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ravenvsfox · 5 years

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happy valentine’s day, nearest and dearest, here’s rockband au chapter six 💖

His shoes squelch through rotten leaves, and he grinds his toes in, trying to leave an impression in the frozen mud. He’s sitting close enough to the fire pit to get fried. The cold air is spritzed with the kind of intense heat that makes you feel feverish and radioactive.

The moon is a few turns past full, slouching in the air like a beach ball that’s been squashed on one side.

Andrew smokes. His eyes are closed against the glare, but his lawn chair absorbs all the smoke and heat and traps him in the moment. He presses his callused fingers together through the filter until they meet. The screen door wheezes open behind him, but he keeps his eyes shut.

Footsteps, and then Neil’s voice asks, “what are you doing out here?”

Andrew opens his eyes towards the sky. “Avoiding you,” he says. Neil rustles closer.

“You need a fire for that?”

“I thought if I stared into it for long enough it might burn your face from my memory,” he says honestly.

“I thought it was my personality that bothered you.”

“It’s everything.”

Neil huffs. Shifts. Andrew looks over at him. There’s a piece of hair on his forehead that’s working itself into a spiral. He has a windbreaker zipped up to his chin, but his ankles are bare and his shoes are untied. He imagines himself lurching over the fire and dragging Neil in with him.

“Doesn’t it hurt, to sit that close?” Neil asks. He unfolds the other lawn chair and drops it a foot away from Andrew’s.

“Yes,” Andrew says. A headache crawls into his brain and squeezes both lobes together. He feels like a water balloon that won’t break.

“Then why are you doing it?”

He swallows, and looks away from the deflated moon. “To feel.”

Neil pauses, and Andrew stares him down, feeling overwhelmed and irritable.

“Anything in particular? Maybe the same thing you’re looking for when you have pills and whiskey for breakfast?”

“That,” he says, flicking ash from his cigarette. “Is not feeling. You know that as well as I do.”

Neil shrugs. He looks on-edge, and his knee’s been bouncing since he sat down. “I don’t know if I understand choosing pain over nothing.”

“I get bored of choosing nothing.”

“Is that why you perform? To feel something?”

Andrew digests this question just enough for his body to reject it. “I think I’m done answering questions.” He starts to leave, wobbling dangerously near the metal cage the fire is bucking against.

“Wait,” Neil says quickly. “What about our trade?”

“What about it?”

“Tell me what you want.”

His mind races and grabs for things that he doesn’t even slow down to contemplate. His wishes and fears collide and stick together. Neil waits with his fists clenched on the arms of his chair and his lip caught between his teeth.

“Show me your scars,” his mouth says. Neil’s face changes. Clouds passing over the sun.

“Okay,” he says finally. “If you answer three of my questions, right now.”

Andrew’s gaze doesn’t waver, and Neil rewards him with the edge of a smile, just a glint of it, the there-and-gone flash of a concealed weapon.

“Why did you start drumming?” Neil asks. It’s not at all the question he expected, but it should have been. It’s absurd, the way Neil reveres music, the way it’s tipping out of him always, measured cups full at first, and then pitchers, buckets, storms.

“Juvie had an arts program for ‘character building’,” he replies. “I signed up so I could hit something without getting punished.”

Neil’s eyebrows raise. “Why were you in juvie?”

“Why do you think?”

“Murdering your mother?”

Andrew narrows his eyes. Neil is focused, frank, and knowing, maneuvering through a bluff with his cards to his chest.

He’d wanted the fire to lift a layer of skin, maybe singe him a little, make his hair stand up. Sitting with Neil is like skipping straight to a second degree burn. “Who have you been talking to?”

“Is it true?” Neil asks, deftly avoiding the question.

“I don’t have a mother,” he says. He can’t even contemplate the idea of attaching himself to Tilda like that, at letting her have any title other than the neat red ‘deceased’ on her body bag. He focuses hard so he doesn’t think of Cass.

“Aaron’s mom, then. Tilda,” Neil says, a little impatiently. Andrew’s ears ring with distant surprise at the extent of his knowledge. “You were in the car when she died.”

“Yes,” he says flatly.

“So why didn’t you?”

“Die? I’ve been asking myself that question for a decade.”

Neil sniffs, warming his hands on the fire, mouth flattened by contemplation. “Did she hit you? Is that why you did it? Is that why it bothered you so much that my mother—“

“You don’t understand anything about this,” Andrew interrupts, feeling aggression rev and spin out in his chest. There’s something about Neil that’s so even and cool that he swears he can see his reflection in him. “And your questions are up.” He throws his cigarette into the fire and watches it catch and spark. “I have to talk to Nicky about his loose mouth.”

