#tfctask

When the principal calls Brayden into his office, he’s sure it’s finally happening. He’s getting expelled. Honestly, he’s surprised it took this long for them to finally kick him out. He barely shows up to class, ignores his homework, and completely abandoned going to exy practice. The bleachers have become almost a second home to him, or at least he spends more time there than his actual home.

It should’ve been better after Landon left, one less person to breathe down his neck, but it’s not. His mom has no one to fond over anymore, so she switches between giving Brayden disgusted looks or completely ignoring his existence. It’s like he’s a ghost. He feels like a ghost, haunting the bleachers, completely numb and barely attached to reality.

The thing is, he knows how fucked up he is. That fourteen year old kid who got high for the first time feels like a stranger to him now. It just escalated so fast from there, and he only gets worse by the day. He’s starting to lose hope that it’ll ever get better. Looking in the mirror terrifies him, because he doesn’t recognize the person looking back at him anymore. And he just doesn’t get how anyone can look at him and not see someone who’s practically a shell of a human. Maybe, they don’t notice. Maybe, they don’t care. There’s fleeting moments where he convinces himself that he can stop using and beat this by himself, but then the cravings kick in, and it’s too hard to resist. Especially when there’s no one to encourage him to stop.  

The door shuts behind him as he steps into the office, his hands tremble at his sides when he comes face to face with the principal, his coach, and a man he doesn’t recognize. If they expel him, his mom will definitely kick him out, and then what? He’s left to become some junkie living on the streets?

His coach looks him up and down with a sneer on his face before turning his attention to the other man. “Well, here’s Sykes. I don’t know why you bother, Wymack. The kid hasn’t been to practice in months. I would’ve kicked him off the team, but I haven’t been able to actually track him down,” His coach grumbles. “He’s good, yeah. Not as good as his brother, but one of the fastest strikers I’ve had on the team, but that doesn’t mean much when he doesn’t show up.”

Wymack. As in David Wymack from the Foxes. He’s looking at Brayden so intently that it makes his skin crawl, and he can’t help but scratch at his forearm uncomfortably. Wymack’s gaze follows the movement, and it makes him stop immediately and shove his trembling hands in his sweatshirt pocket.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t ask for your opinion then. Can I talk to Sykes alone?” Wymack asks, and his coach looks like he wants to argue, but he shakes his head and leaves the office.

“This is my office,” The principal points out with a scoff.

“Yeah, thanks for letting me borrow it,” He counters. The two seem to have some kind of staring contest before the principal reluctantly leaves. Maybe, he likes the idea of having two former students on a Class I team too much to put up a fight.

With the other two gone, Wymack crosses his arms over his chest and gives Brayden his full attention, who’s still hovering by the door and trying to curl in on himself to make himself less noticeable, eyes shifting frantically around the room.

The man studies his face for a beat before finally speaking up, “You look like shit, Sykes. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Maybe, that’s just my face,” Brayden replies flatly with a shrug, though his heart is pounding in his chest. Wymack is the first person to ever say anything, and it’s both a relief and terrifying.

“That’s definitely part of it, but you weren’t born that way, kid. I’ve seen enough addicts in my day to know the signs,” Wymack’s face softens a little at that, but it does nothing to reassure Brayden.

“Fuck you, you don’t know anything,” Brayden snaps as he backs up towards the door, readying himself to escape. “Is this a fucking intervention? I thought you were a coach, not a fucking therapist.”

His outburst doesn’t seem to phase the man though as he lets out a short laugh. “Yeah, right. You ever hear of the Foxes?”

Of course, he’s heard of the Foxes. His brother plays for the team that put them through hell years ago. It’d be fucking ironic if Wymack was here to recruit him. Landon would be a Raven and Brayden a Fox, the two teams that always seem to be at war with each other.

“Yeah, you’re like the halfway home of Exy. I’m not interested,” His jaw clenches as he looks resolutely at his worn sneakers.

“I’ve seen your reel, and you’re good. Fucking fast enough to have made a name for yourself, at least. But nobody seems to know why you just stopped playing. Don’t know how though, look at you,” Wymack gestures to him, and Brayden knows exactly what he means--the gaunt cheeks, the sunken, red-rimmed eyes, the dark circles, and pale skin.

He spent the last few years wishing someone would see him, and it looks like he’s finally getting his wish, but now he wants to take it back. He feels too exposed. All it took was one glance for Wymack to understand what his own family either doesn’t notice or ignores. Brayden continues to stare at his feet and avoids meeting Wymack’s expectant gaze. He doesn’t have anything to say to that. He just wants the conversation to end, so he can go to the bleachers.

