Rio/Edwin fic, set in 2005-2007
Title: Skill Will Get You Nowhere
Rating: R/NC-17
Wordcount: 6,122
Authors: speak_me_fair and aka_centimetre2
Disclaimer: Not ours, not true. Woe!
Summary: Superglue, two-foot tackles, Lord Ruud and cooties: it’s 2005, and Edwin and Rio do not get along. At all. In fact, it’s more than likely they’re going to kill each other before the season’s out - and that's even without everyone trying to help. Also featuring David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, abuse of mobile phones, probably the entire Madrid dressing room, definitely the whole of various United dressing rooms, Petr Cech’s skull fracture, and Edwin’s broken nose in 2007.
"Becks..." Rio was whining, and didn't care, because Jesus God, someone had to take a little bit of this, even if it was down the phone. "Becks, I am gonna kill him."
"Hi there, David, good luck with the game you have in two hours, oh hi Rio, thanks for that, mate," came the deadpan reply.
"No, seriously, I am going to turn around and nut that tosser so hard his teeth come out of his eyeballs, what the fucking fuck has he been doing all these years that he can't SEE THE DAMN DEFENCE?" The last was a kind of howl.
"He's been blinded by your hair." Not even an attempt at humour, and Rio was very inclined to stick needles into the phone just to see if Becks would feel it. "Give it time, f'heaven's sake, the man's just arrived an' you're hardly the easiest t'get along with on th'field, mate."
"But he's supposed t'be good," Rio yowled. "And 'e's a fucking smug bastard too, he knows he'll get away with it and 'e doesn't fucking care!"
"You could always try, oh, I dunno, calling for the ball instead of assumin' telepathy - oh, for - " An extended period of cackling and lewd French followed as Zizou apparently stole the phone, and Rio pouted at no one in particular. Fucking hell.
"Also you are too busy hating the Dutchman for to nut Edwin," Zizou finished up, and Rio stared at the phone in disbelief, because what?
"Uh. Zizou? Yeah, er, they're both kind of Dutch...." he started, and was handed back to the not-so-wonderful sound of Beck's squeaky giggle as Zidane announced to the world (and oh fuck, that meant he'd probably been broadcast to the Madrid dressing room, just great) that Rio had a thing for nutting the Dutch.
"I do not - " He gave up, slumping back in the empty dressing room and cricking his neck in the process. "I swear, mate, he and Lord Van Fucking Ruud are gonna have my balls f'breakfast - "
"I thought that is what you are wanting - "
"Ziz, GIVE ME THE PHONE BACK." A lot of scuffling ensued, and then a shrill beep that carved out a crater in Rio's eardrums before the connection went dead and Rio was left feeling very put-upon indeed.
"Well, fuck you all," he said nastily to the silent room. "Sideways. With a....somethin' pointy an' serrated."
"Serrated is good?"
Oh God oh God oh God, Cris. No. Just no with a side order of hell no and NO.
"Yeah, 's great, go tell Ruud you think his playin's serrated," Rio said to the ceiling.
"Okay!" Cris chirped, and Rio leapt off the bench in a brilliantly undignified manner to stop the silly recent-teen from actually going and doing it, because he so would.
"No?" Cris squeaked from the headlock. "But Ruud like being told he is good - "
"One, it's not good, and two, I know, and three, you're not gonna give him th'satisfaction, least of all from me," Rio grumbled as he wound a noogie into Cris's hair.
"Okay. Hey, by the way, Edwin say you pisshead." Cris's grin was abnormally wide. "He say make sure to tell you."
"Did he now," Rio said in tones worrying enough to at least make Cris blink, even if they probably wouldn't give anyone else a brief pause for what passed for thought. "And did Edwin say why I am --" oh God, the speech patterns were contagious -- "pisshead?"
"Yep!"
Rio waited. And waited. "Yep what, Cris?"
"He say ask him!" Cris said gleefully, and wriggled out from under Rio's hand.
Rio contemplated two-foot-tackling him and anyone who happened to get in his way, but by the time he got out to the sweltering training pitch he was actually trying to consider how to get back at the fucking Dutchies properly - in a highly public manner, of course, so even loony Zizou would hear about it.
Sure enough, Ruud and Edwin were warming up together - they weren't exactly a clique, but the fact that no one else in the club seemed to speak Dutch (and sometimes Rio wasn't even sure it was that) meant they were no doubt getting away with truly epic amounts of shit.
Rio was saving up releasing a full Peckham rant on them. That would be his last resort.
"Want me to hold yer ankles in the press?" Oh God bless Ryan, lovely, oblivious Ryan who thought everything was wonderful as long as they were in the running for a single bloody trophy.
"Yeah," Rio said. "Yeah, thanks, mate." He tuned out Ryan's gentle chatter about how well the new boys were working out, and how this might be their year again, and all the shit about that'd be great, Rio, yeah? I reckon we c'd do it... and wished that he could stop looking over at the sodding Dutch and their sodding ability to get along with each other, because he knew one thing pretty well. Edwin was going to win this one, and it didn't matter what he knew. The fucking Dutch bastard was going to come out of the whole mess looking like the good guy, and Rio looking like the prat.
And it wasn't on.
He didn't like the feeling of being taken for granted. The fact that he was bloody good at his job and just got on with things didn't mean Edwin deserved better just for being new, or even for finally 'fixing' things after Roy and Tim. He liked Tim, for fuck's sake. And Tim didn't crash into him.
"Fucker," he snarled under his breath, as though it would make him feel better, and flapped off Giggsy's happily confused gaze. "Not you, mate."
"Talking to yourself again?" Ruud sniggered, and his sweaty, fiercely-stubbled head hovered gleefully above Rio's. "I suppose it's for the best. No one else can understand you."
"Ruud, and wow your breath's smelling gorgeous today, go and piss up a rope," Rio said without even having to think about it.
"I see, so the only vocabulary you know how to pronounce is vulgar," Ruud grinned murderously. "How nice."
"It's okay," Ed's high-pitched giggle broke in, and now Rio was looking up at two silly Dutch faces and really, really starting to hate his day. "Even if he could speak, you can't understand him on the pitch."
"Or you're just deaf," Rio sniffed back, choosing his words really rather carefully. "Shithead."
"Oh." Edwin managed to look worried even upside down and inverted. "You are angry, I was thinking more...banter."
"And I'm gonna check on Wayne, or maybe Outer Mongolia," said Ryan in a hurry.
"You knocked me over!" Rio yelled, niceness be damned. "Fuck's sake, you went into me back! I said move --"
"No, I say move --"
"I'm your fucking last call, mate --"
"And you are bad at it, " Edwin said firmly.
"What!" Rio yelped, sitting up and tugging himself violently up out of the press. "Who th'fuck d'you think you - "
"A very good goalkeeper," Edwin said, his hands on his hips and glowering down at Rio from his three-inch advantage. "My box," he continued, pointing vaguely out towards the field. "My rules."
Ruud leaned around him like a Punch and Judy puppet, grinning maniacally. "He's lovely when he's mad, isn't he?" he crooned, and Rio wasn't sure exactly who he was referring to, because what the fuck?
"Ruud," Edwin said, running his hand over his face very slowly, "go away. Go away now. Go and be a striker and help Ryan in Outer Mongolia. Go and chat up Cris. Go away."
Rio giggled, despite himself, and got a joint look of surprise from the Dutchmen.
"But I'm having fuuuun. .." Ruud singsonged, and to Rio's surprise, Edwin turned on him.
"Yes, Ruud, and you will have a lot of fun when all your goals are made up for by the fact there is no-one to keep out the opposition, for sure!"
