In Valencia
by worldcoup
In Valencia, the winter has a quiet, timid quality to it: it curls up around your arms in a dull shiver one December morning and leaves apologetically not more than a month later; and yet, the entire time, you can still smell the sea.
In 2008, however, winter persists: or at least, Fernando feels like it does-he feels like the days stretch long and tense and cold and uncertain, and there’s more of a mineral, salty bite in the ocean breeze. Perhaps it was the rain that hung, heavy and threatening, in the air that evening, as he stepped outside the paterna, fumbling for his keys, or perhaps it was this season-this football season, where everything was happening off the pitch and not enough on it-that made the days expand into long, lethargic, threatening reminders that he wasn’t getting any younger and they weren’t going anywhere; looming questions of this-might-be-it between all the hours that left him with too much time to think about these things. He’s just managed to tug his keys out when he hears a sharp, “Oi!” behind him.
“David,” he says, without turning around. He doesn’t sound unwelcoming, just tired.
“Pleased to see you too,” says the other man gruffly, clapping a hand on his back. “I’m here to claim the ride you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you a ride,” Fernando says, though he tips his head to the side, indicating for David to get in, as he seats himself and revs up the engine. “I drove you back from the dinner we had last weekend, remember? You had too many mimosas.” He pauses. “Who gets drunk on mimosas, David, honestly.”
“Oh,” says David, making himself comfortable and leaning his seat back, then shrugs, adding “whatever,” in a voice that makes Fernando laugh, with its careful, youthful investment in sounding as careless as it does. He knows the kid doesn’t care if Fernando owes him a ride or not, because the kid takes what he wants with an impunity that isn't arrogance so much as it is age. Fernando would say it reminds him of Raúl, except it would be a forced comparison: Raúl’s inner arrogance is as subtle as David’s is absent, and his politeness as stark as David’s is disguised in the roughness of his speech and his brashness on the pitch. Everyone is comparing them nowadays-there are crumpled Marca articles Fernando finds scattered around David’s locker late Wednesday afternoons, or bits of radio interviews with Luis Aragones he catches while making himself coffee in the morning-but Fernando still does not see how they overlap, not in the slightest. David is the Asturias: unexpected and cold and mountainous and yet somehow warm; Raúl is Madrid-the reluctant nexus, the focal point, as powerful as he is unstable. Raúl is teenage years and unending naivety and whispered conversations smoking pot with legs dangling off the edge of bridges; David is an uncomfortable reminder of the years that Fernando does not have left to waste. Raúl is a phone call and a conversation that says nothing either of them needs to say to each other away; David is here right now, and currently, being a repetitive little shit.
“Fernando.” David rolls his eyes. “You’re clearly not listening to me.”
“That’s because I don’t give a shit,” Fernando tries, patiently. “There’s nothing about the new BlackBerry that interests me.”
“You own it,” David points out.
“And that’s about all the information I need about it.” Fernando pulls the car to a halt.
“This is not my house or yours,” says David, craning his neck outside the window. “Are you trying to kidnap me, Morientes?”
“Could get a handsome transfer fee out of it, considering what they’re saying about you,” he replies drily. “You don’t bum car rides off your elders for kicks, Villa, I know your pattern. Come in, get a coffee with me, talk.”
“Is this a date?” laughs Villa. “Cute.”
Fernando rolls his eyes as he lets Villa in, but he knows Villa is secretly grateful: they have become strangely close over the past year, fitting together like two not quite jagged-end pieces in a puzzle, smashed together to fit until their edges have folded or chipped away and broken. Perhaps it's because Fernando is too old to deal with the bullshit at Valencia, and David-despite being midway through his twenties and married with a child-is somehow altogether too young. (But then, sometimes, Fernando wonders if he projects youth onto Villa as some sort of compensatory mechanism: to see in him what he could no longer see in the mirror, bask in his youth and invincibility on the pitch, because invincibility is a feeling he has missed, and there is only one place (one person) who was able to give it to him earlier.) They pick a discreet corner table.
“What’s on your mind, kid?”
“I’m five minutes younger than you.” David scowls. “Coffee,” he adds, and Fernando starts, having just noticed the rosy cheeked waitress who had appeared by his side. “For me, too, please,” he says politely, and lets the silence between them stew until the scent of freshly roasted coffee fills the air, and too-white mugs topped with dark liquid are slid on the table.
“So,” Fernando begins.
“So,” Villa says, hands wrapping around his coffee, and takes a long sip before he sighs. “I’m thinking of leaving. Moving.”