Sighing Wymack crosses the room and grabs a packet from the desk before shoving it towards Brayden. “I want to sign you on to the Foxes, Sykes. You need a lot of work, but you’d make a good striker. You’d have a full five year scholarship to Palmetto, access to therapy, a meal plan, and you can stay with the staff over the summer if you can’t come back here.”

Brayden hesitantly takes the contract with a trembling hand and stares down at it. He can’t make sense of any of the words, because they just blur together. He never considered college. He figured he didn’t have the grades for it, and he’s not really in a place where can actually function on campus. He always wanted to do something with art, like become a tattoo artist. He could get a degree in art, and he wouldn’t have to come back to Pasadena. It all seems a little too good to be true.

“What’s the catch?” He asks, clearing his throat as he finally looks at Wymack.

“Rehab. I’ve recruited plenty of addicts, but I expect them to try and get sober. There’s a facility in Palmetto you can go to over the summer, and Betsy, our therapist, will work with you too.”

Brayden’s knuckles turn white as he clenches the contract in his hands, the paper practically vibrating in his grip. He’s thought about getting clean so many times, but he always wanted to do it by himself. He doesn’t want help or to talk. He doesn’t want a therapist asking how he feels about this and that and make him feel more pathetic than he already is.

He’s desperate though. He knows if he stays here, he’ll either end up on the streets or continue to feel unwanted in his own house. He doesn’t even like Exy, but he can play for a few years if it means a scholarship and a place to live. Rehab is almost enough to make him refuse. The idea of it alone makes him sick with fear, but it’s only a few months. All the celebrities seem to go, so why not him?

The locker room is messy, loud, and under normal circumstances Carter would likely be joining in on the chaos. But instead, he’s in his coach’s office. It’s small and stuffy. There are motivational posters all over the wall that Carter had never paid much attention to previously. All his motivation came in the sound of an angry voice, threats, and bruises. Carter knows what future he has set out for himself because it was his father’s future. Carter’s vision for anything else doesn’t matter. Non-existent. That’s how he’s always felt. He only had five years, five brief years of getting to be the person he truly wants to be and as desperate as he is to have that in his grasp again, he has to let it go.

But now someone stands across from him and is offering him the opportunity to step off the gravel road and onto another path. One that he could carve out himself and make it what he wants it to be in the end. All it means is signing the contract, joining the Foxes for five years. He’d get to play Class 1 Exy. Not on a big three team like his father wants, where he wouldn’t belong. Carter isn’t blind to what it means by Wymack coming and Carter had thrown a look to his coach when he stepped inside. His skills on the court are top-notch. Carter puts everything he has on the court every single time he steps out there. Wymack said it the moment they were alone in the room.

“You play like you have nothing to lose. Everything you have it out on that court.”

And Carter had only looked up and with some strange confidence told him, “Everything I have is on that court.”

There’s a level of understanding. Partially, Carter is sure, because Wymack’s been on enough of these visits and seen enough of kids just like him. But Carter also knew that while his skills would have put him out on the radar of other Exy teams (and it had, there were other offers that his father had been very vocal about), there’s one thing that would put him on Wymack’s radar.

“Is your father going to be a problem?”

It’s a reasonable question. Carter wonders in that moment just how much Wymack knew about his father prior to coming here. Clearly, he knew enough to be here, but did he know his father’s own past? His Exy past? Their names had changed… Carter doubted it, but there seems to be this look in Wymack’s eyes that makes Carter wonder for a brief moment if he truly did.

It wouldn’t be the first time Carter wondered if Wymack is all-knowing.

Carter had smiled and shook his head. “No, he’s not going to be a problem,” he said with that same confidence that had surfaced earlier. Really, he’d been lying through his teeth. Carter knows his father wouldn’t be a problem for Wymack and the Foxes, but he’d be a problem for himself. And maybe that’s what the coach across from him had really been asking—but Carter wouldn’t let someone put themselves in the line of fire for him.

It isn’t as easy as signing the contract. Going home with the news of an offer from the Foxes turns quickly into a screaming mess of anger. Liam’s life revolves around the Exy world and he’s spent many nights on the couch spitting on the Foxes and Wymack’s vision for the team. Carter’s heard plenty of lectures that made his father’s view on them perfectly clear and now here comes his kid home with an offer from them? But more than anything, Liam is mad at Carter. If Carter would have been a little bit better. If Carter would have not been so sensitive. How did he fuck up and let people think their house was anything but a perfect household?

It’s always Carter’s fault in the end.

Even worse, Carter makes the mistake of telling his mother in the quiet of the night weeks later that he’s considering the offer from the Foxes. Naïve of him to think that she would keep it to herself. Whatever relationship and life the two of them had built in those five years together didn’t mean anything anymore. Not with Liam back home.

