Football AU: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 19/22
Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think 19/22
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: If I die hit by a bus before I post it, hit up my BFF for the last chapter, she'll have the password to the draft. Also, none of this will ever happen.
May 2018
“Did we just lose a European final, like…?”
Carra is a picture of crimson-faced bewilderment, feet firmly planted on the pitch of Westfalenstadion, where the confetti scattered around the center circle may be blue, but everything else is bright red, the stands are overwhelmingly red, the flags are red and the red sky still vibrates with the loudest, if slightly German-accented, delivery of You’ll Never Walk Alone heard anywhere outside England.
“Yeah… I guess we did…,” Stevie croaks, his voice barely a scratchy rasp above the uproar of a stadium that knows it’s over but doesn’t care because it does not want it to be over. He grabs Carra’s sweaty head and plants a big, sloppy kiss on his forehead, laughing maniacally. “Lighten up, old man! 5-4, most beautiful football of the season, nobody’ll be talking about the Champions League tomorrow… One for the history books, eh?”
Carra blinks at him like you would at a very fragile, very unstable person whom you love dearly but know to be absolutely off their fucking rocker.
“Let them Italian twats have it! We’re still in Europe next year… Just have to slaughter Chelsea and Stoke over the next six days and Big Ears here we come!”
Unsurprisingly, Carra is a little slow out the gate when it comes to finding the hilarity that makes Stevie literally shake with laughter, his mind still reeling from the 123rd-minute, unstoppable wonder strike (From a fookin’ Right Back?!? Fookin’ Christ!) that shattered Liverpool’s hopes of another penalty shootout final.
Stevie steps away and raises his gaze to the night sky, not caring a bit if it’s the release of pent-up adrenaline that makes him feel light enough to fucking fly. The singing still hasn’t stopped, it feels like it will never stop, and he misses his father terribly, ignoring the world around him for a brief spell because he wants to think of nobody else in that moment.
His eyes sting from the combined strain of exhaustion and the quick burst of photographers’ flashes discharging straight in his face and he lets them have it. It’s a consolation of sorts for those who’d missed a good angle on the earlier highlights of a 6’4” bald, tattooed Center Back cradled in Stevie’s arms as he soaked Stevie’s suit jacket clear through with tears. Or of Jake being warmly embraced and kissed by a family of pasty nerds, none moreso than the young gentleman who’d been almost pulled over the railing for an impromptu make-out session in front of the away fans. The likelihood of the Champions League being anywhere near the front page of any sports section of a newspaper or blog had indeed collapsed to zero.
Stevie watches Jake pass him on their way to the bus, clutching his hard-earned Europa League final hattrick ball.
“Next one I’m getting at Stamford Bridge, boss!” Jake yells over his shoulder, a second before Morgan jumps on his back.
“Fuck you, Guinto, you cheeky bastard,” Adam laughs. “Not in that way… You’re obviously taken. I’ll race you for the Bridge ball though…”
“Twat!”
“The kids are all right, I see.”
Stevie startles at the sound of Xabi’s voice close to his ear and for a split, irrational second he forgets that the last six months happened and wonders what he’s doing there.
“They know they were fantastic tonight, nobody could have asked more from any team.”
“Don’t know why we pay a sports psychologist when they have you,” the creases around Xabi’s eyes fold deeper with his smile and he forgets to tuck his right hand behind his back for long enough for Stevie to notice his bruised, bloody knuckles.
“The fuck…”
“I had a visitor at half-time,” Xabi shrugs, looking somewhere over Stevie’s shoulder for a more private corner. “Jake’s former agent wanted an urgent parking lot meeting…”
“McCreary?!? Who the fuck let him in?”
The explanation can wait for another time as far as Stevie is concerned, although he still catches the gist of it while he drags Xabi back to the now empty dressing room by the sleeve of his no longer impeccable shirt.
“He manages plenty of German players. But he was here to ask for a particular ex client back. I guess after the first two goals he figured there’s a lot more money to be made with Jake at Liverpool.”
“So you punched his lights out? You’d think a simple No would…please tell me you did punch his lights out, yeah?” Stevie asks, voice full of hope.
Xabi looks at his bruised knuckles sheepishly.
“Let’s say his mouth looks a bit worse than my hand. He called Jake before the game, threatening to go to the papers again… If you thought the kid had mental strength before…”
Stevie smiles as he replays the final and the aftermath in his head, his hand loosening up his tie knot.
“I wish I’d been there to see what the prick had to say to get your fist through his grid.”
Xabi’s eyes suddenly wander around to a fixed spot on the floor, waiting for the resurgent wave of anger to slosh back under lock and key into his subconscious.
