Chapter Text
Nick had grown up knowing he didn't have a single musical bone in his body. Why else would his father always tell him to stop making that racket when he would sing to himself as a child? Why would his brother David tell him he sounded awful every time he sang along to a song in the car? His mother only ever chastised David for being mean to his brother, never telling Nick that she enjoyed his voice. There were no piano lessons or other instruments for him to try instead, his life too busy with rugby practice and training and games.
Nick had grown up knowing he was good at rugby. He knew because Stéphane and David told him they were proud every time he scored the game winning try. He knew because his coaches used him as an example of how to do things. His mother came to every one of his games and cheered for him, praise pouring from the sidelines. There were practices most afternoons and running every morning and games every weekend.
He had never questioned it. Nick enjoyed rugby, and his teammates were nice enough. When he was at school, he was always part of a group, even if he mostly trailed along quietly while the more boisterous members took charge of the conversation. When he was little, all anyone wanted to talk about was rugby and video games, which had been fine. But as they got older, the topics diversified and changed, and Nick found himself outside the conversation more and more. He hadn't noticed girls when his peers were obsessed, he didn't watch the same telly, and his only hobby off the pitch was baking with his nan when his parents were both visiting David at the special sports boarding school he attended.
Nick was relieved when he was recruited by St. John's, which was arguably more prestigious from a rugby perspective than David's place at Cranbrook, and close enough to home that he could stay with his mother. The cracks were forming in his parents' marriage, had been for years, and ultimately it was a relief when Stéphane returned to Paris full time and gave up the pretense of giving a shit about his children. David went to uni in Lyons in an attempt to appease him by attending his Alma mater. Nick sent updates of every try scored, and only got asked why not more, as if it weren't a team sport.
When Nick was drafted to Sales, he got a curt text from Stéphane about how at least it was premiership… for now. Moving away from his mother was hard, but Nick knew his role. Even if his teammates pushed him towards drunken hookups, Nick mostly deflected, remembering how devastated his mother was at David's string of women. There was no real appeal for him anyway. What he craved was a sense of connection, which he would never find in a one night stand. Despite all the evidence in his life to the contrary, Nick believed in romance. He was quickly a favorite of the coaches and staff, putting in extra hours in the gym and film room. Rugby was his life and his life was rugby.
Unsurprisingly, years of incredible dedication to a brutally physical sport had left Nick with his share of aches and pains and lingering injuries. He followed the advice of his physios, but his sense of a normal pain level was permanently skewed by a lifetime of unforgiving training. In particular, his hip bothered him, and so he did his stretches and IT band rolling and heat and ice. He checked in with Imogen any time something changed, and tried to stay ahead of the preventable stuff. But there was a perpetual baseline twinge he had come to accept as his normal.
He didn't remember much about the match, really. It was barely into the season. They were playing Leeds, who were always tough to beat. It was raining, which always made his joints ache a bit, even at 31 years old. He figured he still had a few years before retirement. Nick was ready and focused and committed to doing his best, just like before most games of his professional career. There was nothing remarkable about the fixture. Until somehow in the scrum, his legs were dragged one direction and his torso another and there was a snap and a blinding pain and suddenly he couldn't force his body to take in any air and the team physio was asking what hurt like it was a question he had any hope of answering without just screaming wordlessly. They strapped him to a board and put him in the back of an ambulance and even though he wasn't dead, his life had ended.
It turned out that the pain he had been experiencing on and off, but mostly on, was the cartilaginous tissue wearing down to practically nothing. The hit had torn what was left, but it was so thin, standard athletic repairs weren't an option, and a standard reconstruction still had to wait for the surrounding soft tissue damage to heal. For the next six weeks, Nick was on bedrest, and after that… Well, he would walk again, but never play.
The first days home from the hospital were fine. He figured out the routine of medication and how to pee and making himself food to eat with as little standing as possible. His mum was there to help, and he had visitors. Those visits quickly dwindled as his teammates had to get back to practice and games, and Nick didn't really want to hear about everything he was missing. His father texted to ask how soon he would be playing again. He watched terrible telly, but even the usually soothing Bake Off was frustrating because he wasn't allowed in his own kitchen long enough to do anything more than pour a bowl of cereal. Instead, he fell down the rabbit holes of YouTube, and into the niche of songs covered in different styles from the original and deeper into more general guitar videos. After several hours of watching basic tutorials, Nick decided to buy one and try it properly. It seemed a cheap enough investment in his short term sanity.
His fingers had plenty of callouses from years of rugby and weightlifting, but Nick quickly developed new ones as he spent the next few weeks learning basic chords. It was soothing to strum, even when he wasn't playing anything in particular. The distraction was helpful when he was anxious and trying not to fret about his next MRI. Maybe the initial assessment has been wrong. The doctor had mentioned the swollen tissue made it hard to read. Maybe it wasn't so bad.
It wasn't so bad.
It was worse.
