Football AU: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 9/22
Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 9/22 (aka Liverpool Has Two Dads and It's OK Because You Can't Label Love)
Rating: R (swearing and grownup stuff)
Summary: Crystal Palace will eventually get back to the top flight of the PL. The rest is far less likely to ever happen.
February 2018
Jake tells himself he is not going to let it all get to him the first day he steps onto the pitch wearing the other red shirt. It's an away game at Crystal Palace and at least he doesn't have Anfield to worry about, or so he thinks, until he comes onto the pitch to the tune of the loudest singing from an away side he'd ever heard. The game is a plodding, tortuous affair full of ugly football from both sides and his head feels like it's dunked in ice water the whole time. It's not the kind of refreshing, sobering type of sensation most people would associate with the image. He just feels cold and numb and ineffective.
Disconnected.
His brain refuses to cooperate and no matter how closely he's watched Lussey and Lucas in training, no matter how many times he'd gone over the schemes with both coaches, his mind is utterly, morning-before-trig-midterm-test blank and he knows deep in his bones that he wouldn't be able to find his new teammates with a map and a flashlight.
Sixteen minutes after halftime, after Stevie's arm wrapped around his shoulder and the encouraging-but-pointed dressing room indications, he loses the ball (again) like a fucking amateur and Palace inevitably score from the counter and then score again three minutes later. On some level, Jake's rational mind knows he's just being paranoid, but when Stevie doesn't sub him out despite missed sitter after bad pass after failed link-up with the midfield, he starts to think it's on purpose so that the taunts of "fucking useless Yank" and "5th Column Fergie Boy" (Seriously... how do they even come up with that shit?) can pour over him like holy water from the baptistry.
Absolution finally comes in the 77th minute and Jake wishes Stevie didn't smile at him and didn’t give him a pat on the back before he buries his head in a towel on the bench.
His equally dejected teammates mostly spare him from consolation attempts in the dressing room, which is fine by Jake, but the reprieve is only temporary. At some point after a fortnight of shoddy, goaless performances and lonely training sessions filled with monosyllabic conversations spill over into the front pages of Merseyside's football comentariat, the team bonding exercise feels like an inevitability. It's Lucas who comes up with the brilliant idea to do opposition research for their upcoming Europa League fixture over dinner. Stevie is as impressed with the Brazilian's leadership abilities as he is with himself for naming a Liverpool Captain agile enough to volunteer both Xabi's apartment and his cooking skills for the event and get away with it. Lucas' Madonna-and-Child Raphaelite smile tended to have that effect on people.
Jake's mildly relieved to see that he's the least uncomfortable squad member currently dragging their feet about Xabi's living room, desperately trying to find a spot where they would not be disturbing any of the minimalist furniture. Adam Morgan shoves his hands in his pockets and stares dumbfounded at the rows of DVDs lined up over half a living room wall as if the titles were inked in Phoenician.
"Think some of these are nudies like?"
"They're probably French and everyone sleeps with their hairy cousins and they're all depressed about it. Not even you'd get off on that," Lussey nudges him gently like one would drag a kindergartener away from the glue pot.
It's fairly obvious to all involved, Jake foremost of all, that it's not just the spotlessness and foreignness of Xabi's apartment that has every Liverpool player present, except maybe Lucas, walking on egg shells, but that the main elephant in the room is a pachidermus americanus. Jake knows on some level that he’s never known how to do… this, he’s felt it even on junior high pitches during goal celebrations where he’d still be on the outside looking in even in the middle of the pile. It's not like he tunes everyone out on purpose, it's not that...
He's suddenly aware that Lucas is peering over his shoulder at the screen of his phone, but since he's currently filming Stevie's arrival in the kitchen with overflowing Auberge Delicatessen bags in hand and the intense conversation he's engaged in with Xabi over the fragrant pot on the stove, he's not exactly on high ground when it comes to privacy.
"When his forehead creases in that way, is a good sign," the Captain beams his most radiant smile at him, stopping Jake just short of asking if it's like reading tea leaves or runes.
"Was this his idea or yours?" he asks instead, eyes still focused on the minuscule screen where Xabi has Stevie sampling their dinner off a massive ladle. Jake can't read forehead wrinkles yet, but he knows what licking your fingers means.
