I'm no superman
by hipokras
Revealing his true colours was not as desirable as the song made it sound.
He has a guy on hand for the express purpose of sorting through the 'Ask Andrei' e-mails. They come in hundreds every six hours, and sometimes he thinks Mitch forwards the more ridiculous questions to him just because he can. (And because he's evil.)
It begins innocently: Hello, Andrey! Now it's staring back at him on the computer screen. Do you have any pets? What are their names?
Because it would be too much to hope for that they would ask him instead about his performance against Leeds yesterday, or wonder why he takes shirtless pictures with his barbecue grill in his backyard. No, it has to be pets.
Did he ever have any pets? He's not sure, he can't really remember. His childhood was left behind a continent and several lifetimes away, and why is it that he mentally associates pets with the family dog and childhood, and not the goldfish in Robin's living room?
(Careless that, having an overfed cat and goldfish in the same house. It's a lot like sending a lion to the meadow where the lamb is grazing, optimistically expecting the two of them to be best friends. He's not sure why such a particularly violent analogy comes to mind either. Why can't he be thinking of rabbits and cats instead?)
Julia likes cats. They have to agree to disagree somewhere, the dissent swirling like smoke between them as they lie side-by-side in the double-bed, still wrapped in their clothes. "What do you mean, you hate cats? You used to feed that stray living in your building, remember?"
"That was before we even met," he argues, annoyed by her crystal-sharp memory for the littlest discrepancies.
Because I'm the cat, he realises, answering his own question as he stares up at the ceiling in the dark. Julia is nestled into the new blankets, perfectly content in her dreams. I'm the bloody cat, and I'm starving.
*
"Remind me again why you're taking care of a cat?"
They're on the bus. Wojciech has momentarily paused in snapping photos of their sleeping team-mates and is looking at Andrei with wide-eyed earnestness. Translation: Your capacity to dig yourself into holes is amazing, man. Teach me your tricks, wise guru.
Speak for yourself, Andrei thinks grumpily, remembering the time Wojciech got drunk and tried to pick up a wannabe model via SMS. She'd tweeted a screencap of that text (and his number), and the Internet (and Wojciech's voicemail) had been buzzing for days afterwards.
"Because a certain captain is no longer thinking straight," he says aloud, sulkily. He's being discriminated against because he may be the only member of this team who can't stand cats. (He doesn't really understand it: how Cesc can have a dog in his life, and still love cats.) "He thinks it'll be a 'bonding exercise'" - sarcastic finger-quotes - "for me to keep the cat around for a while."
Wojciech's mouth drops open in an 'O.' "Huh. And I thought it was because he was trying to keep Thomas from getting too attached to Cat… hey! When's my turn with this bonding exercise?"
"You should consider trying to keep a plant alive for longer than a month first," says Andrei, wielding his crisp, hard-improved English like a weapon, not for the first time.
It makes hilarious, ironical sense that the only reason he's Guardian of the Cat is because Robin is trying to keep it away from someone else.
When he wakes up on Saturday morning, he knows he's going to have a great day. Today is The Day. The last one. He can't wait to foist this hellbeast back on its owner. It's day five of the horror of babysitting Robin's clawed 'baby' (read: monster), and he's only one tetanus shot away from driving home with Cat and barbecuing him in the Viking grill in his backyard. (Julia might have a few questions, but it's nothing he can't handle.)
"Morning, kitty," he says happily, watching the evil creature twist around in its basket, trying to acclimatise to the strangeness of the room for the fifth day in a row. "Ready to go back to Dada?"
Can't wait, retorts the cat silkily. That is, to be shot of you and your ridiculous baby-talk. Sweet Simba, I fear for your children's IQ. Cat bares his fangs in a feral hiss at Andrei.
"Yeah, well, I hate you too," he replies. "Breakfast?"
Robin just smiles, sliding his phone into his pocket and accepting an armful of cat with warm gratitude. Andrei is willing to bet a whole lot that Robin had just been tweeting @T_Vermaelen05, or at least about his cat.
