Work Text:
South Wales was cold and wet and lonely. Rain fell in sheets as he drove home from the Parc Y Scarlets, shopfront lights blurred in the ever-falling droplets. Every part of him ached from training and he wondered why he even tried.
Deep down he knew.
Waiting at home, pale as fresh fallen snow and with perfectly highlighted features, she was waiting for him, spread out on the kitchen table or lying on the bed. It always comes back to her, doesn’t it.
The Statsheet.
He had been underperforming for months. He knew it, the coaching staff knew it. But it was the Stat sheet who really drove the point home. Theirs had not been a happy union since is form had begun to dip, towards the end of the previous season. Every time he ran out infront of the Llanelli crown he knew that it wasn’t the fans or even the head coach he wanted to impress, it was her.
It harmed his game, going for meters made rather than effective carries. Only tacking people he knew he could take. But the allure of positive stats was too much to resist.
No.
He had to end it now. Before it got too late. Before his contract was cut and his career ended. He would break up with her tonight. He had to.
He couldn’t.
What motivation would he find with her no longer in his life? How could he continue to drag himself onto the pitch. He was getting old now, over thirty. A fossil, Wales Online had called him. Every time he went online after a match calls for him to be dropped were levelled at the club.
Retiring was an option, but what would he do next. Punditry? He lacked the charisma. Coaching? Required too much thought.
He pulled into his driveway and sat in his car, still thinking about what his future would hold. I can decide later he lied to himself.
She called to him as he took off his dripping wet coat. “A little birdie told me you made twenty three tackles at training today.”
At that moment, Decon Manu knew that he was doomed, like fly in a spiders web.
He would never be free.