2+2=2
by cheryl-bites
His awakening was a sprawling conglomerate of five or six attempts to rise to the surface. He was disturbed by something, he knew that, and it was imperative he sort it out; but when he broke through he was just more disturbed, because he was in some sort of chaotic hotbed of sin. The hotel room was very yellow, with morning sunlight daubed everywhere; and his legs were twisted up in yellow covers, and there was a yellow curtain fluttering irritatingly in the bathroom (from which pernicious gargling issued).
This seemed wrong. Horribly wrong. He had either torpedoed his marriage by knobbing some other (very noisy) woman, or he had collapsed after a bender with Cassano and Sneijder, which sounded worse. Also, he had a terrible pain in his eyes, his gastrointestinal tract, his head and his... toes? All right. He tried to raise his head, the world turned into a messed-up jigsaw and someone put a hand on his forehead and said with serene urgency, "Hey, hey."
"Ugh," said Andrea.
"Don't sit up just yet."
A man's voice. Andrea knew it was familiar, but nothing in his mind was where he had left it and he couldn't turn his head to look at the guy. He kept his eyes closed (all the yellow had forced them shut) and listened instead.
Splashing, clanging... Rusty singing was coming from the bathroom in perplexingly familiar tones. Andrea had no idea where he had heard that voice so often before, talking about the referee and the first half and... Wait. That wasn't right; couldn't possibly be right. There was a bloke in there, and another beside him, and with a feeling akin to being tortured on a rack he remembered legs in the bed, lots of them, and heat in the darkness and a man's arms holding him firmly as he... He squinted and, with a ferocious effort, managed to turn his head a little.
There appeared, to his vast relief, the face of Ivan Ramiro Cordoba, all calm and brown and splotched like a borlotti bean. Ivan ruffled Andrea's hair with one hand (OW) and, with the other, suspended a glass of water in front of his face. "This should get the taste out of your mouth."
"Please don't tell me what my mouth tastes like," Andrea mumbled, flinching away from his memories, but he did manage to take the glass and drink from it while spilling only a little on his neck and the tormented bedclothes. (He didn't want to know what was on those either.) Cordoba took it away and wiped Andrea's throat as skilfully as he held up a lightboard. His fingers were warm and tickled, and that proved to be a bad thing, because Andrea remembered something that blasted him with gut-melting fear. No way had he shivered against... whose furry chest was that? and requested more, and OH GOD IT WAS ALESSANDRO COSTACURTA'S. He lay very still, trying to breathe normally and to remain flaccid, which was almost impossible. His body seemed to be singing eagerly the pleasures of musky scents and wiry muscles and dear god surely Costacurta had never drunk champagne out of his navel? Please let that not have happened, he implored his memory. His memory gave a very uncomforting cackle... No, that was someone else. "How many people are there here, anyway?"
"Just four," Cordoba said brightly.
"Four and us?" Andrea managed.
"Four counting us."
"Thank heavens for small... Excuse me, Ivan, my feet really hurt."
"Do they?" Cordoba sounded concerned. Before any time had passed in the yellow dreamworld (nightmareworld?), Ivan was scrambling about at the bottom of the bed. Andrea briefly wondered if he should sort his own feet out, then conceded he wouldn't have the strength to do that if they were on fire.
"That better?" said Cordoba, resurfacing.
"Thanks."
"Your stockings were too tight round your toes - "
"STOCKINGS?" Andrea croaked like an angry toad, accidentally opening the hole in his brain a little wider.
"Well - "
"Why am I wearing stockings?!" He groped at his chest, hope rapidly sinking, and discovered it was cluttered up with something made of satin. He whipped his hands away at once to avoid discovering what it was.
"I know you probably don't want to hear this, Drea," Ivan said gently, "but that was your idea."
Andrea, wanting to shout "NOOOOOOOO" as Darth Vader had in the last Star Wars film, had a very brief image of himself leaping on the bed and actually tearing fabric in his enthusiasm. The image disappeared as if someone had flicked off a projector, but before Andrea could feel relief a new and ghastly enemy appeared. In the bathroom, the sound of Costacurta's electric shaver was joined by a prolonged hiss; long before it came to an end, an ogre of stifling perfume lumbered over to the bed and throttled the two men.
