Posted using PostyBirb",
"writing": "Niel was going to kill someone; maybe the guy facing him.\n\nHe’d gotten up early, like an hour before the coach did the round of banging on doors. He’d gotten to the locker’s showers where the dalmatian had agreed to meet with him for a quickie before Niel left for Madison, but he wasn’t there. Instead, as he’d turned around to check the hall in case he was running late, he’d come face to face with Coach Horgar. The bear grinned as he expressed his pleasure at the eagerness Niel was showing for the coming away game. And since they were both there, they should start packing the gear, right?\n\nThe coach kept up a one sided conversation about the coming game as they worked, while Niel fumed. He talked about this opposing team, the Madison field, their locker and paused.\n\n“I really hope I’m not going to have to deal with a trophy seeker there, too.”\n\nNiel paused in pulling the bag with their away uniform out of storage.\n\nThe bear’s smile turned evil. “I had to chase one away this morning, not ten minutes before I ran into you. Looks like I’m going to have to go around and change the code on all the doors again if just anyone can get in here.”\n\nThe son of a bitch had purposely cock-blocked him.\n\nNiel had immediately planned on heading out the instant the coach left to wake the team, call the dalmatian and try to convince him to meet in the restroom by the entrance, but three seniors arrived before that, and they were instructed to stick by Niel so he wouldn’t be distracted.\n\nThe dreaded bus ride had been better. The assistant coach was the one supervising the bus Niel was in, and anytime someone, even a senior, got rowdy, he shut them down. The gazelle had been oddly absent from the locker room since the start of the month, and Niel now suspected he was kept in the dark about the enforced tradition.\n\nAs soon as they arrived in Madison, the coach called for a pre-game meeting, torpedoing Niel’s plans for a detour by the weight room in the hopes someone there, like an opposing player, was looking for a nice ass to claim. The meeting had stretched until they had to get ready to play.\n\nAnd here Niel was, geared up, facing the opposition and pent up like he couldn’t remember ever being. He was going to murder someone on the field for being forced to endure this torture.\n\nAt least, there was halftime to look forward to.\n\nHe grinned at the badger facing him and waited for the ball to come into play. Time to destroy the opposition.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel lifted his head from between his legs at the halftime announcement. That last tackle had sent him off his feet and left him with vertigo. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes for it to pass. He stood, and didn’t immediately fall, so he followed the others.\n\nThe coach gave a rousing speech about the game, or maybe the previous night’s dinner. Niel wasn’t paying attention. He felt better and eyed the door, counting the minutes left for him to find a guy to fuck him. He was going to have to set records with how quick this quickie was going to be.\n\nNiel was out the door as soon as the coach stopped talking.\n\n“Where do you think you’re going?” Coach Horgar demanded before Niel took his fourth step.\n\n“For some fresher air; it stinks in there.” He barely kept his tone civil. Every second of delay was one less he had to—\n\n“Really? Don’t you mean you’re going off to get laid?”\n\nNiel rounded on the man. “What do you fucking care?”\n\n“It’s November. The team—”\n\n“Oh, fuck off with the team. This is about you getting your jollies. Not team spirit. I don’t see the seniors in cages. You expect me to believe they aren’t getting laid? That you aren’t? Or is that the point? You can’t get any, so this month gives you an excuse to make the rest of us suffer with you?”\n\nThe bear smirked. “Kid. I get laid. More than you, I expect.”\n\nNiel tilted an ear. “Unless it happened more than four times, last night, I doubt that.” It was his turn to smirk at the coach’s surprise. “Now, unless you have something worthwhile to tell me. I have less than five minutes to—”\n\n“In the locker room, now.”\n\n“Hey! The game doesn’t restart until—”\n\n“You’re not here to get a cock up that ass. You’re here to help the team win. To get better so you can have a career in the NFL.”\n\nNiel threw his hands up. “Who fucking said I want that?”\n\n“Then why are you here?”\n\n“I’m here because I’m good enough I was offered a scholarship. If the NFL thinks the same, I might take them up on it, but I’m here, like a lot of us, to get an education. I’m thinking I’ll teach history, but I’m just a freshman, so who knows. Brenden’s going for information technology, Herley’s thinking about applied physics. You need me to list every player who doesn’t have ‘I want to be an NFL superstar’ as their career goal, or is that too fucking hard for you to comprehend?”\n\n“Coach Horgar,” a woman called as the bear glared at the raccoon, muzzle opening. “Two minutes before the team has to be on the field.”\n\nThe bear’s snarl morphed into a grin. “I guess it’s game time.”