Football AU: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 15/22
Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 15/22
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: Stevie really did want to kill Lee Bowyer. The rest is fiction.
April 2018
They load their suitcases and their bleary-eyed strikers into the rental SUV and Xabi hands Carra a steaming cup of the blackest coffee he can find at that hour before he heads towards the driver’s side of the car.
“You sure you don’t want to sit with the lads, stretch your back?” Stevie cuts him off, zipping up his leather jacket against the chill of the impending dawn.
“It’s a two-hour drive…”
“Only if you put me gran behind the wheel.”
Xabi looks down at the cup of coffee warming up his fingers and has a change of heart.
“Try not to get us arrested again,” he chucks the keys to Stevie and walks across to the passenger’s seat instead. “Autographs will not be enough for repeat offenders, we would end up having to trade Carra for cigarettes.”
A middle finger sticks up in Xabi’s general direction before all doors are slammed shut.
Jake and Adam are asleep as soon as Stevie takes the highway exit and Carra grunts at the sight of Morgan drooling over Jake’s shoulder.
“It’s the internet, I tell yeh. All that Facebook shite’s making them soft. Some of these U18 lads I’m taking to Hong Kong… Christ, they look like the closest they’ve been to a pair of tits was playing as Fat Frank on their fucking FIFA.”
“Makes you feel ancient, doesn’t it?” Xabi stretches his neck against the head rest, his eyes falling on the sparse traces of silver around Stevie’s temples. He realizes he looks about five years older than Stevie, although it may be because Stevie’s had forehead wrinkles before he could grow a beard and the human brain just can’t deal with Benjamin Button types and will make you see things that aren’t really there.
“Would explain the midlife crisis bar brawlin’,” Stevie gripes affectionately.
“Fuck off, you’re just jealous you’re an old, boring fart and missed out. I mean, what’s with the funeral music, like?” Carra protests as the low humming voice streaming from Xabi’s iPod into the audio system of the SUV drones something about leaning against walls and thinking of one’s dick.
Despite Carra’s grumblings, the baritone hum teams up with the prolonged spell of sleeplessness to lull him into a blackout doze.
~
“What, you’re too posh for EasyJet now?” Adam snorts at Jake in the middle of an improvised autograph session which is about to be cut short because it’s causing some serious disruption to check in queues.
“We smell like ass and probably look like ass too,” Jake screeches through his teeth as they’re both smiling beatifically in the middle of a group of Dutch children. “This is classic Alonso, he’s sending us to the naughty corner.”
The first thing Jake notices when their little troupe disembarks in the terminal of Ostend-Bruges is the BA flight announced with a departure of half an hour earlier than their own plane. Xabi informs them curtly that Carla thought it would be a good idea to have pictures of the two of them signing autographs on an EasyJet flight next to the ones of the two of them getting their asses kicked in a dodgy pub and they’re obviously in no position to question their Communications Director’s logic. Jake just seriously doubts this was not a collaborative idea.
They pluck up the courage to ask for breakfast once they pass through security, but Jake lets Adam wolf down his sandwich and quietly makes his way to the observation deck. He thinks, absurdly, that if this were an inspirational coming of age movie, there’d be discreet indie music strumming in the background and he’d lean against the glass watching planes take off to destinations unknown. Instead, the only vehicle he can make out on the runway at this hour is a fuel cistern and the only distinguishable soundtrack that breaks through the morning buzz of the airport is a repeated announcement for a Mrs. De Groof to please get the fuck through security already, in not so many words.
“Headache?”
Xabi extends a cup of Starbucks that promises to be bitter and scalding, two things Jake’s throbbing temples would actually gladly welcome were it not for pride fucking with him.
“What exactly is it that you do around here?”
“I keep your boss’ blood pressure nice and low,” Xabi smirks ever so faintly.
Jake wraps his fingers around the coffee cup feeling instantly jolted back to reality.
“This isn’t… I don’t mean to…” Jake takes a deep breath, gathers his thoughts for a moment and starts again. “I wasn’t out celebrating last night. I’ve been... uh... trying to make a decision for a while and drowning in alcohol with a bunch of Scousers was the smartest way to go about that.”
“We’ve all been there at some point.”
“I’ve been getting these phone calls… my former agent wanted to chat since I started scoring goals, being in the papers...”
Xabi’s brow knits in anticipation, but he lets Jake sip a big gulp of predictably strong coffee before he’s ready to go on.