"You can keep the balls in my goal anytime, darling," Ruud drawled as he sauntered away. "Treat Rio nice, he's got no one else willing to do it."
"What the hell d'you think I've been tryin' t'do, eh?" Rio spluttered, shoving at Ed and almost meaning it. "You've heard what bloody Eric's been tellin' ya, I know y'ain't stupid - well, so I've been told - what th'fuck is wrong that y'keep making a fool out of me?"
Edwin's eyes narrowed into a smirk. "What," he said mildly, "you afraid I have cooties?"
Rio blinked at him. "Er, what? No? What?" In some world, probably Ed's, that made sense. In Rio's, which was apparently the last bastion of normality, it made no sense at all.
Ed shrugged. "Is just a little bump," he said critically. "We'll work it out. You really such a little boy that you're afraid of bruises from a stray elbow? We get the ball out. No problem."
"Well that's just great, Edwin, but you're forgettin' something." Off Edwin's confused look, Rio found it within himself to explain. "I get to be thumped six ways from Sunday and grin about it. So they don' thump you. An' if you're busy doin' th'same from behind, it's kind of....impossible. Okay? Not cooties, just I like walking, man!"
Edwin's eyebrows rose. "You're saying you get up in my face in the box to protect me?"
Rio resisted the urge to let his head fall into his hands. "I'm a bloody defender, mate, what th'hell did you think I was doing?"
"Do I look like I need protecting, then?" Ed said, with a hard sense of incredulous mirth.
Rio felt his hands, of their own volition, want to flail at the sheer ridiculousness of this conversation.
"No," he said slowly. "No, I don'. But it is. My. Job." You stupid fucker, he wanted to add.
"Well, then you should feel glad to have something taken off your to-do list," Ed said coolly, and Rio's mouth actually did drop open. "Feel free to refocus your energies. Not that you need to, of course," Ed added, the almost-but-maybe-not rudeness obvious in his voice.
"Right," Rio said grimly. "Fine. I'll do that." And on your own stupid thick Dutch head be it, he managed not to say.
They managed to play up to Fergie and the team and everything anyone could want in front of the world and the cameras, and even managed to pretend to get on a few times, through Ruud leaving, through Cris's fiasco of a hotel night, through everything right up until --
"ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME INTO THE GUY WHO CAUSED THE NEXT CECH?" Rio screamed as the news came through.
"What?" Edwin said, looking genuinely bewildered, before his expression cleared and he frowned over his seat at Rio on the team bus. "Oh, for god's sake. That was a freak accident, you really think having two defenders on top of him instead of one would have helped?"
Rio stared at him, mouth open and about to deliver chapter and Peckham verse, and then Cris, unusually, hit Fletch so hard over the side of the head that he fell into the aisle, and it all got lost in a scuffle of trying to stop someone actually killing someone else before they got onto the pitch.
Ed ended up out of his seat and pressed up against a window, and Rio perched on top of the stereo and wishing he could crawl into a luggage compartment as the slap-fight grew and grew - but he allowed himself a small moment of private victory, because Ed's face was pinched and pale, and even a real dunce would be able to tell he'd been shocked.
See how he feels in this game, Rio thought spitefully, even as he planned to throw a few elbows himself, just to make sure Edwin knew he was there.
It didn't quite work like that.
Rio was warned and warned and warned, because even the worst of referees knew that the defenders were on their uppers now, and finally got carded after a display of not-actually-tackling that should have got him sent off, whereupon Ryan started screaming at the ref, and wasn't that just the fucking kicker?
Okay, he thought, standing back. Okay, man, you are losing it. You are really fucking losing it. And he was, because the next boot that went in, and it would be Ed, and his fault, because he wasn't doing his job, and Jesus Christ he wanted to kill someone.
The worst was that it actually felt good. It actually felt good to plant studs - studs, yeah, those things, those fucking huge spikes - into someone's leg as long as he could look back and make sure his keeper was still standing. He was liable to break bones during those next few games, all in the name of a man who was comatose and wouldn't give a damn - because yes, that was how he justified it to himself. It was not because of Edwin, it was because he was a defender and he had a keeper to defend, and because there was a poor bugger lying in a hospital with a cracked skull who deserved it.
"Rio." Becks phoned him that time, oddly quiet. "Rio, mate, you've gotta ease off. 've been watching. You gotta. Ok? You're gonna end up on a five match ban, you don't watch out."
"I know." He did know, but --"I know, but what if --"
"If you're not there, you can't do nothin', right? So stand back a bit and make sure you are."
Golden, California-kissed Becks, taking the time as he always had.
"What's your defence like?" Rio asked bitterly.
"Crap," was the honest response. "So don't join 'em."
It passed, eventually. Cech went home, came back to training, finally came back for Chelsea and they bristled with all their characteristic cocky menace again, and after a bollocking from the fifth different referee in a month Rio finally shut his mouth and kept his feet on the ground. Ed noticed - he would - and teased him mercilessly for it. Where'd your fire go, Rio, thought you liked red -
"Yeah?" he finally snapped once, and he actually raised his unlaced boot in his hand as though he was about to attack with it, the rage hissing out through his teeth. "Why don' we try it out on you, then?"
"O-kaaaay..." Ed said, and actually had the gall to sound surprised. "Right, hang on, you're still a fuck-up about Petr?"
"Fucked up," Rio said tiredly and automatically, because correcting people who were mostly-Vida was by now second nature, and tried to grin. "Yeah. Guess I am. Ask anyone here, we all are 'cept you...."
"Why should I be?" Ed said, with a careless little shrug and clearly lying his head off about the idea that he didn't care. "I get hit in the face, I get hit in the face. I make my living throwing myself in the air and then falling head-first into the ground, Rio," he added dryly, leaning down to lace up his own boots. "I knock you over, same thing.
"Still," he smirked, "thanks for your - concern, ja?"
"Concern for those stupid brain cells o'yours, you're clearly losing them in the thousands every week," Rio groused.
"Aw, he DOES care!" Ed announced to the dressing-room, grabbing Rio in a very sweaty hug, and was met with a chorus of not-caring-at-all, other than Vida, who peered at them both interestedly.
"Yes?" he said to them both. "Is why he tries killing people first. Is love," he said proudly.
"Oh my God," said Rio.
"Oh," said Ed.
"Vida," said Ryan with a commendably straight face, "great use of English, mate."
Ed grinned down at Rio, who was suddenly making a very concerted attempt to escape. "Cooties?" he cackled, and planted a horribly wet kiss on Rio's cheek.
Rio decided that the only avenue left open to him was to yowl, stick a knee in Edwin's stomach, and then sit in his seat determinedly not laughing as Ed wheezed and choked his way through the gaffer's team talk. He wasn't sure if he quite managed to pull off his innocent look, but it was the effort that counted.
He didn't think anyone apart from the gaffer was falling for it, but there it was -- anything was better than the horrible avuncular pep talk about how nice it was to see everyone getting on.
The attempted kiss was more than enough to get them throwing elbows at each other again, because it felt like a routine now, something that mattered, something that kept them angry and focussed and calculating. Ed added an occasional bounce of a ball off the back of Rio's head during training, so Rio went about putting glue in the fingertips of Ed's gloves.
Five deflated balls, three pairs of gloves, and a hospital trip later, Albert the kitman took them aside and warned them in no uncertain terms that even the boss couldn't be that clueless, which was a useful thing to know given they'd progressed to stealing each other's car keys and the prospect of chasing each other all over Carrington in the middle of the night once everyone else had gone home wasn't very appealing.
Well. Mostly not. In some respects, the idea of that particular game was really pretty damn good, but it also wasn't quite what Rio was up for yet, so no.