Cordoba's flapping as he tried to waft the scent away from his face jolted Andrea out of another set of memories, because as well as two stiff dicks in his hands (and that NEVER HAPPENED) he was recalling his five years as youth coach at Roma, where there had been only one person who smelt like that. Actually, there was probably only one person who smelt like that in the entire world.
"You didn't tell me he was here!"
"They were both doing some TV thing - "
Christian Panucci, whose jeans were regrettably tight around the crotch area, exited the bathroom and stuck his pelvis out. "Stramaaaa," was his salutation to Andrea; to Cordoba, "Is he alive?"
"He's alive."
Andrea felt this was mendacious.
Panucci strutted sinuously across to the bed. Andrea shrank away from him, or tried to, but he was made of layers; the underneath layer was creeping away, but the skin part was reaching eagerly for whoever could satisfy it. Blood was rushing through every capillary. Andrea breathed in very slowly and tried to remain absolutely still.
"I like you, Strama," said Panucci. "I found a good use for the dimple in your chin." He struck a pose and waited, but was perhaps disappointed in his quest for an indignant reaction when Andrea could only blink glassily. (That was from his hangover, absolutely not from arousal.)
Before Panucci's repertoire could extend to anything more mortifying Billy Costacurta walked out of the bathroom, white-shirted and still towelling his hair. The situation complicated itself to an infinite degree. Costacurta was not putting maximum emphasis on his genitalia, which ought to have made him less dangerous than Panucci. It didn't.
"Hello, Cordoba," he said cheerfully, then, "Ah, Sleeping Beauty's awake, eh?"
Hearing himself called a beauty in that voice made Andrea's hair stand on end, along with another larger object. He held himself even stiller than he had before, realising that he had stopped breathing only when the room turned grey. Gulping air, he heard the mattress creak. Costacurta had climbed on beside him.
"You look sort of like one of Raphael's cherubs," he decided, perhaps because Andrea's face was puffy and his bottom lip sticking out. "Look at him, Christian, doesn't he just have something...?" And then, horror of horrors, he laid a finger on Andrea's nose and tapped it gently. Andrea smiled blankly from reflex, looked into Costacurta's eyes and realised he shouldn't have, because there was an unknown feeling blossoming inside him and he must prevent its flowering at all costs. (This was even more difficult given that last night, he knew, he had generously given everything.)
Panucci leapt onto the bed with a great twang of mattress entrails and said, "He can have a bit more if he likes." Andrea, caught between this insouciance and Costacurta's tenderness, conceded that he was doomed.
"I like Romans, there's something about Romans," said Costacurta, his fingers wandering across Andrea's visible chest hair.
"Big dicks," Panucci said immediately.
Andrea heard his rusty voice as if it was coming from somewhere else. "My wife hasn't got a dick."
Panucci opened his mouth. Cordoba reached out and did something outside Andrea's field of vision; Panucci gave a startled gasp and fell silent. Andrea was torn between gratitude and curiosity.
"You know," Costacurta began thoughtfully, and he put his arm around Andrea's shoulders and pulled him across the pillow. This was the worst thing yet. Searing heat flooded the bed and Andrea felt he had two bodies. One was still lying, safe, in the dent in the bedclothes; the other was about to have something terrifyingly pleasant happen to it. "We could," Costacurta continued, and Panucci began to crawl across the bed.
In the bathroom, two mobile devices rang simultaneously. Panucci and Costacurta leapt up in a storm of disapproval and flinging arms and cries of "Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Mamma mia, they would choose now!" Then they stampeded through the yellow curtain in a way that made the walls shake. They weren't even trying to do it.
Andrea lay still until his heartbeat had subsided a bit and his skull (or the walls; he wasn't sure) had stopped rattling. From the bathroom came animated conversations about RAI and knitted ties and the importance of not saying "testa di cazzo" on live television.
"Ivan," Andrea whispered. "Did you give me tequila?"
"You gave yourself it. Plenty of it."