“It wasn’t Nicky,” Neil admits, fiddling with his own hands, looking uncomfortable. “The foxes like to gossip. What I wanna know is how bad your childhood was to warrant that kind of response.”

“Tilda wasn’t a part of my childhood. Neither was Aaron.” He stands up.

Neil’s gaze snaps towards him, surprised. “What—“

“Show me.”

Neil’s expression ticks, just a little crack of discomfort in that mirror. “The fire—“

“Leave it.” He tamps down the impatient urge to pull Neil to his feet himself.

Andrew leads the way to the back door, feeling the cool air wash mercifully over the places where his control has worn away. For Andrew there’s almost no difference between numbness and composure.

Neil follows a couple of steps behind, his gate uneven over the broken stones and tree roots littering their unkempt backyard.

Inside it’s cool and dark, unusually quiet except for the distant murmur of music playing in Kevin’s room, the rustle of their boots coming off, and Neil’s jacket unzipping. The space next to the door is narrow, and their elbows knock together.

Neil leads them back to his room at the end of the hall, and Andrew’s headache compounds. It’s exactly the same pressure that you get in your ears when you’re swimming to the bottom of a pool.

The door opens, then closes gently behind them. The room is chilly from the poorly sealed windows, and almost pitch dark until Neil clicks on the bedside lamp.

Andrew can smell him in the sheets, in the air. The room was meant for last minute guests, but Neil has brought such a particular permanence to it that Andrew knows it will belong to him even after he’s gone.

Neil pulls his shirt over his head and drops it at the foot of the bed.

His arms spasm and drop like he was going to cover himself and thought better of it. He stands as if for inspection, the cold air raising gooseflesh all the way down his chest.

Andrew considers his own mistake. He’s magnetized. Electrified. Furious.

The scars are too numerous to contemplate as anything but a collection. Many of them are old, shrunken in that way that scars get when you’ve grown out of them. Some are newer, pink and knobbly, at odd angles. The pattern is expansive as a tattoo, a shifting, breathing story.

Neil’s stomach sucks in, and his shoulders curl like dry leaves. Andrew touches his bullet wound with his thumb.

“Someone shot you,” he says quietly. The skin is warm and dusky beneath his fingers, still alive despite being so torn.

“More tried,” Neil replies. His voice is so close to Andrew’s ear that it doesn’t sound like Neil at all.

His hands move, nearly unprompted. “How much money did you owe to earn this—“ He puts his palm flat to what is unmistakably the brand of an iron, and Neil’s chest pitches sharply.

“I got that one at home,” he tells him. “You’re not the only people who think I have a smart mouth.”

“It must be true then.” He slots his fingers over his ribs, where a panel of skin is white and shapeless. “These are killing wounds. They cannot be from a mother who wanted you alive.” He thumbs the place where it looks like something was hooked in his belly button and torn through. “Not from a life on the run either.”

“They’re not," he says softly. Andrew’s hands lift, just fingertips shy of not touching at all.

“Are you going to tell me who you are, really? Your lies have stopped convincing me.”

Neil might have been an excellent liar if he hadn’t wanted Ausreißer so badly, so transparently.

Neil squirms. He puts a hand to his head as if to steady himself. “Abram.” Andrew turns the word over in his head, looking for a way in. “That’s a name I can give you that doesn’t cost me anything.”

“Your real name,” Andrew guesses.

Neil tilts his head. “It’s the only thing my mother gave me that I still have.”

“Then I do not want it.” Andrew levers himself backwards, and the space between them is freezing cold.

“Fine.” Neil turns away, and Andrew stares at the surgical style slice down his back. He’s starting to feel sore with tension, exhausted with holding himself back when it’s usually the easiest thing he can do. Neil rustles around in the top drawer of his dresser and produces a slip of paper. He eyes Andrew for a beat, then hands it over. “Do you recognize this number?”

He looks at the rigid tops of the fives and the messy overhanging loop on the nine. He recognizes Neil’s handwriting from the lyrics he had stolen and wrung out and set to dry, but the number itself is unfamiliar.

“No,” he says, watching Neil’s disappointment occur to him. “Where did it come from?”

“Someone’s been—texting me.”

Andrew reads the worry in his voice with interest. “You don’t have a phone.”

“Right,” Neil says, too quickly. “Forget it.” He picks up his shirt and turns it over in his hands. “It’s probably a fan.” The lamplight puts shadows in every dip of him. He’s fit, and slender, and his scars fit him like pins and seams on a half-tailored suit.

