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Finding Nathaniel in their room, bruised and crying, isn’t uncommon, and it inevitably breaks Jean’s heart every time.
“Baby, what happened?” Jean asks gently, dropping his gym bag on the floor by the door, so he can have his hands free. Neil turns his tear streaked face up to him, and lets out a low mournful sound.
“Bad, bad, bad,” he mumbles, fidgeting, and then makes another sad noise, and sticks his hand in his mouth, gnawing at his fingers until they bruise.
“Shh, shh, don’t do that,” Jean mumbles soothingly. “Did Riko hit you?”
Neil blinks his tears away and shakes his head. His eyes are wide and red-rimmed ans clear like mountain lakes, glossy and blank. It’s useless trying to get Neil to talk when he’s like this, but Jean needs to know what happened.
“Did Kevin yell at you then?” Jean was going to kill him. Neil could handle himself against Riko, but there was something about Kevin’s violent acerbic criticisms that always seemed to chip away at his defenses, and push him over the edge when he was fragile.
“Did someone hurt baby?” Jean tries again, smoothing Neil’s fiery curls away from his head.
Neil shakes his head again. “Bad, bad, bad,” he repeats, almost at a lull. “No, no. Natty doesn’t like that. Bad, bad, bad.”
“What don’t you like, Natty?”
“Bad Natty,” Neil clarifies. “Bad baby. Dumb, dumb Natty.”
“You’re not dumb,” Jean reassures gently. “Wanna sit down, mon petit?”
Neil whines, but lets Jean lead him to the edge of the bed, and sit him down on the mattress. Looking at him now, there don’t seem to be any new bruises - just the remainder of practice yesterday, and then training with Riko. The only new addition is the bitemarks on Neil’s slender pale fingers.
Jean fishes his car keys out of his pocket and hands them to Neil. The keychain is a tacky rubber penguin, gag gift from Johnson, from a Christmas a few years ago. Neil sticks it in his mouth, instead of his fingers. If Andrew were here, he’d offer Neil a cigarette, but it was Jean’s humble opinion that Andrew was being a bad influence on their boy, which -
“Did Andrew say something mean to you?” he asked, deadly quiet. He would find the menacing midget and wring his neck.
Neil rewarded him with another slow blink and shook his head.
“Good Andrew. Dumb baby.”
“Did you… did you do something you think will get Andrew upset?”
Neil shakes his head again.
“Bad. Mean.”
“Who’s mean, Natty? Who’s being mean to you? Tell me, and me and Riko are going to sort it out.” Virtually the only time he and Riko agreed on anything, was using the good old “you hold him, i’ll hit him” Raven team-up on anyone who so much as made Nathaniel frown.
Neil shook his head again. He was beginning to calm down, from Jean rhythmically petting him, and the toy in his mouth, and being spoken to quietly. He was rocking back and forth slowly, his eyes lazily blinking, tears still sliding down his face.
“Can’t,” he mumbled. “Bad mean. Scary.”
There were only three things Neil was afraid of. Tetsuji Moriyama, Nathan Wesninski and Mary Hatford.
“Did the Master say something to you, Natty?”
Jean struggled to remember if Neil had been underperforming at practice lately. But if Neil had had a conversation with the man, he’d have the bruises to show it.
Mary had no contact with her son, since finalizing her divorce with Nathan, and moving to Englanf, so that meant -
“Baby, Natty, is your father coming here?”
Natty nodded, and burst into tears freshly.
“Daddy,” he said weakly. “I don’t want. Mean. Mean. Mean.”
Jean drew Neil into his arms, letting Neil cry into his shoulder.
“It’s okay baby. You don’t have to see him. You won’t see him. I’m gonna talk to Riko, okay? You and Andrew are gonna go run errands while he’s here, okay? How does that sound? you’re gonna go pick some new raquets up, we’ve got an order incoming, don’t we? And then you’re gonna look at the new armor designs. And then Andrew’s gonna get ice cream and you’re gonna share, does that sound nice?” He was rocking Neil, trying to calm him.
Nathan’s appearances at Evermore, rare as they were, always sent Neil into a tailspin.
“Okay,” Neil mumbled.
“Look at me, baby, you don’t have to see your daddy if you don’t want to. Did Riko say that?”
Neil nodded again. Riko had essentially privatized Nathan Wesninski, since the get go, equal parts a desperation for a father figure, and building rapport with Ichirou’s… boyfriend? Lover? Gentleman friend? So Neil almost never had to interact with him anyhow, but sometimes just having to be in the same building, even one as massive as the Evermore Court was a trigger.