"Did I not tell you that when I have tequila I lose my mind?!"
"I sort of picked that up by the end of the first bottle," Ivan intoned, "but, you know, I'm not in charge of your diet, you're actually 37."
"But!"
Cordoba's hand was resting lightly on his face. "I like introducing people to new things."
"You're very good at it - why does everyone keep fondling my face?!"
Ivan's smile stretched until it attained its true brilliance, the light that kept Andrea warm and safe when his team was losing 3-0 in January. "We'd like to touch you somewhere else," he almost whispered, "but we're afraid it would alarm you."
Andrea spent a while gazing at Cordoba (who was wearing his usual nondescript navy blue jumper with holes in) and wondering how he wasn't screaming with horror. Panucci's perfume was quite bad enough, of course, but then there was this perilous discovery that one could hurl oneself with gusto into selfish pleasure and not worry about it. Wasn't Cordoba married? Didn't he perceive the danger? Had it been his fingers that made Andrea cry with... All right, best not to think about that. (He was pretty sure it hadn't.)
"Please tell me it was safe," he whispered back.
Cordoba held up a plastic bag entirely full of used condoms.
"Thank you. I think."
Panucci, who had been bawling into a mobile for some time, snapped it shut and yelled, "Come on, Costacurta!" There was a prodigious rustling of fabric and the talking heads dragged their overnight bags across the bedroom. Andrea closed his eyes, tracked their progress by sound as they grabbed keys and watches and testosterone paraphernalia, and vowed never to drink anything ever again.
"About ready to go now," Costacurta decided, striding towards the door.
"Strama can't handle his drink," Panucci said cheerfully.
Costacurta laughed, then paused in mid-stride at the foot of the bed. With his tie about halfway to where it should be, he paused in sudden contemplation. "Pity," he said. "You know, he's much prettier like this."
Andrea squinted down at his disarranged lax limbs and wondered how anyone could find him pretty at all. He eyed the two pensioners suspiciously; suddenly they were sporting identical, sinisterly delighted grins... "Fuck off, you two," he slurred, too fed up and tired to deal with them; this pulled the pin from the laughter grenade, and they staggered away from the bed bawling and hooting and slapping each other with glee. Andrea wondered why homosexuality had to be so loud.
There was a period of golden semiconsciousness after the door had slammed. When it finished, after what might after all have been only a couple of minutes, Andrea was roused by soft pinging. This turned out to be Cordoba swishing a teaspoon around in something that had to be either coffee or maté.
"Ivan?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why are you here?"
Ivan tasted his teaspoon. He looked pleased. "To look after you."
"Yeah, right!"
"I do look after you," said Cordoba, then sipped his coffee and winked.
"Why didn't you fuck me?" said Andrea. "Why just watch?"
Cordoba grinned. The yellow backdrop was suddenly harmonious and perfect. Watching the smile spread across his face was like watching gazelles run; or maybe something shorter and Colombian... Were there llamas in Colombia? The ungulates were shooed away when Ivan laid his hand on Andrea's hair. It drew a path to his throat, then stroked his lips with its thumb.
"Oh," said Andrea around the thumb, feeling the resurgence of that blossoming sensation inside him. It was still horrendously embarrassing, but perhaps a little less so given that its instigator was an Interista who knew how to keep his mouth shut.
"I'm not a youth player," he pointed out.
Ivan's eyes twinkled. The adjacent skin crinkled. He gave a grin that seemed almost regretful.
"Oh," said Andrea again. "I'm a... youth coach?"
Ivan drained his coffee and banged it down, then assured Andrea, "Give it ten years," and started helping him out of his lingerie.
~
Notes
His awakening was a sprawling conglomerate of five or six attempts to rise to the surface. He was disturbed by something, he knew that, and it was imperative he sort it out; but when he broke through he was just more disturbed, because he was in some sort of chaotic hotbed of sin. The hotel room was very yellow, with morning sunlight daubed everywhere; and his legs were twisted up in yellow covers, and there was a yellow curtain fluttering irritatingly in the bathroom (from which pernicious gargling issued).
