Pairing: Marc Bernal x Reader
The first time you see him try to straighten his leg, his jaw locks so hard you can hear the click.
“Two more degrees,” the physio says gently. “Just a little. Breathe.”
Marc breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He used to laugh through drills, chatter in two languages at once, wink at the kids who gathered after training. Now he watches the ceiling tiles like they’ve offended him. You sit on the blue vinyl chair beside the treatment table and count his breaths quietly, the way you’ve started doing because counting gives you something to do that isn’t watching his face slice itself into restraint.
“Fourteen,” you murmur. “Fifteen. Sixteen.”
He exhales like he’s been underwater, shakes his head once. The physio taps his calf, makes a note on the tablet, and gives you a sympathetic look over the edge of her glasses. Break time.
Marc doesn’t look at you. He stares at the black brace swallowing his knee and works his mouth like something sour is stuck to his tongue.
He grunts. It might be yes. It might be whatever is left of his vowel sounds since the injury taught him to economize speech the way he now conserves motion.
You unscrew the bottle. “Sip.”
He takes it without meeting your eyes, drinks half, hands it back, then rubs his fingers over the Velcro on his brace like he’s trying to abrade a thought until it vanishes. Around you, the rehab room hums: treadmills whirring, a physio counting reps, an elastic band snapping softly back into place. Outside, someone laughs. It’s not him.
He snorts. It isn’t cruel. It’s just small. “Sure.”
“You hit twenty degrees.”
“I used to hit people’s perfect through-balls,” he mutters, Spanish rounding the edges. “Now I hit twenty degrees.”
You lean back in the chair. “Different game.”
He clicks his tongue. “Shit game.”
You let that hang. He’s earned the right. You’re the one who stays for his breaks: ten minutes between sets where he pretends his leg isn’t screaming and you pretend the clock isn’t a metronome for how much he hates this. At first you came because you didn’t know where else to be. Now you come because he doesn’t ask you to, and that feels like a promise you shouldn’t break.
The physio claps her hands softly. “Alright, Marc. Step-ups. Slow and controlled.”
He shifts off the table with the awkward grace of someone negotiating terms with his own body. You stand automatically, offer an elbow. He hesitates, then accepts like he’s doing you a favor.
He rolls his shoulders. “Always.”
It’s a lie, but you both let it pass. He steps onto the low platform: right foot up, left foot follows, pause, left foot down, right foot down. His face empties into concentration. His breath counts with you. The physio watches the angle of his knee and the line of his hips and nods when he manages to keep them square.
“Good,” she says. “Again.”
He does ten, then another ten, then one where his foot wobbles and the fear cracks through. He catches himself. He doesn’t swear. He doesn’t say anything. He just steps off the platform and rubs both hands over his face so hard you worry he’ll peel himself backwards.
“Break,” the physio says, because she’s kind and also knows that rage is a muscle that needs stretching too.
You follow him to the corner with the gray chairs and the faint smell of antiseptic. He leans forward, elbows on knees, head bowed, rubbing the hinge of the brace like polishing a weapon he doesn’t trust.
“Tea?” you ask, because you brought a thermos. You’ve started bringing little things: oat biscuits he pretends he doesn’t like, a small speaker when the room is quiet, a pen for the stack of crossword pages he never touches.
He shakes his head. “Later.”
He works his jaw. He doesn’t say thank you. He rarely does, now. Not because he’s forgotten how but because gratitude would require acknowledging the largeness of the problem and the smallness of everything else. You don’t take it personally. That’s the secret no one tells you about care: you learn how not to take things personally, or you break.
He glances sideways, a sliver. “You look tired.”
You huff a laugh. “Rude.”
“Then honest back: you look like you fought a lawnmower.”
A fraction of a smile ghosts across his mouth. “And lost.”
You nod. “But you’re still giving post-match interviews.”
He shakes his head. “To the worst journalist.”
“I’ll have you know my questions are Pulitzer-grade.”
“Mm.” He watches his shoelaces as if they might transform into anything else if he stares long enough. “How is outside?”
