[ The Court Will Rise; Part II (part ii) ]
Ships: Steven Gerrard/Xabi Alonso, Sergio Ramos/Fernando Torres, Iker Casillas/Cesc Fàbregas, Raúl/Guti, Cristiano Ronaldo/Kaká
Summary: One man dead, another accused. Can the legal team of Alonso, González, & Casillas save Cristiano Ronaldo? Lawyer AU. Uh.
Disclaimer: Not true, broseph. A l s o I know jack-all about the law tbh, that’s why I’m trying to get in to law school. So this fic brought to you by episodes of Law & Order: SVU and the wonderful legal counsel of Google, Google, & Wikipedia™.
Chapter: Second Brief
Word Count: 10,469……………… :(
Ships: pre-Iker Casillas/Cesc Fàbregas, pre-Steven Gerrard/Xabi Alonso, pre-Cristiano Ronaldo/Kaká
Characters: Xabi Alonso, Raúl González, Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Cesc Fàbregas, Raul Meireles, Gonzalo Higuaín, Steven Gerrard, Guti, Jamie Carragher, Gerard Piqué, Fernando Torres ; (Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kaká)
Rating: PG-13
Links: Table of Contents
Notes: PART II OF THIS GODAWFULLY LONG CHAPTER HAHAHAHA........
PART I.
Two Months Earlier; April 2011
Xabi has insufferable neighbors. He has, of course, terrible, horrific luck in general, but mostly he has insufferable neighbors. Insufferable neighbors who believe that Wednesday night-no, Wednesday morning-is the absolute perfect time to proceed to get wasted in time and in tune with questionable techno-pop music and then have infuriatingly loud fights once alcohol could be blamed for any loosened inhibition that they, supposedly, had to begin with.
The metallic door to the firm’s building slides open with a faint hiss and he barely has time to set foot on the marble entranceway when the receptionist’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Rough night?”
Xabi feels a rankle of irritation, but he supposes it’s not Sara’s fault that she’s been cursed with remarkable intuition and a sadly paying part-time day job. He supposes everyone has to make rent somehow.
“Neighbors,” he says by way of explanation and it’s early enough in the morning that Miss Carbonero should be grateful it’s an actual word and not a grunt.
“You should really consider moving into a real house,” Sara points out, her nails drumming on the reception desk. Any other morning, Xabi would barely notice it. This morning, it’s yet another detail purposed to slowly drive him over the edge.
“You should really stop talking to Iker,” he says as he trudges across the lobby. He stops at the lift and jabs at the button, waiting for his salvation to come.
“He’s not just good in bed,” Sara smiles pleasantly and Xabi chokes. “He’s good for gossip too.”
She reaches into her drawer for her headset and Xabi finds himself unnecessarily coloring, considering he’s a grown man and she isn’t talking about him.
“Things Iker’s partners do not need to know, Sara,” he says politely and breathlessly waits for the elevator to reach the ground floor. Any second now, dios mio. “I thought you two were-”
“Oh we are,” she grins and clips her headset in. “But he’s still good for a dinner or two.”
Xabi shakes his head slightly as the elevator finally opens with a ding.
The office, as usual, mildly resembles a zoo. The fact that the firm’s large, open layout is nearly brimming with people is, what Raúl believes, a testament to their success. Xabi’s personal opinion is that it is a testament to the lack of spine the three of them combined have in regards to letting go of personnel, but he supposes as long as the firm functions at a somewhat high rate, they don’t have a problem per se. Somewhere beyond the closed door to Iker’s office, he sees Álvaro and Gonzalo leaning against the wall with mugs of coffee in their hands. Between the two of them, there is entirely too much barely-contained energy for this time of the morning. Xabi vaguely wrinkles his nose tiredly before he feels a hand at his elbow.
“Coffee, boss?” a low voice follows and Xabi barely has time to register the clean shaven head of the only part-time associate who doesn’t cause him a migraine at every firm meeting. “Black. No cream, but three sugars.”
“Thanks,” Xabi says gratefully, taking the mug from Raul. His eyes catch on the younger man’s attire and his eyebrows draw immediately. “Run out of clean clothes, Meireles?”
Raul chuckles and takes a sip from his own cup.
“No clients today.”
“Clients can come to the office, you know,” Xabi points out. With anyone else it would be with a hint of irritation, but he and Raul have watched too many a Liverpool game at the only pub in Boston that humors them for him to be too cross. “And then-”
“And then they’ll be too busy staring at you or Raúl to pay any attention to the unprofessional man with the tattoos,” Raul says calmly. “Relax, Xabi. It’s hot outside and I have paperwork the size of Ronaldo’s hair gel collection to file.”