“Last night he finally made it clear that he wanted in on a piece of the action or else…”
“Did you talk to Struan?”
His silence is all the answer Xabi needs.
“You did well to come to me. We’ll take care of this together, Steven and Carla and I… we’re probably going to get the lawyers involved as well. By the time we’re through with him, that prick is going to learn all seventy six different legal definitions of blackmail by heart.”
Jake switches his weight from one foot to another and focuses his eyes somewhere beyond the deserted landing strips.
“Or I could sit down with one reporter who’s not a jackass and make it all go away a lot quicker. If only I weren’t too chicken shit…”
Xabi’s hand goes up to his shoulder and he lets it just sit there for a longer second while his eyes dart back to the table where he left Stevie and Carra bickering.
“I met someone,” Jake says softly, distracted by Xabi’s retreating hand. “He’s just... a guy, nothing to do with football.”
“No gross legs?”
“I thought I wasn’t going to be a Hollywood cliché,” Jake licks his lips, the willingness to smile not quite reaching his cheeks. “Instead I’m asking him to share a lie with me and lots of take out on nights spent in, watching Match of the Day.”
You better hold on to that one then, anybody who sits through hours of Gary Lineker with you is a definite keeper.
“Anything you decide to do, we’ll be right behind you,” Xabi says out loud.
“When did you know that you had to choose? That there was no going back?”
Jake’s bright eyes pin Xabi in place and the denial never quite leaves his throat. He swallows it down and lowers his eyes looking for something to do with his hands.
"I've sat through enough of Lucas' Golden Era brainwashing DVDs to notice you still look at him the same way you used to when George Bush was President and you had roadkill on your head,” Jake looks away, a wave of guilt washing over the pain in his temples. He feels like an intruder, but somehow also like he owes Xabi some peace of mind. “Not to mention I've never seen anyone trying so hard not to look that way at a guy."
"There was never... time to make any choices. I wasn't nine… twenty,” Xabi corrects himself with a thin smile. “I'd already made choices that I thought were the best for me... I guess we just met three years too late. Or three decades too early."
~
“You going to let that butty go dry?”
Carra watches Stevie watching Xabi shrug at Jake before the two turn around and move out of their view.
“Something the matter with Alonso?” his voice goes uncharacteristically quiet as he reaches across the table for Stevie’s uneaten breakfast sandwich.
“Huh?”
“He’s gone the color of boiled shite a bit lately and yer’v been tiptoeing around him like he’s with child.”
“Running one of the biggest football clubs in the world and goin’ round bailing Scousers out of jail at 3 AM at the same time can make a man tired, I suppose, but you can ask him yourself if you’re so concerned.”
Stevie buries half his face in his coffee mug.
Carra squints and thoroughly scans the mix of apprehension and… something else in Stevie’s eyes, knowing full well he hasn’t gotten any better at lying in the past two decades.
“Fuck me!” he half-whispers, half-whistles. “Ten years… a whole fuckin’ decade you’ve had to get smarter about Alonso and yer still as pure stupid about him as the day you tried to rip Bowyer’s face off for goin’ in a bit hard on his ankle!”
Stevie runs a hand over his tired face and sighs unconvincingly.
“Fuck off, you’re still drunk! You need more coffee, they may not let you on the plane to Hong Kong,” he says before he gets up from the table.
December 2005
Stevie gets back to his room just in time to open the door for a frenzied Jamie Carragher who drops theatrically onto the hotel bed still barely able to contain his adrenaline and sake fuelled giggles.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“Fought de Bizzies and won, lad!” he stretches his arms wide with victorious rapture only to cross them back behind his head, grinning at the ceiling. “They caught Didi though, his pace really is shite. You should have seen his face! Fucking hell, what a story we’ll have for the grandkids while yer were moping about in a hotel. You’ve gone all soft arse from spending all yer time with all these continental ponces. Where the fuck were you, by the way?”
“It’s 2 AM, I was asleep, knobhead!”
“In the bathtub?”
Two sets of bleary eyes zoom in straight to Stevie’s perfectly undisturbed bed.
Oh.
They will not speak a word of it for the next decade, but there’s no need to. It’s just one of those things… Except it’s not, not for Stevie. The coil that will wind itself tighter and tighter around his gut for months to come springs to life that night, in an aseptic hotel room suspended above Yokohama Harbor.