“Sunny. People walking dogs. Someone playing the accordion badly.”
He shuts his eyes at that,something like longing passes over him, or maybe memory. “I hate the accordion.”
“That’s true, I don’t. I hate it today.”
He scrubs at his face again, then says too casually, “You can go if you want.”
You don’t move. He knows you won’t. This dance,he offers to let you leave, you refuse,has become as patterned as the rows of ceiling squares. You wonder if he does it because he needs proof that you’ll stay, or because he needs the ritual of pretending there’s a choice.
“Okay,” you say, as you always do, voice light. “I’ll leave after you beat me at twenty questions.”
He groans like you’re torturing him. “No.”
“Yes. I’m trying to enrich your mind.”
“My mind is enriched enough.”
“I doubt it.” You lean forward, drop your chin into your hand. “Animal?”
His eyelids lift. The angle of his mouth softens. “You’re starting?”
“Fine,” he says, and there’s the version of him you know from before: the one who likes to surrender and still win. “Animal.”
“Yes.” He lets the word sit between you, a small concession.
“I chose ‘fish’ because you asked badly.” His gaze flicks to the clock. “Break is almost done.”
“Then I win and you owe me something.”
He raises one eyebrow. It used to be a flirt; now it’s a shield. “Like what?”
He looks at his hands. His knuckles are chapped from the crutch grips. “Later.”
“Deal,” you say, because later has become the currency of rehab. You both know it buys you nothing and everything at once.
He goes back to the platform. He steps and breathes and keeps the line of his hip like a tightrope walker carrying his own heart on a pole. The physio’s praise is even and practical. He doesn’t smile but his shoulders ease minutely when she says, “Better. We keep this pace.”
Another break. Another bottle of water. Another ritual. You pull a small rectangle of chocolate from your bag and slide it across. He stares at it. A muscle jumps in his cheek.
He shakes his head and doesn’t take it. “If I eat that, I’ll be slow.”
He says nothing, but his fingers twitch on his knee like they want to argue.
“You’re allowed to have a piece of chocolate,” you say softly.
“I’m allowed to have an ACL too,” he says, biting the words, and it’s the first time the day’s anger shows its teeth.
You say nothing. The physio is far enough away to pretend she didn’t hear. Marc drags a hand over his mouth and seems to swallow whatever else was climbing his throat.
“Don’t be,” you say, and mean it. “Be mad.”
He keeps his eyes on his brace. “I don’t like being seen when I am.”
“I know,” you say. “That’s why I’m seeing you.”
He gives you a baffled look that you don’t deserve but accept. The break ends. He does quads. He does isometrics. He does the thing where he squeezes a towel between his knees and keeps his back flat and glares at the physioball like it owes him money. And then, at the very end, he tries a heel slide that doesn’t quite slide, and the unpredictability of pain,the way it spikes like a loose wire,catches him unready.
“Fuck,” he explodes. It’s loud enough that heads turn. He pushes away from the mat as if it burned. “Fuck this.”
The physio straightens. “Marc.”
But he’s already up,or as up as he gets, these days,fumbling with the stupid strap at his thigh, the one that catches on itself if he hurries. “I can’t,” He breaks off, breath jagged. “It’s nothing. It’s a stupid, I can’t even move a towel.”
You stand slowly. The room recedes, the ambient noise muting. You are just a person in front of another person who is all edges and fire.
“Hey,” you say, quiet as chalk. “Look at me.”
He does, and there it is: the oceanic panic you’ve been skirting for weeks, the one that lives under the silt of his jokes and his not-jokes. It rises, and he starts saying things as if he’s midway through an argument with the future.
“What if it never stops hurting?” His hands go to his hair, then his brace, then nothing. “What if I do everything right and it still, what if I’m a step behind, what if I compensate, what if I blow the other knee, what if I’m not,” The word dies. He swallows. He looks not at you but near you, as if the wall can take this for you. “What if I come back and I’m not me?”