"Mostly mine."
Jake shuts off his camera when he notices Stevie approaching them.
"Everything a'right in there?"
Stevie shoves his hands in his pockets with an air of relief about him.
"Dinner should be ready in ten minutes. We had a minor cumin crisis, but it's all sorted out now. Apparently there's more than one kind," he mumbles under his breath.
“It smells a bit weird…” Lussey says tentatively from his corner of the couch where he’s grappling with the massive modernist architecture album he’d unwisely picked up from the coffee table.
“Listen up, you lot,” Stevie’s voice rises to a loud whisper to make sure he’s reaching the stragglers at the back of the room. “There’s a Basque man cooking his grandmother’s stew in there and he’s been at it since 3 PM. I’ve done this before so here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to eat it and you’re going to fucking love it. You will complement the cumin notes and you’ll say thank you when you’re done…”
Stevie’s voice is in clear Coaching mode and the pack reacts accordingly, for the most part.
“Maybe we could order some pizza for later, just in case…,” Morgan’s voice squeaks with the hopeful naiveté of the truly clueless.
“…you will ask for seconds!” and if there was ever any doubt about just how serious Stevie is, it’s clearly removed by the look he shoots his hapless striker. “He can and will sell you to Tranmere Rovers come next transfer window and don’t think he wouldn’t… He can sell me too while he’s at it. Lussey, Jordi, you’re setting the table!”
~
"Guinto? It means Gold in Tagalog."
"Tagla wha?"
Jake stops for a moment from bending over the kitchen trash can where he’s in charge of clearing a pile of plates.
"It's one of the main languages spoken in The Philippines."
"I'm just pulling your leg," Morgan laughs, playing with a sienna kitchen towel. Not that he'd know where to find sienna on a color chart. "I am a thick Scouser, no doubt about that, but I've read Manny Pacquaio’s biography, mate," he beams proudly and Jake doesn’t have the heart to tell him he has only the very faintest idea of who he’s talking about.
"Besides, we looked you up on Wikipedia when St... the boss announced you were joining us," Lussey clarifies, rinsing the last of the dinner plates and stacking them neatly in the dishwasher. "Weirdest bit was the one about getting arrested for practicing free kicks inside a cargo plane."
"I wasn't arrested, I was 9 years old," Jake protests. "My old man used to do maintenance on RAF planes and… Akrotiri’s one of the most boring stations out there. Had to keep myself entertained somehow and the security around VC10s wasn't designed with 9 year olds in mind, y’know..."
"So... if you're English and Filipino, how come you have a Yank accent?"
The irony of being the one to bring up someone’s accent is completely, predictably lost on Morgan.
"I grew up mostly around my Mom and we moved to the Bronx when my parents split."
“Xabi lived in New York before he came back here, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, in Williamsburg,” Jake snorts as much as a reaction to Lussey’s maddening earnestness (he’s like a velvety eyed spring fawn and it’s unsettling for Jake to be the jaded, cynical douchebag with one who’s supposed to be his elder) as to the idea that a loft dweller in Williamsburg could ever be mistaken for a New Yorker.
“You into hip hop?”
“The good kind, yeah… None of it was made before we were ever born, in New York or elsewhere.”
“Bollocks,” Morgan objects huffily, “Kanye forever!”
Xabi pauses the UEFA DVD and he looks down at where Stevie is sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, busy scribbling notes down on a legal pad and observing the three youngsters on dishwasher duty. Stevie looks ridiculously young to him to the point where he forgets for a brief instance who these kids in red jerseys are and what the hell they're doing in his kitchen.
~
There are no leftovers to put away by the end of dinner and Vanleberghe, who's small, quiet, Belgian and so stuffed he can barely focus on any of the lively debate about the merits of FC Basel's rhomboid midfield, asks for the recipe for his mother.
"It has been a family secret since the Spanish Civil War, you'll have to take an oath of silence and swear you will use only original ingredients to maintain its Basque authenticity,"
Jordi Vanleberghe swallows hard, suddenly beetroot red.
"Um. OK..."
"I'll print it out from you off Epicurious, it has only some modified spices," Xabi chuckles, feeling magnanimous enough to let Vanleberghe breathe again and rewinding once more over Basel's corner kicks.
