.

“You may have heard of us—” Dan starts, leaving room for the inevitable tidal wave of sound. Her nose scrunches joyfully. “—from our Ausreißer fan-page?”

“Fan encounter gone too far,” Neil says, playing along.

“Yeah, they wouldn’t leave us alone until we let them onstage,” Nicky jokes. “Super embarrassing.”

“It’s our first time sharing the spotlight,” Allison says. “So if we start throwing punches, just let it happen.” She smacks Aaron in the bicep to demonstrate, and he flips her off.

Renee hits the snare to get everyone’s attention, and Andrew mirrors her, automatic. Jingly little adjustments, testing strums, and last minute tuning all cut out.

“This is the unofficial Palmetto anthem,” Renee announces. She nods at Andrew. “Try to keep up.”

No one counts anyone in, they just start double drumming at once, like they’re pulling the oars on either side of a boat, heaving in the same direction. Andrew deviates first, swapping between favoured counter-rhythms, and Renee shakes her head, grinning through it. Neil has always liked her best when she’s at a drum kit, hair wild, mask off.

Dan’s synth settles in like fog, and then the nastiest guitar line they’ve ever conceived of starts sliding all over the place—the full, resonant effect of the three of them. Kevin keeps everyone tied down to his irresistible bass-line; his sound is the dance floor they’re all spinning on.

Neil steps out into centre stage, and becomes the dark pupil in the eye of the spotlight.

He looks up to face his crowd, dragging the mic up to his mouth by its stem, and the first face he glimpses, out beyond the violet glare of the stage lights, is Riko Moriyama’s.

#I simply cannot look at this anymore :))))#the foxhole court #aftg #andreil #tfc fanfic #mine #rockband au #scars tw #I cannot. believe it's been two years #it was a pandemic and also I was getting a master's degree please forgive me

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