This seemed wrong. Horribly wrong. He had either torpedoed his marriage by knobbing some other (very noisy) woman, or he had collapsed after a bender with Cassano and Sneijder, which sounded worse. Also, he had a terrible pain in his eyes, his gastrointestinal tract, his head and his... toes? All right. He tried to raise his head, the world turned into a messed-up jigsaw and someone put a hand on his forehead and said with serene urgency, "Hey, hey."
"Ugh," said Andrea.
"Don't sit up just yet."
A man's voice. Andrea knew it was familiar, but nothing in his mind was where he had left it and he couldn't turn his head to look at the guy. He kept his eyes closed (all the yellow had forced them shut) and listened instead.
Splashing, clanging... Rusty singing was coming from the bathroom in perplexingly familiar tones. Andrea had no idea where he had heard that voice so often before, talking about the referee and the first half and... Wait. That wasn't right; couldn't possibly be right. There was a bloke in there, and another beside him, and with a feeling akin to being tortured on a rack he remembered legs in the bed, lots of them, and heat in the darkness and a man's arms holding him firmly as he... He squinted and, with a ferocious effort, managed to turn his head a little.
There appeared, to his vast relief, the face of Ivan Ramiro Cordoba, all calm and brown and splotched like a borlotti bean. Ivan ruffled Andrea's hair with one hand (OW) and, with the other, suspended a glass of water in front of his face. "This should get the taste out of your mouth."
"Please don't tell me what my mouth tastes like," Andrea mumbled, flinching away from his memories, but he did manage to take the glass and drink from it while spilling only a little on his neck and the tormented bedclothes. (He didn't want to know what was on those either.) Cordoba took it away and wiped Andrea's throat as skilfully as he held up a lightboard. His fingers were warm and tickled, and that proved to be a bad thing, because Andrea remembered something that blasted him with gut-melting fear. No way had he shivered against... whose furry chest was that? and requested more, and OH GOD IT WAS ALESSANDRO COSTACURTA'S. He lay very still, trying to breathe normally and to remain flaccid, which was almost impossible. His body seemed to be singing eagerly the pleasures of musky scents and wiry muscles and dear god surely Costacurta had never drunk champagne out of his navel? Please let that not have happened, he implored his memory. His memory gave a very uncomforting cackle... No, that was someone else. "How many people are there here, anyway?"
"Just four," Cordoba said brightly.
"Four and us?" Andrea managed.
"Four counting us."
"Thank heavens for small... Excuse me, Ivan, my feet really hurt."
"Do they?" Cordoba sounded concerned. Before any time had passed in the yellow dreamworld (nightmareworld?), Ivan was scrambling about at the bottom of the bed. Andrea briefly wondered if he should sort his own feet out, then conceded he wouldn't have the strength to do that if they were on fire.
"That better?" said Cordoba, resurfacing.
"Thanks."
"Your stockings were too tight round your toes - "
"STOCKINGS?" Andrea croaked like an angry toad, accidentally opening the hole in his brain a little wider.
"Well - "
"Why am I wearing stockings?!" He groped at his chest, hope rapidly sinking, and discovered it was cluttered up with something made of satin. He whipped his hands away at once to avoid discovering what it was.
"I know you probably don't want to hear this, Drea," Ivan said gently, "but that was your idea."
Andrea, wanting to shout "NOOOOOOOO" as Darth Vader had in the last Star Wars film, had a very brief image of himself leaping on the bed and actually tearing fabric in his enthusiasm. The image disappeared as if someone had flicked off a projector, but before Andrea could feel relief a new and ghastly enemy appeared. In the bathroom, the sound of Costacurta's electric shaver was joined by a prolonged hiss; long before it came to an end, an ogre of stifling perfume lumbered over to the bed and throttled the two men.
Cordoba's flapping as he tried to waft the scent away from his face jolted Andrea out of another set of memories, because as well as two stiff dicks in his hands (and that NEVER HAPPENED) he was recalling his five years as youth coach at Roma, where there had been only one person who smelt like that. Actually, there was probably only one person who smelt like that in the entire world.
"You didn't tell me he was here!"