"Did you guys have a good time?" he asks, tickling Cat through the abundance of fur. Andrei resists the urge to roll his eyes. He reminds himself that it would not be polite.
"It was an experience," he says, keeping his tone friendly. Truthfully, it had been a blast: for the first five hours, before Cat revealed his true colours, which was not as desirable as the song made it sound. "I can call it Adventures in Cat-sitting," he says instead. Robin's eyes light up, and he hastens to add, "If you say that on Twitter, I will give myself some very painful and complicated injury that will not allow me to play for months."
Robin, who pushes himself to play three times a week, smiles wanly up at Andrei. "I'm sure we can compromise."
"Fine. I shall pull a ligament, and be forced to rest for three days."
"You slipped in the shower, and bruised your hip, and I'll tell my Twitter followers that you love cute fluffy animals."
If he'd been anywhere else, he wouldn’t have even been given the chance to bargain. He draws one more tally in the Luck column, and wonders if this makes him a 'douchebag'.
*
His PR team tells him that a Russian sports magazine wants to interview him, and he agrees.
After they publish the transcript, he spends two days in Arsene Wenger's office, trying to explain that it's just the language barrier fucking up his life.
"If I played just a year in Barcelona it would be the pinnacle of my career."
His eyes are watering from the camera flashes. He hates press conferences. He can't imagine why these people are beating their brains, trying to figure him out, trying to find out why he would say something like that. He wants to tell them he's always been like that, he's always been the scrawny cat being knocked around by the bigger, fatter cats, who always get the goldfish in the end, and Andrei is still fucking starving.
As he steps outside the building for a lightning-fast smoke, he nearly collides into Robin. It's a miracle he isn't burned by the coffee. "Careful," warns Robin, a little coldly, holding up the unlabelled Styrofoam cup so that it doesn't spill.
It's a little pointless to ask why his own team-mates are giving him the cold shoulder, maybe not as literally as this. Robin still laughs when they Google one another. Childhood photos that are fading in family albums are there for public consumption on the Internet, in ways they would have never imagined it when they were children. Robin doesn't look so different in those photos from what he is now.
He's seventeen, and he's walking through the crowd. This is not football as he dreamed it: eleven years old, mother behind the camera, self-conscious and proud on his bed in his Arsenal jersey. His Feyenoord pillow has translated into the number on his back, and the target of the spectators' hate. A flying bottle smashes into the cement, missing the goalkeeper as he steps onto the grass.
There is no tunnel to shield the players.
Robin is still naïve; he thinks prayers and a victory will save them tonight.
It turns out to be the last time he plays for his youth team.
*
Cesc leaves for Barcelona, and the media is whipped into a frenzy about the future prospects of the team. No one has time for Player 23 anymore, whose bids his old club had rejected so that Arsenal could have its new record signing. When Cesc leaves, they say he's going home.
*
Mitch has threatened to break his keyboard over Andrei's head if he doesn't do the answers he needs to do that week's 'Ask Andrei' Q&A. Andrei's usually a lot more enthusiastic about his fans, but he keeps tripping up on the 'Do you have any pets' question.
(If he's honest, he usually likes the curveballs Mitch throws his way. His favourite is: "I've recently come across your picture in the 9th grade Chemistry textbook (Chemistry, Grade 9, written by Gabrielian O.C., paragraph 16, p.95.)." That, and "How can I make my dad more like you?")
In the end, it takes an inordinate amount of imagination and guile to answer the question, 'What are the names of your pets?' Mitch raises his eyebrows over his computer screen when Andrei forwards it, but says nothing.
He tries to be honest, he really does. He's just not sure why it sounds like there's a double meaning behind it somewhere. He's just a regular guy, talking about pets. Not everything has to be symbolic.
2. From Ludastar72
Hello, Andrey! Do you have any pets? What are their names?
