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“Riko is dead.”
Kevin’s breath hitched at the electronic words that passed Wymack’s lips through the receiving end of a phone call. The words made sense desperately, but together they were a Molotov cocktail triggering a fire in the back of his head and in the bottom of his lungs.
“Okay.” Kevin hung up the phone. Andrew was on his feet now, uninterested in the excited murmurs of his drunken teammates hours after their incredible win. They were all packed into one hotel room, and the not-loud-enough-to-warrant-a-noise-complaint music booming from Nicky’s phone was a blur of words as Kevin struggled to make sense of his own surroundings.
“What was that about?” Andrew asked, but his tone was demanding. He wasn’t giving Kevin a choice in whether or not he wanted to answer. He tried to open his mouth to speak before he gagged at the thought of uttering those three words. His chest was entirely constricted, and he wasn’t too sure he remembered how to breathe. He let out a dozen shallow breaths in quick succession before dry heaving again, pulling his hair into tight fists. He didn’t seem to care that his teammates had suddenly stopped loudly celebrating, and were more concerned about what was happening in the corner of the room. Andrew lifted Kevin’s face into his hands to stop his staring at the ground, but the direct eye contact threw Kevin’s entire body into a convulsing panic attack.
“Kevin.” Andrew said his name only once. Kevin didn’t quite hear it. He only looked down at his scarred hand and squeezed it tightly, as if it would get rid of the angry white scars littered across his knuckles and fingers. He grabbed at his tattoo, which was a mistake, due to how fresh his coverup was. He didn’t register the stinging pain. His body couldn’t feel anything.
Andrew had never seen Kevin freak out to such a scale before. He’d seen his nervous breakdowns at the news of Kengo’s death, or the night before his first match with the Ravens as a striker for the foxes, but nothing to the extent of this. Kevin’s lips were turning a light shade of purple due to the unsustainable amount of oxygen his lungs were actually receiving. His hands were twisted and stiff as he held them, with white knuckled grip on his injured hand. He was trying to get in a decent breath, but every quick succession inhale and exhale led to another, and he couldn’t seem to find space to fit in a deep breath. Andrew took Kevin by the shoulders and took him into the spacious hotel bathroom, and locked the door behind them.
“I would implore you to breathe before you pass out,” Andrew glared as Kevin sat back on the edge of the bathtub, his hands now wrapped around his stomach. Andrew would never describe Kevin as weak; his toned body and above average height wouldn’t allow for him to be perceived so. A face tattoo and a bountiful collection of scars allowed him to put on his tough facade, but sat with his body shivering and his breathing loud, nearly crying out in pain or fear or anger, Kevin Day looked weak. In the midst of a mental crisis, he looked fragile. “Who was on the phone?”
“Wymack.” Kevin managed after several painful-looking breaths. He looked as if he were to speak again, but on second thought his body reacted before his mouth could. He leaned over the toilet bowl and threw up, crying in mumbles of unintelligible nonsense and bursts of “oh my god”. He didn’t have the energy to wipe his chin of drool after he sat back up again. He was shivering now, his teeth clattering. Andrew wasn’t sure whether he needed to call an ambulance or not, but he was no stranger to a panic attack in his life. He’d dealt with Kevin’s panic disorder since the day they’d met, but he’d never seen it to the extremity of what was in front of him just then. Usually a strong demand to breathe or a change of location helped to calm him down, but he was uncontrollable.
“He’s dead.” Kevin let out a loud shaky breath with his head tilted back, eyes on the ceiling. “Riko is-“ Andrew grimaced as Kevin dry heaved over the toilet bowl, but he’d heard loud and clear the words he’d said. The king was dead.
