Not!Football AU
The Theoretical SIG Sauer
Chapter 8/8 ½
Rating: R
Summary: In which Xabi is an Arsenal fan.
“Good morning, welcome to Chamartín.”
“Good morning. My name is Xabier Alonso. I’m here to see Mr. Képler Ferreira. I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment, but… he will want to see me, I can assure you.”
The last bit is addressed more to the security camera peering discreetly over the reception from the entrance rather than to the almond-eyed pretty young lady behind the desk on whose face Xabi can read the signs of an impending struggle.
“Mr. Ferreira is in a meeting at the moment.”
I know.
This is Xabi’s cue to unleash the charm offensive full on, his most self-possessed half smile deployed already to full effect and well… Xabi’s not one to get big-headed or anything, but he’s frankly impressed with how easily he’s already demolishing any defensive ramparts standing in his way.
“Would you mind getting him?... ¿Por favor?”
And that’s that. About ten percent of the mission is accomplished once the young lady does his bidding. Xabi flexes his fingers slowly, as if testing his body for any signs of betrayal and when he’s pleased with the result, he slides an arm across the now vacated reception desk and grabs the guest access card.
One… two… three… four flights of stairs taken to avoid any elevator encounters and the last level leads into a seemingly abandoned section of the building’s underground parking lot. Xabi knows better than that. He slides gingerly along the wall until he can finally see anonymous Door X guarded by two uniformed young men shaped like 19th century armoires. He can feel a drop of sweat pooling at his temple in the stale air. It’s not rationally possible to think that he’s been waiting for more than five minutes, but Xabi feels he’s aged at least a couple of years by the time he sees the door open and a bald, swarthy man (“ugly as fuck and twice as mean, looks like a rabid pug” - Pepe’s profiling turns out to be unsurprisingly inspired) emerging to bark some instructions at the guards. He looks pissed.
The squarer of the two armoires follows Ferreira through the exit leading to the elevator and that’s when Xabi’s curls his fingers around the SIG holstered near the small of his back. His hands feel icy cold but steadier than ever when he screws in the silencer into the tip of the barrel (“like a badass champagne cork” er… fine, Pepe, whatever), but Xabi’s not even surprised when his first tranquilizer shot (“Joder, because it’s a terrible idea to give a civilian live ammunition, do you even have to ask…?”) doesn’t come anywhere close to grazing the guard’s neck. He has about half a second to make a decision. Or rather the adrenaline spiking in Xabi’s blood takes no more than half a second to make him step out from the shadows, take advantage of the target’s confusion and shoot him wherever the hell he can aim. It turns out to be the guy’s hip, which does nothing to put him to sleep immediately, but the sting is strong and surprising enough to give Xabi time to whack him hard over the head with the butt of the gun. The third shot is much closer to his aorta and the guard is out cold before Xabi even bends over his limp body to pocket his access card.
They’re in a bunker and one of them is tied to a chair under the sickly glow of a lamp, but that’s where the flashback ends. For one thing, Xabi is wearing a two thousand pound gray suit and matching tie and smells divine while Steven is wearing the same type of paramilitary gear he had when they first… well… second met except with lots more blood splashed over it in fresh stains.
There’s a bluish bruise starting to trickle across the side of Steven’s forehead right next to where drops of blood are slowly accumulating over his left eyebrow, threatening to spill over.
“What the fuck…”
“No time for that now, we have to…” Xabi starts then stops just short of mouthing the ultimate movie cliché. He’d laugh if he weren’t busy kneeling next to Steven’s bound wrists.
“What part of don’t do anything stupid did you fail to grasp?” Steven croaks, his breath coming out in dazed little rasps as he tastes metal and salt on his split lip.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Pepe told me,” Xabi huffs out, frustrated by the sturdiness of the deceptively flimsy strips around Steven’s wrists. “Did you really think I was going to let you carry on with this suicide in the line of duty bullshit?... Before I even got to have sex with you?”
The plastic finally snaps.
“You do know how to sweep a man off his feet, Alonso. Hard to believe you’re single.”