Xabi winces at the mention of their newest and most high maintenance client.
“I’d check your email, by the way,” Raul says on his way past Xabi, which makes the partner swivel and follow Raul with his eyes. Raul’s shrug is hardly telling, but Xabi can see the smile playing on his lips. “Iker hasn’t come in yet, but I overheard Raúl on the phone. He didn’t sound happy.”
None of that sounds the least bit promising to Xabi Alonso, so he manages to gulp down as much of his coffee as possible before turning the lock to his office door and stepping inside.
Xabi settles in to his desk and turns on his high processing computer-an expensive investment, but one that he personally thought was well worth the investment. While Raúl and Iker don’t mind having older computers or phones, Xabi has always firmly believed in treating himself well, at least in regards to the latest technology. It’s not so much that he’s wired in; more that he knows how much of his career is invested in computers and BlackBerries and he simply does not have time to deal with CPUs and phones with the processing speed of Mikel after Thanksgiving dinner.
The computer turns on lightning fast as a result and he reorganizes a few of the files on his desk before pulling up the internet. On the one hand, he could absolutely call Raúl and save himself the headache of whatever it was-or is-that Meireles seems so infuriatingly amused about, but then that would require some measure of self preservation and everyone knows that Xabi Alonso, much like Raúl González and Iker Casillas, is a firm proponent of masochism.
He waits impatiently for Thunderbird to pull up his emails and it’s unsurprisingly full, although he’s certain he told Gonzalo the day before to please please go through and delete what was unnecessary. He doesn’t really blame Gonzalo-knows that the younger man has had his hands full with an environmental case that he’s been sharing with Álvaro-but it really does remind him how much they are in need of interns. Or third year law students to act as summer associates-also known as Advanced Interns. He makes a mental note to discuss it with Raúl and Iker as he scrolls through entirely too many emails of inquiry about the state of his law firm and also of the stamina of his sex life.
Xabi sighs before his eyes catch on a subject line that stops him almost immediately with pervasive irritation.
“You are fucking shitting me,” he curses lowly as he clicks it open.
Gerrard, Carragher, and Gutíerrez LLP to me show details 6:41 AM (1 hour ago)
Associates at AGC LLP,
As you have no doubt received noticed from our firm, the Law Offices of Gerrard, Carragher, and Gutíerrez have agreed to accept the highly anticipated and contentious case of Messi vs. Ronaldo on behalf of Lionel Messi's family and girlfriend, Miss Antonella Roccuzzo. As the prosecution to this case, we are sure you are well aware to the evidentiary rights we have to the crime scene as well as Mr. Ronaldo.
As you are acting as Mr. Ronaldo's defense, we request full disclosure between the two sides and beg your utmost cooperation. We will want to schedule a meeting with Mr. Ronaldo as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Regards,
Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, José María Gutiérrez.
Xabi reaches for his phone and dials Raúl’s extension almost immediately. Raúl picks up on the first ring and Xabi barely has time to breathe out angrily before he speaks.
“I understand you’re angry, Xabi-”
“Angry?” Xabi hisses, vein pulsing somewhere near his temple as he reads and re-reads the message. “Did you read the email, Raúl?”
“Yes and the tone was very cursory-”
“Cursory? It was fucking patronizing-”
“Xabi, we all have our problems with the way that firm operates, but this is not the time to lose our tempers, we have to-”
“Raúl, you can’t possibly believe what you’re saying,” Xabi says angrily. He gestures at his email as though Raúl could possibly see. “We request full disclosure between the two sides, because we were the ones withholding evidence during the Suárez case.”
“We won that case, Xabi,” Raúl says softly. It’s meant to soothe the Basque man, surely, but it doesn’t quite have its intended effect. On the contrary, Xabi bristles even more.
“No thanks to them. If I ever see Steven Gerrard or fucking Guti again-”
“We still have no evidence that they were the ones stalling that case. For all we know it could have been the incompetence of interns or part-time associates. Their reputation is just as clean as ours, they simply tend to say yes to the more controversial cases.”
Xabi laughs derisively and pulls up a reply to the email.
Draft autosaved at 7:53 AM (0 minutes ago)
From: Alonso, González, and Casillas LLP < agc.llp@gmail.com >
To: "Gerrard, Carragher, and Gutiérrez LLP" < gcg.llp@gmail.com >
Add Cc | Add Bcc
Subject: Dear Assholes
Attach a file Insert: Invitation
Associates at GCG LLP,
Please kindly fuck yourselv|
“Xabi please don’t do anything rash,” Raúl begs on the other end of the line, almost as though he knows what the silence from Xabi’s signifies. “Iker hasn’t come in yet and you know as well as I do that he’s going to have choice words as well. Let’s just wait, there’s no reason to reply to-”
“This has Steven Gerrard written all over it,” Xabi says with disgust, cutting off Raúl. “Carragher would just call and ask us to stop being fuckwits and Gutíerrez would manage to add at least a good paragraph of insults to the end.”
