Work Text:
It’s not your helmet. They sawed your helmet off you. You remember this, or maybe you don’t, and you only know it because someone explained it to you in restrained, clinical terms that you chose to translate into gory, visual detail.
You have pretty much shit-all else to do these days. Wait and translate. Translate and wait.
Your mom used to apologize to you, after two glasses of wine, that she couldn’t have any more children. She was so sorry that you didn’t have a younger brother, or a sister, to worship you.
And she always said it like that: Jason, they’d have worshipped you.
Which might not be fair to the nonexistent siblings, but so be it. You didn’t want them anyway, and you told her so.
You never were lonely, as a child. You had a best friend to dog your every step, and on the whole, too much to do.
You had football.
It’s not your helmet, but your eyes are smarting with tears (still working, there are parts of you that are still working) while your seized fingers brush the smooth surface. Football helmets are made to withstand a hell of a lot of impact—
But they don’t do much for your spine.
God bless, Coach. Good luck.
These are the words that you say, because you still believe yourself to be the kind of boy-turning-man who says them.
You can see in Coach’s eyes how much he understands the whole of it. The good and the bad, the ugliness in and around you.
You are supposed to be the strong one. The leader. This is the deal you made—with God. With your future, and the team, and Lyla. With your parents. With Tim.
You are supposed to be strong, like a force of nature, a force that clears the path. Everyone else will follow in your wake—even though you’ve never truly asked them to.
You always figured that everyone else would know what to do, same as you do.
(Same as you did.)
It’s hard to die in your own shadow. All the forerunning thoughts seem unbearably stupid in the numb, stiff, bed-bound nights that are only varied from each other by how each new one is slightly, achingly worse.
It’s hard to wait for no one in particular to tell you that your life is over. It could be a doctor, could be your red-eyed mother. Could be Tim saying, Miss you, Street, with tears twisting his voice and his mouth, unbarring the gates of your deep grief.
(Your world is so small and so cruel and so painful, even though most of your body can’t feel anything. Your tears leak out and do nothing. Your heart beats in your chest and does nothing.)
You are alone. You send them all away—you send your best friend away, and the girl you keep calling the love of your life—and you are alone.
It’s not your helmet. Nothing saved you from yourself.