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There's a fire burning in long, wide licks of pain at Neil's side.
It's a sensation that the combined efforts of his past with his father as well as the general ache which burdens all exy players ensures he won't forget. This time, however, it's not his own pain. It gets to a point that he needs to stop in the middle of the court to reach down and rub at his side in an attempt to ease it up to no avail. He grimaces.
Pain bonds are a phenomenon that have become increasingly common over the years, he's been told, although they've always been prevalent to him. He's watched his fathers men break after realizing the one they'd just decapitated were their own soulmate. More commonly, he's watched them scoff as the people they torture beg for it to stop, not for themselves but for their soulmate's sake.
Some theorize they're an evolutionary trait, designed to signal to a member of the same species that one of their own is in trouble or to nurture the essential social bonds humans require to maintain a healthy life and encourage procreation. Others romanticize them, attributing the link to a deity invested in their love life.
Regardless of their cause, Neil is ambivalent to the concept. His mother washed any hope of finding his soulmate and keeping them out of him as soon as his bond was established. It became even clearer that his chances of meeting them were shit when they went on the run and his identity began changing by the minute. He can hear his mother's scoffing, mocking the idea that anyone other than themselves could protect them.
Even without all of that, Neil isn't sure he wants to meet them. He's never been able to envision himself with someone, in either the romantic or sexual sense. It makes it ten times worse when the concept of having someone fated to him — someone who will weigh him down when he's spent years fleeing with nothing of his own to hold him back — truly sinks in. The idea that he has no say in the matter makes his mouth go dry in distaste.
For all it's worth, Neil has felt bad for his soulmate. Pain bonds snap into place when someone experiences intense pain for the first time, and Neil is sure his wasn't fun for them. While it's somewhat muted through the link and doesn't actually injure the person on the receiving end, it's still strong enough to leave someone faint and dizzy from ample pain. He doesn't feel too sorry, though, because he knows his soulmate's first was just as bad.
After the initial snap, pain doesn't need to be as intense to transfer over. Neil has been woken up from the feeling of a stubbed toe too many times to count. He's sure his soulmate wakes up with aching legs more often than not due to Neil's incessant running whenever his latent thoughts intensify.
He tries not to think about the stinging on his forearms too much.
"Josten!" Hernandez's call breaks him out of his thoughts. He turns to find the man glancing at him, frustrated. Neil winces and jumps back into focusing on practicing his passes, his teammate waiting ready for him 25 feet up-court.
He's been distracted lately, much to the disesteem of his team. He knows his coach is especially irritated, mostly due to him "wasting his potential." Still, it's hard to focus when the pain from his soulmate has turned… fuzzy, for lack of a better word.
It would be one thing if the intense, intermittent pain that has wracked him since he was small was completely gone. He'd probably assume they were dead, tuck away any hint of emotion at that where his mother lies in the small of his mind, and go on.
Instead, it's an unrelenting feeling similar to when your limbs fall asleep — distanced and prickly.
Neil is good at pain, he's spent years handling it. He knows how to deal with intermittent fits of heated stings and deep, throbbing bruises. This feeling of the pain falling just short of his reach, however, is more frustrating than any of that.
Neil doesn't know if he'll ever meet his bond partner. He doesn't know if he even wants to.
He does anyway — not that he knows it at the time.
Andrew Minyard is just as irritating as the pain currently in his wrists is.
Neil rubs at them, shoves his hands in his pocket on his run to practice, and inevitably pulls them out to rub at the ache again. It's a fruitless effort, nothing he does will ease it, but the instinct remains.
It doesn't help when Neil watches Andrew kick the court's wall and his own foot throbs.
It really doesn't help when he notices Andrew rubbing at his ribs in the same spot that Neil's own are currently screaming at him for wearing his binder during practice.
It hits the breaking point at Thanksgiving, when Neil knows that something is deeply wrong before Andrew even leaves the kitchen.
Neil leaves for Edgar Allen and Andrew for Easthaven before either of them can talk about it.
Their pain during this time melts together into a puddle in which neither of them know where it starts or ends, never mind who it's originally from.
They're on the roof when it's finally uttered between them. The golden warm of the sun setting washes over Andrew's face and Neil watches his mouth open as he takes a huff of his cigarette. He swallows deeply.
He doesn't know how Andrew feels about their bond. He knows that the blonde knows, and Neil is clueless to how he even wants Andrew to feel. All he knows is the pit of grief forming in his stomach, mourning something he thinks he might want but could never have — not when he'll be gone soon. Not when there's a countdown sitting impatiently in his message logs.
Still, he needs to know. It's pressing at him so much that he feels like he's going to be sick if he doesn't ask soon.
So he does.
