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Chapter Text

The Foxes are milling around aimlessly with their water bottles after a brutal practice until Dan calls them to attention. “Alright, left hand in,”

“Because it’s closer to your heart,” Nicky adds, like he adds every time. The team puts their left hands in, but not before Allison says a condescending aww and Kevin a disappointed Shut the fuck up.

Once everyone has their hands in, Dan suggests “Exy once?” Nobody protests, and the subsequent chant goes something like this: “EXY ONCE EXY TWICE HOLY FUCKING JESUS CHRIST GOD DAMN SONABITCH LETS GO FOXES,” (Renee abstains from most of the swears), and continues on with incoherent yelling. After nearly six months, Neil still does not know the words to the final line. Nobody will just tell him the words because it’s ‘not tradition.’ 

He sort of mumbles nonsense until the chant ends. He suspects that there is no final line, and everyone is also shouting gibberish.

The circle breaks up and the Foxes continue milling around. Matt claps Nicky on the shoulder, saying “good shit,” because Nicky had made a good block during scrimmage, and Andrew lightly kicks Neil in the shin.

Neil hisses in pain. “What was that for!”

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

Neil sighs. Apparently, if you overtrain running, you can get an overuse injury in your shins. Sue him, he’d only stopped running for his life a few months ago. How was he supposed to notice shin splints? He’s been wearing KT tape, and taking ibuprofen, and doing stretches and ice like Abby told him to. Not a problem.

“Foxes,” Dan calls. Neil and Kevin snap to attention, the rest of the team following suit a second after. “Before you go--”

“Practice wasn’t long enough,” Kevin interrupts. “I’ve been saying--”

Neil hadn’t noticed. His sense of time still isn’t right.

Andrew pops Kevin in the back of the head to shut him up. Kevin gives Andrew a death glare. Dan talks over it. “Practice was cut short because Admin received an anonymous report of hazing.”

“Who snitched,” Kevin says. “Step up now or regret it later. I’m warning you.”

“Not helping our case,” Allison points out. 

Kevin takes a step towards her, snapping “Fuck you, did you do it?” 

“Fuck you, I’m no snitch.” 

“Enough.” Dan looks tired. “They said that somebody noticed Neil at Columbia and got concerned.”

Neil can hardly make sense of that. “Concerned now? We have bigger problems. Like--”

“Like winning. I know. I need to win as much as anyone, so don’t come to me with that. As your captain, I’m telling you to be honest with Admin and let their investigation go smoothly. As a Fox-- we’ve never trusted authority, have we?” She pauses meaningfully. “In the meantime, I’ve made arrangements with Captain Fish of the men’s and Captain Bugs of the women’s rugby clubs. They’ve agreed to let us practice tomorrow, two-hand-touch, I know, we can’t play full contact until we’ve been cleared. I know it isn’t what we want to be doing, and I can’t make you go, but we’ll make the best of it. Maybe we’ll learn something. We’ll meet outside the athletes’ dining hall at 4:15 tomorrow. There’s not a lot of parking at the pitch, so they’ve asked Matt to drive us all down in his truck, following them down their back-way where Campo doesn’t patrol. Okay? Okay. Get some rest. Go.”

Aaron is the first to respond, muttering “I’m not doing that shit, I got homework.” Dan lets it go. 

“Rugby club?” Kevin says, scandalized. “They’re not even varsity! Do they even have a coach?”

“Not like we can practice with the lacrosse team… not after the incident,” Matt says ominously. Neil decides not to ask.

“Captain Fish,” Allison says. “Captain Bugs.”

“Are the nicknames a tradition?” Renee wonders. 

Dan shrugs. “We’ll find out.”

As they leave the court, Renee walks up beside Neil. He side-eyes her.

“Do you agree with Dan?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“We all want to keep playing, but you do deserve some sort of justice for what happened,” Renee says. “Perhaps not admin--”

“Admin doesn’t have a fucking clue what justice is,” Neil says. “Lie to them.”

~

That night, neither Andrew, Neil, nor Kevin can sleep. They all stare silently at the ceiling for a while, refusing to acknowledge each other, until Kevin finally breaks the silence. “Did you ever pick up the rules of rugby, Andrew?”

“No.”

