Euro 2008 fic
Title: Endings
Characters: Dutch team, mostly Ruud van Nistelrooy/ Edwin van der Sar
Rating: PG-13? It's not too graphic...
Disclaimer: They're not mine, and it's fiction!
Warnings: MAJOR angst.
Wordcount: 1,969
Summary: They wanted to win it for him.
Eve of Italy
This is a tournament of goodbyes, and they all know it. That is why they are determined to win it all.
The stakes are high. There are worries, of course - about the back four, about Robben’s health, about the relative unknowns of Engalaar and Boulahrouz. But miraculously, this year there are no arguments. Their fans are as insane as usual or perhaps even more so, their families are here, and even the Group of Death cannot daunt them.
The goodbyes weigh on their minds, though. Van Basten is not such a presence there - they will miss him, of course, and he has gotten them this far - but there have been disagreements, and no one will really be that displeased when he has gone to Ajax.
It is the other departure that is distressing, that even though it is not complete - he will still be with United come the fall - is the one that saddens them, and drives them to win. Edwin is the one who they look up to, the calmest, the most experienced. He began playing professionally when many of his team members were still crawling, so it seems almost natural to look up to him as a mentor. As a father.
Of course, it’s not exactly natural that half the team has kissed the stuffing out of their ‘father’ (with Ruud leading the pack) and that the other half wants to. But then again, the Dutch were never a normal team.
Italian Victory
The whole world loves them (except for a certain booted island) as they celebrate the win, and they mob Ruud and Sneijder in an ever-increasing pile. Edwin takes a few moments to join them as he has to make the trek from the goal, but soon his lean form hurls itself into the fray and Rafael van der Vaart thinks that these are the moments that he lives for as a footballer, these ends of matches when the world is yours…
…as is the incredible feeling of all the bodies pressing around him, the wildly grinning faces which flash into view for a split second and then are buried again in the tangle of flailing limbs, the drops of sweat and the warm skin.
He is sure there is a lot of love going around in this particular pile, and he can feel someone grasping his own thigh. It is normal in a scrum, of course, but it is also far too easy to get worked up about it, which he does. So he sighs when somehow the hand climbs higher and another one cups his cheek for a fleeting instant.
And in that same instant, a hole opens up to the top of the pile and he looks up from the bottom to see Edwin’s grinning face as the keeper nuzzles Ruud’s neck, his face alight with joy and his hair glinting somewhat in the light from all the flashing cameras in the stadium. And he notices when Edwin picks up his beautiful daughter and twirls her around, laughing out loud before he greets the fans.
So close, and yet so far.
Eve of France
They are on the top of the world, and don’t they know it. One set of champions: defeated. Another? No problem. Spirits are high, and the locker room is filled with whoops and war cries, and even a few resounding choruses of the national anthem, voices blending not-quite-smoothly in a cacophony of sound.
Edwin is sitting on a bench which has been shoved against a wall in between Ruud and Van Persie, laughing as they lean back against the white plaster. Van Bronckhorst trots by, clad only in his shorts, and Persie throws out a playful leg, trying to trip him up. He is a little bit more successful than he planned, though, and Giovanni goes flying forward awkwardly into Ruud’s chest with a startled yelp.
Ruud, for his part, merely laughs and shoves Giovanni off him so the younger player is now lying sprawled in Edwin’s lap. Giovanni grins and puckers up his lips playfully.
Edwin just giggles in that unique, adorable way of his, and then ruffles Van Bronckhorst’s hair before sending him on his way. Ruud lays his head on Ed’s shoulder and breathes deeply until the signal comes for them to go out onto the pitch.
French Victory
“You were beautiful, you know,” Ruud murmurs in Dutch, grinning wickedly down at the lean body lying beneath him. “Those saves - what on earth are we going to do without you?”
“I can’t imagine,” Edwin replies wryly as Ruud kisses down his neck, eyelids fluttering closed. “You’ll all be in deep shit.”