Steven wipes the blood off his battered hairline with his left hand, his right arm hanging heavy and rigid as he pulls himself up from his confines.
“Chamartín’s… IT department didn’t take too kindly to my wiping out their servers of anything you ever produced for them,” Steven says flatly like having his elbow completely twisted out of its socket and well on its way to becoming grotesquely swollen is a standard operating procedure.
The one thing he seems to care about though is the SIG Sauer Xabi extends towards his good arm. He could swear Steven’s eyes just literally lit up.
“Can you walk?”
“I have to, don’t I?”
They fish out the decommissioned guard’s weapon on their way out.
“I don’t suppose you have a Plan B,” Steven asks for the sake of conversation once the bullets start flying from the direction of the fire exit.
“Err… Pepe wasn’t very clear on that,” Xabi whispers breathlessly. They flatten themselves against the nearest corner for cover. “Plan A was to find you where Pepe thought they may be keeping you. He said you’d know how to get out of here if you were still alive.”
“Right...”
Xabi sees it when they run towards the backdoor emergency exit. It’s a thin but persistent strip of blood searing through the dullness of the concrete, but there’s no time (ha!) to contemplate it just now, there’s only the elevator and the sounds of their pursuers getting ever nearer.
The elevator doors open with a literal bang, the paneled mirror of the back wall exploding into a shower of sparkly reflections. However, the next bullet doesn’t have enough time to hit the glass cage again before the doors whoosh shut, elegant and impassive. Less than thirty seconds later, Steven shoots the elevator’s control panel just as their heads become visible through two sets of transparent walls. It comes to an abrupt stop halfway between a lobby and a glass-walled conference room.
“What…”
“Time to get off. They think we’re heading for the main exit. Conference room’s less crowded,” Steven answers with cool detachment, like they’re picking curtains or a new sofa.
If this were the movies, Xabi thinks, they’d shoot through two thick walls of polycarbonate and laminated glass and shatter them with one magic bullet. It’s long ago sunk in that reality is far more mundane so the emergency mechanism of the elevator cracks the doors open between floors and they crawl towards the upper level, Xabi dragging Steven up by his good arm.
“Try to act terrified,” Steven prompts, his SIG making contact with Xabi’s temple.
A woman screams when they step out of the conference room towards the fire exit. The sight of the well-dressed gentleman with his hands in the air shoved from behind by a bloodied and beaten scowling man is enough of a show-stopper to buy them crucial seconds to reach the stairs.
“That was riveting,” Xabi smirks. “Where the fuck are we going?”
He realizes keeping up with Steven skipping three steps up in one leap has become worryingly easy, but it’s only when they barge through the door at the top of the stairs and into the blinding sunshine that Xabi sees just how ashen Steven’s face is and how soaked in blood his entire left side below his shoulder is.
The sight of the helipad and their prospective ride to anywhere but here and now distracts Xabi from the cold fright wrapping itself around his throat.
“Probably a good time to mention I didn’t do all that great on my navigation tests in basic training,” Steven’s breath is now a torrent, his lungs audibly struggling to catch up with his erratic pulse.
“I put a bullet hole in the last helicopter I was on,” Xabi yells as they hop onto the slender Robinson R44 Raven II.
“My standards are pretty low.”
There are no holes in this aircraft, though not for the lack of trying. They are simply out of range already when the now overstaffed but ineffective security forces burst onto the helipad and can do nothing more but squint into the heatwave undulating the sunlight around the Raven.
Cartagena is soon spread like a glittering maze beneath them, high rise buildings getting progressively smaller. The cruise ships stretching their whale backs in the docks are a good reminder to Xabi that he needs a vacation. A real vacation on some sea shore with no dead liquid dinosaurs to be unearthed. No laptop, no lab reports, just a trashy Harlan Cobben mystery he’d pick up at the airport, an endless supply of gin and tonic and ideally…
“Did you really shoot up Lampard’s bird?”