He carried fire smoke inside with him on his hair, so much that they might as well be in a house on fire. Andrew watches Neil pull the shirt over his head and sit delicately on the bed, and he makes himself walk away.

______

Palmetto’s front windows are dark when he pulls up, but he knows Wymack will be somewhere inside with his headphones on, and that he’ll pretend to be angry when Andrew comes in after hours. He’ll get angry for real when he swipes his whiskey, and he likes it that way. The predictable scowl, the lack of follow through; he knows what it looks like and how it will feel when it hits.

Neil is different, so unpredictable that it’s off-putting, enough to drive Andrew out of his own house. This time, the moon had bobbed along outside his car window and reminded him of Neil’s half-crushed expression when he’d left him.

He parks along the side wall of the studio and sits in the dark, thinking of Tilda and then of Abram. He doesn’t trust Neil’s flighty impulses or vague stories, but he trusts his scars, his curiosity, and that name. Abram.

The entryway is dim when he gets inside, but he can hear lights buzzing down the hall. He wanders through corridors at a clip, until conversation starts to waft from Wymack’s office and he pulls up short. He lightens his step, and eases close enough to match the voices to Wymack, Dan, and Matt.

“… just a feature. We’re not poaching him or anything,” Dan’s saying.

“Do you really think Andrew will see it that way?” Wymack replies.

“Do you really think I care what the monster thinks?”

“Maybe you should.”

“Bottom line, it’s no one’s choice but Neil’s,” Matt says. Andrew leans into the stretch of wall outside the door and listens hard.

“No, of course,” Dan says. “I just don’t think he should limit himself to their, you know—sound. He stumbled into the music scene, he’s a total newbie in this industry, and I don’t know if they can even handle one other.”

“If anyone can handle that team, it’s Neil,” Wymack says. “Kid’s quick to learn, and stubborn about it.”

“So is Kevin.”

“You’re telling me.” There’s a pause and a creak as someone shifts in their chair. “But Kevin needs to be reminded of their potential. Neil’s good at provoking them, for better or worse.”

“Do you know I mentioned the twins’ case, and he hadn’t even heard about it? It’s like he hasn’t seen any news from the last decade.”

“I told her not to tell Neil all of their business,” Matt says, sounding exasperated.

“It’s public knowledge!”

“Not by choice, Dan, you know that.”

She makes a frustrated noise. “I’m just worried it’s going to end in flames, and I don’t think any of them can afford to take more damage.”

“His name is written on our contract,” Andrew says from the doorway. They all wheel around to look at him, wide-eyed. Wymack curses and puts his face in his hand. “He lives and works with us,” Andrew continues. “He’s our business.”

Dan recovers first. “We’re allowed to be friends with him.”

“If you think giving away our secrets endeared you to him, you’re wrong.”

Dan looks sideways at Matt and back again. “What—“

“He doesn’t trust gossip. And I don’t trust you.” He trails one hand along his wrist, where a trio of concealed knives weigh against his skin. “The next time you drag Aaron into your musical politics, you lose a finger, understand?”

Matt stands up, and his chair spins nervously in his wake. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Don’t talk to us at all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dan says. Andrew steps menacingly forward, and Wymack throws out a hand.

“Alright, alright. It’s too damn late for this.” He rubs his temples. “Andrew, get the whiskey from the cabinet, I know you know how to jimmy the lock. Matt, sit down. Someone explain this to me.”

Andrew obeys mechanically, pacing to the adjoining room to crack the cabinet hidden shoddily behind a coat rack. He hears Matt sigh behind him, Dan moving and whispering nearby. He wiggles the lock, staring at his own hand against the dark wood, vision doubling, remembering tracing the pathways of Neil’s scars. His grip tightens, and the metal cracks.

“Today, Minyard,” Wymack calls. Andrew pulls with brute force and the wood gives way, splintering. “What the fuck was that?” he hears. He ignores him, knocks the door aside, and grabs the liquor from the top shelf.

He’s halfway through a gulp when he reenters the room, and he catches himself on the doorframe.

Wymack sighs. “Christ’s sake. Come sit down.” Andrew drops the bottle on the desk, then sits on the window ledge so that Wymack has to roll back into the corner to see all of them at once. “You all love to make shit difficult, don’t you?”

“Don’t lump us in with him,” Matt complains.

“Oh, so you’re telling me you haven’t been interfering with Andrew’s lot? He’s acting like this for his health?”

Dan slouches back into her chair. “He’s acting like this because he’s a sociopath.”

Wymack reaches for his whiskey.

