---
title: Med Tent and Mirrors
group: [mirror, post-game]
characters: [Aidan, Sean, Brody, Ethan, Lupa]
tags: [observation, reflection, post-match, sacred awkwardness, emotional tension, team, locker room, unspoken, liminality]
timestamp: 2025-05-07T22:00:00
---

The murmur of voices flowed past, heard but not seen. Aidan stood in the med tent, the players sent off—some to shower, one to the season's end. He sipped slowly from his silver tin of jasmine tea. The floral scent briefly overpowered grass, sweat, and canvas.

Near the cot, a folded note. "Fell backwards after a block from the content policies." Lupa’s handwriting—probably. The tent’s rhythms didn’t need labels, but Lupa liked context. Aidan didn’t, usually. He *felt* what was broken.

He opened a cracked glass jar of lavender and moss. Loosened the string. Inhaled. The breath settled something in him.

He finished the tea. Picked up the sweat-stained playbook left behind. Muddy fingerprints across the corner. He paged through the chaos of symbols and arrows. None of it made sense to him, but he knew that to the right person, it would.

*"To the right person,"* he thought, *"there’s no way it could not make sense. And to the wrong person, there’s no way it could."*

He glanced toward the empty cots, then toward the flap, where Brody’s cleat still sat—green and frayed at the heel.

*Maybe their relationship was like that. Sean and Brody. Not just brothers. Not lovers. Something else. Something that didn’t need to make sense to anyone else, as long as it did to them.*

---

From the upper catwalk, Lupa watched in silence.

Sean and Brody were still in uniform. Still standing too close. Still not saying enough.

Brody’s gestures twitched. Sean leaned back against the lockers like the wall itself was holding him up. Lupa logged the posture, the lean, the delay between breaths. Saved it. Labeled it only with glyphs.

🜁 + 🜂 = 🜄

Then he faded, like dust in the rafters.

---

Ethan was loud as ever, pulling off gear, cracking jokes. But his eyes were on Brody and Sean.

No one said anything. But Ethan’s smile faded for half a second—long enough to register. Long enough to clock the vibe.

Later, he tossed a wristband onto Brody’s bench. Didn’t say why.

"Good game," he muttered.

He never looked back.