Work Text:
You should have made him stay. Exercised all your authority, in this one half-silent moment when it never mattered more, and—
It would have hurt him.
In the distance, a truck (his truck) roars to life. You go back into the house, back into your separate life. You close your hand around the handle the camera almost tightly enough to break the damn thing.
The things that count change with the count of seconds.
(You know you had to let him go.)
When you see him at practice, you look him up and down once, to make sure he’s not in need of a medic rather than a linebacker, hitting where it already hurts. He doesn’t say a word, and you don’t ask him to. Practice runs just like it always does. He makes some good blocks and some crappy blocks and Mac shouts himself hoarse, not just at Tim, but at everybody.
You remember you have a job to do, and it’s not worrying.
He doesn’t even want your worry.
You’ve learned a lot about Tim Riggins, and most of it doesn’t seem to do anything for him.
You don’t see Walt around anymore.
You knew you wouldn’t.
Here’s the part that smooths it over: you all win Friday night. There’s a part of you that believes that fixes a lot—or at least, a part of you that will always want to believe that. That is what drew you to football in the first place; it sure as hell wasn’t your old man’s crusade. With time, and what you pray to God is a little bit of maturity, you know the damage that letting something that feels good overtake something that doesn’t can do. But that’s the whole point: that’s the difference made possible by work.
Surely it’s a whole other story, chasing the high when you’ve earned it.
(“Good game, son!” you roar over the crowd’s excitement, especially for him.)
The camera gets returned to where it came from and the town goes back to forgetting Tim Riggins even has a father, and you keep track of how often he meets your eyes, how quickly the bruises fade from black to blue to yellow. None of this results in an epiphany. It’s not even something you talk about much with Tami, because you have a hard time bringing up your failures until you no longer have a choice.
But you do think, sitting alone in your car, that maybe this is all a coach can do sometimes—watch from the sidelines, when there is no game.
You shouldn’t have made him stay, when he came to the door with an offering in hand, with the soul beaten out of his eyes. That’s not what it was about. In the world where you are in a position to do right by the kids who drift past into nothing, you do not have to make them do anything.
Sometimes you wish you were the kid’s father, but you’re not.