“Isn’t the absence of both a good thing, then?” Raúl asks weakly.
“I’ll show them absence is a good thing-” Xabi says, eyes narrowing, just before a beeping cuts him off.
“Is that your line?” Xabi asks, frowning.
“Mm? No, it must be yours.”
Xabi glares from his telephone to the offending email and then back to the telephone again. Somewhere, between the two of them, there is a conspiracy theory waiting to be written and Xabi Alonso is none the pleased for either.
“I will take this call and call you back, Raúl.”
“Xabi please don’t-”
“I won’t send the fucking email!” Xabi snaps, which is uncharacteristic for him, but between his insufferable neighbors and Steven Gerrard, he’s at wit’s end anyway. He takes a few breaths to calm himself while the orange hold light flashes erratically on his telephone.
He forces himself into a calm that is only born of years of frustration and learning how to deal with Álvaro Arbeloa. By the time he finally presses the button to the line waiting, he even has a serene smile on his face.
“Xabi Alonso. Can I help you?”
There’s the brief sounds of rustling and a silence that makes his smile falter for the briefest of milliseconds.
“Ah, Alonso, yeah?” a familiar voice says from the other end. “How are you? This is Steven Gerrard.”
April 2011; The Boston Magistrates’ Court
The press lines up outside, cameras hung around their necks. There are men and women, some in well-pressed suits and a few in brown, bomber jackets, standing suffocatingly close, some craning their necks to watch the courthouse door, but most fidgeting with the settings on their Nikons or microphones. A few women in pearl necklaces and earrings adjust their hair and check their teeth in the lens of the video camera rolling before them, although it’s early enough that the small red light hasn’t lit up to signal recording. Together, the press stands collectively, creating a sort of impenetrable wall that breathes and shudders, titters and yawns in eerily precise synchronization.
In the second row of this ragband militia, armed with all of the necessities of the social and regular media, stands a man with nothing but a notepad and a pen in his hands. Unlike his colleagues, he has no camera strung about his neck, no microphone to adjust in front of him. Instead, he tests his pen out on his empty notepad, smiling as the instrument makes first a clear indentation and then begins to smoothly roll out blue ink.
Ricardo likes blue ink. Black ink, while utterly professional and permanent, bothers him for reasons he never was able to explain to the Dean of his Journalism school-who, coincidentally, also happened to teach the four different segments of News Editing, News Designing, News Reporting, and News Analysis, all of which Ricardo just so happened to take. He thinks maybe it has something to do with his religious upbringing; something about the depth of black ink reminding him of the depths of soul and mortality and immortality and death and generally making him cringe when he would not otherwise.
Blue, on the other hand, is somehow more fluid. It’s bright in a way black is not and easily changeable, much like the news itself. Ricardo’s colleagues often think he’s a borderline New Age hippie, but he smiles and disagrees with them politely. He simply has his style and they have theirs.
His style, much to his boss’s constant irritation, involves less sensationalist pictures and more tasting the atmosphere and mood, gathering the concrete facts and subjective details that can only be collected through direct contact and vision and not through a lens separating him from his subject. The Globe usually sends a photographer with him anyway. He’s not particularly sure where Robinho scuttled off to, but Ricardo has no doubt that he is somewhere within the amorphous blob the press has come to resemble.
Suddenly, every person moves forward, a shudder of excitement running through the collective body of the media as the front doors creak open. Suddenly, voices shouting out every which way, journalists muttering hurriedly into the microphones attached to their person, other journalists speaking seriously to the video cameras poised in front of them, hands thrusting out larger microphones to catch anything the subject might have to say.
“Cristiano!”
“Cristiano, over here!”
“Ronaldo, a word please!”
“Why did you it?”
“Did you do it?”
“Where is his body?”
Ricardo doesn’t try to surge forward with the bodies, although he’s hard pressed not to follow suit. He studies Cristiano as he begins stepping through the throng, the public defender and the designer’s personal agent trying, rather unsuccessfully, to shield him from the journalists and flash of camera bulbs. He begins to jot down notes: how Cristiano looks, details about the public defender and his agent, his body language, his facial expression.
Cristiano looks well enough. Irritated beyond a shadow of a doubt and particularly harassed, but none the worse off for it. He’s wearing an incredibly expensive suit and he’s well-groomed and well-tanned enough. If Ricardo hadn’t known better, honestly, he would have guessed that Cristiano had just stepped out of a pre-Fashion Week press conference instead of the district courthouse.