“Damn right.”
Van Persie comes in at this point, and Ruud can only laugh when instead of blushing and stammering his way back out, the forward grins wolfishly and adds his own kiss to the multitude Ruud has been raining down on Edwin. Ed moans into Robin’s mouth, his head falling back with a satisfying thud onto the bench that Ruud had stretched him out on.
Then Robin walks out again, chuckling to himself, and Ruud looks down into Edwin’s glazed eyes.
“Ja,” he smiles. “Very deep shit.”
Romania
Ruud is bored sitting on the bench, even though they are winning and the crowd is going crazy over the incredible job their young substitutes are doing. He claps and cheers at both goals, of course, but in the interim he is amusing himself in an entirely different manner.
Playing footsies - especially when said feet are in a certain goalkeeper’s lap - is a pleasure he decides he must take advantage of more often. So far the score is five sharp breaths, two long moments of lip-biting, and a few murmured curses. Edwin is leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees to keep Ruud’s ‘activities’ hidden, and his ears are flushed. Ruud presses a little harder, and Edwin jerks, his eyes widening even as he resolutely focuses on the little white ball across the pitch.
“You - are - such a bastard,” he gasps, clenching his fists so hard they turn white, and Ruud feels deliciously evil.
If this were a sport, he’s pretty sure he’d take the Cup.
Turning Point
Dirk is just stepping out of his shower at the hotel when the phone rings, and when he sees from the caller id on his cell phone that it is Edwin, he grins wickedly as he considers all the filthily suggestive answers he could give.
It might be a strange thing to ponder, but being half-naked as he is his free-associating thoughts run rapidly to the brief moment of overwhelming sensation he had once when Edwin leaped on his back to celebrate the end of a victorious match, and they went running together through the crowds, yelling their jubilation to the sky.
For a few minutes there, Dirk was in love - and the feeling has never quite left him. Jealousy would flare up when Ed cuddled with Ruud. Pain would flare up when Ed threw himself into a group of the defenders and grasped Bronckhorst or Heitinga or Boulahrouz, and Dirk would wonder why, except for that one occasion, he could never get Edwin to embrace him instead.
The phone is still ringing. He settles for a self-conscious giggle and then answers it, setting the phone on speaker as he begins to towel himself dry.
“Hi, Sar,” he grins. “What are you doing calling me so late?”
“Kuyt,” Edwin says, his voice low and fast. “Khalid and Sabia lost the baby.”
Dirk’s hands stop moving. A bead of water makes its way down his chest as he stands motionless. “What?”
Edwin sounds eternally weary as he replies. “He left early from training because Sabia went into labor. They lost their daughter. I’m at the hospital now - can you come?”
Dirk doesn’t know what to say. All he can think of, all that is running through his head, is how cruel life could be that while he was lusting after the keeper the defender lost his child.
Eve of Russia
They are fired up, and not just because they need to win to advance. Besides Khalid’s emotional speech on the training pitch, they have other motives - it’s impossible to avoid the newspapers during a tournament, after all, and they have all read the headlines: “Hiddink could start and end van der Sar career.” “Is this the end for Ed?” “Hiddink aims to commit ‘treason’ against Holland.”
Few things can collectively make the squad angry, but attacking their captain is one of them. So when Edwin fires back a day later that he will not give up against ‘Guus,’ there is a chorus of back-slapping and fierce smiles all around. And they all know they want to win it for them - they want to win it for Khalid and Edwin.
Different men, of course, show this desire in different ways. Van Bronckhorst gives Edwin a tight hug around the shoulders before he goes to line up, all casual but eternal affection. Dirk merely stares, longing, and then slaps the keeper’s palms. Van Persie laughs long and loud, giving the others energy, and then bounds away to his place on the bench. Boulahrouz tightens the black cloth around his arm, staring off fixedly into space, his face contorted in a deep frown.