Fernando pauses. “I know,” he says evenly, “I mean, you’d have to live in a rock not to know that, David.”
Villa shrugs, apologetically. “I haven’t exactly been hiding what I think about what’s been going on recently. I think I deserve better than this.”
Fernando bites his lip. Football doesn’t owe you anything, he thinks-words said to him, many years ago. The sooner you realize that, the less your heart will break when you come in angry, painful collision with this principle. Fernando should have realized a lot of things sooner, in retrospect, but it’s hard to not believe in the debt to a devoted heart; hard to pay the price for loyalty always in broken hearts. He considers Villa.
“Where are you thinking of going?”
Villa’s head snaps up, a look of surprise in his eyes, as though he expected Fernando to take a different course-admonish him, perhaps, for wavering from loyalty, or tell him it isn't the time to be thinking about this, the summer too far away. But Fernando’s never gotten anything more from loyalty than cutting words, foreign cities and betrayal, and perhaps it would do them good to draw summer’s talk into the winter.
“Madrid, maybe.” Villa shrugs, finally. “If they make an offer. Or, I don’t know…England. I know people in England.”
“You hate England,” Fernando chuckles.
“I hate the Beatles,” Villa corrects him. “That rules out Liverpool, as much as Pepe tells me I’m an idiot for it. But, you know. United. Or something.”
Fernando makes a face. Villa laughs, and they lapse into silence again, Villa’s chuckles dying as he runs a finger along the rim of his cup. Fernando looks outside, behind them, the sun beginning to peek through the clouds and hit the cracks of the stones on the pavement. He remembers Liverpool-the grey skies and the unfamiliar accents and shopping at little corner markets for his favourite (imported) brand of coffee at six in the morning, because most nights he couldn’t sleep, a combination of stress and expectation and a lingering sensation of homelessness in someone whose home didn’t seem to welcome him anymore. It wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be, though. Raúl-they still talked then, well, talked much more than they did now-would offer comfort, but it came out tasting more like condescension or apology instead, neither of which Fernando wanted to accept; the truth was, even though he wasn’t scoring and it was too cold, between learning English-for-football and the taste of malt vinegar on oily fish and chips, he’d learnt how to stop caring. It wasn’t so bad, after that: after all, the cold did have the extraordinary ability to make you painfully numb. He’d still recommend it to a friend. He’d recommend it to Villa.
“England’s cold,” is all he offers in the end, taking a sip of his coffee and letting the bitter warmth seep through his tongue. Villa shrugs in acknowledgment.
“You’re worried they’ll look down on you here for leaving,” Fernando says, setting down his cup. “Don’t be. You’re not from Valencia, you don’t have an-obligation, in the same way.”
“You weren’t from Madrid,” Villa counters. Fernando’s expression darkens.
“I didn’t leave them,” he says, pointedly. Villa looks confused, but doesn’t pry.
It is true that he isn't from Madrid, though, and maybe it’s why though it felt like home for a while, it was only the pretense of being one. He wonders if Villa feels like home-here, in Valencia, or back at Zaragoza, or wherever he went. Villa looks like he wouldn’t care either way. Fernando likes to think of himself as well-travelled, but Villa has moved about a lot, too-and looks unafraid of doing it again. He's more like Fernando than Raúl, it startles Fernando to realize-Villa has loyalty, too, but it isn't to a place, to the kiss of a badge and the back of a boardroom-it's to a principle, an ideal, a dream crafted 10 years ago by some frustrated 14 year old boy sitting at the edge of a bench of a rainy Sunday afternoon because his coach hadn’t let him start. Fernando may have forgotten how to understand loyalty, but Villa’s loyalty is not Raúl’s.
“David,” he says suddenly, and Villa looks up again, perhaps at the hoarse urgency in his voice. “I don’t think you should do it, don’t go.”
Villa frowns, looking confused, but Fernando has realized something and now is hit with a sudden need to tell David, to stop him. “Just…” He shrugs, and his urgent thoughts dissolve in the face of articulation. Something about homes-something about the lost feeling of being a perpetual (football) nomad. Something about David being cut for greatness-a prodigal, if adopted, son, raising a kingdom from its ashes. Something about missing him. About nothing familiar to ground him. Something about Villa needing to not become him-because maybe he had it wrong, maybe they all had it wrong. Maybe Villa isn't following Raúl’s footsteps-maybe he's following his. Greatness that got forgotten somewhere along the way, in train rides and contract signings and the word offside in four different tongues. Tiredness, before it was due. Loneliness, even in the face of new friends and new fans and charming ladies asking for dances at bars. New shopkeepers and familiar bread. Something about stopping Villa being his own redemption.
