Rainbow Connection, AFTG ✔️

1.13

JAMES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Waking up was in itself a horrifying nightmare. He'd been waking up in unending layers of black since he was seven years old, and while familiar pain still weighed his limbs and lungs, he woke up to brightness.

He'd thrown his arm up in his sleep. It was uncomfortable, but he left it there when he groaned himself out of a muggy sleep. He had the time to observe all of his surroundings before he laid his head down again and saw that his wrist wasn't head-cuffed to the headboard.

It felt like a trick, so James lowered his hand with the caution of a wounded animal. He held his wrists up to his face for examination, blinking multiple times to see if the head cuff would appear on his left one again. It never happened, and James was still staring at the bandages on his arms when someone walked into the room.

"You know where you are?" David Wymack was fairly tall — obviously much taller than James would be if he was standing — he had large shoulders, and his forearms were covered in tribal flame tattoos. In his Palmetto hat and a windbreaker, James saw the resemblance between Kevin and his father.

The outfit was different from what James remembered him to be wearing when he'd first knocked on Wymack's door, making him frown. Pain shot through his face and he cringed. He shook his head to answer Wymack's question, then asked his own, "How many days has it been?"

"Three." Wymack held up three fingers as if James couldn't hear him, "You've been in a medically induced coma. Your injuries were extensive, and you wouldn't stop shouting at the doctors. Richmond General, by the way."

North Carolina then, James nodded slightly. He had a vague memory of trying to bat doctors in masks away from him, but the fog around his brain was yet to lift completely.

"I didn't want to call until I was sure you'd wake up." Wymack pulled his phone out of his pocket and James tensed immediately.

"No!" He shouted. He'd thrown his arm out to unrealistically reach for Wymack, but the pain that shot through his entire body made him fall back onto his pillow and cry out. He didn't stop shouting though, begging, "Don't call them! Do they know I'm here? Kevin said you were safe—you were supposed to be safe!"

He trashed around, which must have been some signal for doctors to run in again and put him under. Wymack rushed in front of the bed before the doctors and their syringes got to him, raising his hands to tell them off. When they paused, he turned back to a crying James and said, "I'm calling Kevin, okay? No one knows you're here, James."

James screwed his eyes shut and let his bandaged hands dig into his hospital sheets. He stopped crying and screaming, but he didn't start speaking.

-

His leg was broken. James could have told the doctor's that before he got here. He'd gone from West Virginia to Wymack's apartment on that leg, bleeding and weak; he knew it was broken. The cast they'd fitted on his leg was heavy and bulky, and they were giving him two sets of crutches--underarm and elbow--when he left.

Aside from his greatest injury, his face was covered in bandages. He was taped up over his nose, chin, and right cheek; of course the only thing untouched was that goddamned tattoo on his face. Riko had really gone above and beyond. It was ironically impressive.

Kevin wouldn't be here until the end of his holiday break, around the same time Neil -- Nathaniel -- would break free of Riko's clutches. Porter would be following Kevin; Porter always did.

Whenever he tried to sleep, he remembered Neil, Vincent, and Jean. Then he couldn't sleep.

Wymack had been on calls since the moment James woke up. There was a plan in motion, one that relayed on a lot of stupid luck and hard work, and James was betting everything on it. In no world would he wear shoes with black laces again, let alone allow Riko lock him up again.

Wymack walked in with his phone up to his ear. He said, "Your uniform's ordered," and James felt like a lifeboat had finally pulled him out of the ocean.

-

Kevin was the first Fox to get the call, but Matt, Nicky, Aaron, and Porter knew by the first day's end. By the second day, everyone knew.

Hayden didn't know any insane amount about exy. He didn't know a ton of players outside of the Foxes, and he only loosely understood why body-checking was okay here but not there. Either way, Hayden didn't need to understand to completely support his foster sister at every game.

The non-Fox players he knew by name were few, and each one of them were Edgar Allan Ravens. Riko Moriyama, Jean Moreau, and James Knight. Kevin's old Perfect Court-mates. Hayden gave it a second thought and also realized he could name a few USC Trojans from his attempts at bonding with Kevin.

Renee had left the kitchen to take a phone call ages ago. Allison was busy showing his foster mother how to decorate jingle bell cookies, but Hayden worried enough to excuse himself and follow her up the creaky stairs of their house.

He found her in her bedroom, right at the end of the call, and Hayden leaned on the doorframe with furrowed brows, "What's up?"

"James Knight broke his leg," She said. She pressed her lips into a line, shaking his head, "Wymack is signing him onto our Spring striker line. He'll be out of a cast by February."

"James Knight as in Raven James Knight?" Hayden asked, eyes wide, "James Knight as in openly gay exy player James Knight? James Knight as in literally James Knight?" Renee looked upset. Hayden stopped and swallowed thickly, "How'd he break his leg?"

"Riko." Renee said shortly, "That's all James told Coach."

Hayden frowned, and they went downstairs together to tell Allison the news.

-

Riko cut down every Raven in his path for days. At some point, it was supposed to end. Somewhere along the line, his sadistic love for pain would overrule his own crushing heartbreak. Riko somehow miscalculated, because it never ended.

In cruel attempts to feel anything except James' absence, he broke and broke Nathaniel, Jean, and Vincent. Nothing worked; Vincent learned to play exy with broken fingers. Nathaniel learned how to survive back-to-back waterboarding.

None of his inventive torture tactics brought James back.

That made Riko angrier.

CONTINUED IN THE KING'S MEN