more on injured! sae and reader… i think the worst part to sae is he watches you become…happy. he feels like he watched a flower bloom in front of him. it drives him crazy.
he struggles, more than he ever has in his life. it’s infuriating. his progress is much slower than anticipated, in part because of how many breaks he’s forced to take when he gets angry.
he sees you almost every time he goes to physical therapy. you’re much farther ahead then him. you smile and laugh and joke with the physicians. you fall and get back up. it feels like you’re mocking him.
you bring him a cup of water one of the first times you cross paths. he’s in the hallway to cool down after snapping at a therapist.
“getting started is the worst of it. it’ll never be the same, but it will get easier,” your smile is so pure, so sweet, so sincere.
sae wants to chew you up and spit you out to show you what real pain is.
“you don’t know shit.”
you say nothing, just keep holding the bottle out.
he slaps it out of your hand. he can hear it thump and roll around on the the tile. he waits for a flash of hurt in your eyes that never comes. instead, he watches you walk, unsteady, to where it landed and struggle to reach the floor. your teeth grit, you shake, but you succeed. he watches you struggle again to straighten before you hobble back over and place it in his lap. youre smiling that sickening sweet smile still, like you know something that he doesn’t. there’s pain in your eyes now, but it’s from the ache of moving instead of sae’s rejection. this makes him more upset for some reason.
“maybe,” you say after a moment of silence, “but there’s only one way to prove me wrong.”
you walk back into the office. all sae can think about is how good it would feel to rip your throat out.
he chooses to ignore the hollow ache the idea forms in his chest.
i am sorry this is so incredibly late!!!
this is so good!!! i really do think he'd struggle so much with physical therapy especially if he knows he still won't be able to play soccer after it's completed. that his career is over, no matter what. and to see someone else able to move forward despite their own hardship with it...god.
this is just so delightful (and painful)!!! he would be atrocious about it but also it's so heartwrenching because he's lost so much. soccer is all he knows. i do think he would coach eventually but i think it would be a raw wound for a long, long time, especially if he's coaching close to his age range!!