The orthopedist had told Nick that she was quite frankly shocked he had been walking before the tackle. When asked to rate what his pain has been, Nick shrugged and said a three or four. He hadn't caught what she'd muttered under her breath after that, but she clearly either didn't believe him or thought he was insane. He was sent home for six more weeks of “light activity”, or really, house arrest, and scheduled for a hip reconstruction. Stéphane offered to find a second opinion from a French specialist he knew. The team doctors expressed their sympathy. He got a very kind letter from his general manager and a severance check and with that, Nick Nelson was officially no longer a rugby player.
He got a few texts from mates expressing their sympathy, but those dried up quickly. He hadn't been that long from retirement, after all. His mum called every day, nattering away about the latest work gossip and her friends and the dogs and the cow videos she found on Instagram. Similarly, Imogen, one of the team physios (though, he thought bitterly, no longer his physio) sent him stupid memes and baby duck pictures. With nothing else to fill his time, Nick was getting better at guitar quickly, to the point where he started to hum along as he worked through songs he knew.
Music became a balm and obsession for Nick. He'd never had strong opinions before, but he was rapidly discovering favorite artists and songs and building himself Spotify playlists for different moods. He suddenly was asking his mum about her old albums, and diving deep into the back catalog of Tracy Chapman, Colin Hay, Death Cab for Cutie, the Indigo Girls, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, and, of course, ABBA. He would never tell his mum but he wasn't particularly fond of the Swedish pop group, preferring songs he could play along with.
Once he learned a few chords, it was amazing how many songs he could approximately play. More surprising was how natural it felt to sing at the same time. Nick had never been one to go up when there was karaoke at a pub, only singing alone in the car or the shower. Now he was starting to notice things about his own voice, like his range, and what songs were most comfortable. He also discovered that he was actually enjoying it. Of course, no one was around to hear him, so who knew what he actually sounded like, but that wasn't really the point. Sometimes, it was the only time he used his vocal chords all day instead of texting.
Surgery went as smoothly as it could, and instead of being forced to sit, Nick was going through extensive physical therapy which was depressing in different ways. Instead of the extra thick resistance bands they used in training, he was struggling with the lightest weight ones. The surgery alone shouldn't have left his muscles so weak, but apparently there had been damage to the tendons that had been missed under all the other injuries. At least he understood working out. Without his guitar, though, the rest he also required to recover would have been almost impossible.
He could have played a lot of video games on his Switch, but all of his favorites were multiplayer, and he'd never really enjoyed playing against random strangers on the internet. Too often, he got paired with homophobic children trying to insult his mum, and it wasn't actually fun. Nick enjoyed reading, but he'd gotten into the habit of listening to audiobooks while he worked out. Doing the same thing with sitting just felt off.
When it seemed like this hobby was really going to stick, Nick reached out to the local music store to find a teacher. A nice older man called Nathan stopped by twice a week and taught Nick different songs, and got him to try singing along with a few. To Nick's utter astonishment, he was told he had a quite good voice. Maybe it was only after puberty that he had developed singing worth listening to. Maybe his father and brother had always been jerks. Neither one of them had talked to Nick since he acknowledged he was never going to play professional rugby again. Nathan set Nick up with a vocal coach, Youssef. Nick had no illusions of a second career, but it gave structure to his weeks, and gave him something to work on. While his salary as a player had been decent, his agent has landed him some phenomenal endorsements, some of which hadn't ended the instant his career did.
When Nick was on his regular, frustratingly slow walk around the neighborhood, he stopped in the tea shop for a cuppa and an admittedly inferior scone. “Good morning, Darcy,” he said to the blonde woman in the pink and orange tie dyed apron working behind the counter.
“Morning, Nickelback!”
Nick groaned. “I liked Nicholas Nickelby better. I know I have geriatric musical taste, but they're just so aggressively medium. It's like musical porridge.”
“What songs are you working on now?”
“I'm working on Closer to Fine,” said Nick.
“An interesting choice, rugby lad,” said Darcy, handing him a steaming cup. He tried not to cringe at the nickname, which was both on point and utterly incorrect.
“One of my mum's favorites. Trickier than Riptide was, but I already know the words.”
“You should come to the shop open mic night!” said Darcy. “You can do one or two covers, no pressure.”
“I don't know, it's just a little thing I do to pass the time.”
“You know that's not what Nathan and Youssef say about you. At least take a flyer? If you aren't ready for the stage, it's at least something to do on a Friday night. You might meet someone!” Darcy waved a yellow paper at him.
“Hey, have more faith in my social life! I could have plans,” complained Nick.
“Babe, you're too honest. I already know the truth.”
Nick sighed, resigned. “I'll be there, though I don't know if I will play anything.”
“What's the worst that could happen?” asked Darcy.
Nick folded the flyer and stuffed it in a pocket. Darcy had a point. He'd already lost his dream job, social circle, and his body would never be the same again. His friends were the barista he saw daily and made small talk with, and Imogen – end of depressingly tiny list. He hadn't heard from anyone else in weeks, his messages lurking on read. Compared to that, what was the worst thing that could happen at an open mic night?