still at it
For those of you waiting on holiday fic, worry not, it'll be up here eventually. Just got kind of backlogged, what with the holiday festivities requiring a good chunk of time away from the computer, and then the return to school and work.
"Holiday" fic now turning into "vague wintery season" fic. Ah well.
This is a little something different.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
the sun and the sky just are that way
There's a kind of dull ache in his joints that he doesn't remember having before, when he wakes up. He's been sore after games, sure, that comes with the territory, but not like this: sore in ways that make him feel like he's been scraped clean of cartilage, nothing stopping his bones from rubbing up against each other, the bad kind of friction. Sore beyond sore, really.
He sits up and his spine telescopes ponderously. He can almost hear the sharp, gritty noise of every disk moving against every other, all up the whole long line of him.
Wonders, maybe, if this is how other quarterbacks feel, guys who play on bad teams in bad conferences. Maybe this is normal for some guys. He knows there are offensive lines out there that aren't solid, bold, but are instead dotted, each guard and tackle a separate being instead of kind of merged with his brothers into a whole line, unbroken and theoretically unbreakable. Those dotted lines, though, they're at shitty schools, places where football is an afterthought. Not here.
Here. The sun's rising weakly in what he assumes is the east, and that way is home. This isn't home. It's too hot, too shiny, too golden and red. He's still jet-lagged, probably. He wants to blame the game on that, on his rhythm being somewhere in the mountains, snagged there and stayed behind while they flew over, but that's just an excuse. And he doesn't make excuses. Not this season.
This season is over, though. For him. Them. They'll go home and catch up on their work, professors necessarily understanding. He'll watch the big game, sure, he has to see what happens. A little morbid, maybe, but it's a little bit like closure too.
He wants to find his offensive line, sit them all down in a row, make them look at film until they can watch themselves crumbling into dust without wincing guiltily. He wants to cut open the game ball and dig around its insides, strings of elastic spaghetti slithery between his fingers. He wants to strip the kid in the Trojan suit of his armor, bruise the pale flesh underneath. He wants, badly, to get to the bottom of things, because he doesn't think he'll sleep right until he knows the what, the how, the why.
They'll be losing a lot of guys to the draft, he knows that. But they lost Braylon and they survived, they've lost worse and they've always lived to tell the tale. Hart's going to be back, small solid presence a constant comfort in the backfield, sometimes he wonders how he ever played without that before and how he'll ever play without that after, whenifwhen he too gets snatched away by some pro team hoping to touch upon the next great Wolverine quarterback, the next Tom Brady. But that's in the future, and he'll be back next year. Everything else will build around him, him and Hart, and fall into tidy clockwork place come next fall. It always does.
All season long he could feel the blood pumping through him. Not red blood, that's always there, but the maize and blue stuff rushing in his veins alongside it. It energized his limbs and sped up his heart. They played well or, at least, well enough. Home, that's a place where history matters, where it lives and breathes. Every second he can feel that maize and blue running through him, he knows it's run through the veins of everyone before him, just like it'll run through the veins of everyone after. The ultimate in recycling.
Bo, and then Ford, no one wants to talk about it, because that's just another kind of excuse, and they don't make excuses. But he doesn't think he can say it meant nothing, because no matter how old they were, how separated from his own life by years and eras and professions, they meant something. Once you've had that maize and blue in you, it gets a little flavor of you, he thinks, and the next generation to have it, they have that new little flavor too.
Excuses, though. Lloyd wouldn't allow him to wallow in them, and he won't allow himself to either. They're not the what or the how anyways. Maybe part of the why, but only a part among many parts.
He packs his bags slowly, spreading everything out on the bed and folding it deliberately. He saves the jersey for last. The back of it is rough with dried dirt, the yellow number 7 smudged with brown and green.
He rubs his thumb over the flatly embroidered patch on the chest. Roses. Good, but not good enough.
Next year, his last.
He zippers his bag shut and slings it over his shoulder, pointedly ignoring the spike of pain. He's gonna talk to the coaches, the players, the guys who are sticking around, he's gonna figure this thing out.
The sun's still struggling to rise in the sky when he glances out the window, and he can't help but smile. There's this saying he heard once, probably one of the alumni told him at some dinner or barbeque or post-practice hand-shaking event. Hell, maybe even Bo himself told him, it's the sort of thing that he would've gotten a kick out of.
About how Man didn't do anything to make the sky blue, or the sun maize, how it just proves that God's got good taste in colors.
Those colors don't change, even out here, where everything's maroon and gold and plastic. He can feel that old stirring in his fingers, extra charge to his system as the colors bleed back in. Maybe when they fly home he'll pick his rhythm up again, lost-puppy homing in on him when the plane crosses whatever sticky patch of land it's alighted on.
'Next year,' he mouths silently to the sky, the sun. Maybe Bo and Ford and whoever else is out there. It's stupid, but he doesn't feel as stupid as he thinks he probably should.