The next phone call to Becks involved a hell of a lot of squeaky giggling and one hoot of 'KNEW IT!' which did nothing at all for Rio's patience or his ability to pretend everything was normal.
"Wha'?"
"Rio." Becks's giggle was almost painfully high-pitched. "You two haven't smashed into each other for weeks."
"Dunno what you mean," Rio said sniffily.
"Fuck off and stop acting stupid. You've found yourself a playmate!"
"You fuck off," Rio said, feeling petulant and annoyed with everyone and everything, especially himself. "Got Spurs t'morrow, hang up th'phone."
"Yeah, Becks, nice t'talk t'you, Becks, hope you're not dyin' of boredom in cloudy, hazy, asphalt-jungly LA, Becks - "
"Hope you are," Rio said grumpily, and did hang up, but not before Becks had said, suddenly and quickly serious, "Rio, talk t'im."
He got his usual adrenaline shakes that night, and woke up feeling grumpy and tired, racing through his warm-up to make himself alert. He didn't see Ed until they were both in the tunnel and listening to the fanfare, which was when he reached out and poked Ed in the ribs.
"Oi," he said grumpily, quite horrified at what he was doing. "Wanna speak t'you after."
"About what you did to my boxers?" Ed sniggered meanly back, and Rio was torn between indignant denial and horrendously awful and inconvenient curiosity.
"Er, no, but about that?" He jerked his head at Cris and Wazza, who were slanting looks at each other and trying not to laugh.
"Oh I don't want to think, " Ed moaned.
"But you so will," Rio said smugly, and did his little jump as he touched the pitch with more than usual zest.
The match was fucking brilliant. They'd beaten Watford 4-0 the week before, but to put that many goals past a team that was truly worth it was brilliant, and the first time it had happened all season. Rio felt powerful and steady in the cold air, confident in dealing with Berbatov, the slide of grass during the breakup of counterattacks seamless with Vida, who was just starting to think like Rio did with every single run, and when Ed made that save - fucking hell but it was hard, really hard, not to run over and pull him to his feet, to try and wipe that smug grin off of his face because only he wanted to see it.
So it didn't make much sense, really. It didn't make sense that Keane got away from him, and it didn't make sense to turn and run across and see Ed unconscious on the grass, with a hand over his bloody face and one knee sticking up like a sad sentinel.
Rio knew, course he knew, about how it felt when all the blood went right the hell out of your head and into someplace else, and he knew how it felt when it did that because something hurt so much you couldn't breathe, and he knew about blind panic, but he'd never before felt blood go out of his face and to nowhere while his heart slammed hard enough to pump it around six Rios at once.
He didn't know what he'd shouted, and never got up the courage to ask, but even Keane moved away, blanched, stopped pretending he was concerned and just fucked off, which was probably good because Rio was wondering just what it would take to rip someone's arm off, right then and there.
He didn't even get to see Ed as the medics clustered around him, and that hurt, it hurt so much when Sheasy grabbed his elbow and shoved him towards the touchline, because who the fuck would dare ask him to do something, anything now -
Except it was the gaffer. Which meant yes, he had to walk over on legs made of cold rubber, and had to actually concentrate on something, like the green shirt in his hands, and no, this was wrong -
-- and then, thank God, thank God, it wasn't his, it was Sheasy's call after all, because all he could think of was the way JT had taken the gloves that day and poured sweat out of them before putting them on his hands, deliberate choosing of gloves-not-his to wear, and Rio really didn't think he could have done that, he didn't think he could --
"Get on the pitch, laddie," said Fergie's familiar whiskey-voice in his ear, and oh don't let that be understanding or sympathy he could hear, because he would go under.
Edwin was at least upright - Rio thanked whatever heavens were watching - and walking, reaching a hand out to Sheasy, his head lolling on his neck like that time he and Ruud had gotten drunk and come round to Rio's at four in the morning just to annoy him. Rio watched him all the way off the pitch, so taut he thought his body would just unwind and spring out a final burst of desperation before he crumpled, and waited in vain for a look of his own as the group surrounding the bloodied keeper disappeared down the tunnel.
So he turned back, and tried to do his job, and failed miserably. It seemed appropriate, really. He couldn't fathom doing a good job for the wrong person.
"You OK?" Becks asked that night, and Rio couldn't even say anything, too choked up with all the need to go and see Ed and kill fucking Keane and resign from ever defending anyone ever again and maybe get very drunk and --
"Yeah, I never was," got filled in for him, and what? Becks hadn't given a damn about their keepers, hadn't -- and oh. Oh. Iker, of course, Iker who kept out more goals than anyone even when the other side scored three, because Madrid's defence were about as useful as a wet paper tissue and had a tendency to run up to try and score at the other end. Iker, who screamed "Daviiiiiiiiid," when he knew no-one else was going to even try and get back to him.
"I don' - " he tried, and had to stop. "Becks, I didn' - tell him. An' now 'e's - "
"Rio, stop bloody acting like you're fucking Atlas," Becks said gently, and Rio blinked, having to drag his brain back to that higher plane. "He's at least as scared 'syou are."
Rio did get drunk in the end, downing his third or fourth or fifth pint sometime after midnight and not having rehydrated properly in his misery, so when he lurched through the hospital lobby he was so surprised that they let him in that he nearly snogged the nearest nurse. He spent a good deal of time reading the chart hanging outside Ed's darkened room, swaying genially, because someone like him who obviously knew what they were doing had to make sure he was being taken care of, 'ey.
Even in near-blackout, Ed looked impressively horrible, and very, very patched-up, which didn't do one hell of a lot for Rio's unsteadiness. He did a fair job of getting over to the side of the bed quietly, though, which he was chalking up as one for his own home team right up until he crashed into the chair and tried to move it across the floor, and set up a screeching noise like the worst electric guitar on feedback ever allowed on speaker.
Ed didn't move, and oh hey, drugs. Good drugs, they better be the best drugs, and --
"Sorry," Rio croaked out, not sure why, but feeling it all the way through. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean --" and then the words were spilling out of him, a little slurred and very scared. "Should have been there, said I would be, damnit, Ed, you don't listen, you should've waited, was tryin' t'keep Keane reined in, I dunno what happened, didn' mean t' -- 'm sorry --"
His head felt very, very heavy, and it didn't want to stay upright, and the bed was very close, and he was only going to put it down for a minute....
Ed's hand fumbled annoyingly at the back of his neck. "Well they did all tell me you're thick," he said gently, and Rio was not crying, he was just keeping quiet so he didn't say anything else stupid while Ed's hand got heavier on the back of his head, and his breathing evened out, and under the hospital smells and the horrible blankets, he was very much Ed, and that was fine, it was all fine, and if he put up his own hand to hang on to Ed's clammy fingers, that was fine too, because it just meant they weren't on his neck any more, and. It was fine.
He woke up before Ed, his head throbbing like an angry warlord had been let loose inside it with an axe, and moaned quite pathetically as he tried to un-crack his limbs from the horrible position they'd settled in, in the equally horrible chair.
In the pre-dawn light Ed's face was purple and black for a few inches all around his nose, tiny dabs of blood still visible on his chin and in his eyebrows. Rio would have reached out and brushed some of it away, but waking him was an impossible thought as he hunched in on himself and tried not to be sick.
He couldn't let Ed see him this way, couldn't face up to that tiny moment of acknowledgment, the idea that everything would be different, that he'd never go to training or step onto the pitch or bend over to touch his toes in the tunnel and feel the same way again. He couldn't do that here. Not here.