“He - he,” Neil had given himself hiccups crying. “He promised. He said I’m not gonna b-but,”
“But what, mon petit?”
“B-but Lola says I have to,” Neil whines mournfully.
“That’s bullshit,” Jean says, matter-of-factly. He wipes the tears off Neil’s tattooed cheek, and kisses the number three there gently. “Riko is Lola’s boss, not the other way around. What he says goes. So he says you won’t see him.”
Neil nods again, and makes a small noise.
“Why don’t you tell Riko that Lola thinks she gets to tell you what to do?” Jean suggests, keeping his tone light. Riko’s anger was a dangerous weapon of mass destruction, and aiming it carefully lead to interesting results, especially when it came to his jealous posessiveness over people he considered property. Like Neil.
Neil nods again. “Later?” he asks. “Natty’s tired.”
“That’s okay, Natty. Do you wanna find Andrew?”
Neil nods, and grasps Jean’s hand weakly, as Jean leads him through the hallway to Andrew’s room. Andrew doesn’t have a roommate, and he sleeps on a mattress on the floor, because, as Neil had put it, “Andrew doesn’t like laying on a bed.” He’d immediately slapped a hand over his mouth, like he hadn’t been supposed to say that, and so no one brought it up. As if anyone would question Andrew. Even Riko was wary of him.
Andrew was watching what appeared to be a true crime documentary, and he paused it when he heard Jean and Neil come in.
“Natty’s got a bit panicky, because his daddy will be coming round soon on Moriyama business,” he says keeping his voice even. “he was a bit teary,”
Neil nods. “Sad Natty,” he mumbles.
“-and he’s tired now.” Jean finishes. “Is it okay if he takes a nap here with you?”
Andrew makes a non-commital noise, and gestures to the bed on the other side of the room, intended for a potential roommate, but mostly occupied by Neil’s stuff that he’s left there. Neil toes out of his shoes, and jeans and huddles up in one of Andrew’s hoodies, pulling it over his t-shirt. He’s still absent-mindedly sucking on Jean’s keychain.
“You gonna talk to Riko?” Andrew asks.
“Yeah. He knows though.” Jean sighs. “I know you don’t like it when Neil’s like this.”
Andrew narrows his eyes. “I hate it,” he corrects coldly. “Natty. Speaking in baby words.”
Jean frowns. “You weren’t here when we first got him. I wasn’t either. Riko says it was worse. It was pretty bad when I got here too. He’s all better now, all things considered.”
Andrew feels like he’s being berated, and he hates it, and he hates Jean, and he hates Nathaniel’s episodes, of lapsing into third person, and baby talk, and panic, and tears, and his stupid oral fixation, and needing to sleep all the time when he’s not on the court, and the -
“He didn’t have an episode my whole first semester,” he says instead.
“Yeah. That was the longest time he’d gone, and there were several things hat could have triggered him. I think he was trying to impress you.”
Andrew points to the pretty boy curled on his spare bed.
“i am not impressed.” he says.
“You keep talking about him like that, and you’re not going to have him for very long,” Jean warns. “He’s a good boy, and he deserves to feel some kind of- “ he gestures vaguely. “Something. Riko handles him better than you do.”
It stings, and it’s mean to. Andrew is by far the best thing that’s happened to Nathaniel, but in between his constant dismissals, and cold attitude, Neil’s tattered emotional landscape can only handle so much.
“Riko carved his name in Neil’s hip,” Andrew reminds in a furious whisper.
“Neil asked him to,” Jean says, equally furious.
“Well I’m not like that!” Andrew snarled.
“What? You’re not possessive? Please. You go green in the face every time someone touches him, even if it’s one of us. You hate sharing your toys.”
Andrew bristles. “I strongly suggest you watch your tone.”
“And I strongly suggest you figure out how you’re going to treat Nathaniel. You can’t pick and choose when you like to be around him. Not here, not in the Nest. Anyway, I’ve told him you’re going to keep him out of the Nest when Daddy Butcher is here. Have some time to think about what you’ll be saying to him.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Andrew wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore.
Jean pointed at his high cheekbone, tattooed with the number 4.
“I do.” he said evenly. He’d been Neil’s for much longer than Neil had been Andrew’s. Neil had protected him. Neil had been good to him. He was just returning the favor.
“Figure it out, Andrew. We’re all getting a little tired.”
He turned around, making to leave the room, and shut the door quietly behind him.
Andrew had plugged his headphones in, to continue watching his movie, while Neil slept his breakdown off. Jean really hoped this whole mess worked, for both their sakes.