That’s a good point, and a good distraction from the existential horror eating away at Neil. If the Foxes are shut down, if they lose the spotlight and fall from grace, he’s dead even sooner than he expected to be. And even worse, if the administration finds out not only about the crackers and alcohol, but also what Nicky did that night at Eden’s, Neil doesn’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t want that to go public. He knows Nicky feels guilty for it. He knows that it would destroy Andrew’s family for it to come out. Neil wants revenge for many things, but not for that. 

He and the Foxes are all in the same boat now: lie, lie, and lie again. Admin can never know. 

“What are the rules of rugby, Andrew,” Neil asks. 

“I thought you were married to Exy,” Andrew says flatly. “Don’t tell me you’re getting a divorce. That’s a sin.”

“What is it called when you score a point,” Neil asks.

“A try.”

“How does it happen?”

“You get past the goal line and put the ball on the ground. I’m not doing this.”

“What’s the most common foul?” Kevin asks. 

“A knock-on. Fumbling the ball forwards. Obstructions and off-sides are also common.”

“You can’t throw the ball forwards?” Kevin says, horrified. “How do you move it?”

“Running and kicking. Would you wait to have your affair until tomorrow? I thought you always said it’s easier not to experiment.”

“I’ll kill you,” Kevin says.

“Says the one without any knives. See how that goes.”

The conversation, if it could be called that, dies down soon. Neil eventually gets to sleep.

Chapter Text

“PCRC—“ Neil assumes that stands for Palmetto College Rugby Club— “Circle up! We’re drilling co-ed today, we have guests!” Captain Bugs calls. 

The ruggers, as Neil has recently learned rugby players are called, finish passing a bottle of spray sunscreen between each other and tying their cleats at the bleachers, and form an enormous circle on one of the pitches. They’re unmarked fields of scraggly grass, distinguished as sports pitches only by the metal H-shaped goalposts at either end. 

Neil is a little nervous, and the chill in the air, seemingly unnoticed by the ruggers in t-shirts, sports bras, and shorts, doesn’t help. Neither did sitting in the bed of Matt’s truck for the ride down to the pitch alongside Kevin, Andrew, Renee, and a case of beer. He approaches the circle, and a couple female ruggers wave him over to stand beside them. Andrew follows Neil like a vaguely-displeased shadow. Neil’s glad to have him at his back.

The ruggers look like they’re about to make small talk with him, but Captain Bugs calls them to attention again, putting a friendly arm around Dan. “This is my buddy Dan from Sports Medicine,” she introduces. “She’s the captain of the varsity Exy team. Admin’s being evil again--”

All the ruggers boo without any real aggression at the mention of the administration.

“--and so we’re being devious--”

Cheers, this time.

“--and letting them practice with us. Let’s everyone introduce ourselves. I’ll go first, my rugby name is Bugs, I’m captain of the women’s team, I’m a senior, I use she/her, and… Q of the D… if you were a ball what type of ball would you be? I’d be a ball point pen. Let’s go around.”

Despite the obvious waste of time, they go around the circle and Neil learns such bizarre “rugby names” as not only Bugs and Fish, but Rocky, Grips, Sweetie, Pumpkin, Creed, and more. Still, the majority of players use their regular names. 

The introductions go around. “Hey guys, I’m Nicky! I’m a senior, I use he/him, and I’d be balls.”

“Hell yeah brother,” Pumpkin, on the men’s team, holds his hand out as if to do some sort of secret handshake with Nicky, who stares at him blankly. 

“Kevin. Starting striker. Senior. I’m… a guy? I’d be an Exy ball.”

“Hi everyone. I’m Renee, I’m a second-year senior, I use she/her pronouns, and I’d be the moon.”

A few ruggers hum in appreciation. “Good one.” “The moon.” “That’s deep.”

Before Neil knows it, it’s his turn. “Neil Josten number ten. Freshman. I’d… also be an Exy ball.”

“Imitation’s the sincerest form of flattery,” Captain Fish comments. Neil and Kevin look at each other with identical distaste. 

“Andrew,” Andrew says.

Captain Fish waits a few seconds. “...Anything else?”

“No,” Andrew says. 

“Cool, chill,” Captain Fish says. “Man of few words. I can respect it.”

“Don’t care,” Andrew says.

“Tough crowd!”

Once introductions are done, Captain Bugs leads everyone on a jog around the field. It’s not nearly long enough a run to warm Neil up, but some of the ruggers are breathing hard by the end of it. One of them asks Neil if his shins are okay, gesturing at his KT tape. He stares at them blankly until they wander away. They do a few moving stretches, things like high knees and butt-kicks and lunges, and finally Captain Fish explains some basic passing drills and hands out balls to pairs of ruggers. 