Sorry marqhoos this was the best I could do. :p
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: Stevie really did want to kill Lee Bowyer. The rest is fiction.
April 2018
They load their suitcases and their bleary-eyed strikers into the rental SUV and Xabi hands Carra a steaming cup of the blackest coffee he can find at that hour before he heads towards the driver’s side of the car.
“You sure you don’t want to sit with the lads, stretch your back?” Stevie cuts him off, zipping up his leather jacket against the chill of the impending dawn.
“It’s a two-hour drive…”
“Only if you put me gran behind the wheel.”
Xabi looks down at the cup of coffee warming up his fingers and has a change of heart.
“Try not to get us arrested again,” he chucks the keys to Stevie and walks across to the passenger’s seat instead. “Autographs will not be enough for repeat offenders, we would end up having to trade Carra for cigarettes.”
A middle finger sticks up in Xabi’s general direction before all doors are slammed shut.
Jake and Adam are asleep as soon as Stevie takes the highway exit and Carra grunts at the sight of Morgan drooling over Jake’s shoulder.
“It’s the internet, I tell yeh. All that Facebook shite’s making them soft. Some of these U18 lads I’m taking to Hong Kong… Christ, they look like the closest they’ve been to a pair of tits was playing as Fat Frank on their fucking FIFA.”
“Makes you feel ancient, doesn’t it?” Xabi stretches his neck against the head rest, his eyes falling on the sparse traces of silver around Stevie’s temples. He realizes he looks about five years older than Stevie, although it may be because Stevie’s had forehead wrinkles before he could grow a beard and the human brain just can’t deal with Benjamin Button types and will make you see things that aren’t really there.
“Would explain the midlife crisis bar brawlin’,” Stevie gripes affectionately.
“Fuck off, you’re just jealous you’re an old, boring fart and missed out. I mean, what’s with the funeral music, like?” Carra protests as the low humming voice streaming from Xabi’s iPod into the audio system of the SUV drones something about leaning against walls and thinking of one’s dick.
Despite Carra’s grumblings, the baritone hum teams up with the prolonged spell of sleeplessness to lull him into a blackout doze.
~
“What, you’re too posh for EasyJet now?” Adam snorts at Jake in the middle of an improvised autograph session which is about to be cut short because it’s causing some serious disruption to check in queues.
“We smell like ass and probably look like ass too,” Jake screeches through his teeth as they’re both smiling beatifically in the middle of a group of Dutch children. “This is classic Alonso, he’s sending us to the naughty corner.”
The first thing Jake notices when their little troupe disembarks in the terminal of Ostend-Bruges is the BA flight announced with a departure of half an hour earlier than their own plane. Xabi informs them curtly that Carla thought it would be a good idea to have pictures of the two of them signing autographs on an EasyJet flight next to the ones of the two of them getting their asses kicked in a dodgy pub and they’re obviously in no position to question their Communications Director’s logic. Jake just seriously doubts this was not a collaborative idea.
They pluck up the courage to ask for breakfast once they pass through security, but Jake lets Adam wolf down his sandwich and quietly makes his way to the observation deck. He thinks, absurdly, that if this were an inspirational coming of age movie, there’d be discreet indie music strumming in the background and he’d lean against the glass watching planes take off to destinations unknown. Instead, the only vehicle he can make out on the runway at this hour is a fuel cistern and the only distinguishable soundtrack that breaks through the morning buzz of the airport is a repeated announcement for a Mrs. De Groof to please get the fuck through security already, in not so many words.
“Headache?”
Xabi extends a cup of Starbucks that promises to be bitter and scalding, two things Jake’s throbbing temples would actually gladly welcome were it not for pride fucking with him.
“What exactly is it that you do around here?”
“I keep your boss’ blood pressure nice and low,” Xabi smirks ever so faintly.
Jake wraps his fingers around the coffee cup feeling instantly jolted back to reality.
“This isn’t… I don’t mean to…” Jake takes a deep breath, gathers his thoughts for a moment and starts again. “I wasn’t out celebrating last night. I’ve been... uh... trying to make a decision for a while and drowning in alcohol with a bunch of Scousers was the smartest way to go about that.”
“We’ve all been there at some point.”
“I’ve been getting these phone calls… my former agent wanted to chat since I started scoring goals, being in the papers...”
Xabi’s brow knits in anticipation, but he lets Jake sip a big gulp of predictably strong coffee before he’s ready to go on.