\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel swiped his phone over the scanner and pulled on the door. Or tried to. He grumbled a curse as it stayed close and swiped his phone again. He was too tired to deal with a scanner on the fritz.\n\nWhile the coach might have been pissed enough after their altercation to bench Niel, he wanted to win more, so he’d put him on the field. But after a third tackle, Niel had trouble standing, and stumbled trying to get back into the lineup. He was pulled by the paramedic and looked over. He used the enforced rest to eat a few energy bars. In his eagerness at getting laid, then the argument with the coach, he’d forgotten to eat anything during halftime. He figured it was the cause of his dizziness.\n\nHe was tackled again as soon as he got the all clear to return to the field, and that one left him with his head spinning for the rest of the game.\n\nHe tried to rest during the return trip, but the team was celebrating their victory and no one cared what state he was in. The bus had fallen quiet by the time they arrived at the university dorms, but Niel had managed to fall asleep only minutes before. He’d zombie walked through the cold night, to his room, and now he couldn’t get the damned door to open so he could fall into bed.\n\n“Dude,” Brenden whispered, three doors down, “what are you doing?”\n\n“Trying to get into our room.” He raised a fist to teach the damned thing who was the boss.\n\n“That’s Carmichael’s room. He’s going to kill you if you wake him.”\n\nHe turned to argue with his roommate, but the cougar had the door opened. He motioned Niel in, and the raccoon decided he was too tired to care. So long as there was a bed for him to fall unconscious in, he didn’t care whose it was.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel stared at the whiteboard, wishing the passages Professor Rogers had listed would come in enough of a focus so he could read them. He’d been sure he’d linked the ones the professor would discuss during the class, but he couldn’t find them. Fortunately, the professor understood not every student was the pinnacle of preparedness, and listed the relevant information so they could pull them up on their phone.\n\nIf only Niel could get his eyes to focus and read it.\n\nHe’d slept.\n\nWell, he’d been unconscious until nine. There was no practice after a game night, and he’d thought ahead. His alarm had woken him for his first class, and not practice. He couldn’t remember setting it on his phone, but he thanked yesterday’s self for doing it.\n\nNot that the extra hours had helped. He took twice as long getting showered and dressed. Even knowing he was getting closer and closer to being late to his class hadn’t help. He wanted to hurry, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.\n\nIt would suck if he was coming down with something.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel placed the tray on the table as he sat.\n\n“Did you enter a weight gain contest or something” Jessica eyed the mountain of food on the tray. She shared his Ancient History and Anthropology classes and three times a week they ate together, since one was before lunch and the other after.\n\n“I’m feeding the flu,” he replied. His head had cleared by the time History was over, and his body no longer felt like it was filled with cotton, but he was hungry.\n\n“You feed a cold, starve the flu,” the lioness said. “You’re lucky you aren’t being charged by the plate or you’d be starving your walled too.”\n\n“You sure?”\n\n“You’re a history buff; don’t you know your olden time saying?”\n\n“I’m a football player. We don’t know nothing.”\n\nShe nodded. “You get hit on the head often enough. The tackle that took you out of the game last night looked nasty.”\n\nAs a tight end, he didn’t get the ball often, but once in a while, things lined up. On the first play back on the field, the opposition had covered his team’s receivers, and he’d found himself the best candidate. He’d caught the pass, and managed to get the down, before being tackled, but that had taken him out for the rest of the game.\n\nMaybe that was what was wrong with him. He’d been cleared, but maybe this was a delayed concussion? Was that a thing?\n\nIt was probably just the flu.\n\n“Earth to Niel. You still with me?”\n\n“Uh? Yeah, sorry. What did you say?”\n\n“That you got hit hard,” the lioness replied. “Did they check you out? Maybe you should go to the infirmary.”\n\n“I’ll be fine. As soon as the class is over, I’ll go to bed.”\n\nIn no time, he emptied his tray, to Jessica’s amazement.\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel shouldered the stall door open to the gurgling of his intestines. He barely had his pants down and sat that they emptied themselves painfully.\n\nFuck.\n\nWasn’t feeling sick, mixed with diarrhea, a sign he’d gotten food poisoning? Had he eaten anything on the bus ride to Madison? Before the game? He hadn’t after, he was sure of that. He couldn’t have caught this from the cafeteria, could he? Food poisoning didn’t act this fast, did it?\n\n* * * * *\n\nNiel stared at the text on his phone. He knew it was the reading material assigned for the essay he had to hand in next week on Kiecian Rus, but he couldn’t make out any of it. It was all squiggles instead of letters.