The rugby ball is enormous, bigger than a football with the hollow solidity of a basketball. Neil tosses it from hand to hand a few times. It’s unfamiliar, but makes a satisfying sound when he catches it. He can imagine the rush of clutching it in both hands and sprinting to the end of the field, touching it down, scoring for his team. 

In another life. 

In this life, Neil and Andrew practice short pop-passes until they seem good enough, and then struggle mightily with long passes, spinning the ball so it flies straight. 

“I’d rather be playing Exy, but this is interesting,” Neil says. 

“I’d rather be doing jack shit,” Andrew says.

“Yeah.” 

Neil gets the ball to spin when passing with the strength of his right hand, but can’t achieve the same consistency with his left. He needs more practice.

“Let’s do some kicking drills,” Captain Fish calls, and Neil catches the ball Andrew lobbed at him slightly too late, the impact stinging as the heavy ball hits him in the stomach. “Two lines of catchers at the cones out left, one line of kickers at the cones out right. We’ll rotate through. Catchers, call it if it comes to you, pass it to your buddy, and try to make a try without the kicker tagging you. Let’s go!”

Kevin, who’d been paired with Captain Bugs, next to them, sighs. “Kicking…”

“I know you don’t kick in Exy, but your footwork can’t be that bad,” Captain Bugs says optimistically.

“I’m not really… into feet,” Kevin says disdainfully. 

Captain Bugs snorts, putting a hand over her mouth to hide an irrepressible grin. “Oh, I’m sure.”

Neil hears other inane conversations as they form lines. He ends up in the second kicking line. 

“People always say I should try a bold red lip,” Sweetie chats with the girl next to her. “I’m like, have you seen me? Red?”

“I don’t know, I could see it,” the girl replies. 

“I agree,” Allison says. “The light pink makes you look like a baby doll. You’re not a doll, you’re a woman.”

“That’s true,” Sweetie says.

“You’ll never look good if you’re scared of looking bad,” the other girl says philosophically. 

Another pair of guys are talking about their birthdays. “Guess,” says Pumpkin. “What’s the worst date in September?”

“I dunno,” his buddy says. “The seventeenth?”

“No,” Pumpkin says. “Think a second.”

He obliges, stroking his chin performatively, then starts cracking up. “Oh! Oh! You were really born on-- I forgot…”

“Never forget!”

Neil isn’t sure what the worst date in September is, but he stops eavesdropping when the kicker shouts “HEADS!” 

The ball flies in a high, dangerous arc like something launched from a trebuchet. It comes down to the left, and when the catcher catches it like they’re expected to, their partner shouts in encouragement. 

The drills become hypnotic after a while, never quite intense enough to drive the goosebumps from Neil’s skin and make him sweat, but satisfying in their dogged pursuit of the skills the ruggers needed. When Neil and Kevin step up to the catchers’ cones, they don’t need to say a single word to each other. They know they’ll make a try. 

“Heads,” the kicker calls, and kicks. 

~

It;s about ten that night, and Neil is doing last-minute edits on a proof for math class on Kevin’s laptop. Then the email comes in. You’ve got mail, the robotic voice drones. Neil clicks over to the email tab to see the subject headline Invitation: Investigative Interview @ Thu Jan 24 2008 3pm - 3:30 pm (EDT) (Neil Josten). His heart drops. Opening the email, it looks automatically-sent, as if somebody went into his digital schedule and opened a meeting there without needing to ask. It gives him the full address of the office where the interview will take place, and the names of the organizers, administrators that seem pretty high-ranking.

Neil swears, feeling chills running down his spine.

Then another email comes in. Notice of Investigation, directly from one of the administrator’s emails. 

Dear Neil,

You have received an important message from the Office of Student Rights & Responsibilities. Please click the following link to view this message:

https://palmetto-advocate.edu/u/lj2kter4

Thank you,

Digital Signature

Max Johnson

Senior Director of Campus Life

Neil clicks the link. He logs in with his student credentials to read the official Notification Letter. 

Dear Neil,

The Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities is conducting interviews based on reports received by the office regarding Varsity Mixed Exy. It is important that we speak with students who were potentially present to complete the investigation and resolve this case. As such, this is a request that you attend an interview with investigators on Thursday, January 24th, at 3:00 pm.