He chuckles a little at the comparison and scribbles it down, just in case.
Amidst the questions and clamor, Cristiano and his semi-entourage manage to cut through the press without answering a single thing. It’s only when the designer reaches the sleek black car parked at the curb to the courthouse that he looks back once more toward the crowd.
His eyes, worn at the edges and crinkled from stress scans the bodies with more weariness and resignation than Ricardo thinks he’s ever seen. It’s not the markings of a guilty man, but then again Ricardo is but a journalist.
It’s just before Cristiano’s eyes find his that Ricardo takes a step forward and asks, among so many questions of admissions of guilt or innocence and the state and whereabouts of Messi’s body, the only truly objective, factual question that any of them has uttered in the past two minutes.
“Cristiano,” Ricardo says a bit loudly, pleasantly. “Who are you hiring to represent you?”
No one else seems to notice the question or, indeed, Ricardo himself, but something flickers in Cristiano’s eyes. No one else seems to notice, but Ricardo does.
He smiles, widely, the end of his pen stuck in his mouth. He thinks he probably should not look as amused as he does, but he can’t help it. He works in a zoo for a living; journalists and media spectators are but wild animals vying for attention, at the core of it.
Cristiano holds Ricardo’s gaze for a few seconds, his eyebrows creasing.
“Alonso, González, and Casillas,” Cristiano Ronaldo answers.
The press quiets for half a second as the realization that he’s answered a question sets in before they surge forward once again, even louder this time.
Ricardo, however, gives Cristiano a large grin as he jots that down on his notepad.
“Obrigado,” he calls in Portuguese and the designer’s eyes widen before he’s shoved into his car by his agent.
Seconds later, Ricardo slips away from the disappointed throng. He still has no idea where Robinho is, but he has his story and that, he thinks with a smile, is the detail that counts.
THIS SUMMER’S NEWEST FACES
The Teams Battling For and Against Cristiano Ronaldo
By Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite
Globe Staff / April 1, 2011
Weary eyes and faint bags under his eyes are all that denote that fashion designer Cristiano Ronaldo has been accused of and charged with the murder of famous underwear model, Lionel Messi. Messi, whose body remains to be found, disappeared in the middle of March. After much investigation, the Boston Police Department issued a warrant for Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrest.
Since then, extremely strong evidence has surfaced linking the fashion designer to Lionel Messi’s death. Accordingly, Ronaldo has been charged with first degree, pre-meditated murder.
Under such circumstances, one would not expect Ronaldo to emerge from the Boston Magistrates’ Court so crisply dressed, with diamond studs in each ear and a tone of tan spread evenly across. However, Ronaldo himself revealed that he has hired the excellent legal team of Alonso, González, and Casillas to construct his defense in the coming months.
Alonso, González, and Casillas, a Boston-based law firm founded by Xabier Alonso, Raúl González, and Iker Casillas-all three of whom were graduates of Harvard Law-has gained quite the reputation and prestige within the last five years. Known mostly for their environmental protection efforts and fighting for civil liberties in both low-stakes and high-attention cases, Alonso, González, and Casillas shot to fame in 2008 for winning the highly publicized case Suarez vs. Connecticut wherein professional soccer player Luis Suárez, of Uruguayan descent, sued the state of Connecticut for racial discrimination. Suárez, who was arrested by Boston police under reports of assault at a public bar, claimed that Boston police had unfairly charged and mistreated him during his arrest. The player believed that Boston police had profiled him and not awarded him his full rights as a naturalized U.S. citizen due to his immigrant background.
Suárez hired the Boston law firm after hearing of their credentials in the fight for civil liberties. Indeed, Alonso, González, and Casillas provided a solid case that won over the jury and the judge. The Suárez suit was settled for an undisclosed amount and was championed as a victory for immigrant and minority rights throughout the country.
While a supposed murder case certainly isn’t in the firm’s repertoire, their experience and championing abilities might be enough.
Then again, the prosecution, hired by Messi’s family and girlfriend, Antonella Rocuzzo, is none other than Boston-famed Gerrard, Carragher, and Gutiérrez-who also happen to be Alonso, González, and Casillas’ arch nemesis. Notorious and well-known for their nearly flawless prosecution record, the Suárez case notwithstanding, the firm will once again be acting as Alonso, González, and Casillas’ rivals.
The case of Cristiano Ronaldo and the murder of Lionel Messi remains far from solved, although the path to that answer and ultimate verdict will certainly be something to keep an eye on, if the history of these two legal teams are anything to go by.