foxy-exy:Sometimes, Neil Josten counting Kevin through a panic attack stitches him back together. He

foxy-exy:Sometimes, Neil Josten counting Kevin through a panic attack stitches him back together. He’d dropped it. The Exy racquet. He’d tried to make a shot — something that should have been the easiest thing in the world, second nature, what he’d trained his entire life to do —  but his hand, the fucking useless thing, spasmed. And the racquet went flying.He couldn’t do it.He was a failure.“Hey. Look at me.”The hand that covered his own did not, surprisingly, belong to Kevin’s ever-present guard. He followed the gray sweatshirt sleeve up to the new striker’s face — Neil Josten.Neil was crouched in front of him, dressed for bed aside from a pair of beat up running shoes — in such bad shape that it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen apart yet.Kevin didn’t know why Neil, of all people, was here. His presence was contextless and strange, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the court, and it started to pull Kevin out of churning panic to ask in a raw voice, “What?”“Breathe in,” Neil said, with narrowed eyes, and Kevin half did, covered his face with his right hand, coughed out the half breath, tried again.He reached to scrabble at his chest, like he could clear the blockage of his own mind, and Neil’s hand went with his own.“Come on. Five things you can see,” Neil said.read more here!Chapter five is out!!“We both need to practice. The season is going to start. It’s time to get over…all this.” Kevin’s gesture was too big and awkwardly trailed off at the end, his fingers curling as he recognized too late the emotions pouring off Nathaniel.“That’s how you’re planning on doing this?”Kevin wondered how he could have mistaken him before for anyone else — Nathaniel’s expression now is nothing but Wesninski. Cold, dead fury.“You’re going to brush it aside like you didn’t freak out and then pretend I didn’t exist?” The step forward shouldn’t have sent Kevin skittering back, and the smile that curled across Nathaniel’s face definitely shouldn’t have been as broken as it was. “Like you aren’t still fucking terrified of me?”Kevin set his jaw and fought the impulse that urged him back even further. “We’ll figure it out. The game is most important, Nathaniel.”“Don’t call me that,” snarled the striker, and Kevin flinched. Nathaniel — Neil — stared at him, disgust clear in his face as he looked Kevin up and down, and finally looked away. He was quiet when he spoke again. “And what about me? What if I don’t want to ‘figure it out’ with you?”Kevin felt dangerously unstable suddenly. “What, are you going to quit?”“And what would you care if I did, Kevin?”No, no, that wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Neil couldn’t leave. Kevin had hand picked him, had sat there watching those tapes every night to be sure that he was the one, electric with his potential. A Fox who might be able to make it past a shattered past to what the game was really about, someone who might even want it as badly as he did, and he was going to walk away from it?Kevin started towards him, angry now. “Why would you sign with me if you weren’t going to play for me?” -- source link

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