The interview will take place in Administrative Building 2. You will receive a calendar invite shortly after this email.

As students of Palmetto State University, the Student Handbook sets out the investigation process and expectations that students will be honest and forthcoming with information during investigations, as well as refrain from actions that could be deemed retaliation.

Thank you,

Max Johnson

Senior Director of Campus Life

Attachment(s)

No Attachment

Sent/Submitted On

January 23, 2025 10:19 PM

Neil puts his head in his hands, and feels them trembling. What a mess. 

He feels a hand on his back, and hears Kevin. “It’ll be fine,” Kevin says. “They want to intimidate us with their posturing bureaucracy, but we stick together. I may not like this team--”

Neil snorts.

“--Shut up, rookie.” Kevin pauses as if Neil cares about that irony. “But we don’t break our promises. You gave me your game, didn’t you?”

“Won’t let me forget it.”

“Then show up, and do what you do best: lie. Okay? Now let me log in, I need to see if they’ve sent me mine.”

Chapter Text

Andrew drops Neil off outside Administrative Building 2 a couple minutes early, and Neil awkwardly lurks on the sidewalk until he figures it’s time to go in. At the front door, he notices a daddy-longlegs spider just to the right of the doorknob. It’s definitely a sign that this will be a disaster.

A student worker sits at the front desk with a bowl of mints. Neil takes one but doesn’t eat it.

“Hi!” she says. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yeah.”

“With who?”

“With… the senior director of campus life.”

“Oh,” she says knowingly. “That’s just upstairs, down the hall to your left.”

Neil nods and goes to the stairs. Most of the office doors are closed, so he walks past them, and gets to the one on the left with the open door. There are two men inside, one on a chair and one behind a desk. 

“Hi,” Neil says. “I’m Neil, am I supposed to be here?”

They look slightly perplexed, until the one at the desk looks at his computer and says yes. They introduce themselves as Mr. Johnson the director of campus life, at the computer, and Frederick, the director of the Title IX office, in the chair. Frederick then explained that Title IX deals with cases of sexual harassment and civil rights violations. 

“Glad you’re keeping people safe,” Neil says, knowing his face is masklike. 

“I was sorry to hear about your teammate over Thanksgiving,” Frederick says. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m the person you come talk to if there’s anything sexual going on in a hazing situation,” Frederick says. “We have anonymous reports, of course, and sometimes people just show up in our office.”

Neil wants to kill him. 

They proceed to attempt small talk and ask Neil where he was from, if his family is fans of the Arizona State University Sun Devils or the University of Arizona Exy Team. Neil picks one at random. They ask what got him into Exy, and he deadpans “The money.” They ask him his major, and if he does anything besides study and play Exy-- obviously not. They ask him his age.

“Nineteen,” he lies. 

They ask him when he’ll turn twenty-one. 

They tell him that they wouldn’t do anything to him if he admitted he’d drank, or if, for example, he’d been on the high team when playing Drunk vs. High.

“So that’s what DvH stands for,” Neil says. “I’d heard of it on other teams, but we don’t do that. The Foxes aren’t a big enough team to play against each other like that.” 

They ask him if the Foxes have parties often, if he had been hazed, and what he would consider to be hazing.

“If someone encouraged me to drink… if there was bullying going on, if someone’s skills at Exy gave them too much social power,” Neil guesses. This is such a joke. No one ever interrogated the Ravens like this.

“That’s about right,” Mr. Johnson says. “So, what did happen at the club that we heard about?”

“Nothing,” says Neil. 

They look at him like they expect him to keep talking. 

“They wanted to welcome me to the team,” Neil says. “They wanted to show me a place that they hung out as high schoolers, that’s important to them as a family. Or, a family and also Kevin. I just drank soda. The music was loud and it threw me off, like I said I’m from a small town and I wasn’t familiar with places like that, and I ran off on my own. We talked it through when I got back to campus.”

“We heard that somebody hit you,” Frederick says. “Was there a fight?”

“No,” Neil says. “Must’ve been an accident. Someone not seeing where they were going.” 

“So there’s nothing going on between you and that group?”

Nothing is stretching it. In some ways, everything is going on between Neil and Andrew, but these lazy, bitter bureaucrats have no right to it. Neil says “We’re teammates. It’s been a hard season, you know that. We’re learning to work together.”

“And we’re very sorry for that,” Frederick says, playing the good cop. 