AA: At the present moment, I don't have any. When I was a kid, we had two kittens. I cannot now remember their gender. And we also had a hamster. However, they all disappeared under unclear circumstances. When I was a teenager, we had a Pekingese dog- Chuck. It still lives with my mother, rather old now. In family life, Julia and I still do without pets. Although Yana and Artem sometimes ask us to think about it. But my children do not strongly insist on it - bring it up once in a while and forget about it in a couple of minutes.
*
Robin ends up in the physio room because he slips on a puddle of water in the showers, and skids. He tries to tell them that he's fine, he hasn't torn anything, he's smart enough to tell them if he has, but the combined efforts of Per and Thomas lift him clean off his feet. ("I feel like my arms are being dislocated," he jokes feebly, but his sarcasm backfires when Per politely suggests, "Piggyback?)
His shin is discoloured an ugly purple, and he's told to lay off practice for at least the rest of the day until it subsides. People have walked in and out with far worse injuries while they were naked, but no one is taking risks with this towel-wrapped player.
"Andrei?"
Andrei stops.
"You'll feed Cat again, won't you?"
"Uh…"
For a dazed second, Andrei thinks Robin has lost his mind in a horrible car accident involving an SUV and a snowdrift. But then he gets himself together, and nods, promising yes, absolutely, no problem, can do, I love cats, cats love me.
"I'd ask Thomas," elaborates Robin, "but he might kidnap Cat for himself. This time, I really think he will."
Lies. Cats hate Andrei Arshavin. They can smell the fear lathering him like the hairs rising on his arms.
"Thanks, mate," says Robin in his awkwardly endearing accented English, and Andrei just hopes this doesn't end up on @Persie_Official. He doesn't need to be the official team babysitter: he gets enough of it on snow days when everyone suddenly remembers that he drives an SUV.
If there's a lesson in here somewhere, it's obvious that they haven't learned it.
But despite Andrei's scepticism about the state of Robin van Persie's learning curve, he doesn't spurn the second chance he's being given. He doesn't bite the hand, and he gives up on the goldfish. Cat food is good enough for him, anyway.
-- finis --
Revealing his true colours was not as desirable as the song made it sound.
He has a guy on hand for the express purpose of sorting through the 'Ask Andrei' e-mails. They come in hundreds every six hours, and sometimes he thinks Mitch forwards the more ridiculous questions to him just because he can. (And because he's evil.)
It begins innocently: Hello, Andrey! Now it's staring back at him on the computer screen. Do you have any pets? What are their names?
Because it would be too much to hope for that they would ask him instead about his performance against Leeds yesterday, or wonder why he takes shirtless pictures with his barbecue grill in his backyard. No, it has to be pets.
Did he ever have any pets? He's not sure, he can't really remember. His childhood was left behind a continent and several lifetimes away, and why is it that he mentally associates pets with the family dog and childhood, and not the goldfish in Robin's living room?
(Careless that, having an overfed cat and goldfish in the same house. It's a lot like sending a lion to the meadow where the lamb is grazing, optimistically expecting the two of them to be best friends. He's not sure why such a particularly violent analogy comes to mind either. Why can't he be thinking of rabbits and cats instead?)
Julia likes cats. They have to agree to disagree somewhere, the dissent swirling like smoke between them as they lie side-by-side in the double-bed, still wrapped in their clothes. "What do you mean, you hate cats? You used to feed that stray living in your building, remember?"
"That was before we even met," he argues, annoyed by her crystal-sharp memory for the littlest discrepancies.
Because I'm the cat, he realises, answering his own question as he stares up at the ceiling in the dark. Julia is nestled into the new blankets, perfectly content in her dreams. I'm the bloody cat, and I'm starving.
*
"Remind me again why you're taking care of a cat?"
They're on the bus. Wojciech has momentarily paused in snapping photos of their sleeping team-mates and is looking at Andrei with wide-eyed earnestness. Translation: Your capacity to dig yourself into holes is amazing, man. Teach me your tricks, wise guru.