Your heart tilts. You remember the way he used to run, like the pitch had been designed to keep up with him. You remember how his celebration was more relief than joy, an exhale that said see, I did not ruin it. You take a breath large enough for the both of you.
“I hear you,” you say. “I hear all of it.”
He laughs, sharp and without humor. “Great. Congratulations. Write it down.”
“I will,” you say. “And then I’ll read it back when your brain tries to pretend you never said it. You’re scared. You’re angry. You hate that your body feels like a guest you don’t know how to host. I hear it.”
His face pulls. “Don’t,” He gestures vaguely. “Don’t make it pretty. It’s not. It’s ugly.”
“It’s not pretty,” you say. “It’s true. And you’re allowed to be ugly with me.”
There’s a scuff of a chair. Someone flips a page on a clipboard. The physio lingers at a respectful distance, busy with anything that isn’t you. Marc’s eyes glass just enough for light to catch.
“I’m not supposed to need this,” he says too fast. The accent thickens, the edges of vowels rounding as if to protect him from his own consonants. “I’ve always been, I know how to do hard things. I know how to. But this, it’s so slow.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I wake up and it’s still here.”
“It will be,” you say. “Until it isn’t.”
His jaw works. “Helpful.”
“Brutally. I’m full of it.”
He breathes, shaky. He looks at the door like he could outrun it, which is irony’s idea of a joke. Then, in a voice that tries for steady and misses, “You should go.”
“You should,” He breaks, and the sound is an animal thing that makes you wish you could ferry him anywhere else. “I will say something I can’t take back.”
“So say it,” you say. “And if it’s too big for here, we’ll take it somewhere else. But I’m not leaving you alone with it.”
He stares at you like he has never seen you before. You feel the moment tip: not romantic, not then. Something heavier. If loyalty has a sound, maybe it’s the zipper of a brace being undone with slow, patient hands.
“I can’t stand,” he tries, and his voice thins. “I can’t stand that I can’t,” He gestures helplessly toward the mat and his own body and the world. “I am boring. I am nothing but this knee. People look at me like I’m a question mark.”
“I look at you like you’re Marc,” you say.
His mouth ticks, a spasm of something like hope trying on a face. He shakes his head once. “You only say that because you’re kind.”
“I say it because it’s true.” You sit again, so he doesn’t have to look up. “You are more than your favorite verb.”
“Run. Your favorite verb. You collect them. You always have. Run. Win. Press.” You count on your fingers. “Laugh. Mock. Kiss,” You choke on the last before it can escape and make an idiot of you; the word stumbles around the room, bruised. “Lash out,” you amend, which is a lie but not a betrayal. “Swear.”
His gaze flicks down. “I don’t kiss.”
You pick at a seam on the chair. “No. Not right now.”
“Not with,” He gestures again, everything and nothing.
You shrug, deliberately light. “You can be a person without performing for me, you know.”
He flinches. The snap happens like that,the way a branch seems whole until the last fiber gives. “Performing?” he repeats, voice flat in that frightening way. “That what you think? That I, what, I was only good when I was,” He can’t finish the sentence. “You think I am this because I can’t work for your applause?”
You inhale, steady. “No.”
“Then what?” His eyes flare; the room goes blurry around the edges of him. He keeps his voice low but it doesn’t matter; you feel it like it’s close to your own teeth. “Tell me what I am now that I can’t be useful. Tell me why you’re still here. Tell me what you are getting out of this, because I know what I’m not giving you.”
For a beat, you let the words exist. You don’t recoil. You don’t smooth them. He’s not a grenade, you think; he’s a person who has been handed one and told to juggle. You make your hands empty.
“I’m here,” you say calmly, “because you are my friend.”
He laughs like you slapped him. “Friend.”
“Because I like you when you’re sweating under stadium lights and I like you when you’re sweating to lift your heel six centimeters. Because,” You search for honesty and find it, bare and unpretty. “Because you scare me a little when you look like this and I know that means you need someone who won’t be scared off. Because I like you. Full stop.”
“I’m not asking for a thing,” you say. “I’m not asking you to be better or brave or fast. I’m asking you to let me sit here while you hate everything, including me, and not send me away because you want to punish yourself.”