“Look,” Matt starts. “Neil had some questions about where Ausreißer came from, Palmetto’s history, that kind of stuff.”

“And?” Wymack prompts.

“And we told him,” Dan says. “About the twins’ mom—“

“Try again,” Andrew interrupts. Dan barely looks at him.

“—and about Kevin and Riko, Evermore’s break-up, the… accident.”

“Accident,” Andrew echoes.

“Kevin’s hand,” Matt clarifies slowly. “We didn’t tell him…”

“We wouldn’t tell him,” Dan says softly. “No matter what we think of you, we’d never—you know we’d never do that.”

Andrew leaves the room.

“Andrew,” Wymack says, but he’s moving fast, focusing on the sweaty, velvety feel of his armbands, the kick-drum pulse that never stops, struggling to feel something, struggling to stop feeling—

He clips the side of a couch with his hip and nearly trips.

“Andrew,” Wymack says again, ten paces behind him, looking thunderous. “They’re not going around telling people, okay? Wanna explain to me why this is fazing you?”

“Something had to, eventually,” he tells him, a lightning strike of vulnerability. Wymack looks critically at him.

“And it’s Neil, huh?” He says it like its nothing, like he’s not a police flashlight finding Andrew’s crime scene. He lets himself close his eyes. When he opens them, Wymack is wound tight with frustration. “Just don’t let this get in the way of the music. You know how many bands break up when two members split?”

“Lucky for you,” Andrew says, “that won’t be a problem.”

“Okay,” Wymack says slowly. “So are we insecure or are we stupid?”

“I can’t speak for you,” he replies, and he turns to leave.

“Stupid, then,” Wymack says. Andrew keeps walking towards the exit. “Hey,” he calls. “That kid puts more stock in what you say than all of Foxes combined. I wouldn’t worry.”

“I don’t care what he thinks. They can tell him whatever they want, if he asks.” Andrew hefts the door open, and hesitates, face turned against the night air. “But they’re betting on the wrong people.”

Wymack’s expression sinks towards pity, and Andrew lets the door thud closed behind him.

______

When he gets back to the house it’s pushing two in the morning. He leaves his shoes on, bypassing Nicky in the living room where he’s passed out in front of muted TV, and bursts into Neil’s room.

It had occurred to him halfway home that Neil was trying to put the story back into Andrew’s hands when he’d questioned him by the fire. He puts more stock in what you say than all of Foxes combined.

In the panel of light from the hall, he watches Neil snap awake and dive immediately for something under his pillow. When his eyes adjust and find Andrew, his body goes limp with relief.

Andrew’s adrenaline freezes mid-leap—somewhere between the ledges of one rooftop and another—and plummets into the chasm between.

“What is it?” Neil asks hoarsely.

Andrew keeps his face very still, pretending that he didn’t storm in with some half-baked notion of clarifying the Foxes’ partial truths, as if the full flush of reality would mean something to Neil.

“I didn’t meet Aaron until I was sixteen. I was left in the foster system. He was kept.” He breathes in, holds it, then says, “your mother kidnapped you.”

Neil hesitates, hands clenched in the bedding, looking miserable. He jerks his head.

“So did Aaron’s. She tried to kill him every day and called it motherhood. So I got rid of her.”

Neil nods again.

“Any more questions?”

“Not today,” Neil replies tiredly. “You?”

He thinks for a moment, until the obvious question emerges like something deadly cresting the surface of the sea; the catastrophe of a fin next to your lifeboat, the vagueness of its body, hidden below.

“How did your mother die?”

Neil swallows. His hair is flattened from sleep, and he looks like a lost child.

“She didn’t run fast enough. Got herself shot, and bled out on the side of the road. So I got rid of her,” he echoes, and Andrew steps forward. Neil looks up. His eyes are so pale in the spare light, they could belong to a corpse.

He should have recognized death on him earlier. If grief is the rope around your throat, talking about it is synching the noose, and Neil’s been kicking and gasping since they found him.

“Another walking tragedy for Wymack’s collection.”

“Running tragedy,” Neil reminds him. He pulls his knees up, watching Andrew for his next move.

“Not moving very fast for a runner.”

Neil looks away. “I'm getting comfortable.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“No,” Neil agrees hollowly. His face spasms like he might laugh, and then he says, “it won't last.”

Andrew’s eyes rove over his wilted shoulders. “Are you planning on going somewhere?”

Neil doesn’t look at him, but his jaw twitches, and his knuckles are white.