But first—
"What the hell?" Andrew asks, turning to look at Neil who's hand is now shoved between a rock and concrete. It's not enough to break it, not enough to even make him bleed, but just enough to make sure.
"You know." Neil says, it's a statement, not a question. Andrew's silent for a while.
"It doesn't mean anything."
For once, Neil is the quiet one. He stares at Andrew in a pressing silence, unsettling enough for the blonde to toss his cigarette to the ground and continue without a roll of his eyes.
"The universe decided we deserved to torture each other. Society just decided to romanticize it."
Neil took his binder off hours ago, so he doesn't know why his chest feels like it's squeezing so tight that he's going to stop breathing. He doesn't know why his stomach is hollowing out when he's going to be gone anyway. If anything, he's causing Andrew more pain, even if it's just from the act of his future murder in itself.
He doesn't have anything to say, though, and he's almost out of truths to ask. So he stays quiet.
They don't tell anyone they're soulmates, even after they start… whatever it is they're doing. It's not important, anyway.
Until Andrew's face is bashed in by an elbow and a knife presses at the nape of Neil's neck.
Andrew knows before he steps foot outside of the locker room that something is up. He knew it from the moment he heard Neil's voice crack on his "I'm sorry," an innate, illogical feeling that makes him clench his hands and storm up to Neil demanding an answer. Neil's silence is an answer enough, but without knowing what is going on — there's nothing he can do. Not when he already promised Neil not to intervene.
Andrew doesn't break his promises. Ever.
That doesn't stop him from falling to his knees at the searing pain blossoming on his cheek. An invisible blister forming within seconds. Their promise doesn't keep him from keeling over and vomiting from the pain spreading throughout his gut, his limbs, his face. On top of it all, a heavy bruise blooms on the side of his eye.
Unsuprisingly, it's Renee that finds him first.
"Any sign of him?"
Andrew lets out a low groan. She kneels next to him looking concerned. "They couldn't have gotten you that bad."
He grits his teeth. "It's not me."
It's not his. Not his pain, not his injuries. Yet he bears it knowing that it's even worse on the other end.
He needs to find Neil.
Renee looks at him, raising a hand clear in his line of sight. Another wave of burning passes through him and his head falls limp. It's permission. She places a hand on his back and starts moving it in gentle circles. She want's to say that it will be okay, that Neil's okay, but she doesn't lie anymore.
The rest of the team finds them not long after. By now, all of them have noticed Neil's dissaperance amid the chaos. Fucking Houdini, Andrew mentally hisses at Neil. By now, the pain has shifted into a numb tingle — the sort of feeling that makes you bite the flesh of your cheek after a dose of local anesthetic at the dentist.
Kevin worries his lip in front of him. Nicky glances between him and some omnipresent being in the corner of the hotel room like it will give him the answers to life itself. Aaron sits on the bed, glancing at him through the ocrner of his eye while picking at his nails. Matt doesn't know what to make of any of this. All their eyes shift to him as soon as he lifts his head and he sucks in a breath. They can't tell if it's out of pain or anger. He'll keep it that way.
"Connect the dots. It's clear they're sou-"
"Now is not the time to play detective-"
The discussion outside the hotel door is muffled, but not as noise cancelling as the rest of their team thinks it is. Every part of his body feels bruised and tender.
The hotel room is a blur of mutual pain and frustration. Something snaps in Neil the moment he sees Andrew. With everything Lola did that night, he couldn't decipher his own pain from the blonde's. He didn't even know Andrew was hurt — or, well, he hoped he wasn't. Hoped all the pain he felt was his.
But the left side of Andrew's eye is bruised to all hell and Neil presses at it with his thumb, wincing at the pain in his own left side. He doesn't stop — pressing, pressing, pressing until Andrew hisses and Neil exhales a slow, heavy breath. Andrew returns the gesture, the pads of two of his fingers sinking themselves into the tender flesh beneath his chin and next to his throat, gaze flickering across his face and he turns it this way and that.
"I'm sorry." Neil says and only the two of them know what he's apologizing for. I'm sorry for the pain, for leaving, for forcing you to make that promise.
His arm burns from Andrew's visible restraint from punching him, his knuckles sore from how hard he's clenching the fist in his hoodie. The carpet digs into his knees and once again he's reminded that they're surrounded by everyone. Neil flicks a look at the others and then back at Andrew. The two of them know they're soulmates — have known longer than either of them want to admit, but Andrew's shoulders relax and it feels more like a mutual understanding of their feelings than they've ever had before.
Their pain is engraved within each other, deep in the marrow of their bones, and it no longer feels like something they need to push away.
He swallows a thick clot of saliva clinging to the dryness of his mouth and starts from the beginning.