“Threatened to kill one of his men while I was at it,” Xabi tries to not sound exceedingly smug about it because that part had not exactly been his favorite.
Steven doesn’t seem entirely broken up about it, although Xabi can’t tell if it’s because Lampard’s men are not his men or because he’s pouring every ounce of energy into keeping his eyes open and his hands from trembling on the controls of the helicopter.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re most likely certifiable and out to ruin my life, I mean. Why… why would you do that?”
“Well… you’re not very good at this secret agent business,” Xabi says all sensible and don’t-take-it-personally, “which I guess makes us both a bit… let’s face it, we’re both fuck ups.”
Steven doesn’t really have time for hurt pride before Xabi gives him a loaded look, his eyes shimmering like sparkling wine.
“It didn’t work, Steven. My great discovery… it was never going to work.”
“Chamartín’s Head of Security didn’t seem to think so when he was breaking my elbow looking for the data I stole off their computers,” Steven grumbles, a creeping suspicion starting to form in his head nonetheless.
“They had the theoretical models, yes. But no matter how perfect the chemistry was, I just… couldn’t find the right formula. And believe me, I tried. That’s why I went along with the change of venue, I guess I thought maybe the Colombian refinery would do the trick. I was just buying time….”
He swallows a bitter taste in his mouth, a reflux of failure mixed with guilt.
“It may never work or take longer than one man’s lifespan to see it happen.”
“Oh.”
Steven feels like he’s reached the limit of his eloquence.
“I couldn’t just fly off knowing you could die for nothing. Or… you know… at all…”
Steven pretends really hard to be focusing on nothing but their gentle descent into what looks like a leafy residential neighborhood. Once they’re close enough, Xabi sees the Union Jack flapping in their propeller draft and half a battalion of Royal Marines descending on the manicured lawn of the consulate of the United Kingdom, a country they are technically about to invade.
~
“Agent Gerrard needs to rest. He’s in no condition…”
It’s not like Xabi can’t tell already. The oxygen mask on his wan face as Steven is wheeled into the Consulate on a stretcher was one of his first clues, right after he’d collapsed three steps into their march towards hours of bureaucratic wankery. He barges into the infirmary after the medic regardless.
“I just want to…”
“Mr. Alonso, you need to leave. Now!”
Steven wraps his hand weakly around the medic’s labcoat and the shrillness level of her voice drops significantly when he rasps something at her from beneath his oxygen mask.
“Two minutes,” she concedes, shooting Xabi a dirty look on her way out.
Xabi has no idea what Steven’s trying to do so he helps him claw the mask off his face while Steven protects his crushed arm during his attempt to drag himself to a half-seating position on his side.
“Steven, you have a bullet in you. Again… It’s probably best if you don’t try any heroics, that was just failed banter earlier, I don’t actually believe you’re…”
“Shut up! The bandage…”
“What…?”
“Bandage… on my back… take it off!”
Xabi feels a wave of dismay hit him when he notices how laborious the rise and fall of Steven’s chest is. The pit of his stomach feels too tight.
He lifts up Steven’s shirt gingerly, his fingertips startled by how heated his skin is, and rips the dirty bandage off. The wound that had once been healing nicely is now an angry red scar again, oozing a too sticky blood trail from under a torn crust.
“Had about ten seconds to hide your life’s work,” Steven says hoarsely. “I figured I only knew one man crazy enough to voluntarily stick his finger in a bullet wound…”
Xabi’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh, so you shove a data card in your bullet wound, but I’m the nutter here?!?”
His hands do not waver nearly as much as his voice. Xabi pulls out a flat, weightless hexagonal chip the size of a thumbnail from under Steven’s inflamed skin, staring at it with equal parts of fascination and disgust.
“After things calm down a bit,” Steven rolls painfully on his back again, deflated as if he’d spent the last ounce of energy. “You can start again… if anyone can ever make it work... it should be…”
His eyelids flutter over cloudy eyes a few times as Xabi puts the oxygen mask back on his face. He leans his forehead against Steven’s clammy skin and whispers something above his blood-soaked hair as the medic storms back into the room.