He stumbled out into the corridor, feeling disorientated and ill and like he needed a rewind or five gallons of energy drink or maybe just to fall into a swimming pool and let something soak in, when his phone announced that he had fifteen new messages, and crap, none of that was going to be good.
"IF HE'S REALLY HURT I WILL --" Ruud.
"FERDINAND WHERE WERE YOU SAW THE --"
"REPLAYS AND YOU --"
"WILL YOU PICK UP THE --"
"FERDINAND FOR FUCK'S SAKE JUST --"
"Kind of got a bollocking from Becks, look, just call me, I won't --"
"RIO ANSWER YOUR GODDAMNED PHONE --"
"Oh for fuck's SAKE --"
Rio gave up on the rest, and just pressed redial.
"WELL IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME - "
"Ruud," Rio whimpered, curling his shoulder into a wall and making little gestures pleading for calm to nobody, "shh. Shh. Please. 'M beggin' you."
"Where is he?"
"Hospi'al. 'M there now. He's sleepin'. Spoke t'me last night, looks a fright." He swallowed hard. "Looks really 'orrible, Ruud, 'is face."
"And? God's sake, man."
Rio shrugged, hunching into his jacket, then realized that Ruud was probably expecting an answer out loud. "C'ncussion. Broken nose. Say they'll let 'im home later t'day."
Ruud's breathing in was audible. "Okay. Okay. Shit, it looked a lot worse on the screen. Sorry I shouted --"
"A lot," Rio couldn't help saying.
"Yeah, a lot, what do you want, blood?"
"Think 've had 'nough of that, thanks," Rio said on a giggle, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone, and then Ruud said in a completely different tone of voice, "Ferdinand?"
"Yeah?" Rio was almost curious.
"Go to bed," Ruud said irritably, and hung up.
For what was probably the first and hopefully the last time, he followed Ruud's advice and passed out on his sofa at home, not even bothering to undress, and woke up several hours later smelling and feeling completely wretched. An hour after that, curled up with a hot drink and the most crap telly he could find, he finally got around to checking on a new slew of texts, most of them from United physios wondering why the hell he'd missed training. He couldn't give a damn.
The last, however, was short and to the point and far, far too intriguing.
Head hurts. Like a whatever. Come talk.
Thinking that driving was probably going to be a quick way to getting his face all over the papers for all the wrong reasons, Rio took a cab.
He quickly found that this was also a way to probably getting his face in the tabloids for all the wrong reasons, although in this case it was going to be because he had beaten a cabdriver to death with his own steering wheel for not shutting the fuck up.
After all that, Alderley Edge felt almost too quiet, too controlled, too neat for what had happened. It was a long trudge up the driveway, and an even longer time before he managed to ring the bell and a raspy voice, barely recognizable, shouted that it was open.
Ed was on the sofa under a blanket, his head tilted back towards the ceiling as though keeping it at a certain angle would make the swelling go away. "Sorry," he said thickly. "Blood keeps - " He stopped and swallowed as Rio stood shuffling in the middle of the carpet, his hands in his pockets. " - going down m'throat every once in a while. Fucking annoying."
"Er," Rio said, in a grand moment of less-than-helpful, "yeah?"
Ed snorted, and then said in surprised complaint, "Ow."
"Serves you right for laughing at me," Rio said automatically, and it was so easy to go back to this, except. Except. Ed's hand on his neck, and Becks telling him he wasn't Atlas, and Ruud worried, and Becks had bollocked out Ruud, how the fuck had he known to do that, and Ruud's voice had changed and Ed had texted and -- "I think I got concussion too," he said mournfully, and sat down with a protest of air on the nearest armchair.
"Serves you right," Ed sighed, and let his arm dangle over the edge of the sofa, his hand stretched towards Rio as though expecting him to hold it. "You drink too much."
Rio stared and blinked. Stared at the hand. Stared at Ed a bit more, and cleared his throat. "Ruud's been on my case all day," he said, making sure to sound disgruntled. "Couldn't ya have just picked up y'self?"
"I did." Ed's hand didn't lower like it was supposed to. "Rio. You are being. A git. I know when you're scared you are a complete git --"
"Hey!"
"-- but seriously, this is getting very stupid. Also, we are in a position where almost everybody thinks they are helping, and nice though their concern is, I would very much like them to stop. You?"
"....yeah," Rio admitted, and slid out of the chair to take Ed's hand. "Yeah. Fuckin' would, yeah. Sorry."
"I'll apologise for Ruud if you take on Becks," Ed said dryly, and Rio sniggered.
"No way, man."
Ed smirked again and slowly made sure their fingers were intertwined. "This is awkward," he said, his puffy eyes half-closed. "Kissing you would really hurt. Not fair."
Some very, very unholy and brilliant thoughts occurred to Rio, and he grinned, not caring how mad he probably looked. "Really not," he agreed. "Cos, y'know? I can kiss you. Anywhere 'cept the face."
Ed stared at him, and then shook with laugher, trying not to let any of it escape through his battered nose and mouth. "Godver, Rio, you --"
"I'm awesome, yeah," Rio said happily. "So so awesome..."
He started with Ed's hand, since it was there, and then went straight on to finding out just how true it was about endorphins and pain.
Turned out it was all spot on. If a bit messy.
"You've made me bleed, y'fucker," Ed gasped at one point, but the facts that he couldn't feel it and that it just made him tilt his head back further so Rio had better access to his neck made Rio really not care.
His hands were in Rio's hair, tracing the shape of his ear, stroking at the back of his neck like and not-like the night before, making him arch and curl and most of all try to stop his head spinning at the idea that this was actually happening.
"Not like y'haven' bled on me b'fore," Rio mumbled, and felt Ed laugh, because of course he had, that was what they did, and he was starting to get it, finally, how it wasn't all on him and damn, damn, they were bloody brilliant, weren't they, them together, why should this be any different?
"You're paying for the nosejob if you get it out of place," Ed sniggered, and grabbed Rio's face upwards to actually kiss him - Rio could feel chapped lips and hot bruises before Ed pulled away with a hiss of discomfort, but he didn't give a damn.
"Payback for your elbow in m'eye that one time," he said smugly, and Ed swatted him up the back of the head.
They were good at it, in the end, a bit one-sided (but it wouldn't always be, Rio knew), and good. They knew each other well, after all, had patched each other up desultorily after training, not caring except to wrap a bandage around something that would hurt worse later if they didn't, or stick tape over a cut to save everyone time, and hell, yeah, of course everyone had known before them, how could they not? They'd said it and shown it and given away what they wanted a thousand times, and maybe Rio hadn't known just what Ed's shout sounded like when he finally came, and maybe Ed hadn't known that Rio tended to laugh when he was done, but they still almost, sort of, just about knew, and none of it was new.
"They're all gonna laugh," Rio said some time later, with his nose in Ed's hair and his arms limp around him. "Smug bastards."
"Yeah. Ruud's won fifty pounds off of this," Ed said mournfully. "Git."
Rio's eyes widened. "On what? That we'd - ?"
"No, on who came first. The bugger's been trying to set us up for months."
"What!" Rio hadn't made a squawk like that even when he'd discovered an anthill in his locker during the prank wars of the previous season.
Ed laughed, and it sounded painful. "Oh yeah."
"Can I kill him?" Rio asked a bit sleepily, because what rest he'd got on the sofa just wasn't as inviting as the idea of sleeping here, and now, and all tangled up in familiar, bloody marvellous sex-and-Ed smells.
"Next game, Rio," Ed said, and goddamnit if that didn't sound fond. "Kill him by stopping him scoring."
"Think I c'n?"
"Think we can," Ed said, and put a sloppy sort-of-kiss on his arm. "Yeah. I'll bet you that. We can."