“Who else knows?” Andrew asked. Kevin just shook his head at the question and started to cry. This wasn’t a graceful sob that was expected from a celebrity, it wasn’t a faked movie scene where his tears rolled down his cheeks as he let out soft hiccups with Andrew comforting him and telling him it was going to be alright. This was more than crying. This was whole body, whole mental and physical meltdown. Tears were streaming down either side of his face and his nose ran with every loud, screaming sob he let out. The music had stopped entirely outside, but Andrew pretended not to have heard. Kevin stood up and started pacing the room, and Andrew only stepped in to stop him when he started to react violently to his surroundings. He kicked the bottom of the sink, and threw his injured hand into the mirror above it. A soap dispenser and a tube of hotel shampoo were thrown across the room before Andrew took a swift, firm grip of Kevin’s wrists and pulled them down by his side before engulfing Kevin in a tight hold. He struggled for several moments and tried to kick Andrew away from him before his legs gave way and he sat on the floor. Andrew kept his arms around him until his body had gone almost still less the uncontrollable shiver accompanied with his attack. Kevin let himself sob into Andrews collarbone as he couldn’t move himself to anywhere else. Andrew didn’t allow himself to recoil.
A knock at the door brought Andrews attention back to the room of athletes outside. An urgent “fuck off” tended to do the trick, but another harder knock urged Andrew to ask who it was. When Neil answered back, he looked to Kevin in silent questioning. With a look through shallow breaths and desperate wiping of his cheeks, Andrew took that as permission and unlocked the door to allow Neil inside.
“Oh shit,” Neil blurted out at the sight of Kevin crumpled on the bathroom floor. He was pale, almost identical to the old white floor tiles, and his eyes were sunken in such a way that only screamed that Kevin’s entire body was in crisis mode. He was dragging his nails up and down his neck, leaving jagged red lines as his body rocked back and forth. Neil instinctively went to German so as he couldn’t understand. “Who told him?”
Andrew turned to look at Neil. “Wymack. You knew?” Neil nodded. Andrew wanted to know how he’d figured out, but he could only assume that he was some sort of witness when he’d been called back out for questioning.
“I’m going to die,” Kevin mumbled in English.
“You are not going to die,” Andrew snapped back at him. “Killing yourself like this is not going to bring him back.”
“Fuck you!” He coughed loudly as if he was about to puke again, but swallowed hard and cradled himself again. “You don’t understand.”
“Oh, try me.” Andrew kept his composure as he brought himself back down to Kevin’s level. Neil wondered if they intended that interaction to come across the way it appeared. To an unknowing witness, Kevin had just lost a half brother. He’d lost an ex-partner in crime from the perfect court. Anyone would be devastated, of course they would, but Kevin’s reaction was his raven instincts kicking in and stirring around with his mental condition to put his body into fight mode. His biggest abuser was dead. The man who broke his hand in sheer jealousy and with malicious intent, the man who’d tormented his life but had played by his side for so long was going to be buried and forgotten about. His protector who’d never left his side as a raven, the same man who’d hurt him more than anyone else in his life. Kevin’s reaction was a mixture of gratitude and fear. He was supposed to make court with Riko. How was he supposed to survive without him, even when all he’d done for a year was trigger his anxiety and made his life hell? Kevin’s lack of thinking at the statement that Andrew didn’t understand was pure stupidity. As if Andrew could not understand the death of an abuser, who he’d put up with for so long, who’d been an interference in the positive thing in his life. Kevin tried to apologise, but just put his face in his hands.
“Tell the others.” Andrew told Neil without looking, keeping his eyes on Kevin as he practically pulled out his own hair. “I think Wymack deserves to know his son is about to kill himself if we leave him alone and that perhaps he’ll need to be watched tonight.”
“I can hear you.” Kevin spat into the toilet, his body still shivering as if it were freezing.
“I’m aware. Have you started breathing yet?” Kevin looked up at Andrew who was sat across from him, his legs crossed. His breathing was slowing down as he rationalized but any mention of his name would be sure to quicken the pace up again. Neil nodded and left the two alone as he stepped out to an eavesdropping audience.
“Riko is dead,” Nicky choked on the drink that had just touched his lips and he started coughing uncontrollably. Neil tried to ignore this. “Kevin is having a meltdown over it, obviously.”