Among other things, that he was not surprised that a little faggot would do so well under your wing, old rumors considered…
“That… is not important right now. What he just told reporters outside the stadium was that he was planning to sue Liverpool Football Club because I caused him severe physical and emotional distress.”
“I fucking hope so!” Stevie laughs darkly, wondering if his night can possibly get any stranger. “Jake fucked up his little blackmail scheme, wait till we tell the press why that arsehole was following you around in parking lots to begin with. Soulless Agent Blackmails Young Footballer in Love,” he rattles off while searching frantically through a first aid kit laying about in a locker room.
Stevie settles for an ice-pack he wraps around Xabi’s swollen hand. He’s still holding it in place, his other hand brushing over the pulse point in Xabi’s wrist, when Xabi looks at him with strange, distant eyes.
“There’s something else McCreary does not know that it will not help his case…”
“You know what’s dead funny? Between you, me and Carra, yours is the best PR fuck up of the season,” Stevie speaks over Xabi, barely paying attention to anything but the numbing cold he feels in the fingertips of one hand and the burning current travelling through his other hand.
“He cannot sue the club. I am not an employee anymore, not since this morning.”
“By comparison, I’m a fucking angel, me…”
“I… have to leave for a while,” Xabi says, relieved to have finally caught his attention.
“Wha… McCreary doesn’t stand a fucking chance, the club will back you up 100 percent, Jake too, how can…”
“Stevie… I’m dying.”
Stevie’s hand tightens around the ice-pack for a second before he lets it drop into Xabi’s other palm. His breath doesn’t return to his lungs for a while.
“What is this, some artsy, writer shite about… the meaningless of life and football?”
“No… Well, we’re all dying, I’m just apparently getting there a bit faster, that’s all.”
“All… That’s…” Stevie sputters over his own words. “Are you on drugs? I knew it! Please tell me you fell off the fucking wagon and hit your head hard on the way down!”
Suddenly, Xabi wishes he had reconsidered his utter disdain for self-help books because a How to Tell Your Loved Ones You’re Ready for the Glue Factory guide would come in handy right about now.
“Steven, no… I’m sorry, I don’t know how else… I could go into great detail about the growth patterns of the spinal tumor that’s most likely going to kill me… eventually… but it would not make much of a difference, no?”
After the week he’s had, Xabi can tell by now that it’s finally starting to sink in for Stevie and he’d give just about anything to skip this part, the part where he hurts someone he wants to protect and feels guilty about failing at it so badly. It’s Week 1 and he’s fucking tired of it already. Xabi places the ice-pack on a table and reaches out to caress Stevie’s cheek with his warm, bruised hand. Stevie recoils as if burned, he’s almost on the other side of the dressing room in less than a second.
"Did those Swiss fuckers do this to you? You said… you said it could go wrong, the treatment… did it?”
“Whatever time I have left is actually thanks to them. Apparently my chronic back pain was… mal… misdiagnosed, they missed it during my back surgery. Until now…”
“How long?”
Xabi wishes Stevie weren’t this… subdued, he’s not quite sure he knows what to do with a composed Steven Gerrard at this point.
“Don’t know… It depends if it’s the kind that’s… that can be operated or not. The good news is it’s a type II, slower, less aggressive… The bad news is it’s had a lot of time to grow in peace. The Swiss fuckers booked me to the best tumor center in America, I’m starting treatment in North Carolina next week.”
Stevie runs his cold hand over his mouth, his stubbled skin forgetting to react to his icy fingers.
“Does… Jon know? Does anybody?”
“Mikel, my parents…I’m flying to Paris tomorrow,” Stevie feels a sharp pang of regret for even asking because this is the first time he can hear Xabi’s voice break.
“You have to fight it, you hear me?”
Stevie shuffles closer with hesitant, piecemeal strides, but his voice is steady and strong.
Xabi shrugs.
"Well, they’ll start by zapping my brain with this cool experimental laser… Might get a superpower out of it.”
Stevie would like nothing more than to get a good, satisfying punch of his own, but he envelops Xabi in his arms instead, his fingers latching onto the back of his neck, just under his shirt collar.
"You can’t die, you idiot. We’re playing Champions League next year… what the fuck are we going to do about Barca without you?”
“OK,” Xabi says, his eyelashes closing against Stevie’s neck.
“I need to read your fucking book, with the time travel and the killer… You’re not going to die! You can’t!”
It’s the first time all week that Xabi’s terrified of dying, the first time he truly fears it all the way in his bones, but he decides not to argue with him.