“I’m not going to be the one who’s going to be this club’s savior,” Villa says, carefully, as though he read Fernando’s mind. I’m not going to be the one who can be your savior. “And that’s okay,” Villa continues, after a pause. “That doesn’t change if I’m going to stay or not, because I’m not… I’m not this club’s hero. I’m not going to be any club’s hero.” He draws back. “Maybe Gijon,” he says thoughtfully, “when I’m near retirement. Or Spain.” He chuckles, as though that's never going to happen. It reminds Fernando of Raúl again, but for different reasons. “My point is, that’s not what’s going to make or break my decision.”
It’s funny, because Fernando’s never thought of it that way. It was always los Blancos, then darkness; it was always black and white. You were either Raúl or Fernando; god knows enough of Fernando’s life has revolved around one or the other. You could either stay, or you could run away. You were either a savior or a failure, and there was nothing in between. But Villa isn't; Villa acts as if he doesn't want to be. He doesn't seem to be following Raúl’s footsteps, or Fernando’s: he isn't talking now, about leaving, like either of them would have. Maybe it is possible. Maybe there is something between the weight of failing on your shoulders, or the burden of the entire club’s success. Maybe you don't have to be a hero: maybe you can just be.
“You’ll do fine,” he says, in the end: to himself; to Villa; he doesn't know anymore. He drains his cup. “Whatever you do. Stay, go to Italy, go to United, whatever.”
“Yeah,” says Villa simply, setting his cup down on the table. “I know.”
“Thank you,” he says, as they move to get up.
Villa pauses in putting on his coat, brows furrowing. “Me? You’re the one that gave the advice, the very unhelpful advice, by the way.” Fernando nudges him, a smile creeping on his face. “It’s true!” Villa protests, though he’s smiling too, as they walk out. “Villa, you should go! No, England is cold, don’t go. No, Valencia need you! No, it’s okay. Honestly, Fernando.”
“You’re a twat,” Fernando tells him affectionately, swinging an arm around him as they push open the café door. There is something lighter about his step, or something shorter about the sunset, when he sits inside the car, and the push of the leather of the steering wheel feels easier against his hands.
In Valencia, the winter has a quiet, timid quality to it: it curls up around your arms in a dull shiver one December morning and leaves apologetically not more than a month later; and yet, the entire time, you can still smell the sea.
In 2008, however, winter persists: or at least, Fernando feels like it does-he feels like the days stretch long and tense and cold and uncertain, and there’s more of a mineral, salty bite in the ocean breeze. Perhaps it was the rain that hung, heavy and threatening, in the air that evening, as he stepped outside the paterna, fumbling for his keys, or perhaps it was this season-this football season, where everything was happening off the pitch and not enough on it-that made the days expand into long, lethargic, threatening reminders that he wasn’t getting any younger and they weren’t going anywhere; looming questions of this-might-be-it between all the hours that left him with too much time to think about these things. He’s just managed to tug his keys out when he hears a sharp, “Oi!” behind him.
“David,” he says, without turning around. He doesn’t sound unwelcoming, just tired.
“Pleased to see you too,” says the other man gruffly, clapping a hand on his back. “I’m here to claim the ride you owe me.”
“I don’t owe you a ride,” Fernando says, though he tips his head to the side, indicating for David to get in, as he seats himself and revs up the engine. “I drove you back from the dinner we had last weekend, remember? You had too many mimosas.” He pauses. “Who gets drunk on mimosas, David, honestly.”
“Oh,” says David, making himself comfortable and leaning his seat back, then shrugs, adding “whatever,” in a voice that makes Fernando laugh, with its careful, youthful investment in sounding as careless as it does. He knows the kid doesn’t care if Fernando owes him a ride or not, because the kid takes what he wants with an impunity that isn't arrogance so much as it is age. Fernando would say it reminds him of Raúl, except it would be a forced comparison: Raúl’s inner arrogance is as subtle as David’s is absent, and his politeness as stark as David’s is disguised in the roughness of his speech and his brashness on the pitch. Everyone is comparing them nowadays-there are crumpled Marca articles Fernando finds scattered around David’s locker late Wednesday afternoons, or bits of radio interviews with Luis Aragones he catches while making himself coffee in the morning-but Fernando still does not see how they overlap, not in the slightest. David is the Asturias: unexpected and cold and mountainous and yet somehow warm; Raúl is Madrid-the reluctant nexus, the focal point, as powerful as he is unstable. Raúl is teenage years and unending naivety and whispered conversations smoking pot with legs dangling off the edge of bridges; David is an uncomfortable reminder of the years that Fernando does not have left to waste. Raúl is a phone call and a conversation that says nothing either of them needs to say to each other away; David is here right now, and currently, being a repetitive little shit.