He knows something went wrong when he comes home from a trip to the store the next day to his mother in the kitchen with a bruised face and crying into the vegetables that she’s cutting. Iris isn’t looking up to Carter, but she risked a glance to Liam who is sitting at the kitchen table.

By the end of the night, Carter’s on the bathroom floor and his father standing over him with those familiar dark eyes.

“You sign that damn contract; I better never see your damn face here ever again. You walk out that fucking door and never come back.”

Carter makes the decision not to go to his graduation. He paid his dues and his grades were stellar, he doesn’t need to walk across the stage to prove that to anyone. Instead, he spends his time packing quietly just what he needs and finding all the cash he has hidden away from his father. It’s enough to get him to Palmetto. Just enough. When he leaves in the night for the red-eye flight, it’s with the bare minimum that he owns to his name and his Exy gear. Trekking to Wymack’s place takes time and bumming a few rides, but eventually he makes it to the address and when Carter knocks on that door, he knows he’s starting a new life.

Exy’s giving him another chance and he won’t let it slip through his fingers.

Carter hit the ground hard, the sound echoing in the empty court and his string of curses followed along. His mind had been somewhere else and his body had finally given out on him. His legs were shaking, his right arm he landed on in pain but he knew it would just be a nasty bruise tomorrow. Getting out of bed tomorrow might be a different story. Physically, he might not be able to even turn over.

He laid there shaking for a period of time before he found some strength to pull himself up and slowly make his way to the locker room. Shower wasn’t even an option as soon as he sat down on the bench and his body lost whatever energy it had regained. His Exy gear littered the floor, his locker thrown open, and his backpack resting up against the closed lockers.

A pounding headache started up at his temples and was making progress across his head, not helping as the thoughts in his head began swirling around about the next game and the draft coming up faster than he expected. Didn’t matter how much he practiced, the doubts and the worries never seemed to go away.

He reached down gently to his backpack to fish out his cell phone and thumb through his contacts. There are a few different people he could call that he knew would answer. Grant and Beretta at the top of the list. If he really wanted to, he could call Wymack. The man would always be there—a reassurance that gave Carter comfort on many occasions.

Instead, he called out to someone unexpected. They were friends but they didn’t talk as often as Carter would have liked for very… Exy reasons. But this is about other Exy problems and Carter needed to talk to someone new about the draft and the future coming. Who knows, maybe the other would have advice that Carter hadn’t heard yet.

The ringing of the phone is the only sound Carter can hear other than his own heavy breathing. Exhaustion is weighing down heavily on him but the unsettled feeling is taking precedent over anything else. The closer they get to the next game, the worse the feeling gets in his chest. They can’t lose this game. The Foxes have no other choice but to win.

Carter had been praying every single night. He hasn’t prayed since the day his father came back to their home—upsetting everything in his life once again and crushing the happiness he’d built with his mother.

Finally, the phone clicked and right away Carter heard Spencer on the other line.

“Is everything alright?”

The words made Carter smile. At least he knew Spencer would always be in Beretta’s corner.

“Everything’s good. Ber’s fine—being her usual self. And I swear I’m not calling just to tell you she’s better than you… even if it’s true.”

Spencer’s laugh is reassuring to Carter and brought out a smile. Another reason Carter doesn’t mind Spencer: he’s never once gotten pissed at Carter for always fucking around with him.

Really, the only bad thing Spencer has going for him is that he’s a Raven. Which is a pretty damn big thing when he’s a Fox but Carter can’t put Spencer on his shit list. They’re good friends thanks to Beretta.

“I would expect nothing less from her number one fan. What's up?”

This is the part that Carter wasn’t sure about. Sure, there are other Foxes that Carter could talk to when it came to this and honestly, Carter’s already been to them and had those conversations. But he remembered what Betsy told him about reaching out to more people—to step out of his comfort zone. As much as he puts on a show for everyone and as much as he truly is wild—there’s a box that Carter has always kept himself in firmly when it came to his feelings and his past. Only two people know his actual past—Wymack being one of them. Benefit of a new name. A new life. But even just talking about the things going on in his head… he rarely talks about it.

“Honest to god, I just needed to bounce some shit off someone. We both know this game the Foxes have coming up… It’s important.” Carter isn’t stupid to think the Ravens aren’t keeping a close tab on the Foxes. “But even more important, the draft is coming.”

Spencer paused for a moment, knowing exactly how Carter is feeling. Both of them know what the draft means; if they don't prove themselves now, they'll get passed over and forgotten quicker than a dropped flower. "Think you're ready for it?"

That was the question. Carter would answer yes in a heartbeat if the question was: Think you’re ready to play professional? It’s all he’s wanted. Carter would settle into a team and play his heart out every single day. He would love to travel and learn from other experienced Exy players. He’d make a name for himself and put his past that much farther behind him.

But ready for the draft? That’s a whole different story.