Rating: R (grownup stuff, swearing etc.)
Summary: If I die hit by a bus before I post it, hit up my BFF for the last chapter, she'll have the password to the draft. Also, none of this will ever happen.
May 2018
“Did we just lose a European final, like…?”
Carra is a picture of crimson-faced bewilderment, feet firmly planted on the pitch of Westfalenstadion, where the confetti scattered around the center circle may be blue, but everything else is bright red, the stands are overwhelmingly red, the flags are red and the red sky still vibrates with the loudest, if slightly German-accented, delivery of You’ll Never Walk Alone heard anywhere outside England.
“Yeah… I guess we did…,” Stevie croaks, his voice barely a scratchy rasp above the uproar of a stadium that knows it’s over but doesn’t care because it does not want it to be over. He grabs Carra’s sweaty head and plants a big, sloppy kiss on his forehead, laughing maniacally. “Lighten up, old man! 5-4, most beautiful football of the season, nobody’ll be talking about the Champions League tomorrow… One for the history books, eh?”
Carra blinks at him like you would at a very fragile, very unstable person whom you love dearly but know to be absolutely off their fucking rocker.
“Let them Italian twats have it! We’re still in Europe next year… Just have to slaughter Chelsea and Stoke over the next six days and Big Ears here we come!”
Unsurprisingly, Carra is a little slow out the gate when it comes to finding the hilarity that makes Stevie literally shake with laughter, his mind still reeling from the 123rd-minute, unstoppable wonder strike (From a fookin’ Right Back?!? Fookin’ Christ!) that shattered Liverpool’s hopes of another penalty shootout final.
Stevie steps away and raises his gaze to the night sky, not caring a bit if it’s the release of pent-up adrenaline that makes him feel light enough to fucking fly. The singing still hasn’t stopped, it feels like it will never stop, and he misses his father terribly, ignoring the world around him for a brief spell because he wants to think of nobody else in that moment.
His eyes sting from the combined strain of exhaustion and the quick burst of photographers’ flashes discharging straight in his face and he lets them have it. It’s a consolation of sorts for those who’d missed a good angle on the earlier highlights of a 6’4” bald, tattooed Center Back cradled in Stevie’s arms as he soaked Stevie’s suit jacket clear through with tears. Or of Jake being warmly embraced and kissed by a family of pasty nerds, none moreso than the young gentleman who’d been almost pulled over the railing for an impromptu make-out session in front of the away fans. The likelihood of the Champions League being anywhere near the front page of any sports section of a newspaper or blog had indeed collapsed to zero.
Stevie watches Jake pass him on their way to the bus, clutching his hard-earned Europa League final hattrick ball.
“Next one I’m getting at Stamford Bridge, boss!” Jake yells over his shoulder, a second before Morgan jumps on his back.
“Fuck you, Guinto, you cheeky bastard,” Adam laughs. “Not in that way… You’re obviously taken. I’ll race you for the Bridge ball though…”
“Twat!”
“The kids are all right, I see.”
Stevie startles at the sound of Xabi’s voice close to his ear and for a split, irrational second he forgets that the last six months happened and wonders what he’s doing there.
“They know they were fantastic tonight, nobody could have asked more from any team.”
“Don’t know why we pay a sports psychologist when they have you,” the creases around Xabi’s eyes fold deeper with his smile and he forgets to tuck his right hand behind his back for long enough for Stevie to notice his bruised, bloody knuckles.
“The fuck…”
“I had a visitor at half-time,” Xabi shrugs, looking somewhere over Stevie’s shoulder for a more private corner. “Jake’s former agent wanted an urgent parking lot meeting…”
“McCreary?!? Who the fuck let him in?”
The explanation can wait for another time as far as Stevie is concerned, although he still catches the gist of it while he drags Xabi back to the now empty dressing room by the sleeve of his no longer impeccable shirt.
“He manages plenty of German players. But he was here to ask for a particular ex client back. I guess after the first two goals he figured there’s a lot more money to be made with Jake at Liverpool.”
“So you punched his lights out? You’d think a simple No would…please tell me you did punch his lights out, yeah?” Stevie asks, voice full of hope.
Xabi looks at his bruised knuckles sheepishly.
“Let’s say his mouth looks a bit worse than my hand. He called Jake before the game, threatening to go to the papers again… If you thought the kid had mental strength before…”
Stevie smiles as he replays the final and the aftermath in his head, his hand loosening up his tie knot.
“I wish I’d been there to see what the prick had to say to get your fist through his grid.”
Xabi’s eyes suddenly wander around to a fixed spot on the floor, waiting for the resurgent wave of anger to slosh back under lock and key into his subconscious.