“Fernando.” David rolls his eyes. “You’re clearly not listening to me.”
“That’s because I don’t give a shit,” Fernando tries, patiently. “There’s nothing about the new BlackBerry that interests me.”
“You own it,” David points out.
“And that’s about all the information I need about it.” Fernando pulls the car to a halt.
“This is not my house or yours,” says David, craning his neck outside the window. “Are you trying to kidnap me, Morientes?”
“Could get a handsome transfer fee out of it, considering what they’re saying about you,” he replies drily. “You don’t bum car rides off your elders for kicks, Villa, I know your pattern. Come in, get a coffee with me, talk.”
“Is this a date?” laughs Villa. “Cute.”
Fernando rolls his eyes as he lets Villa in, but he knows Villa is secretly grateful: they have become strangely close over the past year, fitting together like two not quite jagged-end pieces in a puzzle, smashed together to fit until their edges have folded or chipped away and broken. Perhaps it's because Fernando is too old to deal with the bullshit at Valencia, and David-despite being midway through his twenties and married with a child-is somehow altogether too young. (But then, sometimes, Fernando wonders if he projects youth onto Villa as some sort of compensatory mechanism: to see in him what he could no longer see in the mirror, bask in his youth and invincibility on the pitch, because invincibility is a feeling he has missed, and there is only one place (one person) who was able to give it to him earlier.) They pick a discreet corner table.
“What’s on your mind, kid?”
“I’m five minutes younger than you.” David scowls. “Coffee,” he adds, and Fernando starts, having just noticed the rosy cheeked waitress who had appeared by his side. “For me, too, please,” he says politely, and lets the silence between them stew until the scent of freshly roasted coffee fills the air, and too-white mugs topped with dark liquid are slid on the table.
“So,” Fernando begins.
“So,” Villa says, hands wrapping around his coffee, and takes a long sip before he sighs. “I’m thinking of leaving. Moving.”
Fernando pauses. “I know,” he says evenly, “I mean, you’d have to live in a rock not to know that, David.”
Villa shrugs, apologetically. “I haven’t exactly been hiding what I think about what’s been going on recently. I think I deserve better than this.”
Fernando bites his lip. Football doesn’t owe you anything, he thinks-words said to him, many years ago. The sooner you realize that, the less your heart will break when you come in angry, painful collision with this principle. Fernando should have realized a lot of things sooner, in retrospect, but it’s hard to not believe in the debt to a devoted heart; hard to pay the price for loyalty always in broken hearts. He considers Villa.
“Where are you thinking of going?”
Villa’s head snaps up, a look of surprise in his eyes, as though he expected Fernando to take a different course-admonish him, perhaps, for wavering from loyalty, or tell him it isn't the time to be thinking about this, the summer too far away. But Fernando’s never gotten anything more from loyalty than cutting words, foreign cities and betrayal, and perhaps it would do them good to draw summer’s talk into the winter.
“Madrid, maybe.” Villa shrugs, finally. “If they make an offer. Or, I don’t know…England. I know people in England.”
“You hate England,” Fernando chuckles.
“I hate the Beatles,” Villa corrects him. “That rules out Liverpool, as much as Pepe tells me I’m an idiot for it. But, you know. United. Or something.”
Fernando makes a face. Villa laughs, and they lapse into silence again, Villa’s chuckles dying as he runs a finger along the rim of his cup. Fernando looks outside, behind them, the sun beginning to peek through the clouds and hit the cracks of the stones on the pavement. He remembers Liverpool-the grey skies and the unfamiliar accents and shopping at little corner markets for his favourite (imported) brand of coffee at six in the morning, because most nights he couldn’t sleep, a combination of stress and expectation and a lingering sensation of homelessness in someone whose home didn’t seem to welcome him anymore. It wasn’t as bad as everyone had made it out to be, though. Raúl-they still talked then, well, talked much more than they did now-would offer comfort, but it came out tasting more like condescension or apology instead, neither of which Fernando wanted to accept; the truth was, even though he wasn’t scoring and it was too cold, between learning English-for-football and the taste of malt vinegar on oily fish and chips, he’d learnt how to stop caring. It wasn’t so bad, after that: after all, the cold did have the extraordinary ability to make you painfully numb. He’d still recommend it to a friend. He’d recommend it to Villa.