Ruud kisses Edwin hard and fast, sliding his hands up underneath the black shirt and reveling in the touch of palms against hard muscle as Ed grabs the back of his neck and returns the kiss with force.
“Make sure you score for me,” Edwin says as they straighten each other up afterwards, the sound of the raucous crowd drifting through the air. “I don’t want to have any work to do.”
“Of course,” Ruud replies, swaggering to the door. “Come on, we’re Dutch. What could happen?”
The End
Edwin walks into the locker room after giving his usual ever-polite interview, and almost all movement ceases as he stalks over to a bench, ripping off his gloves with a vehemence all the more terrible for its rarity in the keeper who is always calm. He sits down, not looking up at anyone, and several of the men there think Ruud is very brave when he walks behind the seated man and brushes his fingers across the black of Edwin’s broad shoulders, because they all know they should have won. Edwin gave them everything he had, he was brilliance itself - and still, they lost his match.
Van Bronckhorst looks away as he pulls off his shirt. He knows, he knows that the second goal was his fault. He should have been there to stop Torbinski, and he can still see the disbelief on Edwin’s face as he lifted his arms and shouted - what the hell happened? Why weren’t you there?
Edwin reaches down to start untying his shoes, his hair falling down over his face, and slowly the other members of the team start turning and muttering amongst themselves. Ruud steps over the bench and sits at Edwin’s side, resting his arms on his knees and whispering in his friend’s ear.
Edwin does not respond, not then. Nor does he respond when Ruud slings an arm around his shoulder, cupping his cheek, and cradles his head in the crook of his neck.
But then something shifts, and Edwin gets up, staring down wordlessly, his eyes fixed on the floor. He is not sobbing as he did after that match in 2006 (they called it the ‘Battle of Nuremberg’), but somehow this silence is more terrible.
And he walks out of the locker room, probably to go and find his family, to comfort his little girl and the boy whose hair has been dyed Oranje.
The team watches him go. He will never come back.
FIN
This has already been posted in at least two places, so apologies if you've seen it already!
Characters: Dutch team, mostly Ruud van Nistelrooy/ Edwin van der Sar
Rating: PG-13? It's not too graphic...
Disclaimer: They're not mine, and it's fiction!
Warnings: MAJOR angst.
Wordcount: 1,969
Summary: They wanted to win it for him.
Eve of Italy
This is a tournament of goodbyes, and they all know it. That is why they are determined to win it all.
The stakes are high. There are worries, of course - about the back four, about Robben’s health, about the relative unknowns of Engalaar and Boulahrouz. But miraculously, this year there are no arguments. Their fans are as insane as usual or perhaps even more so, their families are here, and even the Group of Death cannot daunt them.
The goodbyes weigh on their minds, though. Van Basten is not such a presence there - they will miss him, of course, and he has gotten them this far - but there have been disagreements, and no one will really be that displeased when he has gone to Ajax.
It is the other departure that is distressing, that even though it is not complete - he will still be with United come the fall - is the one that saddens them, and drives them to win. Edwin is the one who they look up to, the calmest, the most experienced. He began playing professionally when many of his team members were still crawling, so it seems almost natural to look up to him as a mentor. As a father.
Of course, it’s not exactly natural that half the team has kissed the stuffing out of their ‘father’ (with Ruud leading the pack) and that the other half wants to. But then again, the Dutch were never a normal team.
Italian Victory
The whole world loves them (except for a certain booted island) as they celebrate the win, and they mob Ruud and Sneijder in an ever-increasing pile. Edwin takes a few moments to join them as he has to make the trek from the goal, but soon his lean form hurls itself into the fray and Rafael van der Vaart thinks that these are the moments that he lives for as a footballer, these ends of matches when the world is yours…
…as is the incredible feeling of all the bodies pressing around him, the wildly grinning faces which flash into view for a split second and then are buried again in the tangle of flailing limbs, the drops of sweat and the warm skin.