\n\n“You look like shit.” Brenden only had on a towel as he stepped out of the bathroom. His movements were stiff. He was also dealing with the punishment he’d received during the game.\n\n“Congratulation,” Niel replied bitterly. “You don’t need glasses.”\n\n“What did the nurse say you have?”\n\n“Nothing. Once I’m done with this, I’ll go to bed and it’ll pass.”\n\n“Dude, you should go to the infirmary.”\n\n“It’s just the flu.” His stomach gurgled, and he was fully awake. “Or food poisoning.” He ran for the bathroom. He was lucky it had just been vacated. The way his body behaved, he wouldn’t have made it to the restroom at the end of the hall.\n\n* * * * *\n\nHe was never doing that again.\n\nHe dropped in the chair at his desk and shuddered at the memory. Hoping for a clue as to what ailed him, Niel had looked in the bowl before flushing. He was pretty sure the stuff should have been brown, not… those colors.\n\nBrenden buttoned up the cuffs on his shirt.\n\n“You heading out?” Niel looked the cougar up and down.\n\n“Yeah. Melany wants to meet up. You’re not invited. I don’t want you to give her whatever you have.”\n\n“Then I hope I haven’t given it to you. Can you bring me a sandwich when you get back?”\n\n“Dude, how are you hungry if you’re sick?”\n\nNiel shrugged.\n\n“I’ll stop by the cafeteria, but it’ll be a few hours.”\n\n“I’ll survive,” he replied and added, once the door closed. “I hope.”\n\n* * * * *\n\n“I can’t,” Niel told the ram on the other side of the call. “I have this essay to finish and I caught something while in Madison. Sex is the surest way to pass that on to you. You haven’t given me a reason to want that for you, Luke.”\n\n“That sucks. I wanted to explore Ancient Rome some more.”\n\nNiel chuckled. “It’s not going anywhere. This is going to be done in a day or two. I’ll make it up to you then.”\n\nHe disconnected and placed another call. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? Olavo could fuck him to full health.\n\n“You have reached Olavo Medeiros’s message center. If this is regarding classes, press one. If this is frat business, press two. If you are a friend, press three.” He pressed three. “Hi. I’m unreachable until the end of the day tomorrow. Sorry about that. If this can’t wait, call Kuno. He can probably help you with whatever you need. Otherwise, leave your name and I’ll call you back once I’m back in town.”\n\nNiel put the phone away. With Olavo out of town, there was no point in calling Kuno. Should he even bother the capybara over a stomach bug? His friendship with Kuno was based on a lifetime of shared memories the bat had shoved in both their heads. They’d made the friendship real over the last two years, but Olavo had come into his life after the fact. He was nice, but more a friend of a friend, which didn’t mean he was Niel’s friend.\n\nHe shrugged and tried to focus on his essay again. This would be done in a couple of days. He could survive the misery; if not the coach’s reaction when he didn’t play at his best.\n\n* * * * *\n\nHow many ways were there to fail? Niel couldn’t think of an answer; couldn’t think of much, really. But he was pretty sure he’d failed in all of them trying to go through practice.\n\nHe’d tripped over his own feet more than once. Dropped just about every ball thrown at him. Even Carl, the lightest player on the team, had sent him on his ass with a shoulder block. He groaned, trying to get back to his feet. Good thing they weren’t actually playing. The coach would kill him if he screwed this badly during a—\n\n“Leslie!” the bear yelled. “Get over here.”\n\nNiel accepted Carl’s hand, then ambled to the bear. He kept his walk leisurely to ensure the world remained steady.\n\n“Are you okay?” the coach searched the raccoon’s face.\n\n“I’m fine.” He did his best to show his strong side.\n\n“How about you tell me the truth? I can see you aren’t fine. The team in Madison can see it, too.”\n\nNiel sighed. “I think I caught a bug at the game. Maybe the locker room wasn’t cleaned properly.”\n\nThe bear looked over the field, his brow creasing. “You think. Are you telling me you haven’t been checked out by the infirmary yet?”\n\nHe shrugged. “It’s just a bug; it’ll pass.”\n\n“And you’re going to pass it along to everyone else in the meantime.” The coach cursed. “Do you have any idea what that can do to their chances?” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Go see the nurse. Don’t argue. You kids and your damned belief you can survive anything. Half the sick time on this team would be avoided if your reaction to any stomach flutter was to think you’d caught the plague and rushed to the nurse.”\n\n“I’d jut spread it to her too if I did. It’s called the plague because there’s no cure.”\n\n“It’s the twenty-first century. There’s a cure for everything, including whatever you have. Go see the nurse.”\n\nNiel dropped his shoulder pads on the bench in the locker room. He’d be back in ten minutes to put them away. That was how long it would take the nurse to instruct him to take it easy for a few days. What else was she going to do, send him to the hospital for a stomach bug?",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": "Niel was going to kill someone; maybe the guy facing him.