“You should be,” Neil says. “You’re doing your investigation now, about something that doesn’t matter. It seems like the Foxes are the only ones who ever have each other’s backs, we’re not the ones hurting us-- where were you when Seth needed you? Or did you think that Allison hazed him?”

“We don’t think that,” Mr. Johnson says quickly.

“She was the love of his life,” Neil says. “If you think they were too young to know that, well I guess you’ve never had to see people die young. He’d never hurt her and she’d never hurt him. Because we’re Foxes. You’re just some spineless admins who wish they had a time machine.”

“Calm down, now,” Frederick says, holding out a hand like he was trying to soothe a zoo animal. “Take some deep breaths.”

“I am calm,” Neil says. “I’ve been calm. Would you let me go? I have better things to do.” 

Mr. Johnson says “One last question, please Neil-- is there anything you would change about what happened to you?”

“Not a single fucking thing,” Neil spits.

Before either of them dismiss him, he stands and speed-walks out of the room, face burning. He goes down the stairs two at a time, and ignores the polite goodbye coming from the secretary student. He calls Andrew as soon as the cold sunny air hits him outside. “Get me, now.” 

“On the way,” Andrew says, and adds nothing else, but stays on the line as the seconds tick on. 

~

Neil and Kevin destroy themselves running Raven drills back to back in an empty court while Andrew chainsmokes in the bleachers. Neil can’t stop thinking about Seth. He’d used him as a distraction. Once again, his death is the only thing that can bring the Foxes together, but his death wasn’t the administrators’ fault. It was Neil’s.

Kevin doesn’t stop pushing Neil, not even after he collapses. He shouts at him to get the fuck up, and somehow, Neil does. When Neil falls to his knees the second time, and lands flat on his back, staring at the blurring court ceiling, Kevin lets him stay there.

They have rugby in an hour. 

Chapter Text

Playing two-hand touch with the entirety of PCRC is absolute chaos. The team has no uniforms, so determining who’s on which team depends entirely on which direction the ruggers are facing. Besides that, there are way too many people. Standard rugby plays sevens or fifteens, but with nearly fifty people out on the pitch, they’re playing twenty-fives.

Neil tries to focus. 

The ball bounces forward off Kevin’s hands, and the other team shouts “KNOCK!” Nicky scoops up the ball and starts running before he realizes that a knock-on is a foul that stops play, and he’s the only person moving.

“Aw man,” Nicky says, walking back to his line. 

“I’m killing every man, woman, and child here,” Kevin adds, not having fumbled a ball during play since he was about twelve.

“You’re fine, back ten, we’re flat,” Captain Bugs says. They’ve christened themselves Team Two for this scrimmage, and the other team is Team Cuckoo Clocks for an unknown reason.

“Hey, what’s tree in Spanish again,” Rocky shouts across the field.

“Tree?” Nicky responds. “Uh, árbol!”

“That’s right, it’s our-ból! Gimme!”

Nicky passes him said ball, his team going back ten and setting up their flat defense line. 

“Rocky, I’m here. Let’s get steep,” Captain Fish says, ready to catch Rocky’s pass as his team switches to offense. 

“Getting steep,” Dan says, taking a few steps backwards beside Captain Fish. “Who’s out left?”

“Out left,” Sweetie confirms, jogging left to fill in the gap in their line. 

“You’re steep, good,” Captain Fish tells Dan. “Like a perfectly made cup of tea.”

Dan laughs. “I like that.”

Rocky grins an evil grin, touches the ball to his foot, feints a throw to Captain Fish, and starts barrelling forward. Neil dashes forward too, hands outstretched-- “Two!” he tags him, but shit, he’s already thrown the ball. Captain Fish loops behind him and catches the ball, juking out Matt and Creed, and makes a break for it. 

Neil isn’t letting that happen.

“GET HIS ASS NEIL,” Nicky shouts. 

“Getting it!” Neil starts sprinting after Captain Fish. Captain Fish is running straight, Neil is farther to the side, so it’s a hypoteneuse interception. He’s at a disadvantage. He’s at the center line now. Ten yards pass like it’s nothing. He’s gaining on him. He hyperventilates on purpose, knowing the all-out sprint can’t last much longer. He’s almost there. He can hear Captain Fish’s singsong “Ban ban ban ban ban,” to the rhythm of his strides, and Neil is not about to make that the soundtrack to a try. 

