A Quiet Night | An All for the Game Fanfiction

Chapter 2

Over the next several weeks, Neil attempts to process. He starts with the fact that he met Andrew and Aaron Minyard, talked to Nicky Hemmick on the phone, and stood closer to Kevin Day than he had in fifteen years. If he hadn't been so busy chewing out Andrew - and if Neil hadn't bolted at the first sight of Kevin Day - he might've even looked him in the eye.

The thing he gets stuck on is that Andrew asked about his scars. (Well, he didn't really ask, just stared at Neil intensely. And he assumes that's how Andrew asks about things.) He's not the first person to ask about them, of course. It's usually curious kids, and Neil usually says he was an accident-prone child. He reached for a knife, fumbled it, and cut his face. His mom left a curling iron out, Neil pulled on the cord, and it burned his cheek and hands.

No, it's not weird that Andrew asked. It's weird that Neil realizes he wanted to tell Andrew the truth. He wanted to open up to him. He wanted to tell him about the iron incident. He wanted to tell him about the knives and the blood and the time with Kevin in the upper room in the Nest. He wanted to tell him about being on the run with his mother, the time he was shot, when his mother gave him alcohol to dull the pain while she stitched him up. He wanted to tell him about burying his mother's bones on the beach and how the weirdest things at the worst moments bring him right back to that night.

He wanted to tell him that while Andrew was preparing for the NCAA Championships his sophomore year, Neil was working the graveyard shift at a Waffle House in Georgia and living his life as Michael Kettering with bright blond hair and brown eyes. He wanted to tell him that his father's people had grabbed him as he was walking to the bus after his shift, taken him to his childhood home in Baltimore, and tortured him. He wanted to tell him that he still doesn't know how Lola found him, that he's terrified that they knew where he was the whole time and waited until his father was out of jail so he could deal with him personally.

He wanted to tell him about his uncle showing up, his father dying in front of him, finding out that his father worked with the Moriyama, and sitting with a very kind FBI agent who smiled at him and made sure he had enough food during his two-day interrogation. About Witness Protection and how he's not as scared as he was seven years ago, but that he still gets nightmares and panic attacks and is terrified of getting too close to anyone. Because who would want all of that? Who would stick around after hearing that kind of horror story?

But there was something about Andrew that made him think he would. Maybe he wouldn't even blink. He'd just nod. Accept it. Accept him. Except he isn't supposed to tell anyone who he really is. And how did he know Andrew actually wanted that kind of truth? He was probably expecting some horrible accident story, child abuse, a mugging gone wrong. Not serial killers and mafia and murder. That probably would've been too much.

And the thing is, it's useless, really, to think about the what if. He didn't tell him. And he won't ever see him again. So, what's the point in wondering what Andrew would have said? But three months later, in the midst of a hectic shift in the minor injuries section of the ER, he's proven wrong.

He hurries out to the waiting room to call his next patient back, and he gets as far as saying "Ryan Stett-" when he looks up. And there he is, leaning against the reception desk with his hand wrapped tightly in gauze. His gaze on Neil lingers, but his expression never changes.

"Um." Neil clears his throat and turns his attention to the expectant faces around the room. "Ryan Stettler."

A guy around Neil's age stands with the help of another guy. His head is wrapped in what looks like a sock. They follow Neil back to an open cubicle, and Neil goes through the motions as if on autopilot. Turns out Ryan decided to hop a parking meter and faceplanted when the crotch of jeans snagged on the top of it. His friend, Bobby, was apparently sober enough to strip off his sock and stop the blood gushing from the jagged cut above his eye. (Neil makes a mental note to clean it really well when he's picking out the rocks later.)