He’d gotten up early, like an hour before the coach did the round of banging on doors. He’d gotten to the locker’s showers where the dalmatian had agreed to meet with him for a quickie before Niel left for Madison, but he wasn’t there. Instead, as he’d turned around to check the hall in case he was running late, he’d come face to face with Coach Horgar. The bear grinned as he expressed his pleasure at the eagerness Niel was showing for the coming away game. And since they were both there, they should start packing the gear, right?
The coach kept up a one sided conversation about the coming game as they worked, while Niel fumed. He talked about this opposing team, the Madison field, their locker and paused.
“I really hope I’m not going to have to deal with a trophy seeker there, too.”
Niel paused in pulling the bag with their away uniform out of storage.
The bear’s smile turned evil. “I had to chase one away this morning, not ten minutes before I ran into you. Looks like I’m going to have to go around and change the code on all the doors again if just anyone can get in here.”
The son of a bitch had purposely cock-blocked him.
Niel had immediately planned on heading out the instant the coach left to wake the team, call the dalmatian and try to convince him to meet in the restroom by the entrance, but three seniors arrived before that, and they were instructed to stick by Niel so he wouldn’t be distracted.
The dreaded bus ride had been better. The assistant coach was the one supervising the bus Niel was in, and anytime someone, even a senior, got rowdy, he shut them down. The gazelle had been oddly absent from the locker room since the start of the month, and Niel now suspected he was kept in the dark about the enforced tradition.
As soon as they arrived in Madison, the coach called for a pre-game meeting, torpedoing Niel’s plans for a detour by the weight room in the hopes someone there, like an opposing player, was looking for a nice ass to claim. The meeting had stretched until they had to get ready to play.
And here Niel was, geared up, facing the opposition and pent up like he couldn’t remember ever being. He was going to murder someone on the field for being forced to endure this torture.
At least, there was halftime to look forward to.
He grinned at the badger facing him and waited for the ball to come into play. Time to destroy the opposition.
* * * * *
Niel lifted his head from between his legs at the halftime announcement. That last tackle had sent him off his feet and left him with vertigo. He’d been waiting for fifteen minutes for it to pass. He stood, and didn’t immediately fall, so he followed the others.
The coach gave a rousing speech about the game, or maybe the previous night’s dinner. Niel wasn’t paying attention. He felt better and eyed the door, counting the minutes left for him to find a guy to fuck him. He was going to have to set records with how quick this quickie was going to be.
Niel was out the door as soon as the coach stopped talking.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Coach Horgar demanded before Niel took his fourth step.
“For some fresher air; it stinks in there.” He barely kept his tone civil. Every second of delay was one less he had to—
“Really? Don’t you mean you’re going off to get laid?”
Niel rounded on the man. “What do you fucking care?”
“It’s November. The team—”
“Oh, fuck off with the team. This is about you getting your jollies. Not team spirit. I don’t see the seniors in cages. You expect me to believe they aren’t getting laid? That you aren’t? Or is that the point? You can’t get any, so this month gives you an excuse to make the rest of us suffer with you?”
The bear smirked. “Kid. I get laid. More than you, I expect.”
Niel tilted an ear. “Unless it happened more than four times, last night, I doubt that.” It was his turn to smirk at the coach’s surprise. “Now, unless you have something worthwhile to tell me. I have less than five minutes to—”
“In the locker room, now.”
“Hey! The game doesn’t restart until—”
“You’re not here to get a cock up that ass. You’re here to help the team win. To get better so you can have a career in the NFL.”
Niel threw his hands up. “Who fucking said I want that?”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m here because I’m good enough I was offered a scholarship. If the NFL thinks the same, I might take them up on it, but I’m here, like a lot of us, to get an education. I’m thinking I’ll teach history, but I’m just a freshman, so who knows. Brenden’s going for information technology, Herley’s thinking about applied physics. You need me to list every player who doesn’t have ‘I want to be an NFL superstar’ as their career goal, or is that too fucking hard for you to comprehend?”