Among other things, that he was not surprised that a little faggot would do so well under your wing, old rumors considered…
“That… is not important right now. What he just told reporters outside the stadium was that he was planning to sue Liverpool Football Club because I caused him severe physical and emotional distress.”
“I fucking hope so!” Stevie laughs darkly, wondering if his night can possibly get any stranger. “Jake fucked up his little blackmail scheme, wait till we tell the press why that arsehole was following you around in parking lots to begin with. Soulless Agent Blackmails Young Footballer in Love,” he rattles off while searching frantically through a first aid kit laying about in a locker room.
Stevie settles for an ice-pack he wraps around Xabi’s swollen hand. He’s still holding it in place, his other hand brushing over the pulse point in Xabi’s wrist, when Xabi looks at him with strange, distant eyes.
“There’s something else McCreary does not know that it will not help his case…”
“You know what’s dead funny? Between you, me and Carra, yours is the best PR fuck up of the season,” Stevie speaks over Xabi, barely paying attention to anything but the numbing cold he feels in the fingertips of one hand and the burning current travelling through his other hand.
“He cannot sue the club. I am not an employee anymore, not since this morning.”
“By comparison, I’m a fucking angel, me…”
“I… have to leave for a while,” Xabi says, relieved to have finally caught his attention.
“Wha… McCreary doesn’t stand a fucking chance, the club will back you up 100 percent, Jake too, how can…”
“Stevie… I’m dying.”
Stevie’s hand tightens around the ice-pack for a second before he lets it drop into Xabi’s other palm. His breath doesn’t return to his lungs for a while.
“What is this, some artsy, writer shite about… the meaningless of life and football?”
“No… Well, we’re all dying, I’m just apparently getting there a bit faster, that’s all.”
“All… That’s…” Stevie sputters over his own words. “Are you on drugs? I knew it! Please tell me you fell off the fucking wagon and hit your head hard on the way down!”
Suddenly, Xabi wishes he had reconsidered his utter disdain for self-help books because a How to Tell Your Loved Ones You’re Ready for the Glue Factory guide would come in handy right about now.
“Steven, no… I’m sorry, I don’t know how else… I could go into great detail about the growth patterns of the spinal tumor that’s most likely going to kill me… eventually… but it would not make much of a difference, no?”
After the week he’s had, Xabi can tell by now that it’s finally starting to sink in for Stevie and he’d give just about anything to skip this part, the part where he hurts someone he wants to protect and feels guilty about failing at it so badly. It’s Week 1 and he’s fucking tired of it already. Xabi places the ice-pack on a table and reaches out to caress Stevie’s cheek with his warm, bruised hand. Stevie recoils as if burned, he’s almost on the other side of the dressing room in less than a second.
"Did those Swiss fuckers do this to you? You said… you said it could go wrong, the treatment… did it?”
“Whatever time I have left is actually thanks to them. Apparently my chronic back pain was… mal… misdiagnosed, they missed it during my back surgery. Until now…”
“How long?”
Xabi wishes Stevie weren’t this… subdued, he’s not quite sure he knows what to do with a composed Steven Gerrard at this point.
“Don’t know… It depends if it’s the kind that’s… that can be operated or not. The good news is it’s a type II, slower, less aggressive… The bad news is it’s had a lot of time to grow in peace. The Swiss fuckers booked me to the best tumor center in America, I’m starting treatment in North Carolina next week.”
Stevie runs his cold hand over his mouth, his stubbled skin forgetting to react to his icy fingers.
“Does… Jon know? Does anybody?”
“Mikel, my parents…I’m flying to Paris tomorrow,” Stevie feels a sharp pang of regret for even asking because this is the first time he can hear Xabi’s voice break.
“You have to fight it, you hear me?”
Stevie shuffles closer with hesitant, piecemeal strides, but his voice is steady and strong.
Xabi shrugs.
"Well, they’ll start by zapping my brain with this cool experimental laser… Might get a superpower out of it.”
Stevie would like nothing more than to get a good, satisfying punch of his own, but he envelops Xabi in his arms instead, his fingers latching onto the back of his neck, just under his shirt collar.
"You can’t die, you idiot. We’re playing Champions League next year… what the fuck are we going to do about Barca without you?”
“OK,” Xabi says, his eyelashes closing against Stevie’s neck.
“I need to read your fucking book, with the time travel and the killer… You’re not going to die! You can’t!”
It’s the first time all week that Xabi’s terrified of dying, the first time he truly fears it all the way in his bones, but he decides not to argue with him.