______

Kevin twirls his finger in the air, signalling for the band to get their instruments ready. He slides the controls on the soundboard around with his other hand, and the air hums with machinery. Andrew’s ears ring from playing for so long in such a tight space.

“From the top, with crisper harmonies this time,” he says, making his way back to his spot. “Andrew, take that thing out of your mouth.”

Andrew clenches his teeth around the coffee stirrer and swivels it to the opposite side of his mouth. “No thanks.”

Kevin narrows his eyes and shrugs his bass on, twanging a couple of notes to check that the tuning is still tight. “You’re not mumbling through your part because you’re in a pissy mood.”

“What mood,” Aaron says. “That’s his personality.”

“Maybe we could take a break,” Nicky suggests, slouching against the side of the piano, guitar nudged up at an odd angle. “This is getting messy.”

“I know what your ‘breaks’ look like,” Kevin says. “And nothing’s going to get cleaner with grease and nicotine in you.”

“What about pot and gatorade?” Nicky asks innocently.

“Wymack,” Kevin says imploringly

Wymack’s sequestered in the sound booth, and he looks irritably up from the monitor. “Just get it done,” he says. “Nicky and Aaron need to tune again, you’re flat. So are you, for that matter, Neil.”

Neil wrings the microphone’s neck. “Give me a C?” Nicky stretches over the keyboard and plunks a finger on middle C. Neil hums the note. Clears his throat. “Okay. Let’s do it again.”

Andrew hits the snare three times, a wake up call, and then he takes off like a runaway train. His hands ache badly. Their recording sessions have started to turn into recording weeks.

Sometimes they take turns in the studio, sometimes they sit around a table, warping and layering their sound, picking samples to waterfall through their tracks. Sometimes Andrew writes verses, crumples them into balls, and throws them at the side of Neil’s head.

Sometimes, like right now, they pile into the studio together and shred through their songs, improvising, all of them gripping the music so tightly that it starts to lose its shape and pull in the middle.

Neil sings, flat again, and he hears it himself because he drops the melody an octave, lower than Andrew thought he could sing.

His drumsticks pretzel, but the shape they make is better, almost, the offbeat is interesting against Neil’s low-slung vocals. Andrew starts to talk-sing the melody, the way they used to do all of their songs, on pitch but unadorned. Neil’s mouth quirks, and he picks up the harmony instead.

Kevin signals a time out, but Wymack shakes his head and holds a hand up.

The coffee stirrer droops out of Andrew’s mouth. Neil and Andrew carry the music between them like they’re moving furniture where they want it.

As a rule, he doesn’t feel this way when he’s sober. He’s wedged between sleepless nights and obnoxious personalities, and—in some abstract, uncomfortable way, like growing pains—he’s enjoying himself.

Neil has that accidental, out of place smile on his face. His fingers glide down the mic stand slowly, and a shiver cracks down on Andrew’s shoulders.

His eyes bounce from Neil to Kevin, who’s looking at them with wide eyes, as if he’s waiting for their unexpected chemistry to fizzle. Andrew stops singing out of spite, but Neil picks up the slack, finding the melody again.

They all sprint to the end of the song, barely staying upright, bursting apart as soon as the last note sounds.

There’s barely a moment of panting quiet before applause bursts out of the booth. Dan and Renee are there with Wymack when Andrew looks, beaming and clapping. Nicky crows, waving them inside. Andrew chucks a drumstick at the window, and Dan gives him the finger, right up against the glass.

“That was really good, guys,” Renee tells them as soon as the door between them is open.

“I’m impressed,” Dan agrees.

“I’m so glad that’s the take you heard,” Nicky says breathlessly.

“What are you doing here?” Kevin asks, pointing a water bottle towards them in an accusatory manner.

“We were in the neighbourhood,” Renee says, showing her teeth. Andrew catches her eye and lifts his chin. “We’re curious about what you’re working on.”

“She means I wanted to crash,” Dan admits, shameless. Her fingernail skates over one of his cymbals and makes a thin, metallic sound. Andrew holds his remaining drumstick threateningly over her hand until she moves it. “Neil, can we talk to you?”

“You can’t have him,” Nicky says.

“Can we rent him?” Dan retorts cheekily.

“Ask him,” Andrew says, “what he wants.”

Renee stops in front of Neil, smiling, but Neil steps backwards. Andrew’s blood spikes with annoyance. He’s so obvious with his dislike but cagey about his reasoning.

“What do you think of featuring on one of our tracks?”

Neil’s expression twists, and he looks over at Andrew for help. He stares blankly back until Neil falters and has to find his own reply.