“Dead?” Dan had nearly sobered up at Neil’s news. “Like killed himself dead or was murdered dead?” Neil almost twitched as he weighed up what to tell his teammates. He had promised to stop lying to them, but his situation with the Moriyama’s was deeper than that. He needed to find out what the media would be reporting before he could tell them a truth or a lie.
“I don’t know,” he settled with. “He’s dead and that’s all I know. Does anyone know what room Wymack is in?”
He found out his room number from Renee, who’d kept it in case of an emergency. He figured Wymack had called instead of coming up to their room in order to keep the situation controlled, and maybe to stop the others finding out, but with Kevin practically in crisis mode, they deserved to know the bare minimum. Neil grabbed a jacket and left the room with a pitiful smile as half the group went back to trying to listen in to what was happening in the bathroom.
Neil found his way to Wymack’s room, and before he had time to bring his hands back to his sides after knocking, David had the door open and was gesturing for him to come inside. Abby was sat on the end of the king size bed, her fingernails in her teeth as she tried to keep up with the media on her phone.
“How is he?” Wymack knew why Neil was there without even asking. “How is he taking it?”
“I think,” Neil weighed up how he could answer that. “I think he’s going to need to be watched tonight. He’s having a meltdown.”
“In what way?” Abby had put her phone down and was listening intently to Neil.
“He’s having a panic attack in the bathroom with Andrew. He looks like he’s been sick and he probably shouldn’t be left alone right now.” Neil wasn’t concerned so much about Kevin trying anything, he didn’t think it would be something he would consider when he had so much prospects ahead of him, but Neil had to remind himself that not everyone thought like he did. This seemed to be the worst news Kevin had ever received, and the emotional effect it was having on him led Neil to reconsider Kevin’s mental state at that moment in time.
“Was he still panicking when you left?” Abby asked, voice full of concern. He didn’t think she was a psychiatric nurse, but perhaps in her time with the foxes, she’d had plenty of experience with such outbursts like Kevin’s frequent ones.
“Yes.” Neil looked between her and Wymack. “I’ve never seen him like that before. Why didn’t you come up to tell him?” He directed this at Wymack, who sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“He deserved to know first. If I went up he’d find out at the same time as everyone else and that’s not fair. They were practically brothers.”
“He abused him. He tried to ruin his entire career.”
“I don’t expect you to understand their relationship. Riko was all Kevin had with the ravens. He was his childhood and his adolescence and his adulthood. Everything was about the two of them. He struggled to survive for weeks without someone constantly by his side when he first came here. You have to understand how much time they spent together.” Neil nodded. “Do you think he needs me or Abby up there?”
“I don’t know.” He took out his phone and dialed Andrew’s number before he started to pace. It took only several rings before Andrew picked up with an Andrew-tuned ‘what?’
“How is he?” Neil asked, knowing the answer was obviously not well.
“Matt yelled about it when he came back into the room and hearing it again made him spiral.” Andrew answered in German. Neil heard Kevin throwing up again in the background. He screwed up his face at the sound. “He’s tried to break his hand again twice now. Perhaps Abby has some drugs to help? He doesn’t carry medication with him.”
“Do you have anything to calm him down?” Neil asked Abby, who immediately jumped to check what she had in her travel-sized first aid kit tucked neatly beneath the bed. She rummaged around for a second before looking up at Neil.
“Does he want me to help?”
Neil relayed the question to Andrew, who put it not so nicely to Kevin. By the sounds of it, the answer Andrew received was something along the lines of ‘I’m going to fucking die. I can’t breathe.’
“Yes.” Andrew answered. Several other words were shared before Andrew hung up to go back to helping Kevin. Neil told Abby everything he’d been told to pass on. She took some fast-acting medication from her bag and stood up.
“I’m going to go up first to tell the others to clear out.” Neil thought of the others seeing Kevin in such a state. Though the mean spirited part of him thought it would help humanize him, the part of him that thought of how he would feel in Kevin’s situation told him it would be best to move them out. He knew Allison and Renee had agreed to share the double room they were all currently in, but he figured they could simply share a different room.
