Football AU: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 16/22
Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 16/22
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: Stevie really hates dogs. The rest is so not true.
March 2006
He leaves the pitch with Xabi’s arm around his back, the world suddenly, oddly weightless on his shoulders. Maybe it’s the cameras that follow Stevie around everywhere, even on the plane he boards for Paris the next morning, Gratty and the Champions League Cup in tow, or maybe it’s the numbing sense of might have been that would inevitably hit him later, but Stevie doesn’t feel nearly as gutted as he had dreaded and expected to feel.
Big Ears says see u next yr. Think she misses me already.
Xabi doesn’t reply, but he’ll roll his eyes out at him late at night, in his apartment, when he asks Stevie if he plans to get a tattoo of her profile on his behind, sailor-style. He gives Stevie's ass a hard squeeze to illustrate a point.
It bothers Stevie that he’s this OK with losing, even though he knows he can’t accuse himself of not caring because he does, he does, he does care so very much… The problem is he’s happy and the voice inside his head won’t shut up about how much he doesn’t deserve to be. And no, it’s not their utterly devoid of self-belief strikers or the man in charge who can’t seem to inspire them. It’s… something entirely different. It’s being happy because of football but without football at the same time. His fingers stop their idle ambling through Xabi’s hair and he looks at the top of Xabi’s head resting just under his ribs.
“What now?” Xabi protests against his skin, lazily crawling up Stevie’s chest.
“Nothing…”
"We lost and it sucks. And is all your fault, OK? Worst Captain ever,” Xabi chuckles, closes his eyes and his lips around Stevie’s Adam’s apple. “You can take out the boy from the Catholic School, but not take the Catholic guilt out of the boy…”
“Aren’t Spaniards supposed to be all Papists?... Technically?” Stevie asks, relishing the opportunity to sidetrack Xabi from reading his mind.
“I’m Basque,” Xabi turns on his back, the memory of his last proper Sunday mass in church coloring his sharp cheekbones a pale shade of pink.
Although Stevie had drunk-teased Xabi about his exchange student adventures on occasion, until he’d eventually fessed up to certain things he would never disclose in a sober state of mind, Stevie really had no business knowing how he’d spent every Sunday of one summer forever ago in an Irish church, pretending to sing from the hymnal while his eyes roamed all over the eldest of the O’Brien’s impossibly blue-eyed daughters.
“You tried to shag your host sister?!?”
“I was in love, cabrón! For your information… I did not try… To want and to try are two very different things,” Xabi had philosophized meekly and gave Stevie a shove in the ribs, desperate to keep their fairly incoherent pub chat away from Pepe’s ears.
He tried to mumble something else about how it would have never worked out because she went around humming Spice Girls songs off key and had Hanson posters up on her wall, not to mention the fact that he was far too shy to say more than three words in English for most of his stay there, but Stevie was way too drunk to care or remember by that point.
Now that he’s sober, Xabi congratulates himself on leaving out the more embarrassing parts about how he looked up words in the dictionary, trying to explain to his own senses how sweet she smelled, in her own language. Or about that day when she noticed he existed across from her at the dinner table and how she asked him to say something in Basque and smiled at finally hearing his voice at normal volume and for more than the briefest of seconds, even though she had no way of knowing what Zure begiak ederrak dira…. Ez dut utzi nahi… meant. He’d gotten a big smacker straight on the lips on his last Sunday in Ireland and left with a broken teenaged heart.
Xabi should know better the summer after that, when the new tennis coach arrives at the neighborhood club from a university across the border, all sinewy, muscly arms and legs, French cigarettes, killer one-handed backhands and stupid, post-punk graphic tees, but… he’s not old and wise enough just yet. He doesn’t get his heart broken quite in the same way, although he does get quite a bit more than a stolen kiss, but Xabi knows instinctively that he needs to look for shelter. Eventually, and not without a few storms weathered on the way, he finds it, his perfect safe harbor, until he ends up washed up on the wrong shore of the Irish Sea.
September 2006
“We’re getting married…”
“Congratulations.”
Stevie lifts his eyes, his heart dropping a few levels lower to meet his already nauseated stomach. He looks utterly, miserably lost and Xabi feels a daft little pang of sympathy on top of all the other things he’s feeling right now and which he’ll compartmentalize and rationalize later, much later.
“What do you want me to say? Ask you to…” Xabi looks for the perfect word somewhere over the horizon, but fails to find it, the memory of some yellowed page of English prose too distant to be of any use, “…run away with me? Go to play for the San Jose Earthquakes and to retire in a beach home in California? ...Listen to you when you sing cheesy Phil Collins songs in the shower? ... Get a dog?”
Stevie winces out of reflex. Cats. A couple of cats. Wouldn’t need no walking, shit in their own box…
“Fuck this!” he spits out, shaking his head with the same hopelessness he sees in Xabi’s amber eyes. “Just… everything, y’know? I’m sorry… I…”
"I want you to be happy,” Xabi rescues Stevie from himself, his thick eyelashes half-lowered in tune with his voice. He means every word and a few more that he never attaches to his bland pronouncement.
It’s not until later, during inevitable celebrations with the lads, when Kuyt pats him on the back, waggling his ugly-but-adorable dog eyebrows at him and slurring: “So… Alonso… When is your bird going to make a decent man out of you?” that Xabi feels like he could happily wring Stevie’s neck.
They can stop anytime they want to, really. They do stop, several times, the months in between those times used as a respite, a lull in proceedings between the times when they barely look at each other and celebrate goals with a half-hearted pat on the head and the other times, the times when they leave purple bruises and finger marks on each other and disguise them as training accidents and blame Finnan.
They can stop anytime. By the following spring they both know it’s time to stop for the last time.