His mouth opens, then closes. He looks injured by the accuracy, which feels unfair and exactly right. “I don’t, I’m not,”
“I know you’re not doing it on purpose,” you say, gentler. “But you are doing it. And I’m not going.”
Silence. He wipes his face with the heel of his hand, furious and embarrassed. “I don’t want to need you.”
“I don’t want,” He shakes his head, tiny. “I don’t want any of this.”
His breath stutters. You could map the rhythm of his life by the way he inhales. Someone drops a resistance band across the room. The physio pretends to look at a chart.
He says, quieter, like the words have to be smuggled out: “It feels like if I stop being angry, I will fall apart.”
“Then be angry,” you say, matter-of-fact. “I’ll hand you pieces when you’re ready.”
He laughs, a small, incredulous sound that makes something in your chest give. His eyes dart away. “You’re very stubborn.”
“God,” he mutters, dry. “You’re so,” He cuts himself off, frowns. “I want to ask you for something.”
“Don’t,” He looks nauseous, like the taste of humility is metallic. “Don’t stop coming.”
Your throat goes hot. Careful. You nod once. “Okay.”
“No matter how I,” He spreads his hands, palms up, apology and defense at once. “You know.”
He exhales a laugh that is almost a sob. “Fuck.”
He finally takes the chocolate, tears it in half with surgical precision, and presses a piece into your palm like a treaty. You pretend you don’t notice how his fingers shake.
“Break is over,” the physio says from five feet away, tone casual, eyes kind. “We’ll finish with range. Then ice.”
Marc nods without looking up. “Okay.”
You stand with him. He settles back on the table. The physio lifts his heel and supports his calf and asks, “Ready?” and Marc answers, “Ready,” and you know he’s lying and trying and both are true.
Between sets, he breathes and you breathe with him. He says, “Count,” and you do. He says, “Stop,” and you say, “Two more,” and he glares and does them, and the glare is a different kind of hope.
After, when his leg is swaddled in ice and the room has thinned out, he leans back against the wall and tilts his head your way without quite looking.
“You’re going to miss something,” he says. “A life, outside.”
“I’ll file a complaint with management.”
He snorts. “Don’t do that. They’ll fire me.”
“Everyone is replaceable,” he says, automatic and fierce, and you understand that this is the prayer athletes say to themselves when they’re young to stay hungry, and the curse they say to themselves when they’re hurt to stay angry.
“Not to me,” you say, because if you’re going to be here you might as well tell the truth.
He moves his eyes to you at last. The expression there is not relief, not yet. It’s the look of someone who has been walking in the rain and realizes he might be allowed to be wet.
“Tell me a story,” you say, reminding him of the debt he owes from winning and losing the shark game.
He grimaces. “I owe you nothing.”
He thinks for a long time, then says, “When I was eight, I lost a race at school. I was supposed to win. My dad told me, ‘You don’t need to be faster than them. You need to be faster than you were yesterday.’” He smirks without humor. “He was wrong then and right now.”
“Maybe he was right then and wrong now.”
“Because now you don’t need to be faster than you. You need to be kinder.”
His face does something complicated. “To who.”
He exhales. “I don’t know how.”
“I do,” you say. “We’ll practice.”
He nods once, like acceptance is a drill. He watches the condensation on his ice pack and then says, so quietly you almost miss it, “And what if I never get back.”
“If,” you say, because you have no interest in making him swallow lies, “we will be okay. You will be okay. You will be different and still yourself. You will hate me for saying that and also love me for staying. Both can be true.”
He closes his eyes. A moment passes where you can hear the electricity in the fluorescent light.
“You’re,” He starts, stops, tries again. “You are good.”
He opens his eyes. The edge has dulled. The anger is not gone, but it’s lower, like the tide. He looks at your hands, then at your face, and then his mouth shapes around something fragile as glass.
“I don’t,” he begins, then shakes his head, breath catching, voice falling into a whisper so careful you feel it more than hear it. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