Chapter 8/8 ½
Rating: R
Summary: In which Xabi is an Arsenal fan.
“Good morning, welcome to Chamartín.”
“Good morning. My name is Xabier Alonso. I’m here to see Mr. Képler Ferreira. I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment, but… he will want to see me, I can assure you.”
The last bit is addressed more to the security camera peering discreetly over the reception from the entrance rather than to the almond-eyed pretty young lady behind the desk on whose face Xabi can read the signs of an impending struggle.
“Mr. Ferreira is in a meeting at the moment.”
I know.
This is Xabi’s cue to unleash the charm offensive full on, his most self-possessed half smile deployed already to full effect and well… Xabi’s not one to get big-headed or anything, but he’s frankly impressed with how easily he’s already demolishing any defensive ramparts standing in his way.
“Would you mind getting him?... ¿Por favor?”
And that’s that. About ten percent of the mission is accomplished once the young lady does his bidding. Xabi flexes his fingers slowly, as if testing his body for any signs of betrayal and when he’s pleased with the result, he slides an arm across the now vacated reception desk and grabs the guest access card.
One… two… three… four flights of stairs taken to avoid any elevator encounters and the last level leads into a seemingly abandoned section of the building’s underground parking lot. Xabi knows better than that. He slides gingerly along the wall until he can finally see anonymous Door X guarded by two uniformed young men shaped like 19th century armoires. He can feel a drop of sweat pooling at his temple in the stale air. It’s not rationally possible to think that he’s been waiting for more than five minutes, but Xabi feels he’s aged at least a couple of years by the time he sees the door open and a bald, swarthy man (“ugly as fuck and twice as mean, looks like a rabid pug” - Pepe’s profiling turns out to be unsurprisingly inspired) emerging to bark some instructions at the guards. He looks pissed.
The squarer of the two armoires follows Ferreira through the exit leading to the elevator and that’s when Xabi’s curls his fingers around the SIG holstered near the small of his back. His hands feel icy cold but steadier than ever when he screws in the silencer into the tip of the barrel (“like a badass champagne cork” er… fine, Pepe, whatever), but Xabi’s not even surprised when his first tranquilizer shot (“Joder, because it’s a terrible idea to give a civilian live ammunition, do you even have to ask…?”) doesn’t come anywhere close to grazing the guard’s neck. He has about half a second to make a decision. Or rather the adrenaline spiking in Xabi’s blood takes no more than half a second to make him step out from the shadows, take advantage of the target’s confusion and shoot him wherever the hell he can aim. It turns out to be the guy’s hip, which does nothing to put him to sleep immediately, but the sting is strong and surprising enough to give Xabi time to whack him hard over the head with the butt of the gun. The third shot is much closer to his aorta and the guard is out cold before Xabi even bends over his limp body to pocket his access card.
They’re in a bunker and one of them is tied to a chair under the sickly glow of a lamp, but that’s where the flashback ends. For one thing, Xabi is wearing a two thousand pound gray suit and matching tie and smells divine while Steven is wearing the same type of paramilitary gear he had when they first… well… second met except with lots more blood splashed over it in fresh stains.
There’s a bluish bruise starting to trickle across the side of Steven’s forehead right next to where drops of blood are slowly accumulating over his left eyebrow, threatening to spill over.
“What the fuck…”
“No time for that now, we have to…” Xabi starts then stops just short of mouthing the ultimate movie cliché. He’d laugh if he weren’t busy kneeling next to Steven’s bound wrists.
“What part of don’t do anything stupid did you fail to grasp?” Steven croaks, his breath coming out in dazed little rasps as he tastes metal and salt on his split lip.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Pepe told me,” Xabi huffs out, frustrated by the sturdiness of the deceptively flimsy strips around Steven’s wrists. “Did you really think I was going to let you carry on with this suicide in the line of duty bullshit?... Before I even got to have sex with you?”
The plastic finally snaps.
“You do know how to sweep a man off his feet, Alonso. Hard to believe you’re single.”