He is sure there is a lot of love going around in this particular pile, and he can feel someone grasping his own thigh. It is normal in a scrum, of course, but it is also far too easy to get worked up about it, which he does. So he sighs when somehow the hand climbs higher and another one cups his cheek for a fleeting instant.
And in that same instant, a hole opens up to the top of the pile and he looks up from the bottom to see Edwin’s grinning face as the keeper nuzzles Ruud’s neck, his face alight with joy and his hair glinting somewhat in the light from all the flashing cameras in the stadium. And he notices when Edwin picks up his beautiful daughter and twirls her around, laughing out loud before he greets the fans.
So close, and yet so far.
Eve of France
They are on the top of the world, and don’t they know it. One set of champions: defeated. Another? No problem. Spirits are high, and the locker room is filled with whoops and war cries, and even a few resounding choruses of the national anthem, voices blending not-quite-smoothly in a cacophony of sound.
Edwin is sitting on a bench which has been shoved against a wall in between Ruud and Van Persie, laughing as they lean back against the white plaster. Van Bronckhorst trots by, clad only in his shorts, and Persie throws out a playful leg, trying to trip him up. He is a little bit more successful than he planned, though, and Giovanni goes flying forward awkwardly into Ruud’s chest with a startled yelp.
Ruud, for his part, merely laughs and shoves Giovanni off him so the younger player is now lying sprawled in Edwin’s lap. Giovanni grins and puckers up his lips playfully.
Edwin just giggles in that unique, adorable way of his, and then ruffles Van Bronckhorst’s hair before sending him on his way. Ruud lays his head on Ed’s shoulder and breathes deeply until the signal comes for them to go out onto the pitch.
French Victory
“You were beautiful, you know,” Ruud murmurs in Dutch, grinning wickedly down at the lean body lying beneath him. “Those saves - what on earth are we going to do without you?”
“I can’t imagine,” Edwin replies wryly as Ruud kisses down his neck, eyelids fluttering closed. “You’ll all be in deep shit.”
“Damn right.”
Van Persie comes in at this point, and Ruud can only laugh when instead of blushing and stammering his way back out, the forward grins wolfishly and adds his own kiss to the multitude Ruud has been raining down on Edwin. Ed moans into Robin’s mouth, his head falling back with a satisfying thud onto the bench that Ruud had stretched him out on.
Then Robin walks out again, chuckling to himself, and Ruud looks down into Edwin’s glazed eyes.
“Ja,” he smiles. “Very deep shit.”
Romania
Ruud is bored sitting on the bench, even though they are winning and the crowd is going crazy over the incredible job their young substitutes are doing. He claps and cheers at both goals, of course, but in the interim he is amusing himself in an entirely different manner.
Playing footsies - especially when said feet are in a certain goalkeeper’s lap - is a pleasure he decides he must take advantage of more often. So far the score is five sharp breaths, two long moments of lip-biting, and a few murmured curses. Edwin is leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees to keep Ruud’s ‘activities’ hidden, and his ears are flushed. Ruud presses a little harder, and Edwin jerks, his eyes widening even as he resolutely focuses on the little white ball across the pitch.
“You - are - such a bastard,” he gasps, clenching his fists so hard they turn white, and Ruud feels deliciously evil.
If this were a sport, he’s pretty sure he’d take the Cup.
Turning Point
Dirk is just stepping out of his shower at the hotel when the phone rings, and when he sees from the caller id on his cell phone that it is Edwin, he grins wickedly as he considers all the filthily suggestive answers he could give.
It might be a strange thing to ponder, but being half-naked as he is his free-associating thoughts run rapidly to the brief moment of overwhelming sensation he had once when Edwin leaped on his back to celebrate the end of a victorious match, and they went running together through the crowds, yelling their jubilation to the sky.
