TWENTY-FIVE FLAVORS OFRupert Brookstanton
frustrated
—— 1982 fall ——
He was pacing the locker room in a rage. Like a bull. Comme un taureau—no, le Taureau. Oh, Axe liked that. He would find a way to make his teammates call him that. Although, with Axebanger, (á la) Hache, and Le Capitaine, he might be reaching his limit. Was there a limit on nicknames? He didn't think so. He would make it not so, though it was a small wonder he had developed no naming complex as of yet.
But the point was he was pacing the locker room like an angry bull because the clock was ticking down to ten minutes until kick-off, and his Keeper was still absent.
"When you manage a team of children, you should be at least as competent as your weakest member," Kate remarked in her usual snooty manner, adjusting an elbow brace.
"I know, Katie," he snapped, "as it is what I think in my every encounter with you."
Felicia smacked her bat against her palm in a threatening gesture. "I can give him the what-for when he finally shows up, Axe." Which he knew was (mostly) in jest, and would have appreciated at any other time, but merely gave her a seething glance as he resumed his pacing. Kendall and Joey remained wisely silent, which Axe was somewhat sorry for.
"Perhaps he realized he's led us to larger victories than you and has sought greener pastures," Kate intoned helpfully, her voice echoing as her head was buried in her locker, digging for who-knew-what.
Snarling, Axe turned on her, brandishing a finger angrily in her direction. "Tu me casses les—I—you break my feet!"
Scoffing, she slammed the locker shut and turned with her hands on her hips. "What does that even me—"
"Bof, just go!" he shouted, pointing out the double doors entrance. After a startled moment, they quickly ascertained he meant all of them, and began to file moodily out. It was then he saw his missing Kestrel just outside the door, standing aside to let his teammates pass. "You!" Axe snapped, waving the still pointing finger at him. "I will bench you! I expect of all your worthless team—" he trailed off abruptly when he saw Charlie's expression, yes, but more importantly his cradled hand. His brows pulled together in a harsh frown and he asked in the quiet, menacing voice one might expect from a captain, ""Les couilles de Merlin, what did you do?"
"Just leave it alone," Charlie sighed more than snapped, which was the third worrying thing Axe was forced to notice in as many seconds. "I just have to—" having unthinkingly reached with the suspect hand to his locker, Axe saw his face spasm in pain. Comprehension was instantaneous.
"You broke it. You broke your hand, what is the matt—"
"Axe." The word, his face, were full of misery, the pain one did not get simply from a broken bone. Internally, Axe cursed the day he'd ever kept Charles Spinnet on his team, conveniently forgetting the two wins the young Keeper captained in his stead.
"Well, there is no time for the medic. Can you play?" Charlie nodded miserably. Axe's tongue poked the inside of his cheek in annoyed frustration before for a moment. "I will tape it for you." With a mutter, he summoned the healing kit and none-too-gently shoved Charlie down on the bench. "How did this extremely foolish act happen?"
Bleary-eyed with pain as the shock slowly wore away, Charlie mumbled, "Drystan Fawcett."
Axe's hands stilled in the unraveling of a bandage upon hearing the cursed name. "Pardon me?" he said slowly, as in no uncertain terms did the name of the man who hated him most, even more than Thomas McCormack, fall from his teammate's lips.
Charlie seemed to understand the error of his words and hastened to clarify. "I didn't punch him! I—punched the wall next to him."
Slowly expending a breath through his flared nostrils, Axe tried to remain very, very calm. It was good to remember breathing, breathing was good. Collapsing on the floor from lack of oxygen would not help him break his Keeper's other hand. "What. Were you doing. Next to Drystan Fawcett and walls with the punching."
Their captain losing his grip on English was never a good thing, Charlie recalled, and suddenly averted eye contact, looking down at his hand with renewed interest. "I—erm—I was seeing his sister, and—"
"Fawcett's sister?" Axe snapped, disbelief making him slack-jawed. "You are jesting. Tell me that is so."
"I didn't know—" he caught Axe's look and hurriedly amended, "I mean in the beginning, I didn't—she just—fuck, it's no one's business but our own!"
Raising his eyebrows in unimpressed challenge, Axe pointed to his Keeper's broken hand. "Everything you do, Spinnet, is my business."
Scowling, Charlie's shoulders dropped as he stared at the floor. Axe felt only one twitch of his conscience, which he deemed acceptable, and resumed bandaging the now-mottled purple hand. "I can't give you anything for this, since the ref—"
"She ran away." Charlie blurted out. Once again, Axe stilled as the whole sordid story poured out, the sneaking around, the family drama, Spinnet's unwitting involvement in all of it. When it was done, Axe thought he saw a weight lift off Charlie's shoulders. "I just don't know what to do now."'
She sounds like a twit was what Axe didn't say, looking at the wrapped hand as a reminder of why not to. Instead, he nodded once and got up, gesturing at the clock. Before striding past Charlie, he hesitated and clapped a hand on one broad shoulder, bracing it for a moment before slinging bat and broom over his shoulder and making his way out onto the field, where his team waited to kick-off. Axe tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the United, but it didn't do much good. He found Fawcett's lumbering form easily, somehow managing to look threatening aside a broom, looking at Charlie as though wondering how he might sever his head and substitute it for the Quaffle.
"Broadmoor," he tossed to Kendall, whose look of concentration broke as he looked over in surprise, "get me that snitch. The hell with points, just finish the game."
Frowning, but with the good sense not to question his volatile captain, Kendall nodded.
Putain, this was going to be a long game.