Next year. And off into the maize light of the burgeoning new blue day.
"Holiday" fic now turning into "vague wintery season" fic. Ah well.
This is a little something different.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
the sun and the sky just are that way
There's a kind of dull ache in his joints that he doesn't remember having before, when he wakes up. He's been sore after games, sure, that comes with the territory, but not like this: sore in ways that make him feel like he's been scraped clean of cartilage, nothing stopping his bones from rubbing up against each other, the bad kind of friction. Sore beyond sore, really.
He sits up and his spine telescopes ponderously. He can almost hear the sharp, gritty noise of every disk moving against every other, all up the whole long line of him.
Wonders, maybe, if this is how other quarterbacks feel, guys who play on bad teams in bad conferences. Maybe this is normal for some guys. He knows there are offensive lines out there that aren't solid, bold, but are instead dotted, each guard and tackle a separate being instead of kind of merged with his brothers into a whole line, unbroken and theoretically unbreakable. Those dotted lines, though, they're at shitty schools, places where football is an afterthought. Not here.
Here. The sun's rising weakly in what he assumes is the east, and that way is home. This isn't home. It's too hot, too shiny, too golden and red. He's still jet-lagged, probably. He wants to blame the game on that, on his rhythm being somewhere in the mountains, snagged there and stayed behind while they flew over, but that's just an excuse. And he doesn't make excuses. Not this season.
This season is over, though. For him. Them. They'll go home and catch up on their work, professors necessarily understanding. He'll watch the big game, sure, he has to see what happens. A little morbid, maybe, but it's a little bit like closure too.
He wants to find his offensive line, sit them all down in a row, make them look at film until they can watch themselves crumbling into dust without wincing guiltily. He wants to cut open the game ball and dig around its insides, strings of elastic spaghetti slithery between his fingers. He wants to strip the kid in the Trojan suit of his armor, bruise the pale flesh underneath. He wants, badly, to get to the bottom of things, because he doesn't think he'll sleep right until he knows the what, the how, the why.
They'll be losing a lot of guys to the draft, he knows that. But they lost Braylon and they survived, they've lost worse and they've always lived to tell the tale. Hart's going to be back, small solid presence a constant comfort in the backfield, sometimes he wonders how he ever played without that before and how he'll ever play without that after, whenifwhen he too gets snatched away by some pro team hoping to touch upon the next great Wolverine quarterback, the next Tom Brady. But that's in the future, and he'll be back next year. Everything else will build around him, him and Hart, and fall into tidy clockwork place come next fall. It always does.
All season long he could feel the blood pumping through him. Not red blood, that's always there, but the maize and blue stuff rushing in his veins alongside it. It energized his limbs and sped up his heart. They played well or, at least, well enough. Home, that's a place where history matters, where it lives and breathes. Every second he can feel that maize and blue running through him, he knows it's run through the veins of everyone before him, just like it'll run through the veins of everyone after. The ultimate in recycling.
Bo, and then Ford, no one wants to talk about it, because that's just another kind of excuse, and they don't make excuses. But he doesn't think he can say it meant nothing, because no matter how old they were, how separated from his own life by years and eras and professions, they meant something. Once you've had that maize and blue in you, it gets a little flavor of you, he thinks, and the next generation to have it, they have that new little flavor too.
Excuses, though. Lloyd wouldn't allow him to wallow in them, and he won't allow himself to either. They're not the what or the how anyways. Maybe part of the why, but only a part among many parts.
He packs his bags slowly, spreading everything out on the bed and folding it deliberately. He saves the jersey for last. The back of it is rough with dried dirt, the yellow number 7 smudged with brown and green.
He rubs his thumb over the flatly embroidered patch on the chest. Roses. Good, but not good enough.
Next year, his last.
He zippers his bag shut and slings it over his shoulder, pointedly ignoring the spike of pain. He's gonna talk to the coaches, the players, the guys who are sticking around, he's gonna figure this thing out.
The sun's still struggling to rise in the sky when he glances out the window, and he can't help but smile. There's this saying he heard once, probably one of the alumni told him at some dinner or barbeque or post-practice hand-shaking event. Hell, maybe even Bo himself told him, it's the sort of thing that he would've gotten a kick out of.
About how Man didn't do anything to make the sky blue, or the sun maize, how it just proves that God's got good taste in colors.
Those colors don't change, even out here, where everything's maroon and gold and plastic. He can feel that old stirring in his fingers, extra charge to his system as the colors bleed back in. Maybe when they fly home he'll pick his rhythm up again, lost-puppy homing in on him when the plane crosses whatever sticky patch of land it's alighted on.
'Next year,' he mouths silently to the sky, the sun. Maybe Bo and Ford and whoever else is out there. It's stupid, but he doesn't feel as stupid as he thinks he probably should.
Next year. And off into the maize light of the burgeoning new blue day.