After Practice - Arch Manning
summary: Arch finally breaks after practice.
request: yes
warnings: none!
The apartment is dark when I get home.
Not completely dark, the kitchen light over the stove is on, casting this soft yellow glow across the counters, and the TV is running low in the living room, but quiet enough that something immediately feels wrong.
Usually, when Arch gets back from practice, there’s noise. His bag hitting the floor, music playing from his phone, him calling out “baby?” before he even takes his cleats off.
Tonight there’s nothing.
I look up from the couch when the front door shuts.
“Arch?”
He doesn’t answer right away and my stomach drops, because the second I see him, I know.
Something’s wrong.
He’s still in practice clothes, hair damp with sweat under a backwards hat, duffel bag hanging from one shoulder like it weighs a thousand pounds. But it’s his face that scares me.
Empty.
Not angry. Not irritated. Just exhausted.
The kind that sits behind someone’s eyes for too long.
“Hey,” I say softly, sitting up straighter. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Too fast.
He drops his bag by the door and avoids looking at me while he pulls off his hat. His fingers shake slightly through his hair before he disappears into the kitchen.
I watch him open the fridge and just stand there staring into it, not grabbing anything. Just staring.
“Arch.”
“I’m fine, baby.”
But his voice cracks on the last word and suddenly every little thing from the past few weeks slams into me all at once.
The late-night film sessions, the barely sleeping, him getting quieter, the way he’d smile at me like he was trying to convince himself he was okay too, the headaches, the tension in his shoulders, the way he’d been holding me tighter at night without explaining why.
I stand slowly and walk into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I say again, gentler this time. “Look at me.”
He doesn’t. Instead he grabs a water bottle from the fridge and twists the cap so hard it crackles.
“Arch.”
“I said I’m okay.”
The sharpness in his voice makes us both freeze, because he never talks to me like that. Immediately his eyes squeeze shut.
“Fuck,” he mutters quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I step closer carefully. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
His jaw tightens.
“Nothin’.”
“Arch.”
He finally looks at me and I swear it nearly breaks my heart. His eyes are red. Not like he’s been crying. Like he’s been trying not to for a long time.
“You’ve been shutting me out for weeks,” I whisper. “Please stop pretending you’re okay.”
That does it. I literally watch something in him snap. Not anger. Not frustration. He sets the water bottle down too hard on the counter before dragging both hands over his face.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore,” he says quietly.
My chest tightens instantly.
“What do you mean?”
He laughs once, but there’s nothing funny about it.
“I don’t feel like myself.”
The words come out shaky.
“I wake up tired, I go to practice tired, I can’t shut my brain off for five fucking minutes and everybody keeps expecting me to be good all the time and I-I can’t breathe half the time anymore.”
I stare at him because this isn’t just stress. This has been building for a while.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you worrying.”
“You think this is better?” I ask softly.
His eyes water immediately and that’s when I realize how bad it really is.
Because Arch Manning is the kind of person who holds everything in until it destroys him.
“I just…” He swallows hard. “I feel so overwhelmed all the time.”
His voice gets quieter and quieter.
“Football used to be the one thing that made sense to me. Now every practice feels like if I mess up once everybody notices. Everybody talks. Everybody compares me to people before I even get the chance to become my own person.”
I move closer slowly.
“They expect me to be perfect all the time,” he says, eyes fixed on the floor. “Coaches. Fans. Media. Random people online. Even when I have a good practice, it’s like it’s never enough.”
His breathing starts getting uneven.
“And I know I should be grateful because people would kill for this position but I’m so fucking tired.”
The last sentence cracks completely and suddenly he’s crying. Not dramatic. Not loud. Just silent tears he clearly tried to hold in for way too long.
“Oh, baby.”
I reach for him instantly.
The second my arms wrap around him, he folds, actually folds. His forehead presses against my shoulder while his hands grip the back of my sweatshirt like I’m the only thing keeping him upright.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out.
“No. No, don’t apologize.”
“I just can’t do this perfectly all the time.”
“You were never supposed to.”
His shoulders shake once. Then again and I just hold him tighter.
“I feel crazy,” he whispers.
“You’re not crazy.”
“I haven’t felt okay in weeks.”
The confession nearly crushes me. Weeks. Weeks of him carrying this alone while still showing up every day pretending everything was fine.
I pull back just enough to hold his face.
“You do not have to carry all of this by yourself.”
His eyes shut immediately.
“I didn’t want you seeing me like this.”
My heart physically aches.
“Arch,” I whisper, brushing tears off his cheeks, “I love every version of you. Not just the easy ones.”
That finally breaks him completely. He exhales this shaky breath like he’s been holding it for months and pulls me against him again.
And for the first time since he walked through the door, he lets himself stop pretending.
“I’m scared I’m losing myself,” he admits quietly into my hair.
“You’re not losing yourself.”
I run my fingers through the curls at the back of his neck slowly.
“You’re overwhelmed. You’re exhausted. And you’ve been trying to survive under pressure that would crush most people.”
He doesn’t answer.
Just holds me tighter.
“I need you to tell me when it gets bad like this,” I murmur. “I can’t help you if you shut me out.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to protect me from this.”
He pulls back enough to look at me, eyes red and exhausted.
“I just wanted to be strong.”
I shake my head immediately.
“This is strong.”
His expression crumples again because I don’t think anyone’s told him that before. We stand there in the kitchen for a long time after that. No TV, no phones, no football.
Just me rubbing circles into his back while he slowly calms down in my arms and eventually, when his breathing evens out, he whispers quietly:
“I don’t wanna feel like this anymore.”
I kiss his forehead gently.
“Then we figure it out together.”