FIN
Rating: R/NC-17
Wordcount: 6,122
Authors: speak_me_fair and aka_centimetre2
Disclaimer: Not ours, not true. Woe!
Summary: Superglue, two-foot tackles, Lord Ruud and cooties: it’s 2005, and Edwin and Rio do not get along. At all. In fact, it’s more than likely they’re going to kill each other before the season’s out - and that's even without everyone trying to help. Also featuring David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy, abuse of mobile phones, probably the entire Madrid dressing room, definitely the whole of various United dressing rooms, Petr Cech’s skull fracture, and Edwin’s broken nose in 2007.
"Becks..." Rio was whining, and didn't care, because Jesus God, someone had to take a little bit of this, even if it was down the phone. "Becks, I am gonna kill him."
"Hi there, David, good luck with the game you have in two hours, oh hi Rio, thanks for that, mate," came the deadpan reply.
"No, seriously, I am going to turn around and nut that tosser so hard his teeth come out of his eyeballs, what the fucking fuck has he been doing all these years that he can't SEE THE DAMN DEFENCE?" The last was a kind of howl.
"He's been blinded by your hair." Not even an attempt at humour, and Rio was very inclined to stick needles into the phone just to see if Becks would feel it. "Give it time, f'heaven's sake, the man's just arrived an' you're hardly the easiest t'get along with on th'field, mate."
"But he's supposed t'be good," Rio yowled. "And 'e's a fucking smug bastard too, he knows he'll get away with it and 'e doesn't fucking care!"
"You could always try, oh, I dunno, calling for the ball instead of assumin' telepathy - oh, for - " An extended period of cackling and lewd French followed as Zizou apparently stole the phone, and Rio pouted at no one in particular. Fucking hell.
"Also you are too busy hating the Dutchman for to nut Edwin," Zizou finished up, and Rio stared at the phone in disbelief, because what?
"Uh. Zizou? Yeah, er, they're both kind of Dutch...." he started, and was handed back to the not-so-wonderful sound of Beck's squeaky giggle as Zidane announced to the world (and oh fuck, that meant he'd probably been broadcast to the Madrid dressing room, just great) that Rio had a thing for nutting the Dutch.
"I do not - " He gave up, slumping back in the empty dressing room and cricking his neck in the process. "I swear, mate, he and Lord Van Fucking Ruud are gonna have my balls f'breakfast - "
"I thought that is what you are wanting - "
"Ziz, GIVE ME THE PHONE BACK." A lot of scuffling ensued, and then a shrill beep that carved out a crater in Rio's eardrums before the connection went dead and Rio was left feeling very put-upon indeed.
"Well, fuck you all," he said nastily to the silent room. "Sideways. With a....somethin' pointy an' serrated."
"Serrated is good?"
Oh God oh God oh God, Cris. No. Just no with a side order of hell no and NO.
"Yeah, 's great, go tell Ruud you think his playin's serrated," Rio said to the ceiling.
"Okay!" Cris chirped, and Rio leapt off the bench in a brilliantly undignified manner to stop the silly recent-teen from actually going and doing it, because he so would.
"No?" Cris squeaked from the headlock. "But Ruud like being told he is good - "
"One, it's not good, and two, I know, and three, you're not gonna give him th'satisfaction, least of all from me," Rio grumbled as he wound a noogie into Cris's hair.
"Okay. Hey, by the way, Edwin say you pisshead." Cris's grin was abnormally wide. "He say make sure to tell you."
"Did he now," Rio said in tones worrying enough to at least make Cris blink, even if they probably wouldn't give anyone else a brief pause for what passed for thought. "And did Edwin say why I am --" oh God, the speech patterns were contagious -- "pisshead?"
"Yep!"
Rio waited. And waited. "Yep what, Cris?"
"He say ask him!" Cris said gleefully, and wriggled out from under Rio's hand.
Rio contemplated two-foot-tackling him and anyone who happened to get in his way, but by the time he got out to the sweltering training pitch he was actually trying to consider how to get back at the fucking Dutchies properly - in a highly public manner, of course, so even loony Zizou would hear about it.
Sure enough, Ruud and Edwin were warming up together - they weren't exactly a clique, but the fact that no one else in the club seemed to speak Dutch (and sometimes Rio wasn't even sure it was that) meant they were no doubt getting away with truly epic amounts of shit.
Rio was saving up releasing a full Peckham rant on them. That would be his last resort.
"Want me to hold yer ankles in the press?" Oh God bless Ryan, lovely, oblivious Ryan who thought everything was wonderful as long as they were in the running for a single bloody trophy.
"Yeah," Rio said. "Yeah, thanks, mate." He tuned out Ryan's gentle chatter about how well the new boys were working out, and how this might be their year again, and all the shit about that'd be great, Rio, yeah? I reckon we c'd do it... and wished that he could stop looking over at the sodding Dutch and their sodding ability to get along with each other, because he knew one thing pretty well. Edwin was going to win this one, and it didn't matter what he knew. The fucking Dutch bastard was going to come out of the whole mess looking like the good guy, and Rio looking like the prat.
And it wasn't on.
He didn't like the feeling of being taken for granted. The fact that he was bloody good at his job and just got on with things didn't mean Edwin deserved better just for being new, or even for finally 'fixing' things after Roy and Tim. He liked Tim, for fuck's sake. And Tim didn't crash into him.
"Fucker," he snarled under his breath, as though it would make him feel better, and flapped off Giggsy's happily confused gaze. "Not you, mate."
"Talking to yourself again?" Ruud sniggered, and his sweaty, fiercely-stubbled head hovered gleefully above Rio's. "I suppose it's for the best. No one else can understand you."
"Ruud, and wow your breath's smelling gorgeous today, go and piss up a rope," Rio said without even having to think about it.
"I see, so the only vocabulary you know how to pronounce is vulgar," Ruud grinned murderously. "How nice."
"It's okay," Ed's high-pitched giggle broke in, and now Rio was looking up at two silly Dutch faces and really, really starting to hate his day. "Even if he could speak, you can't understand him on the pitch."
"Or you're just deaf," Rio sniffed back, choosing his words really rather carefully. "Shithead."
"Oh." Edwin managed to look worried even upside down and inverted. "You are angry, I was thinking more...banter."
"And I'm gonna check on Wayne, or maybe Outer Mongolia," said Ryan in a hurry.
"You knocked me over!" Rio yelled, niceness be damned. "Fuck's sake, you went into me back! I said move --"
"No, I say move --"
"I'm your fucking last call, mate --"
"And you are bad at it, " Edwin said firmly.
"What!" Rio yelped, sitting up and tugging himself violently up out of the press. "Who th'fuck d'you think you - "
"A very good goalkeeper," Edwin said, his hands on his hips and glowering down at Rio from his three-inch advantage. "My box," he continued, pointing vaguely out towards the field. "My rules."
Ruud leaned around him like a Punch and Judy puppet, grinning maniacally. "He's lovely when he's mad, isn't he?" he crooned, and Rio wasn't sure exactly who he was referring to, because what the fuck?
"Ruud," Edwin said, running his hand over his face very slowly, "go away. Go away now. Go and be a striker and help Ryan in Outer Mongolia. Go and chat up Cris. Go away."
Rio giggled, despite himself, and got a joint look of surprise from the Dutchmen.
"But I'm having fuuuun. .." Ruud singsonged, and to Rio's surprise, Edwin turned on him.
"Yes, Ruud, and you will have a lot of fun when all your goals are made up for by the fact there is no-one to keep out the opposition, for sure!"