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: Stevie really hates dogs. The rest is so not true.
March 2006
He leaves the pitch with Xabi’s arm around his back, the world suddenly, oddly weightless on his shoulders. Maybe it’s the cameras that follow Stevie around everywhere, even on the plane he boards for Paris the next morning, Gratty and the Champions League Cup in tow, or maybe it’s the numbing sense of might have been that would inevitably hit him later, but Stevie doesn’t feel nearly as gutted as he had dreaded and expected to feel.
Big Ears says see u next yr. Think she misses me already.
Xabi doesn’t reply, but he’ll roll his eyes out at him late at night, in his apartment, when he asks Stevie if he plans to get a tattoo of her profile on his behind, sailor-style. He gives Stevie's ass a hard squeeze to illustrate a point.
It bothers Stevie that he’s this OK with losing, even though he knows he can’t accuse himself of not caring because he does, he does, he does care so very much… The problem is he’s happy and the voice inside his head won’t shut up about how much he doesn’t deserve to be. And no, it’s not their utterly devoid of self-belief strikers or the man in charge who can’t seem to inspire them. It’s… something entirely different. It’s being happy because of football but without football at the same time. His fingers stop their idle ambling through Xabi’s hair and he looks at the top of Xabi’s head resting just under his ribs.
“What now?” Xabi protests against his skin, lazily crawling up Stevie’s chest.
“Nothing…”
"We lost and it sucks. And is all your fault, OK? Worst Captain ever,” Xabi chuckles, closes his eyes and his lips around Stevie’s Adam’s apple. “You can take out the boy from the Catholic School, but not take the Catholic guilt out of the boy…”
“Aren’t Spaniards supposed to be all Papists?... Technically?” Stevie asks, relishing the opportunity to sidetrack Xabi from reading his mind.
“I’m Basque,” Xabi turns on his back, the memory of his last proper Sunday mass in church coloring his sharp cheekbones a pale shade of pink.
Although Stevie had drunk-teased Xabi about his exchange student adventures on occasion, until he’d eventually fessed up to certain things he would never disclose in a sober state of mind, Stevie really had no business knowing how he’d spent every Sunday of one summer forever ago in an Irish church, pretending to sing from the hymnal while his eyes roamed all over the eldest of the O’Brien’s impossibly blue-eyed daughters.
“You tried to shag your host sister?!?”
“I was in love, cabrón! For your information… I did not try… To want and to try are two very different things,” Xabi had philosophized meekly and gave Stevie a shove in the ribs, desperate to keep their fairly incoherent pub chat away from Pepe’s ears.
He tried to mumble something else about how it would have never worked out because she went around humming Spice Girls songs off key and had Hanson posters up on her wall, not to mention the fact that he was far too shy to say more than three words in English for most of his stay there, but Stevie was way too drunk to care or remember by that point.
Now that he’s sober, Xabi congratulates himself on leaving out the more embarrassing parts about how he looked up words in the dictionary, trying to explain to his own senses how sweet she smelled, in her own language. Or about that day when she noticed he existed across from her at the dinner table and how she asked him to say something in Basque and smiled at finally hearing his voice at normal volume and for more than the briefest of seconds, even though she had no way of knowing what Zure begiak ederrak dira…. Ez dut utzi nahi… meant. He’d gotten a big smacker straight on the lips on his last Sunday in Ireland and left with a broken teenaged heart.
Xabi should know better the summer after that, when the new tennis coach arrives at the neighborhood club from a university across the border, all sinewy, muscly arms and legs, French cigarettes, killer one-handed backhands and stupid, post-punk graphic tees, but… he’s not old and wise enough just yet. He doesn’t get his heart broken quite in the same way, although he does get quite a bit more than a stolen kiss, but Xabi knows instinctively that he needs to look for shelter. Eventually, and not without a few storms weathered on the way, he finds it, his perfect safe harbor, until he ends up washed up on the wrong shore of the Irish Sea.
September 2006
“We’re getting married…”
“Congratulations.”
Stevie lifts his eyes, his heart dropping a few levels lower to meet his already nauseated stomach. He looks utterly, miserably lost and Xabi feels a daft little pang of sympathy on top of all the other things he’s feeling right now and which he’ll compartmentalize and rationalize later, much later.
“What do you want me to say? Ask you to…” Xabi looks for the perfect word somewhere over the horizon, but fails to find it, the memory of some yellowed page of English prose too distant to be of any use, “…run away with me? Go to play for the San Jose Earthquakes and to retire in a beach home in California? ...Listen to you when you sing cheesy Phil Collins songs in the shower? ... Get a dog?”
Stevie winces out of reflex. Cats. A couple of cats. Wouldn’t need no walking, shit in their own box…
“Fuck this!” he spits out, shaking his head with the same hopelessness he sees in Xabi’s amber eyes. “Just… everything, y’know? I’m sorry… I…”
"I want you to be happy,” Xabi rescues Stevie from himself, his thick eyelashes half-lowered in tune with his voice. He means every word and a few more that he never attaches to his bland pronouncement.
It’s not until later, during inevitable celebrations with the lads, when Kuyt pats him on the back, waggling his ugly-but-adorable dog eyebrows at him and slurring: “So… Alonso… When is your bird going to make a decent man out of you?” that Xabi feels like he could happily wring Stevie’s neck.
They can stop anytime they want to, really. They do stop, several times, the months in between those times used as a respite, a lull in proceedings between the times when they barely look at each other and celebrate goals with a half-hearted pat on the head and the other times, the times when they leave purple bruises and finger marks on each other and disguise them as training accidents and blame Finnan.
They can stop anytime. By the following spring they both know it’s time to stop for the last time.