“England’s cold,” is all he offers in the end, taking a sip of his coffee and letting the bitter warmth seep through his tongue. Villa shrugs in acknowledgment.
“You’re worried they’ll look down on you here for leaving,” Fernando says, setting down his cup. “Don’t be. You’re not from Valencia, you don’t have an-obligation, in the same way.”
“You weren’t from Madrid,” Villa counters. Fernando’s expression darkens.
“I didn’t leave them,” he says, pointedly. Villa looks confused, but doesn’t pry.
It is true that he isn't from Madrid, though, and maybe it’s why though it felt like home for a while, it was only the pretense of being one. He wonders if Villa feels like home-here, in Valencia, or back at Zaragoza, or wherever he went. Villa looks like he wouldn’t care either way. Fernando likes to think of himself as well-travelled, but Villa has moved about a lot, too-and looks unafraid of doing it again. He's more like Fernando than Raúl, it startles Fernando to realize-Villa has loyalty, too, but it isn't to a place, to the kiss of a badge and the back of a boardroom-it's to a principle, an ideal, a dream crafted 10 years ago by some frustrated 14 year old boy sitting at the edge of a bench of a rainy Sunday afternoon because his coach hadn’t let him start. Fernando may have forgotten how to understand loyalty, but Villa’s loyalty is not Raúl’s.
“David,” he says suddenly, and Villa looks up again, perhaps at the hoarse urgency in his voice. “I don’t think you should do it, don’t go.”
Villa frowns, looking confused, but Fernando has realized something and now is hit with a sudden need to tell David, to stop him. “Just…” He shrugs, and his urgent thoughts dissolve in the face of articulation. Something about homes-something about the lost feeling of being a perpetual (football) nomad. Something about David being cut for greatness-a prodigal, if adopted, son, raising a kingdom from its ashes. Something about missing him. About nothing familiar to ground him. Something about Villa needing to not become him-because maybe he had it wrong, maybe they all had it wrong. Maybe Villa isn't following Raúl’s footsteps-maybe he's following his. Greatness that got forgotten somewhere along the way, in train rides and contract signings and the word offside in four different tongues. Tiredness, before it was due. Loneliness, even in the face of new friends and new fans and charming ladies asking for dances at bars. New shopkeepers and familiar bread. Something about stopping Villa being his own redemption.
“I’m not going to be the one who’s going to be this club’s savior,” Villa says, carefully, as though he read Fernando’s mind. I’m not going to be the one who can be your savior. “And that’s okay,” Villa continues, after a pause. “That doesn’t change if I’m going to stay or not, because I’m not… I’m not this club’s hero. I’m not going to be any club’s hero.” He draws back. “Maybe Gijon,” he says thoughtfully, “when I’m near retirement. Or Spain.” He chuckles, as though that's never going to happen. It reminds Fernando of Raúl again, but for different reasons. “My point is, that’s not what’s going to make or break my decision.”
It’s funny, because Fernando’s never thought of it that way. It was always los Blancos, then darkness; it was always black and white. You were either Raúl or Fernando; god knows enough of Fernando’s life has revolved around one or the other. You could either stay, or you could run away. You were either a savior or a failure, and there was nothing in between. But Villa isn't; Villa acts as if he doesn't want to be. He doesn't seem to be following Raúl’s footsteps, or Fernando’s: he isn't talking now, about leaving, like either of them would have. Maybe it is possible. Maybe there is something between the weight of failing on your shoulders, or the burden of the entire club’s success. Maybe you don't have to be a hero: maybe you can just be.
“You’ll do fine,” he says, in the end: to himself; to Villa; he doesn't know anymore. He drains his cup. “Whatever you do. Stay, go to Italy, go to United, whatever.”
“Yeah,” says Villa simply, setting his cup down on the table. “I know.”
“Thank you,” he says, as they move to get up.
Villa pauses in putting on his coat, brows furrowing. “Me? You’re the one that gave the advice, the very unhelpful advice, by the way.” Fernando nudges him, a smile creeping on his face. “It’s true!” Villa protests, though he’s smiling too, as they walk out. “Villa, you should go! No, England is cold, don’t go. No, Valencia need you! No, it’s okay. Honestly, Fernando.”
“You’re a twat,” Fernando tells him affectionately, swinging an arm around him as they push open the café door. There is something lighter about his step, or something shorter about the sunset, when he sits inside the car, and the push of the leather of the steering wheel feels easier against his hands.