"You can keep the balls in my goal anytime, darling," Ruud drawled as he sauntered away. "Treat Rio nice, he's got no one else willing to do it."
"What the hell d'you think I've been tryin' t'do, eh?" Rio spluttered, shoving at Ed and almost meaning it. "You've heard what bloody Eric's been tellin' ya, I know y'ain't stupid - well, so I've been told - what th'fuck is wrong that y'keep making a fool out of me?"
Edwin's eyes narrowed into a smirk. "What," he said mildly, "you afraid I have cooties?"
Rio blinked at him. "Er, what? No? What?" In some world, probably Ed's, that made sense. In Rio's, which was apparently the last bastion of normality, it made no sense at all.
Ed shrugged. "Is just a little bump," he said critically. "We'll work it out. You really such a little boy that you're afraid of bruises from a stray elbow? We get the ball out. No problem."
"Well that's just great, Edwin, but you're forgettin' something." Off Edwin's confused look, Rio found it within himself to explain. "I get to be thumped six ways from Sunday and grin about it. So they don' thump you. An' if you're busy doin' th'same from behind, it's kind of....impossible. Okay? Not cooties, just I like walking, man!"
Edwin's eyebrows rose. "You're saying you get up in my face in the box to protect me?"
Rio resisted the urge to let his head fall into his hands. "I'm a bloody defender, mate, what th'hell did you think I was doing?"
"Do I look like I need protecting, then?" Ed said, with a hard sense of incredulous mirth.
Rio felt his hands, of their own volition, want to flail at the sheer ridiculousness of this conversation.
"No," he said slowly. "No, I don'. But it is. My. Job." You stupid fucker, he wanted to add.
"Well, then you should feel glad to have something taken off your to-do list," Ed said coolly, and Rio's mouth actually did drop open. "Feel free to refocus your energies. Not that you need to, of course," Ed added, the almost-but-maybe-not rudeness obvious in his voice.
"Right," Rio said grimly. "Fine. I'll do that." And on your own stupid thick Dutch head be it, he managed not to say.
They managed to play up to Fergie and the team and everything anyone could want in front of the world and the cameras, and even managed to pretend to get on a few times, through Ruud leaving, through Cris's fiasco of a hotel night, through everything right up until --
"ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME INTO THE GUY WHO CAUSED THE NEXT CECH?" Rio screamed as the news came through.
"What?" Edwin said, looking genuinely bewildered, before his expression cleared and he frowned over his seat at Rio on the team bus. "Oh, for god's sake. That was a freak accident, you really think having two defenders on top of him instead of one would have helped?"
Rio stared at him, mouth open and about to deliver chapter and Peckham verse, and then Cris, unusually, hit Fletch so hard over the side of the head that he fell into the aisle, and it all got lost in a scuffle of trying to stop someone actually killing someone else before they got onto the pitch.
Ed ended up out of his seat and pressed up against a window, and Rio perched on top of the stereo and wishing he could crawl into a luggage compartment as the slap-fight grew and grew - but he allowed himself a small moment of private victory, because Ed's face was pinched and pale, and even a real dunce would be able to tell he'd been shocked.
See how he feels in this game, Rio thought spitefully, even as he planned to throw a few elbows himself, just to make sure Edwin knew he was there.
It didn't quite work like that.
Rio was warned and warned and warned, because even the worst of referees knew that the defenders were on their uppers now, and finally got carded after a display of not-actually-tackling that should have got him sent off, whereupon Ryan started screaming at the ref, and wasn't that just the fucking kicker?
Okay, he thought, standing back. Okay, man, you are losing it. You are really fucking losing it. And he was, because the next boot that went in, and it would be Ed, and his fault, because he wasn't doing his job, and Jesus Christ he wanted to kill someone.
The worst was that it actually felt good. It actually felt good to plant studs - studs, yeah, those things, those fucking huge spikes - into someone's leg as long as he could look back and make sure his keeper was still standing. He was liable to break bones during those next few games, all in the name of a man who was comatose and wouldn't give a damn - because yes, that was how he justified it to himself. It was not because of Edwin, it was because he was a defender and he had a keeper to defend, and because there was a poor bugger lying in a hospital with a cracked skull who deserved it.
"Rio." Becks phoned him that time, oddly quiet. "Rio, mate, you've gotta ease off. 've been watching. You gotta. Ok? You're gonna end up on a five match ban, you don't watch out."
"I know." He did know, but --"I know, but what if --"
"If you're not there, you can't do nothin', right? So stand back a bit and make sure you are."
Golden, California-kissed Becks, taking the time as he always had.
"What's your defence like?" Rio asked bitterly.
"Crap," was the honest response. "So don't join 'em."
It passed, eventually. Cech went home, came back to training, finally came back for Chelsea and they bristled with all their characteristic cocky menace again, and after a bollocking from the fifth different referee in a month Rio finally shut his mouth and kept his feet on the ground. Ed noticed - he would - and teased him mercilessly for it. Where'd your fire go, Rio, thought you liked red -
"Yeah?" he finally snapped once, and he actually raised his unlaced boot in his hand as though he was about to attack with it, the rage hissing out through his teeth. "Why don' we try it out on you, then?"
"O-kaaaay..." Ed said, and actually had the gall to sound surprised. "Right, hang on, you're still a fuck-up about Petr?"
"Fucked up," Rio said tiredly and automatically, because correcting people who were mostly-Vida was by now second nature, and tried to grin. "Yeah. Guess I am. Ask anyone here, we all are 'cept you...."
"Why should I be?" Ed said, with a careless little shrug and clearly lying his head off about the idea that he didn't care. "I get hit in the face, I get hit in the face. I make my living throwing myself in the air and then falling head-first into the ground, Rio," he added dryly, leaning down to lace up his own boots. "I knock you over, same thing.
"Still," he smirked, "thanks for your - concern, ja?"
"Concern for those stupid brain cells o'yours, you're clearly losing them in the thousands every week," Rio groused.
"Aw, he DOES care!" Ed announced to the dressing-room, grabbing Rio in a very sweaty hug, and was met with a chorus of not-caring-at-all, other than Vida, who peered at them both interestedly.
"Yes?" he said to them both. "Is why he tries killing people first. Is love," he said proudly.
"Oh my God," said Rio.
"Oh," said Ed.
"Vida," said Ryan with a commendably straight face, "great use of English, mate."
Ed grinned down at Rio, who was suddenly making a very concerted attempt to escape. "Cooties?" he cackled, and planted a horribly wet kiss on Rio's cheek.
Rio decided that the only avenue left open to him was to yowl, stick a knee in Edwin's stomach, and then sit in his seat determinedly not laughing as Ed wheezed and choked his way through the gaffer's team talk. He wasn't sure if he quite managed to pull off his innocent look, but it was the effort that counted.
He didn't think anyone apart from the gaffer was falling for it, but there it was -- anything was better than the horrible avuncular pep talk about how nice it was to see everyone getting on.
The attempted kiss was more than enough to get them throwing elbows at each other again, because it felt like a routine now, something that mattered, something that kept them angry and focussed and calculating. Ed added an occasional bounce of a ball off the back of Rio's head during training, so Rio went about putting glue in the fingertips of Ed's gloves.
Five deflated balls, three pairs of gloves, and a hospital trip later, Albert the kitman took them aside and warned them in no uncertain terms that even the boss couldn't be that clueless, which was a useful thing to know given they'd progressed to stealing each other's car keys and the prospect of chasing each other all over Carrington in the middle of the night once everyone else had gone home wasn't very appealing.
Well. Mostly not. In some respects, the idea of that particular game was really pretty damn good, but it also wasn't quite what Rio was up for yet, so no.