He made his way back up to the room as quickly as possible. A knock at the door revealed a concerned looking Nicky and a crowd still gathered around the door. Neil could hear Kevin’s loud cries and yells the second he walked in.
“Abby and Wymack are on their way up. I think it’d be best if everyone left them alone.” Allison agreed even through her reluctance to leave the drama, that Kevin needed space and that she needed to catch up on what the media were saying anyway. She didn’t want to listen to it in the room in case she triggered Kevin even more, and retreated to a different room with Dan, Matt and Renee hot on her heels. Aaron and Nicky went to a different room, but not before Nicky begged for Neil to keep him posted. Abby and David arrived several minutes later, and they managed to coerce Kevin into coming out into the main area of the hotel room.
Neil had never seen him look worse. He needed Wymack on one side and Andrew on the other to move him from the bathroom to a bed, and he kept his arms crossed over his chest as his teeth clattered while he shivered. He’d grazed skin somehow on his injured hand, and small droplets of blood formed over the small abrasions. Abby gave him the medication he needed, and Andrew sat cross legged on one bed beside Neil as Abby sat beside Kevin, with Wymack stood up behind him. Neil wondered if he’d ever seen Kevin in such a state, or if the last time he’d seen him like this was when he arrived at his door with a broken hand. Wymack kept out of their personal lives and tended not to meddle within their mental lives. He had to know that Allison occasionally left banquets and meets to throw up. He had to know that Aaron was often using drugs while on the team. He had to know that Seth was a frequent user when he was on the team, too. He never made comment or intervened when it came to anything other than Exy, but had he been there when Kevin panicked before? Did he know what worked and what didn’t in the same way Andrew did?
Once Kevin started to come down from the worst of his anxiety, he looked at Wymack and started to cry. He had just about stopped shaking, and he lips had started to regain their natural colour. His finger circled the tattoo on his face. Wymack pulled him into a tight embrace. There was no words in the room for several minutes as Kevin let out his grief into his fathers arms. The entire situation was awkward, and Neil hoped Andrew felt it too. Abby had taken a seat beside them, and they all waited for Kevin to regain his composure. When he wiped his face finally, his eyes were bloodshot and his eyelids puffy and red. Nobody knew what to say until he spoke finally, after at least ten minutes of silence.
“How did it happen?” He asked, even though in reality, he knew the answer he was going to receive would be a sprinkled, sugarcoated answer of the violent truth.
“Coach Moriyama says suicide.” Wymack answered quietly.
“How?”
“Kevin-“ Wymack warned, cautiously asking him not to press any further, for his own sake.
“Please?” Kevin had never sounded sincere and pleading in his life. The way he looked at Coach was the only thing anyone would’ve needed to know that he really had to know the answer to the question he’d asked.
“Gunshot,” Wymack told him with a reluctant sigh. “His arm was completely shattered. He’d never have played again.”
Kevin pursed his lips and furrowed his eyebrows as if he was about to cry again, but instead he just nodded. Riko’s death was going to take a long, long, long time to process. Perhaps it felt like revenge; revenge for lost time for having to retrain his unbroken hand. Revenge for having to learn to become ambidextrous as his hand healed, as his mental clock adjusted to normal life outside the nest. Perhaps it was revenge for the countless amounts of abuse he endured at the hand of the deceased. The death of Riko was inevitable the way Andrew had hit him; he would no longer be of use in the same way Kevin wasn’t when he’d broken his playing hand. His talent was disposable at the break of a bone. He felt something at the thought of never having to see or deal with him again, but he felt that pang of grief and upset so strong that it overpowered anything else. He would no longer endure restless night or flutters of anxiety at the though of meeting him face to face. Riko was dead, the foxes were champions, and Kevin knew the hole in his heart where his half brother lay would take a very, very long time to fill.