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It happened halfway through the fifth game in the Kaleigh Day Cup series against the fucking Sharks of all teams. Parker, one of the people on his defensive line, got into a fight with one of the Shark’s offensive players that somehow resulted in the ball sailing right over Parker’s head and directly at Andrew, who was, as always, standing in the goal. Andrew’s reflexes didn’t fail him and he moved to block it. Andrew at 30 may have had the same reflexes as Andrew at 15, at 19, at 22, but after years playing pro exy, his body was slower than his mind and instead of hitting his racquet, heavier than almost anyone else’s in the league, the ball hit his knee with a
resounding
crack!
-
They were all getting older and they knew it. In the world of pro exy, being 30 meant that you were old as fuck.
Of course, this mattered much more to strikers who had to push themselves to be faster against younger and younger competitors. Andrew had watched first hand the surgeries and cortisone shots that Neil and Kevin had to have. Hell, Neil had been out half of last season on IR after getting his second knee surgery because of a particularly bad check that had torn his meniscus. It had taken six months of intense physical therapy for him to play again, and even now, his knee ached during the rainy season. During the off season, there were still days where he couldn’t get himself out of bed without a heat pack and a few painkillers.
Andrew, protected in the goal, never would have expected that he would be the first to retire, but that was life for you.
-
Andrew went down hard.
The pain in his knee was strong enough that it was all he could focus on. He was vaguely aware that gameplay had stopped, that Coach Jones, Neil, and Kelley–the team’s doctor–were surrounding him, but he couldn’t focus on anything well enough to answer any of their questions. In the end, he couldn’t move his knee at all and ended up having to awkwardly stagger to the locker room with Neil and Coach supporting most of his weight.
“Andrew,” said a voice he vaguely registered as Kelley’s, “I’m gonna need to cut your uniform away from your knee so that I can see what we’re looking at. Will you let me do that?”
Kelley’s voice was as calm as it ever was in emergency situations, but Andrew detected a sense of urgency in it that was mildly unsettling. He took a look at Neil’s face, paler than it usually was, a tightness at the eyes that only appeared when he was scared shitless.
That was the first inkling that this may not be an injury he was going to be able to bounce back from.
“Andrew?” Kelley asked again.
“Yeah,” Andrew finally was able to grit out, “just get it over with.”
Kelley got to work and he felt Coach squeeze his shoulder before standing back up.
“I’ve gotta go finish the game,” She said, sounding softer than she ever did (and that was the second clue), “Neil, I know you’re worried about your boy, but so do you.”
Neil searched his face for a minute, clearly trying to come up with a reason to stay, but Andrew knew that whatever was underneath his uniform was something that he’s rather initially deal with alone. So he said, “I’ll be fine, go finish playing stickball, Junkie.”
Neil smiled, wan and clearly fake, kissed his forehead, and said, “I won’t let us lose, Drew, see you soon.”
“As if I care about that!” Andrew shouted at his retreating figure.
Neil threw up his middle finger in response and then was gone.
“Oh boy,” Kelley said into the silence of the now much more empty room, “I wanna get this x-rayed, but first, if I give you the good stuff will you take it this time?”
Andrew, whose complicated relationship with drugs was both public and notorious, shot them a withering stare, “I wouldn’t take them any of the other times, what makes you think that this time will be any different.”
Kelley sighed, “Fine, but at least let me numb the area.”
Andrew nodded, his brain only halfway present, awash in the sea of pain.
-
In the end, the damage the ball did to his knee was extensive. Andrew tried to pay attention to what Kelley and the doctors at the hospital explained was wrong, but between trying to ignore the pain radiating from his leg and controlling the panic that came with being unable to protect himself among so many strangers, Andrew mostly just caught words like torn ligament, shattered knee, fractured something or another.
It sounded very bad for the health of his leg in general, but as the doctors had just slipped some morphine into his IV, it seemed like a far away problem, something he could deal with later after his eyes stopped drooping and his brain was no longer being tugged towards sleep.
He woke up once when Neil strode into his room, breathing hard like he had run the entire way from the stadium to here.
“Hey, Drew,” he said, “how’re you feeling?”
Andrew summoned enough energy to sort of groan out his displeasure at the entire situation. Neil, the asshole, laughed.
“Yeah, I bet,” he said.
“So,” he said, turning at looking at Kelley who was still in the room, “what’s the damage?”
Andrew drifted off during Kelley’s rundown of his extensive injuries, but he was still coherent enough to hear the strain, the tightness in Neil’s voice when he said, “But he will recover, right? This isn’t a career ender?”
Kelley sighed, “He’s going into surgery soon, we’ll know better after that, but Neil, I’m sorry, it’s not looking good right now.”
He felt Neil collapse into the chair next his bed and shakily whisper fuck under his breath.
And then he was back to drifting in a sea of morphine and he didn’t feel anything at all.