"They were both doing some TV thing - "
Christian Panucci, whose jeans were regrettably tight around the crotch area, exited the bathroom and stuck his pelvis out. "Stramaaaa," was his salutation to Andrea; to Cordoba, "Is he alive?"
"He's alive."
Andrea felt this was mendacious.
Panucci strutted sinuously across to the bed. Andrea shrank away from him, or tried to, but he was made of layers; the underneath layer was creeping away, but the skin part was reaching eagerly for whoever could satisfy it. Blood was rushing through every capillary. Andrea breathed in very slowly and tried to remain absolutely still.
"I like you, Strama," said Panucci. "I found a good use for the dimple in your chin." He struck a pose and waited, but was perhaps disappointed in his quest for an indignant reaction when Andrea could only blink glassily. (That was from his hangover, absolutely not from arousal.)
Before Panucci's repertoire could extend to anything more mortifying Billy Costacurta walked out of the bathroom, white-shirted and still towelling his hair. The situation complicated itself to an infinite degree. Costacurta was not putting maximum emphasis on his genitalia, which ought to have made him less dangerous than Panucci. It didn't.
"Hello, Cordoba," he said cheerfully, then, "Ah, Sleeping Beauty's awake, eh?"
Hearing himself called a beauty in that voice made Andrea's hair stand on end, along with another larger object. He held himself even stiller than he had before, realising that he had stopped breathing only when the room turned grey. Gulping air, he heard the mattress creak. Costacurta had climbed on beside him.
"You look sort of like one of Raphael's cherubs," he decided, perhaps because Andrea's face was puffy and his bottom lip sticking out. "Look at him, Christian, doesn't he just have something...?" And then, horror of horrors, he laid a finger on Andrea's nose and tapped it gently. Andrea smiled blankly from reflex, looked into Costacurta's eyes and realised he shouldn't have, because there was an unknown feeling blossoming inside him and he must prevent its flowering at all costs. (This was even more difficult given that last night, he knew, he had generously given everything.)
Panucci leapt onto the bed with a great twang of mattress entrails and said, "He can have a bit more if he likes." Andrea, caught between this insouciance and Costacurta's tenderness, conceded that he was doomed.
"I like Romans, there's something about Romans," said Costacurta, his fingers wandering across Andrea's visible chest hair.
"Big dicks," Panucci said immediately.
Andrea heard his rusty voice as if it was coming from somewhere else. "My wife hasn't got a dick."
Panucci opened his mouth. Cordoba reached out and did something outside Andrea's field of vision; Panucci gave a startled gasp and fell silent. Andrea was torn between gratitude and curiosity.
"You know," Costacurta began thoughtfully, and he put his arm around Andrea's shoulders and pulled him across the pillow. This was the worst thing yet. Searing heat flooded the bed and Andrea felt he had two bodies. One was still lying, safe, in the dent in the bedclothes; the other was about to have something terrifyingly pleasant happen to it. "We could," Costacurta continued, and Panucci began to crawl across the bed.
In the bathroom, two mobile devices rang simultaneously. Panucci and Costacurta leapt up in a storm of disapproval and flinging arms and cries of "Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Mamma mia, they would choose now!" Then they stampeded through the yellow curtain in a way that made the walls shake. They weren't even trying to do it.
Andrea lay still until his heartbeat had subsided a bit and his skull (or the walls; he wasn't sure) had stopped rattling. From the bathroom came animated conversations about RAI and knitted ties and the importance of not saying "testa di cazzo" on live television.
"Ivan," Andrea whispered. "Did you give me tequila?"
"You gave yourself it. Plenty of it."
"Did I not tell you that when I have tequila I lose my mind?!"
"I sort of picked that up by the end of the first bottle," Ivan intoned, "but, you know, I'm not in charge of your diet, you're actually 37."
"But!"
Cordoba's hand was resting lightly on his face. "I like introducing people to new things."
"You're very good at it - why does everyone keep fondling my face?!"
Ivan's smile stretched until it attained its true brilliance, the light that kept Andrea warm and safe when his team was losing 3-0 in January. "We'd like to touch you somewhere else," he almost whispered, "but we're afraid it would alarm you."