Stevie wants to ask how he does that when he can barely get Morgan and Lussey to stop calling him Stevie G, but knows the ability to make grown men freeze with a carefully placed side glance is not something one simply learns. He slips out to the balcony by the fifth replay and finds Jake sprawled out on Xabi's chair, savoring a good long drag of his cigarette.
"These things will kill me, I know," Jake self-lectures pre-emptively.
"Not if Xabi gets to you first. Are you raiding his stash?"
"Brought my own."
Stevie zips up his hoodie and takes the unoccupied seat on the lawnchair by Jake's side, looking up at the starless sky.
"I don't even get a lecture about professionalism and sacrifice for the team?"
Stevie shrugs, focuses on his breath coming up in steam billows in the night air.
"I don't think that's your problem… Don't know how much you read about the club, but basically everyone's convinced I'm a shit manager and they're just too polite to tell me. It's not this big debate or anything... It's just kind of agreed by now that my heart's in the right place but I'm going to join the many players before me who didn't transition very well into the gaffer job. That if it weren't for Xabi pulling my strings and keeping me from flying into stupid, rash decisions, we'd be relegated already. I suppose they have a point with that one..."
He can tell he's got Jake's attention by the way his back straightens against the chair.
"Thing is... those people were dead set on believing that before we ever signed you because we didn't time travel and win the FA Cup seven months in advance or because I didn't put on a kit at half time and banged in a hattrick against United during the last derby."
"You probably could. Or at least you'd be a safer bet than any of us."
"Good lad, that's the spirit!"
Jake throws him a quick look, but doesn't insist on his scoring record.
"This is what playing for this club's always been about. Doesn't matter that we're a midtable team and have been for years, or that I'm new to managing in the Premier League or that we have the youngest squad in the competition, it's never been any different. But you know what's one of the best things about playing for this club? Getting to prove the idiots wrong."
Jake takes a long drag of his cigarette, shakes his head with a smile.
"You're not that crap at this, you know?"
Stevie pushes his chair back and yanks the cigarette out of Jake's mouth before heading back inside.
"Cut that shit out or I'll have you run laps around Melwood till you puke your lungs out," he says softly, but Jake knows he means it far more than his cheeky smirk would indicate.
Rating: R (swearing and grownup stuff)
Summary: Crystal Palace will eventually get back to the top flight of the PL. The rest is far less likely to ever happen.
February 2018
Jake tells himself he is not going to let it all get to him the first day he steps onto the pitch wearing the other red shirt. It's an away game at Crystal Palace and at least he doesn't have Anfield to worry about, or so he thinks, until he comes onto the pitch to the tune of the loudest singing from an away side he'd ever heard. The game is a plodding, tortuous affair full of ugly football from both sides and his head feels like it's dunked in ice water the whole time. It's not the kind of refreshing, sobering type of sensation most people would associate with the image. He just feels cold and numb and ineffective.
Disconnected.
His brain refuses to cooperate and no matter how closely he's watched Lussey and Lucas in training, no matter how many times he'd gone over the schemes with both coaches, his mind is utterly, morning-before-trig-midterm-test blank and he knows deep in his bones that he wouldn't be able to find his new teammates with a map and a flashlight.
Sixteen minutes after halftime, after Stevie's arm wrapped around his shoulder and the encouraging-but-pointed dressing room indications, he loses the ball (again) like a fucking amateur and Palace inevitably score from the counter and then score again three minutes later. On some level, Jake's rational mind knows he's just being paranoid, but when Stevie doesn't sub him out despite missed sitter after bad pass after failed link-up with the midfield, he starts to think it's on purpose so that the taunts of "fucking useless Yank" and "5th Column Fergie Boy" (Seriously... how do they even come up with that shit?) can pour over him like holy water from the baptistry.
Absolution finally comes in the 77th minute and Jake wishes Stevie didn't smile at him and didn’t give him a pat on the back before he buries his head in a towel on the bench.
His equally dejected teammates mostly spare him from consolation attempts in the dressing room, which is fine by Jake, but the reprieve is only temporary. At some point after a fortnight of shoddy, goaless performances and lonely training sessions filled with monosyllabic conversations spill over into the front pages of Merseyside's football comentariat, the team bonding exercise feels like an inevitability. It's Lucas who comes up with the brilliant idea to do opposition research for their upcoming Europa League fixture over dinner. Stevie is as impressed with the Brazilian's leadership abilities as he is with himself for naming a Liverpool Captain agile enough to volunteer both Xabi's apartment and his cooking skills for the event and get away with it. Lucas' Madonna-and-Child Raphaelite smile tended to have that effect on people.