-
Neil took a healthy scratch for the away game the next night so that he could sit with Andrew in the hospital, and luckily, the next was a home game, and so he left Andrew’s side only long enough to play a game and then he was back.
But it was the middle of the playoffs and there was no way that the team would allow their best striker to miss anymore games, even if said striker’s husband was laid up at the hospital.
So after he was released and Neil had settled him into their bed, he said, “I have to play the rest of the series, but I can’t leave you alone like this, Andrew.”
Andrew quickly ran through a list of all of the people that Neil could call to babysit him. Kevin was in the middle of his own season, and so were most of their non-foxes friends, Nicky was in Germany, Aaron across the country, Dan had her own team to coach, and Renee was in some South American country somewhere. That left Allison or Matt, and Allison wasn’t really the caring type, no matter how close friends she and Neil were.
So he wasn’t surprised when Neil said, “I’m calling Matt.”
Andrew just mumbled, “300%” and fell back asleep, the weight of one of the cats settling on his chest.
-
True to his word, Neil left for the team’s five game roadie and Matt swung in as Andrew’s replacement babysitter until his husband could be back home.
“Hey, man,” Matt said, smile on his face and his trademark general air of affability that once would never have been present in the same vicinity as Andrew after what happened freshman year.
Andrew lifted up a hand with lackluster effort, still groggy from the painkiller he had taken last night so that he could sleep. He still wasn’t with it enough to use actual words, but Matt seemed to take that in stride, though that might be on account of his own career ending injury that had taken him out of the game two years prior.
“How’re you feeling, Andrew? We saw the whole thing...it looked bad.”
Andrew summoned up enough energy to speak finally, though it felt like a herculean task, “I currently can’t feel it, but the docs said something about a fracture and a tear and I had to get some surgery, but frankly, my dear, I can’t really give a damn.”
Matt whistled lowly, “They have you on the good stuff, huh?”
It was clearly a joke, but Andrew recognized the shadow in his eyes because it was the same one that was in his every time he thought about the fact that he was currently being drugged again after years not touching anything stronger than advil. Like called to like he supposed.
“Yeah,” Andrew said, not bothering to summon up enough energy to hide his distaste (not that he thought he would have, anyway), “I asked the docs if I could skip it, but they laughed and assured me that I definitely wouldn’t be able to function without it.”
Matt winced, “Yeah, I know how that goes.”
Andrew wasn’t awake enough to really think about it, but even he could feel the slight awkwardness in the air and the way that Matt’s hand had subconsciously drifted to the crook of his arm.
It seemed that even twelve years hadn’t been enough to completely clear the air between them.
-
If he was being completely honest with himself–which he always was–Andrew was slightly apprehensive about Matt staying with him for the week that Neil was away.
It may have been twelve years ago, but Andrew had always suspected that Matt had never quite forgiven him for that night freshman year. Of course, Andrew didn’t regret his decision. He wasn’t in the business of regretting any of his actions if he could help it. And besides, a few years ago at one of the Foxes’ reunion parties, a very drunk Matt and him had a heart-to-heart about it that consisted mainly of Matt spilling his guts and crying on him while Andrew tried to avoid getting beer spilled down his shirt.
But it did help to clear the air between them, even if Andrew’s not entirely sure how much of that night that Matt remembered afterwards.
-
Matt was an acceptable babysitter, even if they both had to avoid each other’s eyes when it came time for Andrew to take his painkillers. He was respectful over Andrew’s well established boundaries, willing to take Andrew to his doctor’s appointments, and was game to watch whatever trash TV that Andrew’s drugged brain wanted them to.
But sometimes he missed Neil, especially because Matt always wanted to talk about things that were best left to Bee.
“So,” Matt began over an episode of River Monsters that they had been watching, “have they said anything about when you’ll be able to get back to exy?”
Andrew tilted his head back on the couch and closed his eyes, his head full of cotton allowing him to take this conversation sideways instead of head on like usual.
“They’re saying that it’s probably a career-ender,” Andrew said, softer than he meant to, “I’ll be able to walk and probably run, but I won’t ever get my range of motion back enough to play in the goal.”
“Fuck,” Matt said quietly, his hand drifting to the scars on his leg from the surgery that knocked him out of the game, “that sucks man. You know we’re all here for you, whatever you need, right?”
Andrew nodded, “Yeah, I know.”
And the amazing thing was that it wasn’t a lie, he has somehow built a family out of this team of misfits that he once could barely stand and refused to get along with. It would be easy to blame it all on Neil, who certainly brought everyone together and acted as the glue to keep them from falling apart, but Andrew knew that none of this would have happened if he had decided to not allow it.
Maybe he would talk about this realization later with Bee. But for now, he was content to let his eyes close and rest beside Matt on the couch in an apartment he shared with his husband and their two cats, head full of cotton, but still warm and content and safe.
“You know,” Andrew said finally, “at least now I can eat as much ice cream as I want.”
He let the sounds of Matt’s laughter mixed with Jeremy Wade fade out as he drifted off to sleep.