“Last night he finally made it clear that he wanted in on a piece of the action or else…”
“Did you talk to Struan?”
His silence is all the answer Xabi needs.
“You did well to come to me. We’ll take care of this together, Steven and Carla and I… we’re probably going to get the lawyers involved as well. By the time we’re through with him, that prick is going to learn all seventy six different legal definitions of blackmail by heart.”
Jake switches his weight from one foot to another and focuses his eyes somewhere beyond the deserted landing strips.
“Or I could sit down with one reporter who’s not a jackass and make it all go away a lot quicker. If only I weren’t too chicken shit…”
Xabi’s hand goes up to his shoulder and he lets it just sit there for a longer second while his eyes dart back to the table where he left Stevie and Carra bickering.
“I met someone,” Jake says softly, distracted by Xabi’s retreating hand. “He’s just... a guy, nothing to do with football.”
“No gross legs?”
“I thought I wasn’t going to be a Hollywood cliché,” Jake licks his lips, the willingness to smile not quite reaching his cheeks. “Instead I’m asking him to share a lie with me and lots of take out on nights spent in, watching Match of the Day.”
You better hold on to that one then, anybody who sits through hours of Gary Lineker with you is a definite keeper.
“Anything you decide to do, we’ll be right behind you,” Xabi says out loud.
“When did you know that you had to choose? That there was no going back?”
Jake’s bright eyes pin Xabi in place and the denial never quite leaves his throat. He swallows it down and lowers his eyes looking for something to do with his hands.
"I've sat through enough of Lucas' Golden Era brainwashing DVDs to notice you still look at him the same way you used to when George Bush was President and you had roadkill on your head,” Jake looks away, a wave of guilt washing over the pain in his temples. He feels like an intruder, but somehow also like he owes Xabi some peace of mind. “Not to mention I've never seen anyone trying so hard not to look that way at a guy."
"There was never... time to make any choices. I wasn't nine… twenty,” Xabi corrects himself with a thin smile. “I'd already made choices that I thought were the best for me... I guess we just met three years too late. Or three decades too early."
~
“You going to let that butty go dry?”
Carra watches Stevie watching Xabi shrug at Jake before the two turn around and move out of their view.
“Something the matter with Alonso?” his voice goes uncharacteristically quiet as he reaches across the table for Stevie’s uneaten breakfast sandwich.
“Huh?”
“He’s gone the color of boiled shite a bit lately and yer’v been tiptoeing around him like he’s with child.”
“Running one of the biggest football clubs in the world and goin’ round bailing Scousers out of jail at 3 AM at the same time can make a man tired, I suppose, but you can ask him yourself if you’re so concerned.”
Stevie buries half his face in his coffee mug.
Carra squints and thoroughly scans the mix of apprehension and… something else in Stevie’s eyes, knowing full well he hasn’t gotten any better at lying in the past two decades.
“Fuck me!” he half-whispers, half-whistles. “Ten years… a whole fuckin’ decade you’ve had to get smarter about Alonso and yer still as pure stupid about him as the day you tried to rip Bowyer’s face off for goin’ in a bit hard on his ankle!”
Stevie runs a hand over his tired face and sighs unconvincingly.
“Fuck off, you’re still drunk! You need more coffee, they may not let you on the plane to Hong Kong,” he says before he gets up from the table.
December 2005
Stevie gets back to his room just in time to open the door for a frenzied Jamie Carragher who drops theatrically onto the hotel bed still barely able to contain his adrenaline and sake fuelled giggles.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
“Fought de Bizzies and won, lad!” he stretches his arms wide with victorious rapture only to cross them back behind his head, grinning at the ceiling. “They caught Didi though, his pace really is shite. You should have seen his face! Fucking hell, what a story we’ll have for the grandkids while yer were moping about in a hotel. You’ve gone all soft arse from spending all yer time with all these continental ponces. Where the fuck were you, by the way?”
“It’s 2 AM, I was asleep, knobhead!”
“In the bathtub?”
Two sets of bleary eyes zoom in straight to Stevie’s perfectly undisturbed bed.
Oh.
They will not speak a word of it for the next decade, but there’s no need to. It’s just one of those things… Except it’s not, not for Stevie. The coil that will wind itself tighter and tighter around his gut for months to come springs to life that night, in an aseptic hotel room suspended above Yokohama Harbor.
Sorry marqhoos this was the best I could do. :p