Jake's mildly relieved to see that he's the least uncomfortable squad member currently dragging their feet about Xabi's living room, desperately trying to find a spot where they would not be disturbing any of the minimalist furniture. Adam Morgan shoves his hands in his pockets and stares dumbfounded at the rows of DVDs lined up over half a living room wall as if the titles were inked in Phoenician.
"Think some of these are nudies like?"
"They're probably French and everyone sleeps with their hairy cousins and they're all depressed about it. Not even you'd get off on that," Lussey nudges him gently like one would drag a kindergartener away from the glue pot.
It's fairly obvious to all involved, Jake foremost of all, that it's not just the spotlessness and foreignness of Xabi's apartment that has every Liverpool player present, except maybe Lucas, walking on egg shells, but that the main elephant in the room is a pachidermus americanus. Jake knows on some level that he’s never known how to do… this, he’s felt it even on junior high pitches during goal celebrations where he’d still be on the outside looking in even in the middle of the pile. It's not like he tunes everyone out on purpose, it's not that...
He's suddenly aware that Lucas is peering over his shoulder at the screen of his phone, but since he's currently filming Stevie's arrival in the kitchen with overflowing Auberge Delicatessen bags in hand and the intense conversation he's engaged in with Xabi over the fragrant pot on the stove, he's not exactly on high ground when it comes to privacy.
"When his forehead creases in that way, is a good sign," the Captain beams his most radiant smile at him, stopping Jake just short of asking if it's like reading tea leaves or runes.
"Was this his idea or yours?" he asks instead, eyes still focused on the minuscule screen where Xabi has Stevie sampling their dinner off a massive ladle. Jake can't read forehead wrinkles yet, but he knows what licking your fingers means.
"Mostly mine."
Jake shuts off his camera when he notices Stevie approaching them.
"Everything a'right in there?"
Stevie shoves his hands in his pockets with an air of relief about him.
"Dinner should be ready in ten minutes. We had a minor cumin crisis, but it's all sorted out now. Apparently there's more than one kind," he mumbles under his breath.
“It smells a bit weird…” Lussey says tentatively from his corner of the couch where he’s grappling with the massive modernist architecture album he’d unwisely picked up from the coffee table.
“Listen up, you lot,” Stevie’s voice rises to a loud whisper to make sure he’s reaching the stragglers at the back of the room. “There’s a Basque man cooking his grandmother’s stew in there and he’s been at it since 3 PM. I’ve done this before so here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to eat it and you’re going to fucking love it. You will complement the cumin notes and you’ll say thank you when you’re done…”
Stevie’s voice is in clear Coaching mode and the pack reacts accordingly, for the most part.
“Maybe we could order some pizza for later, just in case…,” Morgan’s voice squeaks with the hopeful naiveté of the truly clueless.
“…you will ask for seconds!” and if there was ever any doubt about just how serious Stevie is, it’s clearly removed by the look he shoots his hapless striker. “He can and will sell you to Tranmere Rovers come next transfer window and don’t think he wouldn’t… He can sell me too while he’s at it. Lussey, Jordi, you’re setting the table!”
~
"Guinto? It means Gold in Tagalog."
"Tagla wha?"
Jake stops for a moment from bending over the kitchen trash can where he’s in charge of clearing a pile of plates.
"It's one of the main languages spoken in The Philippines."
"I'm just pulling your leg," Morgan laughs, playing with a sienna kitchen towel. Not that he'd know where to find sienna on a color chart. "I am a thick Scouser, no doubt about that, but I've read Manny Pacquaio’s biography, mate," he beams proudly and Jake doesn’t have the heart to tell him he has only the very faintest idea of who he’s talking about.
"Besides, we looked you up on Wikipedia when St... the boss announced you were joining us," Lussey clarifies, rinsing the last of the dinner plates and stacking them neatly in the dishwasher. "Weirdest bit was the one about getting arrested for practicing free kicks inside a cargo plane."
