Chapter Text
Tucson, Arizona — February
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
—Michaelangelo
The parched red desert shimmers like a mirage before hazy mountains, bristled with cacti and ribboned by criss-crossing highways. A line of cars trundles into the sportsplex, disgorging coaches, athletes, and fans. Something about them looks like beetles, the punishing glare of sunlight bouncing off hard carapaces of windshields and chrome. Amid the dry scrubland, the vast fields of chemical green look unreal: a perfect oval of paradise ringed by state-of-the-art training facilities, like a crop circle in reverse. Patrick Stump puts his head down and walks inside quickly, before his goosebumps can get any worse. He never really believed he’d make it here.
He gets directions to the locker room and strides towards it with confidence that’s completely fake, trying not to psych himself out. On the other side of that door is his new team. Spring training is his chance to get to know them and, hopefully, earn their trust before the season starts. He grips the shoulder strap of his duffel bag tighter and tries to arrange his face like he’s worked with major league teams a thousand times before. He’s about to step in when a mocking voice from behind him says, “Push, new kid.”
Patrick whips around to face the speaker and swallows a groan. He can’t fail to recognize Pete Wentz, #13, star forward for the Seattle Sounders. There are posters of the man’s face on the outside of CenturyLink Stadium, not to mention in the sports medicine offices where Patrick interviewed for this job. But Wentz is recognizable even to people who haven’t stared down one of those larger-than-life headshots while sweating their way through a job interview. Awarded Player of the Year when he first debuted on the Chicago Fire, with over 300 career goals, and captain of this team for the past four years, Wentz is dripping with sponsors. He was in a Superbowl ad for a sports drink last year and a Calvin Klein ad in Times Square the year before. And his personal exploits have gotten a fair amount of sports media coverage as well—Wentz has a flair for the controversial. He is, unfortunately, even better-looking in real life than he is on television. Before Patrick can stammer out something truly inane like I’ve used a door before , Wentz adds, “Or get out of the way. Whichever.”
The short, muscular man shoves his way around Patrick, who stands dumbly in his wake. Through the door, he hears Wentz say loudly, “Hey, David, there’s some lost little water boy out there. Did something happen to Mika?”
Your first season with a new team is the most important time for proving yourself, Patrick’s learned from experience. Professional athletes are hard enough to wrangle when they’re healthy; you can’t afford to wait until they’re injured to start building credibility as a physiologist, because the typical injured footballer is about as cooperative as a drunk cat. Theoretically, being a sports physio is about people’s bodies, but Patrick spends more time than he’d like massaging egos instead of quads and using psychology textbook tricks to get grown men to do basic injury-preventing stretches. Patrick figured he’d spend his first spring training with his first major league team laying groundwork, demonstrating a stern, no-nonsense proficiency at mending tissues and joints, and figuring out who his biggest problems are going to be. He’s pretty sure he’s accomplished that last task already. If you can’t get the captain’s respect, you are, in a word, fucked.
So maybe he’s a little angry when he shoves the door open and enters the locker room. Men in peak physical condition and all stages of undress ring the room, their lockers already spilling foul-smelling towels and gym shorts even though he’s pretty sure they’ve just arrived today. David Tenney, the fitness coach who hired him, clocks who Patrick is and rolls his eyes at #13. Wentz doesn’t even look at Patrick, just tosses a half-empty water bottle in his direction. Patrick isn’t going to be called water boy by these overtuned perfectionist meatheads, he’s really not. He makes no move to catch the bottle. It bounces off his arm and hits the floor.
“Everyone, this is Patrick Stump,” David announces. “He’s your new sports medicine god. You will pray to him morning, noon, and night. If he says jump, you say how high and what stretches do I need to do first. We aren’t getting injured this year, gentlemen; we are following Mr. Stump’s regimen. I am tired of handing the MLS Cup to Los Angeles, and we aren’t doing it this year!” David’s got the timbre of inspirational sports speech down pat. The players all know to whoop and cheer at the end, pounding their feet against the concrete floor and slapping the benches. Under no normal circumstance is any pro athlete going to cheer at the prospect of doing more preventative and recovery PT time, so his new boss has really done Patrick a solid here.
He steps further into the locker room, kicking that damn water bottle aside. It goes rolling under some bench or another. Patrick doesn’t watch it. “Well, you heard him, guys. I’m going to keep you off the injured list and on the field. We’re going to have a great season. First thing I want to do is observe—see what you’re already doing to take care of yourselves, see how you move on the field. By tomorrow I’ll have warm-ups for those of you who look vulnerable to injury. So let’s get to it.”
No one whoops or stomps for Patrick, he notices. In fact, most players’ eyes flick over to Wentz, who’s been scrolling on his phone while Patrick speaks.
Wentz looks up at the exact moment Patrick’s looking at him. “Are you gonna pick up my water bottle, new kid?” Wentz says. His voice is quiet and measured. Everyone else is talking, getting ready to hit the field for drills, but it would be stupid to think they’re not listening.
“No,” Patrick says. “You’re thirty-four this year, right?”
Wentz is clearly taken off guard by the conversational pivot, or else he didn’t expect Patrick to have memorized team biographies already. “In June.”
“Then you probably want to get on my good side,” Patrick says levelly. “Unless you were planning on a career-ending injury this season, old man.”
Wentz’s face flashes red. He’s clearly a hothead, leading with his ego. Athletes are sensitive about their age, and Wentz is old enough to be pushing retirement. He opens his mouth to snap something back, but Patrick’s already walked past. He follows David through into the rehab room, which is full of better-quality equipment than any minor league team he’s worked with has had at their home stadium, let alone their spring training facility. As the door swings shut behind them, David hands him a clipboard with the team roster, annotated with injury history, PT notes, and preferences. His eyebrow is hitched. “Taking a firm hand with our team captain?” he asks.
Patrick isn’t going to back down. “If they’re going to respect me, they need to see their captain respect me,” he says.
David shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Our last three physiologists would probably agree with you. But Wentz does things his own way. Focus on the guys who want to be helped, that’s my advice.”
Patrick didn’t get here by letting players tell him how to do his job. He quite literally knows more than they do: that’s the point of him. But he has enough tact not to say so to his brand-new boss. “You’ve been with the team a long time. I figure I should take your advice,” he says instead, smiling.
He follows David through a tour of the facility and an overview of resources he’ll have at his disposal, as well as expectations for his role during spring training. They sit down in David’s temporary office and go over the play roster for the first few training games. Patrick listens, he says the right things, he does his job. But internally, he’s honing his own determination. He’s not going to let some retirement-aged superstar compromise his reputation by getting hurt in some obvious, preventable way. He’s going to make a name for himself in the major leagues by being the best physio this team has ever had, and Pete Wentz isn’t going to stop him.