“Why me?” is the first thing out of his mouth, which is absurd enough to make monsters and foxes exchange conspiratorial glances.

Dan huffs. “It’s like he doesn’t know that half the country’s talking about him.”

Neil takes this poorly. He sits heavily on the piano bench, looking so conflicted and pathetic that Dan has to crouch in front of him just to try and get his attention back.

“Hey,” she says. “No pressure.”

Neil doesn’t move.

“Seriously,” she insists. Her eyes twitch up to meet Andrew’s. “Your choice.”

“We’re experimenting with rock,” Renee tells him, low, like she’s confiding in him. “We might need you to bridge the gap for us, a little.”

The lure of experimental music is obviously too much for him. “Fine,” Neil says. “But Ausreißer comes first.”

Dan grins. “Of course.” She claps a genial hand on Neil’s thigh. “We’re not gonna take away the only stability this freak show has ever seen, Neil, come on.”

“Maybe you don’t give them enough credit,” he says, curiously soft. “They could bounce back.”

“Good thing they don’t have to, since we’re not stealing you,” Dan says, glaring at Nicky.

“Too bad,” Aaron says.

“Let’s just try it out,” Dan says. “Don’t overthink it.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Kevin interjects, “we’re working.”

“Wymack tells us you’ve been working since noon.”

“So?”

“So it’s time for play.” She slides onto the bench next to Neil and plays a fragment of a generous, right-handed tune. “A little after hours collab. Come on. Why not?”

“Some of us have deadlines,” Kevin says.

“What good is having so much talent in one building if we don’t learn from each other?” Renee asks.

“It could be a good exercise,” Neil says, voice curling with interest. “They’re fresher than us right now, and their sound is completely different. We’re more creative when we’re challenged.”

Kevin rolls his neck and exhales. “How would this even work?”

Dan and Renee high five. Andrew picks at the flaky leather on his seat irritably.

“Give me one minute,” Renee says, nipping out of the studio. The band reels a little, shifting from foot to foot and adjusting to the new dynamic in the room. Dan lifts Neil’s hands playfully onto the keys next to hers. When Renee returns, she has her electric violin tucked under her arm. Neil sits up straight, Nicky cheers.

“This is gonna be so weird,” he says.

“Haven’t you played together before?” Neil asks.

“Nah,” Nicky replies. “You’re bringin’ people together, babe.”

Renee bounces her bow on the strings, making a wonky sort of cross where they intersect. She pulls a cord around from the nearest amp, shaking it out and plugging it in. She peels a mean sound from her instrument, then plucks a fiddly pizzicato on her way up to the tuning pegs.

“Can you follow me, Andrew?” she asks. His wrist twitches involuntarily, and he nods. He knows the way Renee plays as well as he knows how she brawls. He would come in on time wearing earplugs in the dark. “Let’s try to stay in the vicinity of B flat major,” she suggests.

The violin nosedives into a fast solo, skidding sideways into double stops and raunchy vibrato. Her jaw works against the chin rest. Andrew finds a counterpoint to her sound, a touchy rhythm that ricochets around the drum kit whenever she gives him room to breathe.

Renee tears her solo into halves over and over again until there’s nothing, and then Kevin can’t resist taking over for her.

Neil has this flushed, exhilarated look on his face. Dan whispers in his ear, clattering notes together like pots and pans. Neil watches their hands closely and plays complementary chords in the bass, anchoring everyone.

Nicky and Aaron aren’t as proficient at making music from scratch, but they can find their way through the chord progressions. Root, major third, perfect fifth, minor seventh, repeat. Everyone lags a little when Kevin tries to drag them to a new key.

Dan plays a few out of place accidentals, laughing at herself, and Renee comes back in with a little jokey riff from a Queen song. The music peters out, but the amps are still buzzing, alive.

“Turns out rock can be fun,” Dan says breathlessly. “Who knew?”

“More fun if you know what you’re doing,” Kevin says, but his hands are shaking like they do when they’ve played a good set.

“Not necessarily,” Renee says easily.

“Kevin," Wymack says.

He’s standing in the doorway, hands braced on either side of it. His expression is stricken.

He doesn’t have time to say anything else before two figures appear at Wymack’s back, dressed head to toe in black. Kevin’s face drains of all colour.

Riko Moriyama, and tucked into his side like a comma, Jean Moreau.

“Go,” Wymack barks in Kevin’s direction, “you don’t have to be here.”

Andrew stands immediately, and Renee drops her violin in her haste to get between him and Riko. She tussles with him, but he’s spurred on by rage, charred with it. Dan struggles to wrench his arms behind his back.