The next phone call to Becks involved a hell of a lot of squeaky giggling and one hoot of 'KNEW IT!' which did nothing at all for Rio's patience or his ability to pretend everything was normal.
"Wha'?"
"Rio." Becks's giggle was almost painfully high-pitched. "You two haven't smashed into each other for weeks."
"Dunno what you mean," Rio said sniffily.
"Fuck off and stop acting stupid. You've found yourself a playmate!"
"You fuck off," Rio said, feeling petulant and annoyed with everyone and everything, especially himself. "Got Spurs t'morrow, hang up th'phone."
"Yeah, Becks, nice t'talk t'you, Becks, hope you're not dyin' of boredom in cloudy, hazy, asphalt-jungly LA, Becks - "
"Hope you are," Rio said grumpily, and did hang up, but not before Becks had said, suddenly and quickly serious, "Rio, talk t'im."
He got his usual adrenaline shakes that night, and woke up feeling grumpy and tired, racing through his warm-up to make himself alert. He didn't see Ed until they were both in the tunnel and listening to the fanfare, which was when he reached out and poked Ed in the ribs.
"Oi," he said grumpily, quite horrified at what he was doing. "Wanna speak t'you after."
"About what you did to my boxers?" Ed sniggered meanly back, and Rio was torn between indignant denial and horrendously awful and inconvenient curiosity.
"Er, no, but about that?" He jerked his head at Cris and Wazza, who were slanting looks at each other and trying not to laugh.
"Oh I don't want to think, " Ed moaned.
"But you so will," Rio said smugly, and did his little jump as he touched the pitch with more than usual zest.
The match was fucking brilliant. They'd beaten Watford 4-0 the week before, but to put that many goals past a team that was truly worth it was brilliant, and the first time it had happened all season. Rio felt powerful and steady in the cold air, confident in dealing with Berbatov, the slide of grass during the breakup of counterattacks seamless with Vida, who was just starting to think like Rio did with every single run, and when Ed made that save - fucking hell but it was hard, really hard, not to run over and pull him to his feet, to try and wipe that smug grin off of his face because only he wanted to see it.
So it didn't make much sense, really. It didn't make sense that Keane got away from him, and it didn't make sense to turn and run across and see Ed unconscious on the grass, with a hand over his bloody face and one knee sticking up like a sad sentinel.
Rio knew, course he knew, about how it felt when all the blood went right the hell out of your head and into someplace else, and he knew how it felt when it did that because something hurt so much you couldn't breathe, and he knew about blind panic, but he'd never before felt blood go out of his face and to nowhere while his heart slammed hard enough to pump it around six Rios at once.
He didn't know what he'd shouted, and never got up the courage to ask, but even Keane moved away, blanched, stopped pretending he was concerned and just fucked off, which was probably good because Rio was wondering just what it would take to rip someone's arm off, right then and there.
He didn't even get to see Ed as the medics clustered around him, and that hurt, it hurt so much when Sheasy grabbed his elbow and shoved him towards the touchline, because who the fuck would dare ask him to do something, anything now -
Except it was the gaffer. Which meant yes, he had to walk over on legs made of cold rubber, and had to actually concentrate on something, like the green shirt in his hands, and no, this was wrong -
-- and then, thank God, thank God, it wasn't his, it was Sheasy's call after all, because all he could think of was the way JT had taken the gloves that day and poured sweat out of them before putting them on his hands, deliberate choosing of gloves-not-his to wear, and Rio really didn't think he could have done that, he didn't think he could --
"Get on the pitch, laddie," said Fergie's familiar whiskey-voice in his ear, and oh don't let that be understanding or sympathy he could hear, because he would go under.
Edwin was at least upright - Rio thanked whatever heavens were watching - and walking, reaching a hand out to Sheasy, his head lolling on his neck like that time he and Ruud had gotten drunk and come round to Rio's at four in the morning just to annoy him. Rio watched him all the way off the pitch, so taut he thought his body would just unwind and spring out a final burst of desperation before he crumpled, and waited in vain for a look of his own as the group surrounding the bloodied keeper disappeared down the tunnel.
So he turned back, and tried to do his job, and failed miserably. It seemed appropriate, really. He couldn't fathom doing a good job for the wrong person.
"You OK?" Becks asked that night, and Rio couldn't even say anything, too choked up with all the need to go and see Ed and kill fucking Keane and resign from ever defending anyone ever again and maybe get very drunk and --
"Yeah, I never was," got filled in for him, and what? Becks hadn't given a damn about their keepers, hadn't -- and oh. Oh. Iker, of course, Iker who kept out more goals than anyone even when the other side scored three, because Madrid's defence were about as useful as a wet paper tissue and had a tendency to run up to try and score at the other end. Iker, who screamed "Daviiiiiiiiid," when he knew no-one else was going to even try and get back to him.
"I don' - " he tried, and had to stop. "Becks, I didn' - tell him. An' now 'e's - "
"Rio, stop bloody acting like you're fucking Atlas," Becks said gently, and Rio blinked, having to drag his brain back to that higher plane. "He's at least as scared 'syou are."
Rio did get drunk in the end, downing his third or fourth or fifth pint sometime after midnight and not having rehydrated properly in his misery, so when he lurched through the hospital lobby he was so surprised that they let him in that he nearly snogged the nearest nurse. He spent a good deal of time reading the chart hanging outside Ed's darkened room, swaying genially, because someone like him who obviously knew what they were doing had to make sure he was being taken care of, 'ey.
Even in near-blackout, Ed looked impressively horrible, and very, very patched-up, which didn't do one hell of a lot for Rio's unsteadiness. He did a fair job of getting over to the side of the bed quietly, though, which he was chalking up as one for his own home team right up until he crashed into the chair and tried to move it across the floor, and set up a screeching noise like the worst electric guitar on feedback ever allowed on speaker.
Ed didn't move, and oh hey, drugs. Good drugs, they better be the best drugs, and --
"Sorry," Rio croaked out, not sure why, but feeling it all the way through. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean --" and then the words were spilling out of him, a little slurred and very scared. "Should have been there, said I would be, damnit, Ed, you don't listen, you should've waited, was tryin' t'keep Keane reined in, I dunno what happened, didn' mean t' -- 'm sorry --"
His head felt very, very heavy, and it didn't want to stay upright, and the bed was very close, and he was only going to put it down for a minute....
Ed's hand fumbled annoyingly at the back of his neck. "Well they did all tell me you're thick," he said gently, and Rio was not crying, he was just keeping quiet so he didn't say anything else stupid while Ed's hand got heavier on the back of his head, and his breathing evened out, and under the hospital smells and the horrible blankets, he was very much Ed, and that was fine, it was all fine, and if he put up his own hand to hang on to Ed's clammy fingers, that was fine too, because it just meant they weren't on his neck any more, and. It was fine.
He woke up before Ed, his head throbbing like an angry warlord had been let loose inside it with an axe, and moaned quite pathetically as he tried to un-crack his limbs from the horrible position they'd settled in, in the equally horrible chair.
In the pre-dawn light Ed's face was purple and black for a few inches all around his nose, tiny dabs of blood still visible on his chin and in his eyebrows. Rio would have reached out and brushed some of it away, but waking him was an impossible thought as he hunched in on himself and tried not to be sick.
He couldn't let Ed see him this way, couldn't face up to that tiny moment of acknowledgment, the idea that everything would be different, that he'd never go to training or step onto the pitch or bend over to touch his toes in the tunnel and feel the same way again. He couldn't do that here. Not here.
He stumbled out into the corridor, feeling disorientated and ill and like he needed a rewind or five gallons of energy drink or maybe just to fall into a swimming pool and let something soak in, when his phone announced that he had fifteen new messages, and crap, none of that was going to be good.
