we'll be back later, lovies

Anonymous said: what about nicky and renee

Anonymous said: wait wait wait wait are we all forgetting about nicky?? will he go back to germany? and second but very important question: will neil start betting too along with the team?

Renee’s answer will come in a separate post just so I can keep the Foxes’ answers separate.

The other question is short enough to include here, though: Neil places exactly one bet in his entire time at Palmetto State. I think he likes being the uncooperative tiebreaker.

As for Nicky…

Erik’s cousin pulls through–when Nicky graduates, he’s got an interview lined up with a PR firm in Stuttgart. It’s a bit of awkward timing around Aaron and Katelyn’s wedding, and he spends a couple weeks going back and forth to make it to every ceremony and meeting, but he makes it work by the skin of his teeth. Afterward he moves to Germany and moves in with Erik. He spends a week quietly integrating orange decorations into the house.

The first couple months are strange, because he’s not used to not being responsible for his cousins and he’s now half the world away from all of the Foxes, but eventually he realizes he’s allowed to live for himself now. He and Erik take a ridiculous amount of vacations, capitalizing on their substantial income and their easy access to all of Europe. He spams his teammates’ emails with pictures and long rants about his life and all the neat things he sees. The Foxes visit him when they can, claiming they’re just using him as a launchpad to the rest of Europe. Eventually Nicky convinces even Wymack and Abby to drop by, which he considers to be nothing short of a miracle.

((What he doesn’t understand is that it’s a greater miracle that Neil and Andrew stop by, because a cross-Atlantic flight is one of the last things Andrew ever wanted to experience))

He gets into football/soccer because it’s Erik’s game of choice, and gets Erik into Exy, and they take time off work to watch the US Court play in the Olympics. He’s there when the Court brings home the gold, edging out Canada in a last-second goal by Kevin Day.

They kick around the idea of adopting, but Nicky eventually realizes it’s just baby fever caused by the rest of the Foxes’ new families. He puts up pictures of their kids as if they’re his own, though, and covers the front of the fridge with artwork sent to “Uncle Nicky”.

He never talks to his parents again, but Erik’s parents treat him like their own son, and after a few years it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.

He keeps the house in Columbia, but he leaves a spare key with a freshman goalkeeper— Robin, the only other Fox, the only female, to make it into Andrew’s inner circle, who will captain the Foxes one day and leave the keys with her successor, so on and so forth, Robin, who becomes Neil’s best friend when the cousins graduate and leave him behind at PSU.

((Robin is the only thing Neil bets on))

((I digress as usual))

TL;DR ::: Nicky gets the happy ending he always wanted.