For a few minutes there, Dirk was in love - and the feeling has never quite left him. Jealousy would flare up when Ed cuddled with Ruud. Pain would flare up when Ed threw himself into a group of the defenders and grasped Bronckhorst or Heitinga or Boulahrouz, and Dirk would wonder why, except for that one occasion, he could never get Edwin to embrace him instead.
The phone is still ringing. He settles for a self-conscious giggle and then answers it, setting the phone on speaker as he begins to towel himself dry.
“Hi, Sar,” he grins. “What are you doing calling me so late?”
“Kuyt,” Edwin says, his voice low and fast. “Khalid and Sabia lost the baby.”
Dirk’s hands stop moving. A bead of water makes its way down his chest as he stands motionless. “What?”
Edwin sounds eternally weary as he replies. “He left early from training because Sabia went into labor. They lost their daughter. I’m at the hospital now - can you come?”
Dirk doesn’t know what to say. All he can think of, all that is running through his head, is how cruel life could be that while he was lusting after the keeper the defender lost his child.
Eve of Russia
They are fired up, and not just because they need to win to advance. Besides Khalid’s emotional speech on the training pitch, they have other motives - it’s impossible to avoid the newspapers during a tournament, after all, and they have all read the headlines: “Hiddink could start and end van der Sar career.” “Is this the end for Ed?” “Hiddink aims to commit ‘treason’ against Holland.”
Few things can collectively make the squad angry, but attacking their captain is one of them. So when Edwin fires back a day later that he will not give up against ‘Guus,’ there is a chorus of back-slapping and fierce smiles all around. And they all know they want to win it for them - they want to win it for Khalid and Edwin.
Different men, of course, show this desire in different ways. Van Bronckhorst gives Edwin a tight hug around the shoulders before he goes to line up, all casual but eternal affection. Dirk merely stares, longing, and then slaps the keeper’s palms. Van Persie laughs long and loud, giving the others energy, and then bounds away to his place on the bench. Boulahrouz tightens the black cloth around his arm, staring off fixedly into space, his face contorted in a deep frown.
Ruud kisses Edwin hard and fast, sliding his hands up underneath the black shirt and reveling in the touch of palms against hard muscle as Ed grabs the back of his neck and returns the kiss with force.
“Make sure you score for me,” Edwin says as they straighten each other up afterwards, the sound of the raucous crowd drifting through the air. “I don’t want to have any work to do.”
“Of course,” Ruud replies, swaggering to the door. “Come on, we’re Dutch. What could happen?”
The End
Edwin walks into the locker room after giving his usual ever-polite interview, and almost all movement ceases as he stalks over to a bench, ripping off his gloves with a vehemence all the more terrible for its rarity in the keeper who is always calm. He sits down, not looking up at anyone, and several of the men there think Ruud is very brave when he walks behind the seated man and brushes his fingers across the black of Edwin’s broad shoulders, because they all know they should have won. Edwin gave them everything he had, he was brilliance itself - and still, they lost his match.
Van Bronckhorst looks away as he pulls off his shirt. He knows, he knows that the second goal was his fault. He should have been there to stop Torbinski, and he can still see the disbelief on Edwin’s face as he lifted his arms and shouted - what the hell happened? Why weren’t you there?
Edwin reaches down to start untying his shoes, his hair falling down over his face, and slowly the other members of the team start turning and muttering amongst themselves. Ruud steps over the bench and sits at Edwin’s side, resting his arms on his knees and whispering in his friend’s ear.
Edwin does not respond, not then. Nor does he respond when Ruud slings an arm around his shoulder, cupping his cheek, and cradles his head in the crook of his neck.
But then something shifts, and Edwin gets up, staring down wordlessly, his eyes fixed on the floor. He is not sobbing as he did after that match in 2006 (they called it the ‘Battle of Nuremberg’), but somehow this silence is more terrible.
And he walks out of the locker room, probably to go and find his family, to comfort his little girl and the boy whose hair has been dyed Oranje.
The team watches him go. He will never come back.
FIN
This has already been posted in at least two places, so apologies if you've seen it already!