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redfiona99Title: Sabin's Knees
Fandom: TNA Wrestling
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, they belong to themselves. No money being made from this. This bears no resemblance to the real lives of the people playing these characters.
Characters: Chris Sabin
Rating: PG
Notes: Mentions of real-life injuries. This fic is set in 2013, or 1 ACL injury and 2 Motor City Machine Guns reunions ago. Very much TNA fic so ignoring ROH and NJPW.
Summaries: When he was starting out, Amazing Red was the guy with knees held together by hope and medical intervention. Or, 'Sabin, back from his ACL injury, growing up and growing older without Shelley'.
Chris has lost track of the number of matches he's had, so one more shouldn't make a difference.
Alex would probably know the exact number, but he's not here.
And that shouldn't be a thing to worry about because Chris wrestled before he was a Machine Gun, and he'll wrestle again now that he's not. And he's had injuries before, which wrestler hasn't, and he's come back from them before, so that shouldn't be a thing either.
Except, this time he's been out nearly a year and everyone knows that ligament injuries never heal quite right.
Of course, he's practised before coming back. Leaned on their shared history and convinced Petey to let him work in at his training school but, it's not the same, is it? There's that difference between even the hardest training and a real match.
Chris can feel all the ways his leg isn't what it was, the way his ankle feels like a stranger's sometimes, moves he never used to have to think about doing becoming something that he needs to prep for.
People have been good, been kind, been supportive, saying all the right things when he needed to hear them. He wished he believed them.
When he's being sensible and reasonable, and not waiting in gorilla for his big return, Chris does believe them. Hell, he's been them, he remembers sitting backstage with Amazing Red, when Red was coming back from one of his injuries. When he was the one saying the comforting things, he believed it. Ligaments do heal, well enough to do all kind of things. Look at the NFL, look at the baseball. At least no cadaver ligaments have been involved in his recovery.
He remembers the look on Red's face, like he felt they were all bullshitting him, and they weren't.
At the time, Chris wasn't bullshitting, he believed what he said. And he'd seen Red wrestle after it, and he could still go. Sure, he changed his style a bit, but everyone did that, you had to over time, 'cause of aging, sure, but also because otherwise it would get boring and stale. He wishes the little voice in his head saying that didn't sound so much like Alex.
But now he knows how much that must have cost Red, the hidden hours to make sure he felt certain he could do a move before he tried it out in front of a camera, that fear, that this move would go wrong this time even if he'd done it a thousand times before, and then he'd be back at the start and have to heal all over again, and it would be worse because the damage would be deeper.
Chris can feel himself starting to freak out, and he knows it's nerves and adrenaline and … mostly he wants either a paper bag or a bucket to throw up in.
It's Petey who hands him the bag, and tells him to practise his breathing exercises. The fucker had him doing yoga in exchange for giving him mat time, and now he wants him to do breathing exercises.
It works, of course, because Petey, for all his really odd ways of showing it, is a good friend, and knows how to calm him down. "You are going to go and wrestle. Any move you do, you will have done twenty times in my school since you've come back, and at least six of them were up to my standard."
"Hey, eight of them were up to your standard."
Which got a chuckle out of Petey. "Go and wrestle your match. You and Sonjay have done this hundreds of times. He'll make sure you don't do anything too stupid." Petey doesn't quite shove him out through the curtain, but Chris can tell he wants to but isn't doing it because he knows this is a choice Chris has to make for himself. Petey's right about this too, either Chris does this now or he never does it and if he stays here he's going to give himself a panic attack.
The only way to prove he can still do it is to go and do it.
End notes: Okay, this fic definitely gained weight after I was out for 8 months with a broken leg. I did not intend to give Sabin my leg angst (I feel I need to add that I am now very happy with my leg, even if I could do without the way one ankle really doesn't like some positions anymore, while the other one doesn't care, although that has lessened over time).