"I wasn't arrested, I was 9 years old," Jake protests. "My old man used to do maintenance on RAF planes and… Akrotiri’s one of the most boring stations out there. Had to keep myself entertained somehow and the security around VC10s wasn't designed with 9 year olds in mind, y’know..."
"So... if you're English and Filipino, how come you have a Yank accent?"
The irony of being the one to bring up someone’s accent is completely, predictably lost on Morgan.
"I grew up mostly around my Mom and we moved to the Bronx when my parents split."
“Xabi lived in New York before he came back here, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, in Williamsburg,” Jake snorts as much as a reaction to Lussey’s maddening earnestness (he’s like a velvety eyed spring fawn and it’s unsettling for Jake to be the jaded, cynical douchebag with one who’s supposed to be his elder) as to the idea that a loft dweller in Williamsburg could ever be mistaken for a New Yorker.
“You into hip hop?”
“The good kind, yeah… None of it was made before we were ever born, in New York or elsewhere.”
“Bollocks,” Morgan objects huffily, “Kanye forever!”
Xabi pauses the UEFA DVD and he looks down at where Stevie is sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, busy scribbling notes down on a legal pad and observing the three youngsters on dishwasher duty. Stevie looks ridiculously young to him to the point where he forgets for a brief instance who these kids in red jerseys are and what the hell they're doing in his kitchen.
~
There are no leftovers to put away by the end of dinner and Vanleberghe, who's small, quiet, Belgian and so stuffed he can barely focus on any of the lively debate about the merits of FC Basel's rhomboid midfield, asks for the recipe for his mother.
"It has been a family secret since the Spanish Civil War, you'll have to take an oath of silence and swear you will use only original ingredients to maintain its Basque authenticity,"
Jordi Vanleberghe swallows hard, suddenly beetroot red.
"Um. OK..."
"I'll print it out from you off Epicurious, it has only some modified spices," Xabi chuckles, feeling magnanimous enough to let Vanleberghe breathe again and rewinding once more over Basel's corner kicks.
Stevie wants to ask how he does that when he can barely get Morgan and Lussey to stop calling him Stevie G, but knows the ability to make grown men freeze with a carefully placed side glance is not something one simply learns. He slips out to the balcony by the fifth replay and finds Jake sprawled out on Xabi's chair, savoring a good long drag of his cigarette.
"These things will kill me, I know," Jake self-lectures pre-emptively.
"Not if Xabi gets to you first. Are you raiding his stash?"
"Brought my own."
Stevie zips up his hoodie and takes the unoccupied seat on the lawnchair by Jake's side, looking up at the starless sky.
"I don't even get a lecture about professionalism and sacrifice for the team?"
Stevie shrugs, focuses on his breath coming up in steam billows in the night air.
"I don't think that's your problem… Don't know how much you read about the club, but basically everyone's convinced I'm a shit manager and they're just too polite to tell me. It's not this big debate or anything... It's just kind of agreed by now that my heart's in the right place but I'm going to join the many players before me who didn't transition very well into the gaffer job. That if it weren't for Xabi pulling my strings and keeping me from flying into stupid, rash decisions, we'd be relegated already. I suppose they have a point with that one..."
He can tell he's got Jake's attention by the way his back straightens against the chair.
"Thing is... those people were dead set on believing that before we ever signed you because we didn't time travel and win the FA Cup seven months in advance or because I didn't put on a kit at half time and banged in a hattrick against United during the last derby."
"You probably could. Or at least you'd be a safer bet than any of us."
"Good lad, that's the spirit!"
Jake throws him a quick look, but doesn't insist on his scoring record.
"This is what playing for this club's always been about. Doesn't matter that we're a midtable team and have been for years, or that I'm new to managing in the Premier League or that we have the youngest squad in the competition, it's never been any different. But you know what's one of the best things about playing for this club? Getting to prove the idiots wrong."
Jake takes a long drag of his cigarette, shakes his head with a smile.
"You're not that crap at this, you know?"
Stevie pushes his chair back and yanks the cigarette out of Jake's mouth before heading back inside.
"Cut that shit out or I'll have you run laps around Melwood till you puke your lungs out," he says softly, but Jake knows he means it far more than his cheeky smirk would indicate.