“Kevin,” Riko says. “It’s been so long.”

“You can’t be here,” Nicky says.

Riko’s eyes flicker with annoyance. “We need to speak with you.”

“No seriously, you can’t fucking be here.”

“What’s going on,” Neil says in German. He’s standing, both hands on the lid of the piano, looking ready to throw a punch.

“Kevin’s worst nightmare,” Nicky replies.

“You have no right to—“ Dan starts, voice tight with the strain of holding Andrew back.

“Kevin is family,” Riko interrupts coolly. “I have every right.” Andrew plants his feet and pulls one arm free.

“Riko,” Neil guesses. Andrew can see the light of whatever the Foxes told him about the Moriyamas dawning on his face. “I don’t really believe in family. But from what I’ve gathered, it’s not so much formed on a basis of total abandonment in someone’s time of need.”

Riko’s expression turns glacial. “Who is this?” he asks. It’s obvious that he’s feigning ignorance, trying to get a rise out of Neil.

“Kevin’s new lead singer,” Neil answers easily. “Oh, is that a problem for you? I know you like to call what you do singing.”

Dan scoffs. Andrew falters just long enough for Renee to wrangle his arm and leg back under her control.

“You don’t interest me,” Riko says. “I’m here with an offer for Kevin, and I’m not concerned with what he uses to pass the time.”

“You might be concerned to know that he’s never in a million years going with you,” Wymack says. Kevin looks between them stiffly, hands closed around the neck of his bass tightly enough for the strings to stripe his skin. “You can muscle your way in here, but your threats don’t work on us, and neither does your bribery. He’s not going anywhere.”

“Kevin, honestly,” Riko says. “This is a waste of your talents.”

“From what I’ve heard, you made sure his talents would be wasted, right?” Neil says. “But you forgot that you needed some kind of talent of your own. Can’t go solo if you can’t carry a tune.”

“We’re at the top of the charts every other week,” Riko says, venomous. “Our reputation speaks for itself. It is impossible to avoid the strength of our fanbase. You play bars and live out of a van.”

“We produce everything ourselves,” Neil says. “We fight for our acclaim with a quarter of your resources, and we sell out shows anyway. You’re the weaker half of a duo, and every penny of your family money couldn’t make your music good again.”

Jean frowns nervously. Nicky hoots, and Aaron cracks a smile that’s at odds with his crossed arms.

“Your bandmates have been feeding you misinformation. Your label is a laughing stock. You cannot begin to understand the Raven legacy, let alone dream of matching it yourselves.” He straightens his cuffs. “But I’m not here to put your amateur minds at rest. I am here because my uncle wishes to offer Kevin a position as a producer. I trust I do not need to tell you how much of an upgrade that is.”

Kevin shakes his head, looking sick.

Riko eyes Andrew where he is fixed and aimed towards him, a guillotine blade held back only by a length of rope.

“Come home,” he reiterates. “Your recovery was questionable enough, and now your repetitive strain may end your career permanently.”

“And whose fault is that, again?” Dan says viciously. Andrew catches Jean flinching.

“He heard you out,” Wymack says. “Hell, we all had the pleasure of listening to your narcissistic, fear-mongering bullshit, and it looks like none of us were impressed. Now get out of our studio.”

“We’ll be back,” Riko promises. “When you don’t have hands over your eyes and ears to avoid the truth.” He steps backwards, and Jean falls in line. “And your dogs are more effectively leashed.”

He takes another step, and Andrew spots the cruel line of a self-satisfied smile as he turns and walks back out into the hall.

There’s a shellshocked silence, and then Aaron says, ”what the fuck. They can just barge in at any time?”

"Kind of makes a guy feel unsafe," Nicky says nervously. He crouches down to root through his bag, and Andrew knows he’s looking for their emergency liquor supply.

“The Moriyamas are better string-pullers than us, but they’re not better fighters,” Wymack says placatingly. “We’re not easily ambushed.”

Nicky stands up with cheap vodka in his hand, and Kevin latches onto it immediately.

“Well they sure as fuck managed it today," Dan says, finally gentling her grip. Andrew shrugs her off as soon as her guard is down, making a beeline in the direction that Riko left.

“Andrew, wait,” Neil calls, and Andrew stops just shy of the door. “He’s hoping someone will follow him.”

“Don’t give him the satisfaction,” Wymack says, putting a hand out and wincing when Andrew rips back out of his reach. “This isn’t the right time.”

“What better time than the middle of the night, on our turf, hm?” Andrew asks. He desperately resents his own helplessness. He hates being made into a liar. He thinks of the way Riko taunted Kevin, the way his eyes skated over Neil, Aaron, Nicky, like he was watching fish dart under the surface, holding a harpoon.