Steven wipes the blood off his battered hairline with his left hand, his right arm hanging heavy and rigid as he pulls himself up from his confines.
“Chamartín’s… IT department didn’t take too kindly to my wiping out their servers of anything you ever produced for them,” Steven says flatly like having his elbow completely twisted out of its socket and well on its way to becoming grotesquely swollen is a standard operating procedure.
The one thing he seems to care about though is the SIG Sauer Xabi extends towards his good arm. He could swear Steven’s eyes just literally lit up.
“Can you walk?”
“I have to, don’t I?”
They fish out the decommissioned guard’s weapon on their way out.
“I don’t suppose you have a Plan B,” Steven asks for the sake of conversation once the bullets start flying from the direction of the fire exit.
“Err… Pepe wasn’t very clear on that,” Xabi whispers breathlessly. They flatten themselves against the nearest corner for cover. “Plan A was to find you where Pepe thought they may be keeping you. He said you’d know how to get out of here if you were still alive.”
“Right...”
Xabi sees it when they run towards the backdoor emergency exit. It’s a thin but persistent strip of blood searing through the dullness of the concrete, but there’s no time (ha!) to contemplate it just now, there’s only the elevator and the sounds of their pursuers getting ever nearer.
The elevator doors open with a literal bang, the paneled mirror of the back wall exploding into a shower of sparkly reflections. However, the next bullet doesn’t have enough time to hit the glass cage again before the doors whoosh shut, elegant and impassive. Less than thirty seconds later, Steven shoots the elevator’s control panel just as their heads become visible through two sets of transparent walls. It comes to an abrupt stop halfway between a lobby and a glass-walled conference room.
“What…”
“Time to get off. They think we’re heading for the main exit. Conference room’s less crowded,” Steven answers with cool detachment, like they’re picking curtains or a new sofa.
If this were the movies, Xabi thinks, they’d shoot through two thick walls of polycarbonate and laminated glass and shatter them with one magic bullet. It’s long ago sunk in that reality is far more mundane so the emergency mechanism of the elevator cracks the doors open between floors and they crawl towards the upper level, Xabi dragging Steven up by his good arm.
“Try to act terrified,” Steven prompts, his SIG making contact with Xabi’s temple.
A woman screams when they step out of the conference room towards the fire exit. The sight of the well-dressed gentleman with his hands in the air shoved from behind by a bloodied and beaten scowling man is enough of a show-stopper to buy them crucial seconds to reach the stairs.
“That was riveting,” Xabi smirks. “Where the fuck are we going?”
He realizes keeping up with Steven skipping three steps up in one leap has become worryingly easy, but it’s only when they barge through the door at the top of the stairs and into the blinding sunshine that Xabi sees just how ashen Steven’s face is and how soaked in blood his entire left side below his shoulder is.
The sight of the helipad and their prospective ride to anywhere but here and now distracts Xabi from the cold fright wrapping itself around his throat.
“Probably a good time to mention I didn’t do all that great on my navigation tests in basic training,” Steven’s breath is now a torrent, his lungs audibly struggling to catch up with his erratic pulse.
“I put a bullet hole in the last helicopter I was on,” Xabi yells as they hop onto the slender Robinson R44 Raven II.
“My standards are pretty low.”
There are no holes in this aircraft, though not for the lack of trying. They are simply out of range already when the now overstaffed but ineffective security forces burst onto the helipad and can do nothing more but squint into the heatwave undulating the sunlight around the Raven.
Cartagena is soon spread like a glittering maze beneath them, high rise buildings getting progressively smaller. The cruise ships stretching their whale backs in the docks are a good reminder to Xabi that he needs a vacation. A real vacation on some sea shore with no dead liquid dinosaurs to be unearthed. No laptop, no lab reports, just a trashy Harlan Cobben mystery he’d pick up at the airport, an endless supply of gin and tonic and ideally…
“Did you really shoot up Lampard’s bird?”
“Threatened to kill one of his men while I was at it,” Xabi tries to not sound exceedingly smug about it because that part had not exactly been his favorite.