He leaps after the captain--

--And hears Dan. “Here!”

No, no--

“Two,” he gasps as Captain Fish trips and goes down hard, digging a muddy gouge in the grass.

But the ball is already in the air, and Neil watches from the ground as Dan catches it and touches it down. That’s a try.

“Holy fuck,” Captain Fish says, sprawled in the grass. “You don’t fuck around.”

“Maybe if you weren’t singing you would’ve made it.”

Captain Fish shakes his head as he brushes enormous clods of mud off of his knee. “It’s tradition.”

“There’s no way…” Neil manages to extricate himself from the tackle position he’s landed in with the Captain, and offers him a hand once he’s standing. “You’re not hurt?”

Captain Fish grins. “I’m fine, but you know we’re not keeping score, right? You don’t have to sacrifice the body like that.”

Neil grimaces. He hadn’t known, actually. The Ravens didn’t keep score, in that they didn’t bother with a lit-up scoreboard, but they were expected to count it in their heads. His team is at 3 tries, Fish’s 4, now 5. “Don’t tell Kevin.”

“I got that vibe, yeah.” Captain Fish holds up his hand for a high-five. Neil figures he might as well give him one, and then starts jogging to meet his team in their new positions. Team Two is kicking to start the new play. 

Team Two grimly accepts Neil back in their ranks. “We’ll get 'em next time,” Captain Bugs says.

“We fucking better,” Kevin agrees. 

“We’re flat, I’m kicking,” Captain Bugs says.

“We’re exploded, ready to catch,” Captain Fish says.

Captain Bugs holds the ball down in front of her foot, gets ready, then drops it. She kicks it and it skids only about fifteen feet. Team Cuckoo Clocks starts running forward, sees that the ball didn’t go far enough, and re-sets. Captain Bugs sighs, retrieves the ball, and re-sets.

This time, the ball’s arc is high and bold, framed against the blue sky.

“UP! UP,” Captain Bugs orders, and Team Two starts running upfield. If they’re fast enough they’ll catch the ball. If they catch the ball they get to play offense, and Neil likes to play offense. 

Rocky catches the ball running sideways, and immediately, Kevin barrels into him. “My ASS,” Rocky complains, pointing out that Kevin had tagged him on his glutes. 

“Sorry,” Kevin says.

“No, always go for the ass,” Rocky jokes.

“I’m calling Frederick,” Captain Fish joins in. “Title Nine, you can’t touch the butt.”

“I’ll haze Frederick,” Rocky says. “He’s a performative male.”

“Let’s not,” Captain Bugs says. 

“Yeah, let’s not,” Dan agrees, coming over to scrum the ball from Rocky to another member of the team-- Neil guesses she’ll pass it to Captain Fish again. “...He is a performative male, though.”

Out to the left, Sweetie says to Nicky “Any Friday nights you’re free?”

Nicky puts a pitying hand to his chest. “Oh honey, I’m flattered, but--”

“Gonna stop you right there, I’m a dyke,” Sweetie says. “I’m saying PCRC throws Friday nights at the South Campus Apartments, you seem like you like to party.”

“Oh!” Nicky grins. “I do like to party!”

“You like beer?”

Nicky hesitates. “German beer’s okay…”

“We got Busch Light take it or leave it, unforch. We don’t got y’all’s kinda funding.”

“Hmm.” Nicky weighs his options. “How about I bring a handle and a mixer to share?”

“That’d be great, actually! Exciting. I’ll text you the address Friday?”

“Sounds like a plan!”

Dan scrums the ball to Captain Fish, who passes it down his steep offense line, and the game is on again. 

Neil is perfectly focused. He sees motion, and Palmetto orange, and the light of the sun. He sees the quicksilver clouds gathering behind the trees past the pitch. He feels dry grass tear beneath his shoes. He chases the rugger with the ball. 

He reaches out with both hands. 

~

PSUFoxes GC

Dan Wilds: Thank you, everyone, for being so wonderful in your interviews. Max Johnson is proud of the environment we’ve created. Practice is tomorrow.

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~

“Left hand in,” Dan says. 

“Cause it’s closer to your heart!” Nicky cheers. 

The Foxes put their hands in. 

“EXY ONCE! 

EXY TWICE! 

HOLY FUCKING JESUS CHRIST! 

GOD DAMN SONABITCH, 

LET’S!

GO!

FOXES!”

And the game is on.