Speak for yourself, Andrei thinks grumpily, remembering the time Wojciech got drunk and tried to pick up a wannabe model via SMS. She'd tweeted a screencap of that text (and his number), and the Internet (and Wojciech's voicemail) had been buzzing for days afterwards.
"Because a certain captain is no longer thinking straight," he says aloud, sulkily. He's being discriminated against because he may be the only member of this team who can't stand cats. (He doesn't really understand it: how Cesc can have a dog in his life, and still love cats.) "He thinks it'll be a 'bonding exercise'" - sarcastic finger-quotes - "for me to keep the cat around for a while."
Wojciech's mouth drops open in an 'O.' "Huh. And I thought it was because he was trying to keep Thomas from getting too attached to Cat… hey! When's my turn with this bonding exercise?"
"You should consider trying to keep a plant alive for longer than a month first," says Andrei, wielding his crisp, hard-improved English like a weapon, not for the first time.
It makes hilarious, ironical sense that the only reason he's Guardian of the Cat is because Robin is trying to keep it away from someone else.
When he wakes up on Saturday morning, he knows he's going to have a great day. Today is The Day. The last one. He can't wait to foist this hellbeast back on its owner. It's day five of the horror of babysitting Robin's clawed 'baby' (read: monster), and he's only one tetanus shot away from driving home with Cat and barbecuing him in the Viking grill in his backyard. (Julia might have a few questions, but it's nothing he can't handle.)
"Morning, kitty," he says happily, watching the evil creature twist around in its basket, trying to acclimatise to the strangeness of the room for the fifth day in a row. "Ready to go back to Dada?"
Can't wait, retorts the cat silkily. That is, to be shot of you and your ridiculous baby-talk. Sweet Simba, I fear for your children's IQ. Cat bares his fangs in a feral hiss at Andrei.
"Yeah, well, I hate you too," he replies. "Breakfast?"
Robin just smiles, sliding his phone into his pocket and accepting an armful of cat with warm gratitude. Andrei is willing to bet a whole lot that Robin had just been tweeting @T_Vermaelen05, or at least about his cat.
"Did you guys have a good time?" he asks, tickling Cat through the abundance of fur. Andrei resists the urge to roll his eyes. He reminds himself that it would not be polite.
"It was an experience," he says, keeping his tone friendly. Truthfully, it had been a blast: for the first five hours, before Cat revealed his true colours, which was not as desirable as the song made it sound. "I can call it Adventures in Cat-sitting," he says instead. Robin's eyes light up, and he hastens to add, "If you say that on Twitter, I will give myself some very painful and complicated injury that will not allow me to play for months."
Robin, who pushes himself to play three times a week, smiles wanly up at Andrei. "I'm sure we can compromise."
"Fine. I shall pull a ligament, and be forced to rest for three days."
"You slipped in the shower, and bruised your hip, and I'll tell my Twitter followers that you love cute fluffy animals."
If he'd been anywhere else, he wouldn’t have even been given the chance to bargain. He draws one more tally in the Luck column, and wonders if this makes him a 'douchebag'.
*
His PR team tells him that a Russian sports magazine wants to interview him, and he agrees.
After they publish the transcript, he spends two days in Arsene Wenger's office, trying to explain that it's just the language barrier fucking up his life.
"If I played just a year in Barcelona it would be the pinnacle of my career."
His eyes are watering from the camera flashes. He hates press conferences. He can't imagine why these people are beating their brains, trying to figure him out, trying to find out why he would say something like that. He wants to tell them he's always been like that, he's always been the scrawny cat being knocked around by the bigger, fatter cats, who always get the goldfish in the end, and Andrei is still fucking starving.
As he steps outside the building for a lightning-fast smoke, he nearly collides into Robin. It's a miracle he isn't burned by the coffee. "Careful," warns Robin, a little coldly, holding up the unlabelled Styrofoam cup so that it doesn't spill.
It's a little pointless to ask why his own team-mates are giving him the cold shoulder, maybe not as literally as this. Robin still laughs when they Google one another. Childhood photos that are fading in family albums are there for public consumption on the Internet, in ways they would have never imagined it when they were children. Robin doesn't look so different in those photos from what he is now.