Petey Williams to the rescue was also not in the original outline but you know …
Fandom: TNA Wrestling
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine, they belong to themselves. No money being made from this. This bears no resemblance to the real lives of the people playing these characters.
Characters: Chris Sabin
Rating: PG
Notes: Mentions of real-life injuries. This fic is set in 2013, or 1 ACL injury and 2 Motor City Machine Guns reunions ago. Very much TNA fic so ignoring ROH and NJPW.
Summaries: When he was starting out, Amazing Red was the guy with knees held together by hope and medical intervention. Or, 'Sabin, back from his ACL injury, growing up and growing older without Shelley'.
Chris has lost track of the number of matches he's had, so one more shouldn't make a difference.
Alex would probably know the exact number, but he's not here.
And that shouldn't be a thing to worry about because Chris wrestled before he was a Machine Gun, and he'll wrestle again now that he's not. And he's had injuries before, which wrestler hasn't, and he's come back from them before, so that shouldn't be a thing either.
Except, this time he's been out nearly a year and everyone knows that ligament injuries never heal quite right.
Of course, he's practised before coming back. Leaned on their shared history and convinced Petey to let him work in at his training school but, it's not the same, is it? There's that difference between even the hardest training and a real match.
Chris can feel all the ways his leg isn't what it was, the way his ankle feels like a stranger's sometimes, moves he never used to have to think about doing becoming something that he needs to prep for.
People have been good, been kind, been supportive, saying all the right things when he needed to hear them. He wished he believed them.
When he's being sensible and reasonable, and not waiting in gorilla for his big return, Chris does believe them. Hell, he's been them, he remembers sitting backstage with Amazing Red, when Red was coming back from one of his injuries. When he was the one saying the comforting things, he believed it. Ligaments do heal, well enough to do all kind of things. Look at the NFL, look at the baseball. At least no cadaver ligaments have been involved in his recovery.
He remembers the look on Red's face, like he felt they were all bullshitting him, and they weren't.
At the time, Chris wasn't bullshitting, he believed what he said. And he'd seen Red wrestle after it, and he could still go. Sure, he changed his style a bit, but everyone did that, you had to over time, 'cause of aging, sure, but also because otherwise it would get boring and stale. He wishes the little voice in his head saying that didn't sound so much like Alex.
But now he knows how much that must have cost Red, the hidden hours to make sure he felt certain he could do a move before he tried it out in front of a camera, that fear, that this move would go wrong this time even if he'd done it a thousand times before, and then he'd be back at the start and have to heal all over again, and it would be worse because the damage would be deeper.
Chris can feel himself starting to freak out, and he knows it's nerves and adrenaline and … mostly he wants either a paper bag or a bucket to throw up in.
It's Petey who hands him the bag, and tells him to practise his breathing exercises. The fucker had him doing yoga in exchange for giving him mat time, and now he wants him to do breathing exercises.
It works, of course, because Petey, for all his really odd ways of showing it, is a good friend, and knows how to calm him down. "You are going to go and wrestle. Any move you do, you will have done twenty times in my school since you've come back, and at least six of them were up to my standard."
"Hey, eight of them were up to your standard."
Which got a chuckle out of Petey. "Go and wrestle your match. You and Sonjay have done this hundreds of times. He'll make sure you don't do anything too stupid." Petey doesn't quite shove him out through the curtain, but Chris can tell he wants to but isn't doing it because he knows this is a choice Chris has to make for himself. Petey's right about this too, either Chris does this now or he never does it and if he stays here he's going to give himself a panic attack.
The only way to prove he can still do it is to go and do it.
End notes: Okay, this fic definitely gained weight after I was out for 8 months with a broken leg. I did not intend to give Sabin my leg angst (I feel I need to add that I am now very happy with my leg, even if I could do without the way one ankle really doesn't like some positions anymore, while the other one doesn't care, although that has lessened over time).
Petey Williams to the rescue was also not in the original outline but you know …
