Chapter Text
“Smith, where the fuck are you?!” Smith hears Kevin yell from right next to him.
He only feels a little bad when the Exy legend jumps a foot in the air when Smith taps his shoulder. “I’m right here,” he says and Kevin swears before looking at him.
“When did you get there?” he demands.
“Whole time, sir,” Smith answers. It has only been a week of practice, yet this is already a familiar song and dance at this point.
Smith has been at Palmetto since before the summer training started up, staying with Coach Wymack after he came to pick Smith up. It is in their initial startle reactions that Smith really can see how Coach Wymack and Kevin Day are father and son. Every morning, without fail, Coach Wymack would forget that Smith was asleep on the couch and sit on him. Then he would curse up a storm as Smith was trying to remember what year it was and where exactly he had fallen asleep.
Though Coach Wymack always apologizes for it, while Kevin is glaring at him as if Smith has purposefully snuck up to scare him.
He hopes that it’s something that’ll come with age for Kevin, but looking at how he red he is turning, he kind of doubts it.
Smith continues to stare at Kevin blandly, waiting for the inevitable blow-up. However, the steam of Kevin’s apparent anger peters out before an explosion happens. “You’re running the ‘rebound-accuracy’ drill,” Kevin says, pointing at the cones he has set up.
Smith nods and goes about the drill without comment. He hits more than he misses but, maybe out of spite or maybe he has simply forgotten again that Smith has already done it, Kevin has him run the drill two more times. Smith says nothing, just runs the drill whenever Kevin calls on him to do it.
On his third try, he only misses one rebound and one of his fellow freshmen pats him on the back. “Wow, first try Smith!” one of the girls says and Smith isn’t sure what her name is, but he’s pretty sure it’s Nancy?
“Thanks Nancy,” he says before he can second guess himself and she smiles back brightly.
Oh, thank god he got it right.
“Wait, was that your first try?” Lisa, his fellow defensive dealer sub, comes up to ask.
“No, third,” Smith answers truthfully.
“Wait, why’d you run it three times?” Ollie asks, “Did you mess it up that-”
“Freshmen! This isn’t the time to shoot the shit around the water cooler! Get back to your drills!” Captain Neil yells, and Smith merely puts his visor back down and moves onto the next drill in the circuit.
He’d really like to actually get through all of them at some point. He gets called to repeat drills repeatedly since Kevin, Captain Neil, or Coach Wymack forget he has already done it. It’s been like this since the first day of practice when Kevin interrupted his introduction, saying they were wasting time since their last names were on their uniforms.
It is hard to argue with that logic, and Smith prefers to be called by his last name anyway.
“Smith! Where are you?!” Kevin’s voice calls from right behind him again.
Maybe the fourth time will be the charm?
***
He really doesn’t mind the extra practice figuring that since his whole college career depends on being kind of good at Exy, he should work hard to make sure he is kind of good at Exy. He’s still shocked that his high school coach had sent his reel out for consideration to D1 schools.
Still, running the same drill six times is approaching a bit too much.
He only manages to avoid running it for a seventh time when Ollie spoke up and asks what’s so bad about Smith’s sixth attempt. It is only then that Kevin seems to realize that he has called Smith before. “Why didn’t you say anything before?” Kevin demands, indignant.
Smith shrugs, “I figured I still needed to improve something since you kept telling me to run it.”
Kevin looks at him for what feels like an eternity before Captain Neil calls for Smith to come over and do agility drills.
Kevin doesn’t call him over for the rest of the practice and Smith considers that a minor win, if nothing else. The practice, like all the others, has plenty of clashes between the Foxes. Smith does his best to avoid those clashes. Opting instead to spend the time that the rest of the team spends arguing getting rehydrated.
Ah, sweet wonderful water.
He avoids the Gatorade since all the sugar and acid tends to make his stomach burn.
Practice ends early with Sebastian whacking Jack in the leg and Jack screaming bloody murder about it.
Smith is more staring through the drama and Coach Wymack calling practice to an end than he is actually staring at it. He’s still thinking about his upcoming first semester of university and wondering if maybe he could switch out his early Friday morning class to a different spot. He wants to be conversational in Japanese, but…at what cost?
He’s so deep in those thoughts that he doesn’t realize that pretty much everyone else has left the Court aside from Captain Neil and their terrifying goalie Andrew Minyard. He makes his way off the Court then but unfortunately there are really not a lot of places his awe-inspiring Captain and the scary goalie will go after practice other than the locker room and damn if that isn’t where Smith is going as well.
He plays it like he is in a classroom. If he doesn’t look at Captain Neil and Andrew, then they won’t notice him. It is a bit higher stakes than being in a classroom though, since Smith is pretty sure that none of his teachers would ever stab him.
Andrew Minyard is scary.
He doesn’t quite understand how he and Captain Neil get along like they do, but they must, considering it is hard to see one without the oth-
“Кролик.” Comes from behind him. Smith’s eyes shoot up immediately to look at Andrew Minyard, who is staring at Captain Neil, who has taken off his shirt and gear. Smith blinks but yeah, that’s still Andrew Minyard who is cupping Captain Neil’s face, thumb brushing along a bruise that a stray ball from one of the 2nd years put on his chin.
“Милый.” Captain Neil says back and oh…yeah they get along really well. Really really well if they’re calling one another Bunny and Darling in Russian.
Smith, momentarily, loses control of his hand in his shock and drops his water bottle. Andrew’s hand shoots back from Captain Neil’s face and they both look at him…looking at them.
He watches as Andrew’s brows furrow and his blank face forms a scowl. “What are you looking at?” he demands. Smith feels his heart shoot up into his mouth while his stomach starts to shovel into the dirt for his grave as Andrew’s hand comes to rest on one of his armbands.
His panic renders him mute. So he nods once before he grabs his towel and general shower supplies and walks into the shower room where the majority of his fellow teammates are finishing up with their post-practice showers.
It’s only as he’s scrubbing his hair that he realizes he has missed the opportunity to inform Captain Neil and Andrew that he is fluent in Russian.