Location: Foxhole Court Lounge Date: September 14th Time: Post-Game (open)
If anything could make him glad to not have anyone sitting in the stands for him, glad to be alone, this game might have come close.
He knew that his father would never have been proud to see him playing on a team like the Foxes. That it would have been more than just a betrayal of his potential to him—(whether that potential had ever been real, or just imagined)—but a betrayal of everything they had stood for, everything they had pretended to be. Duartes weren’t Foxes. Leo was supposed to play the role of the favored son, the pampered prince. No one was supposed to ever look twice, ever think twice, ever see anything different.
His father wouldn’t have been proud to see him playing Class II, either. But sometimes, when he’d come off of a multi-goal night on the Tritons, he’d let himself pretend anyway.
He couldn’t pretend tonight. A one-goal deficit made the loss feel that much more immediate, that much more personal. They’d lost 6-2 to the Jackals, and Leo could tell himself that there was nothing he could have done to turn the game around. They lost 5-4 to the Terrapins, and he knew that he could have done something. He could have scored. He was a striker, that was supposed to be his job. But he hadn’t.
The only thing he’d done was show that he could take a hit. But we already knew that, he could imagine his father saying.
He wants to get away from this. The parking lot outside is dark, and the thought of going out there stops him in his tracks. He can’t stand the thought of a quiet car ride back to Fox Tower, drowning his sorrows in a quiet dorm room. Being too alone, and feeling too much. “Fuck,” he says, quietly, to himself. And then, louder: “I need to get out of here. You can come with me if you want, but you have to promise not to be a buzzkill. This fucking sucks enough already.”
For as much as she admired the Foxes, Sienna was uncertain to whether or not she envied them, and most of the time, she envied everyone, her existence defined by her deep longing to be somebody else. The Foxes were worth envying for their grit and passion, but not for the circumstances from which those grew --- as far as Sienna knew, nobody was born strong; strength was testament to how much bullshit life threw at you, and whether or not you got up despite it. For a lot of Foxes, blood families were bullshit.
Parents Weekend brought a great deal of stress to everyone. In the pessimistic way ( or rather, Sienna’s way ) of putting it, Parents Weekend was three days of pressure, three days of proving whether or not they were still worth their parents time and love and pride. It wasn’t a problem Sienna had to face, for two reasons. One: at twenty years old, she stilll lived with her mother ---thus, every day was Parents Weekend. Two: her stint at the Palmetto state party made any attempt at proving herself fruitless. Love and pride and time were things of the past.
After the game, please come home and look after Rusty while we’re gone, was the text Aurelia had sent earlier that morning, which Sienna took offense to, because it all implied that Aurelia knew that there would be no after-game celebrations, or if there were, Sienna would not be taking part. Instead of voicing out her frustrations, Sienna replied: i can’t i have plans with friends. It only took Aurelia three words to add insult to injury: you have friends?
If she could send the cactus emoji without consequences, Sienna would have. Eyes peeled away from her phone and met Leo’s gaze. “Did you have a plan, or is this, like, an impulse thing?” Leaning forward, she said, “If it’s the latter, my brother needs a babysitter. I’ll pay you.” God, just get me out of this.