“There are eight of us,” Neil says. “Those are pretty good odds.”

“Do you think they came alone? Come on. There are two SUVs parked out front,” Wymack says.

“And I don’t think our eight is the same as the yakuza's eight,” Renee says quietly.

“I’m not fighting them,” Kevin says, hushed.

“Not standing up for yourself, either, I guess,” Neil retorts. He looks fired up, shaking with that nervous energy that Riko always leaves behind.

“I knew he would come eventually, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no when he did,” he replies woodenly.

He sees Neil looking at Kevin carefully, the place where his hand is wet from gulping alcohol too quickly and spilling over his fist. The paralysis that shadowed him all the way through the encounter with Riko is morphing back into his usual coping mechanisms, the fear and spite that show up on him like welts.

“We don’t let him get that close again,” Andrew says. “Or I deal with him however I want.”

Wymack pinches the bridge of his nose. “I can’t guarantee—“

“I can,” Andrew says simply. “I won’t be held back twice.”

Tension stretches between them, until Wymack rolls his eyes and gives him half a nod. “We’ll see, gremlin. I know you have promises to keep, but so do I.”

Andrew swallows this. Behind him, Kevin sinks into the nearest chair, puts the open vodka between his feet, and hangs his head.

“So, uh, Neil,” Dan starts. “You’re not as quiet as I thought.”

“Do you think he could survive here if he was?” Renee asks seriously.

“Good point.”

“People like Riko don’t know what to do when they don’t have all the power in the room,” Neil says. Andrew’s fists curl at his sides.

“Good thing you’re such a fan of out-performing people,” Nicky jokes.

“Yeah, okay, okay, thanks Neil for being a smartass. Thanks everyone else for not killing anyone. Now get out of my sight. I’m locking up whether you’re in or out,” Wymack says.

He steps back into the booth to get his bearings, and the rest of them start to dutifully pack their things away. Dan escapes first, talking urgently on the phone to Matt, squeezing Neil’s shoulder on her way by. Renee follows a step behind her, looking meaningfully at Andrew as she goes.

While the rest of them unfasten cases and shrug on jackets, Neil wanders over with both hands shoved in his pockets. “We’re not the only ones with a deal, are we?” he asks quietly.

“What, do you feel less special?” Andrew says viciously. He feels for his cigarettes, muscle memory.

“I mostly feel uninformed,” Neil corrects.

“Ironic, considering your track record with lying to us.”

Their eyes strike against each other. His arms ache with the trauma of being restrained so violently. Neil had stepped in and held up Andrew’s bargain for him without even knowing it. He’d only just heard about Kevin and Riko, hadn’t lived it like everyone else at Palmetto, but he still managed to turn a secondhand story into artillery. Riko had left unharmed but not unfazed.

“I’ve already told you—“ he cuts himself off. “I know Kevin trusts you. But it’s not that easy for me.”

“It’s never easy. Don’t insult us.” Andrew puts a cigarette in his mouth and walks out of the room with half a mind to track Riko down or else take a knife to someone’s tires.

“Hey,” Neil says, jogging after him. “All of these debts, all of these promises to keep everyone safe. Is anyone watching your back?”

Andrew’s breath cracks in half. He turns and shoves him back into the nearest wall, and Neil clips his forearm on the corner of a door. Andrew watches his sleeve rip with faraway self-loathing.

“No one’s looking for me,” he says, and he turns back again, towards the exit, towards the clarity of the wet March air. The other monsters are starting to pile into the hall, and Neil’s arm is starting to bruise red.

“I find that hard to believe,” Neil calls as he rounds the corner. “You’re impossible to ignore.”

Ironic, Andrew thinks, for the second time in as many minutes, considering the way that Neil can pull the focus of someone like Riko, walk Ausreißer down into a foxhole, or lie so beautifully that you’re convinced that believing him won’t hurt at all.

Outside, Andrew lights the cigarette, takes a drag, and lets it burn in his hand. He thinks of Kevin’s bloodless lips trying to form a ‘no’. He thinks of Neil gravitating closer when Andrew smokes.

He thinks of bad habits, and he crushes the cigarette, half-smoked, under his heel.

#love is great but wouldn't you rather enjoy the smackdown between andrew's enormous crush and neil's dumbass energies #the foxhole court #andreil #tfc fanfic #aftg #mine #rockband au #scars tw #violence tw #abuse mention #riko has arrived and let me tell you i can't wait to kill him

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