“Coach Horgar,” a woman called as the bear glared at the raccoon, muzzle opening. “Two minutes before the team has to be on the field.”
The bear’s snarl morphed into a grin. “I guess it’s game time.”
* * * * *
Niel swiped his phone over the scanner and pulled on the door. Or tried to. He grumbled a curse as it stayed close and swiped his phone again. He was too tired to deal with a scanner on the fritz.
While the coach might have been pissed enough after their altercation to bench Niel, he wanted to win more, so he’d put him on the field. But after a third tackle, Niel had trouble standing, and stumbled trying to get back into the lineup. He was pulled by the paramedic and looked over. He used the enforced rest to eat a few energy bars. In his eagerness at getting laid, then the argument with the coach, he’d forgotten to eat anything during halftime. He figured it was the cause of his dizziness.
He was tackled again as soon as he got the all clear to return to the field, and that one left him with his head spinning for the rest of the game.
He tried to rest during the return trip, but the team was celebrating their victory and no one cared what state he was in. The bus had fallen quiet by the time they arrived at the university dorms, but Niel had managed to fall asleep only minutes before. He’d zombie walked through the cold night, to his room, and now he couldn’t get the damned door to open so he could fall into bed.
“Dude,” Brenden whispered, three doors down, “what are you doing?”
“Trying to get into our room.” He raised a fist to teach the damned thing who was the boss.
“That’s Carmichael’s room. He’s going to kill you if you wake him.”
He turned to argue with his roommate, but the cougar had the door opened. He motioned Niel in, and the raccoon decided he was too tired to care. So long as there was a bed for him to fall unconscious in, he didn’t care whose it was.
* * * * *
Niel stared at the whiteboard, wishing the passages Professor Rogers had listed would come in enough of a focus so he could read them. He’d been sure he’d linked the ones the professor would discuss during the class, but he couldn’t find them. Fortunately, the professor understood not every student was the pinnacle of preparedness, and listed the relevant information so they could pull them up on their phone.
If only Niel could get his eyes to focus and read it.
He’d slept.
Well, he’d been unconscious until nine. There was no practice after a game night, and he’d thought ahead. His alarm had woken him for his first class, and not practice. He couldn’t remember setting it on his phone, but he thanked yesterday’s self for doing it.
Not that the extra hours had helped. He took twice as long getting showered and dressed. Even knowing he was getting closer and closer to being late to his class hadn’t help. He wanted to hurry, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.
It would suck if he was coming down with something.
* * * * *
Niel placed the tray on the table as he sat.
“Did you enter a weight gain contest or something” Jessica eyed the mountain of food on the tray. She shared his Ancient History and Anthropology classes and three times a week they ate together, since one was before lunch and the other after.
“I’m feeding the flu,” he replied. His head had cleared by the time History was over, and his body no longer felt like it was filled with cotton, but he was hungry.
“You feed a cold, starve the flu,” the lioness said. “You’re lucky you aren’t being charged by the plate or you’d be starving your walled too.”
“You sure?”
“You’re a history buff; don’t you know your olden time saying?”
“I’m a football player. We don’t know nothing.”
She nodded. “You get hit on the head often enough. The tackle that took you out of the game last night looked nasty.”
As a tight end, he didn’t get the ball often, but once in a while, things lined up. On the first play back on the field, the opposition had covered his team’s receivers, and he’d found himself the best candidate. He’d caught the pass, and managed to get the down, before being tackled, but that had taken him out for the rest of the game.
Maybe that was what was wrong with him. He’d been cleared, but maybe this was a delayed concussion? Was that a thing?
It was probably just the flu.
“Earth to Niel. You still with me?”
“Uh? Yeah, sorry. What did you say?”
“That you got hit hard,” the lioness replied. “Did they check you out? Maybe you should go to the infirmary.”
“I’ll be fine. As soon as the class is over, I’ll go to bed.”
In no time, he emptied his tray, to Jessica’s amazement.
* * * * *
Niel shouldered the stall door open to the gurgling of his intestines. He barely had his pants down and sat that they emptied themselves painfully.
Fuck.
Wasn’t feeling sick, mixed with diarrhea, a sign he’d gotten food poisoning? Had he eaten anything on the bus ride to Madison? Before the game? He hadn’t after, he was sure of that. He couldn’t have caught this from the cafeteria, could he? Food poisoning didn’t act this fast, did it?
* * * * *
Niel stared at the text on his phone. He knew it was the reading material assigned for the essay he had to hand in next week on Kiecian Rus, but he couldn’t make out any of it. It was all squiggles instead of letters.