Steven doesn’t seem entirely broken up about it, although Xabi can’t tell if it’s because Lampard’s men are not his men or because he’s pouring every ounce of energy into keeping his eyes open and his hands from trembling on the controls of the helicopter.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re most likely certifiable and out to ruin my life, I mean. Why… why would you do that?”
“Well… you’re not very good at this secret agent business,” Xabi says all sensible and don’t-take-it-personally, “which I guess makes us both a bit… let’s face it, we’re both fuck ups.”
Steven doesn’t really have time for hurt pride before Xabi gives him a loaded look, his eyes shimmering like sparkling wine.
“It didn’t work, Steven. My great discovery… it was never going to work.”
“Chamartín’s Head of Security didn’t seem to think so when he was breaking my elbow looking for the data I stole off their computers,” Steven grumbles, a creeping suspicion starting to form in his head nonetheless.
“They had the theoretical models, yes. But no matter how perfect the chemistry was, I just… couldn’t find the right formula. And believe me, I tried. That’s why I went along with the change of venue, I guess I thought maybe the Colombian refinery would do the trick. I was just buying time….”
He swallows a bitter taste in his mouth, a reflux of failure mixed with guilt.
“It may never work or take longer than one man’s lifespan to see it happen.”
“Oh.”
Steven feels like he’s reached the limit of his eloquence.
“I couldn’t just fly off knowing you could die for nothing. Or… you know… at all…”
Steven pretends really hard to be focusing on nothing but their gentle descent into what looks like a leafy residential neighborhood. Once they’re close enough, Xabi sees the Union Jack flapping in their propeller draft and half a battalion of Royal Marines descending on the manicured lawn of the consulate of the United Kingdom, a country they are technically about to invade.
~
“Agent Gerrard needs to rest. He’s in no condition…”
It’s not like Xabi can’t tell already. The oxygen mask on his wan face as Steven is wheeled into the Consulate on a stretcher was one of his first clues, right after he’d collapsed three steps into their march towards hours of bureaucratic wankery. He barges into the infirmary after the medic regardless.
“I just want to…”
“Mr. Alonso, you need to leave. Now!”
Steven wraps his hand weakly around the medic’s labcoat and the shrillness level of her voice drops significantly when he rasps something at her from beneath his oxygen mask.
“Two minutes,” she concedes, shooting Xabi a dirty look on her way out.
Xabi has no idea what Steven’s trying to do so he helps him claw the mask off his face while Steven protects his crushed arm during his attempt to drag himself to a half-seating position on his side.
“Steven, you have a bullet in you. Again… It’s probably best if you don’t try any heroics, that was just failed banter earlier, I don’t actually believe you’re…”
“Shut up! The bandage…”
“What…?”
“Bandage… on my back… take it off!”
Xabi feels a wave of dismay hit him when he notices how laborious the rise and fall of Steven’s chest is. The pit of his stomach feels too tight.
He lifts up Steven’s shirt gingerly, his fingertips startled by how heated his skin is, and rips the dirty bandage off. The wound that had once been healing nicely is now an angry red scar again, oozing a too sticky blood trail from under a torn crust.
“Had about ten seconds to hide your life’s work,” Steven says hoarsely. “I figured I only knew one man crazy enough to voluntarily stick his finger in a bullet wound…”
Xabi’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh, so you shove a data card in your bullet wound, but I’m the nutter here?!?”
His hands do not waver nearly as much as his voice. Xabi pulls out a flat, weightless hexagonal chip the size of a thumbnail from under Steven’s inflamed skin, staring at it with equal parts of fascination and disgust.
“After things calm down a bit,” Steven rolls painfully on his back again, deflated as if he’d spent the last ounce of energy. “You can start again… if anyone can ever make it work... it should be…”
His eyelids flutter over cloudy eyes a few times as Xabi puts the oxygen mask back on his face. He leans his forehead against Steven’s clammy skin and whispers something above his blood-soaked hair as the medic storms back into the room.