"IF HE'S REALLY HURT I WILL --" Ruud.
"FERDINAND WHERE WERE YOU SAW THE --"
"REPLAYS AND YOU --"
"WILL YOU PICK UP THE --"
"FERDINAND FOR FUCK'S SAKE JUST --"
"Kind of got a bollocking from Becks, look, just call me, I won't --"
"RIO ANSWER YOUR GODDAMNED PHONE --"
"Oh for fuck's SAKE --"
Rio gave up on the rest, and just pressed redial.
"WELL IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME - "
"Ruud," Rio whimpered, curling his shoulder into a wall and making little gestures pleading for calm to nobody, "shh. Shh. Please. 'M beggin' you."
"Where is he?"
"Hospi'al. 'M there now. He's sleepin'. Spoke t'me last night, looks a fright." He swallowed hard. "Looks really 'orrible, Ruud, 'is face."
"And? God's sake, man."
Rio shrugged, hunching into his jacket, then realized that Ruud was probably expecting an answer out loud. "C'ncussion. Broken nose. Say they'll let 'im home later t'day."
Ruud's breathing in was audible. "Okay. Okay. Shit, it looked a lot worse on the screen. Sorry I shouted --"
"A lot," Rio couldn't help saying.
"Yeah, a lot, what do you want, blood?"
"Think 've had 'nough of that, thanks," Rio said on a giggle, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone, and then Ruud said in a completely different tone of voice, "Ferdinand?"
"Yeah?" Rio was almost curious.
"Go to bed," Ruud said irritably, and hung up.
For what was probably the first and hopefully the last time, he followed Ruud's advice and passed out on his sofa at home, not even bothering to undress, and woke up several hours later smelling and feeling completely wretched. An hour after that, curled up with a hot drink and the most crap telly he could find, he finally got around to checking on a new slew of texts, most of them from United physios wondering why the hell he'd missed training. He couldn't give a damn.
The last, however, was short and to the point and far, far too intriguing.
Head hurts. Like a whatever. Come talk.
Thinking that driving was probably going to be a quick way to getting his face all over the papers for all the wrong reasons, Rio took a cab.
He quickly found that this was also a way to probably getting his face in the tabloids for all the wrong reasons, although in this case it was going to be because he had beaten a cabdriver to death with his own steering wheel for not shutting the fuck up.
After all that, Alderley Edge felt almost too quiet, too controlled, too neat for what had happened. It was a long trudge up the driveway, and an even longer time before he managed to ring the bell and a raspy voice, barely recognizable, shouted that it was open.
Ed was on the sofa under a blanket, his head tilted back towards the ceiling as though keeping it at a certain angle would make the swelling go away. "Sorry," he said thickly. "Blood keeps - " He stopped and swallowed as Rio stood shuffling in the middle of the carpet, his hands in his pockets. " - going down m'throat every once in a while. Fucking annoying."
"Er," Rio said, in a grand moment of less-than-helpful, "yeah?"
Ed snorted, and then said in surprised complaint, "Ow."
"Serves you right for laughing at me," Rio said automatically, and it was so easy to go back to this, except. Except. Ed's hand on his neck, and Becks telling him he wasn't Atlas, and Ruud worried, and Becks had bollocked out Ruud, how the fuck had he known to do that, and Ruud's voice had changed and Ed had texted and -- "I think I got concussion too," he said mournfully, and sat down with a protest of air on the nearest armchair.
"Serves you right," Ed sighed, and let his arm dangle over the edge of the sofa, his hand stretched towards Rio as though expecting him to hold it. "You drink too much."
Rio stared and blinked. Stared at the hand. Stared at Ed a bit more, and cleared his throat. "Ruud's been on my case all day," he said, making sure to sound disgruntled. "Couldn't ya have just picked up y'self?"
"I did." Ed's hand didn't lower like it was supposed to. "Rio. You are being. A git. I know when you're scared you are a complete git --"
"Hey!"
"-- but seriously, this is getting very stupid. Also, we are in a position where almost everybody thinks they are helping, and nice though their concern is, I would very much like them to stop. You?"
"....yeah," Rio admitted, and slid out of the chair to take Ed's hand. "Yeah. Fuckin' would, yeah. Sorry."
"I'll apologise for Ruud if you take on Becks," Ed said dryly, and Rio sniggered.
"No way, man."
Ed smirked again and slowly made sure their fingers were intertwined. "This is awkward," he said, his puffy eyes half-closed. "Kissing you would really hurt. Not fair."
Some very, very unholy and brilliant thoughts occurred to Rio, and he grinned, not caring how mad he probably looked. "Really not," he agreed. "Cos, y'know? I can kiss you. Anywhere 'cept the face."
Ed stared at him, and then shook with laugher, trying not to let any of it escape through his battered nose and mouth. "Godver, Rio, you --"
"I'm awesome, yeah," Rio said happily. "So so awesome..."
He started with Ed's hand, since it was there, and then went straight on to finding out just how true it was about endorphins and pain.
Turned out it was all spot on. If a bit messy.
"You've made me bleed, y'fucker," Ed gasped at one point, but the facts that he couldn't feel it and that it just made him tilt his head back further so Rio had better access to his neck made Rio really not care.
His hands were in Rio's hair, tracing the shape of his ear, stroking at the back of his neck like and not-like the night before, making him arch and curl and most of all try to stop his head spinning at the idea that this was actually happening.
"Not like y'haven' bled on me b'fore," Rio mumbled, and felt Ed laugh, because of course he had, that was what they did, and he was starting to get it, finally, how it wasn't all on him and damn, damn, they were bloody brilliant, weren't they, them together, why should this be any different?
"You're paying for the nosejob if you get it out of place," Ed sniggered, and grabbed Rio's face upwards to actually kiss him - Rio could feel chapped lips and hot bruises before Ed pulled away with a hiss of discomfort, but he didn't give a damn.
"Payback for your elbow in m'eye that one time," he said smugly, and Ed swatted him up the back of the head.
They were good at it, in the end, a bit one-sided (but it wouldn't always be, Rio knew), and good. They knew each other well, after all, had patched each other up desultorily after training, not caring except to wrap a bandage around something that would hurt worse later if they didn't, or stick tape over a cut to save everyone time, and hell, yeah, of course everyone had known before them, how could they not? They'd said it and shown it and given away what they wanted a thousand times, and maybe Rio hadn't known just what Ed's shout sounded like when he finally came, and maybe Ed hadn't known that Rio tended to laugh when he was done, but they still almost, sort of, just about knew, and none of it was new.
"They're all gonna laugh," Rio said some time later, with his nose in Ed's hair and his arms limp around him. "Smug bastards."
"Yeah. Ruud's won fifty pounds off of this," Ed said mournfully. "Git."
Rio's eyes widened. "On what? That we'd - ?"
"No, on who came first. The bugger's been trying to set us up for months."
"What!" Rio hadn't made a squawk like that even when he'd discovered an anthill in his locker during the prank wars of the previous season.
Ed laughed, and it sounded painful. "Oh yeah."
"Can I kill him?" Rio asked a bit sleepily, because what rest he'd got on the sofa just wasn't as inviting as the idea of sleeping here, and now, and all tangled up in familiar, bloody marvellous sex-and-Ed smells.
"Next game, Rio," Ed said, and goddamnit if that didn't sound fond. "Kill him by stopping him scoring."
"Think I c'n?"
"Think we can," Ed said, and put a sloppy sort-of-kiss on his arm. "Yeah. I'll bet you that. We can."
FIN