“You look like shit.” Brenden only had on a towel as he stepped out of the bathroom. His movements were stiff. He was also dealing with the punishment he’d received during the game.
“Congratulation,” Niel replied bitterly. “You don’t need glasses.”
“What did the nurse say you have?”
“Nothing. Once I’m done with this, I’ll go to bed and it’ll pass.”
“Dude, you should go to the infirmary.”
“It’s just the flu.” His stomach gurgled, and he was fully awake. “Or food poisoning.” He ran for the bathroom. He was lucky it had just been vacated. The way his body behaved, he wouldn’t have made it to the restroom at the end of the hall.
* * * * *
He was never doing that again.
He dropped in the chair at his desk and shuddered at the memory. Hoping for a clue as to what ailed him, Niel had looked in the bowl before flushing. He was pretty sure the stuff should have been brown, not… those colors.
Brenden buttoned up the cuffs on his shirt.
“You heading out?” Niel looked the cougar up and down.
“Yeah. Melany wants to meet up. You’re not invited. I don’t want you to give her whatever you have.”
“Then I hope I haven’t given it to you. Can you bring me a sandwich when you get back?”
“Dude, how are you hungry if you’re sick?”
Niel shrugged.
“I’ll stop by the cafeteria, but it’ll be a few hours.”
“I’ll survive,” he replied and added, once the door closed. “I hope.”
* * * * *
“I can’t,” Niel told the ram on the other side of the call. “I have this essay to finish and I caught something while in Madison. Sex is the surest way to pass that on to you. You haven’t given me a reason to want that for you, Luke.”
“That sucks. I wanted to explore Ancient Rome some more.”
Niel chuckled. “It’s not going anywhere. This is going to be done in a day or two. I’ll make it up to you then.”
He disconnected and placed another call. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? Olavo could fuck him to full health.
“You have reached Olavo Medeiros’s message center. If this is regarding classes, press one. If this is frat business, press two. If you are a friend, press three.” He pressed three. “Hi. I’m unreachable until the end of the day tomorrow. Sorry about that. If this can’t wait, call Kuno. He can probably help you with whatever you need. Otherwise, leave your name and I’ll call you back once I’m back in town.”
Niel put the phone away. With Olavo out of town, there was no point in calling Kuno. Should he even bother the capybara over a stomach bug? His friendship with Kuno was based on a lifetime of shared memories the bat had shoved in both their heads. They’d made the friendship real over the last two years, but Olavo had come into his life after the fact. He was nice, but more a friend of a friend, which didn’t mean he was Niel’s friend.
He shrugged and tried to focus on his essay again. This would be done in a couple of days. He could survive the misery; if not the coach’s reaction when he didn’t play at his best.
* * * * *
How many ways were there to fail? Niel couldn’t think of an answer; couldn’t think of much, really. But he was pretty sure he’d failed in all of them trying to go through practice.
He’d tripped over his own feet more than once. Dropped just about every ball thrown at him. Even Carl, the lightest player on the team, had sent him on his ass with a shoulder block. He groaned, trying to get back to his feet. Good thing they weren’t actually playing. The coach would kill him if he screwed this badly during a—
“Leslie!” the bear yelled. “Get over here.”
Niel accepted Carl’s hand, then ambled to the bear. He kept his walk leisurely to ensure the world remained steady.
“Are you okay?” the coach searched the raccoon’s face.
“I’m fine.” He did his best to show his strong side.
“How about you tell me the truth? I can see you aren’t fine. The team in Madison can see it, too.”
Niel sighed. “I think I caught a bug at the game. Maybe the locker room wasn’t cleaned properly.”
The bear looked over the field, his brow creasing. “You think. Are you telling me you haven’t been checked out by the infirmary yet?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a bug; it’ll pass.”
“And you’re going to pass it along to everyone else in the meantime.” The coach cursed. “Do you have any idea what that can do to their chances?” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Go see the nurse. Don’t argue. You kids and your damned belief you can survive anything. Half the sick time on this team would be avoided if your reaction to any stomach flutter was to think you’d caught the plague and rushed to the nurse.”
“I’d jut spread it to her too if I did. It’s called the plague because there’s no cure.”
“It’s the twenty-first century. There’s a cure for everything, including whatever you have. Go see the nurse.”
Niel dropped his shoulder pads on the bench in the locker room. He’d be back in ten minutes to put them away. That was how long it would take the nurse to instruct him to take it easy for a few days. What else was she going to do, send him to the hospital for a stomach bug?",
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