Andrea spent a while gazing at Cordoba (who was wearing his usual nondescript navy blue jumper with holes in) and wondering how he wasn't screaming with horror. Panucci's perfume was quite bad enough, of course, but then there was this perilous discovery that one could hurl oneself with gusto into selfish pleasure and not worry about it. Wasn't Cordoba married? Didn't he perceive the danger? Had it been his fingers that made Andrea cry with... All right, best not to think about that. (He was pretty sure it hadn't.)
"Please tell me it was safe," he whispered back.
Cordoba held up a plastic bag entirely full of used condoms.
"Thank you. I think."
Panucci, who had been bawling into a mobile for some time, snapped it shut and yelled, "Come on, Costacurta!" There was a prodigious rustling of fabric and the talking heads dragged their overnight bags across the bedroom. Andrea closed his eyes, tracked their progress by sound as they grabbed keys and watches and testosterone paraphernalia, and vowed never to drink anything ever again.
"About ready to go now," Costacurta decided, striding towards the door.
"Strama can't handle his drink," Panucci said cheerfully.
Costacurta laughed, then paused in mid-stride at the foot of the bed. With his tie about halfway to where it should be, he paused in sudden contemplation. "Pity," he said. "You know, he's much prettier like this."
Andrea squinted down at his disarranged lax limbs and wondered how anyone could find him pretty at all. He eyed the two pensioners suspiciously; suddenly they were sporting identical, sinisterly delighted grins... "Fuck off, you two," he slurred, too fed up and tired to deal with them; this pulled the pin from the laughter grenade, and they staggered away from the bed bawling and hooting and slapping each other with glee. Andrea wondered why homosexuality had to be so loud.
There was a period of golden semiconsciousness after the door had slammed. When it finished, after what might after all have been only a couple of minutes, Andrea was roused by soft pinging. This turned out to be Cordoba swishing a teaspoon around in something that had to be either coffee or maté.
"Ivan?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why are you here?"
Ivan tasted his teaspoon. He looked pleased. "To look after you."
"Yeah, right!"
"I do look after you," said Cordoba, then sipped his coffee and winked.
"Why didn't you fuck me?" said Andrea. "Why just watch?"
Cordoba grinned. The yellow backdrop was suddenly harmonious and perfect. Watching the smile spread across his face was like watching gazelles run; or maybe something shorter and Colombian... Were there llamas in Colombia? The ungulates were shooed away when Ivan laid his hand on Andrea's hair. It drew a path to his throat, then stroked his lips with its thumb.
"Oh," said Andrea around the thumb, feeling the resurgence of that blossoming sensation inside him. It was still horrendously embarrassing, but perhaps a little less so given that its instigator was an Interista who knew how to keep his mouth shut.
"I'm not a youth player," he pointed out.
Ivan's eyes twinkled. The adjacent skin crinkled. He gave a grin that seemed almost regretful.
"Oh," said Andrea again. "I'm a... youth coach?"
Ivan drained his coffee and banged it down, then assured Andrea, "Give it ten years," and started helping him out of his lingerie.
~
Notes
- Andrea Stramaccioni is Inter Milan’s coach. Ivan Ramiro is a recently retired Inter player who is now its team manager. Christian Panucci and Alessandro "Billy" Costacurta are retired players who do football analysis and discussion on Italian TV.
- We at ahh_serie_a heard from a girl whose friend got an autograph from Christian Panucci. She said the paper still stank of his perfume a week later.
- Panucci isn't actually a Roman, he's from the north-west. He did spend eight years at AS Roma.
- I couldn't find out whether Stram's wife (Dalila) is Roman in time for the deadline, so I'm going to assume she is.
- While present in a TV studio for discussion, Costacurta was heard saying "testa di cazzo" (dickhead) at the end of a clip about Roberto Mancini.
- Any similarities between this fic and calzamante's were occasioned by the common source material.
- Since Cordoba has a long history of saying things like "My pleasure to help the youngsters", we have spent years joking that he has a thing about the primavera.