He's seventeen, and he's walking through the crowd. This is not football as he dreamed it: eleven years old, mother behind the camera, self-conscious and proud on his bed in his Arsenal jersey. His Feyenoord pillow has translated into the number on his back, and the target of the spectators' hate. A flying bottle smashes into the cement, missing the goalkeeper as he steps onto the grass.
There is no tunnel to shield the players.
Robin is still naïve; he thinks prayers and a victory will save them tonight.
It turns out to be the last time he plays for his youth team.
*
Cesc leaves for Barcelona, and the media is whipped into a frenzy about the future prospects of the team. No one has time for Player 23 anymore, whose bids his old club had rejected so that Arsenal could have its new record signing. When Cesc leaves, they say he's going home.
*
Mitch has threatened to break his keyboard over Andrei's head if he doesn't do the answers he needs to do that week's 'Ask Andrei' Q&A. Andrei's usually a lot more enthusiastic about his fans, but he keeps tripping up on the 'Do you have any pets' question.
(If he's honest, he usually likes the curveballs Mitch throws his way. His favourite is: "I've recently come across your picture in the 9th grade Chemistry textbook (Chemistry, Grade 9, written by Gabrielian O.C., paragraph 16, p.95.)." That, and "How can I make my dad more like you?")
In the end, it takes an inordinate amount of imagination and guile to answer the question, 'What are the names of your pets?' Mitch raises his eyebrows over his computer screen when Andrei forwards it, but says nothing.
He tries to be honest, he really does. He's just not sure why it sounds like there's a double meaning behind it somewhere. He's just a regular guy, talking about pets. Not everything has to be symbolic.
2. From Ludastar72
Hello, Andrey! Do you have any pets? What are their names?
AA: At the present moment, I don't have any. When I was a kid, we had two kittens. I cannot now remember their gender. And we also had a hamster. However, they all disappeared under unclear circumstances. When I was a teenager, we had a Pekingese dog- Chuck. It still lives with my mother, rather old now. In family life, Julia and I still do without pets. Although Yana and Artem sometimes ask us to think about it. But my children do not strongly insist on it - bring it up once in a while and forget about it in a couple of minutes.
*
Robin ends up in the physio room because he slips on a puddle of water in the showers, and skids. He tries to tell them that he's fine, he hasn't torn anything, he's smart enough to tell them if he has, but the combined efforts of Per and Thomas lift him clean off his feet. ("I feel like my arms are being dislocated," he jokes feebly, but his sarcasm backfires when Per politely suggests, "Piggyback?)
His shin is discoloured an ugly purple, and he's told to lay off practice for at least the rest of the day until it subsides. People have walked in and out with far worse injuries while they were naked, but no one is taking risks with this towel-wrapped player.
"Andrei?"
Andrei stops.
"You'll feed Cat again, won't you?"
"Uh…"
For a dazed second, Andrei thinks Robin has lost his mind in a horrible car accident involving an SUV and a snowdrift. But then he gets himself together, and nods, promising yes, absolutely, no problem, can do, I love cats, cats love me.
"I'd ask Thomas," elaborates Robin, "but he might kidnap Cat for himself. This time, I really think he will."
Lies. Cats hate Andrei Arshavin. They can smell the fear lathering him like the hairs rising on his arms.
"Thanks, mate," says Robin in his awkwardly endearing accented English, and Andrei just hopes this doesn't end up on @Persie_Official. He doesn't need to be the official team babysitter: he gets enough of it on snow days when everyone suddenly remembers that he drives an SUV.
If there's a lesson in here somewhere, it's obvious that they haven't learned it.
But despite Andrei's scepticism about the state of Robin van Persie's learning curve, he doesn't spurn the second chance he's being given. He doesn't bite the hand, and he gives up on the goldfish. Cat food is good enough for him, anyway.
-- finis --