[fanfiction] birthday fic
For Stef on her 17th birthday. Because I adore her lots. Because she is eternally wonderful. Because, well, just read to the end. Happy birthday, Stef. (I hope it doesn’t suck.)
17 drabbles for 17 years. 16 of footie, one bonus at the end. The footie ones are connected by the main character and little more.
gods make their own importance
Andriy Shevchenko gen (with appearances by assorted ships), PG-13
1600 words
1. He finds a strange common ground with the boys in blue when Liverpool is mentioned. They were all victims of the same team in the 2005 Champions League, even if it was on different levels. Even if Sheva’s was a personal failure that would never be forgotten while Chelsea’s was a collective one that was already starting to heal. He stands in front of the army of red and thinks This is it. Thinks this is the chance to make up for everything that’s gone wrong since. But he can’t turn back time and he’s left with the same mistakes.
2. He imagines a day when his time at Milan is just a small memory, a slight blip in his past, and he wonders if such a thing would ever be possible. What great events must happen to render what are now the best years of his life so insignificant? He pictures the future, tries to see a life in which he felt unending happiness, but all he can do is transplant the joy of the past few years to accompany stereotypical images of life. But he just can’t see how anything could compare to those days of black and red.
3. He loves the good days on the pitch. He loves the crisp grass under his feet and the faint hint of skin beneath his spikes after a clean tackle. He loves the way time can seem to slow down even as the game picks up its pace. He loves the sight of the ball flying through the air or rolling in front of him. He loves the sound of the net being pushed back when the ball lands in the goal. He loves being crushed by his teammates when he does the right thing.
He loves playing, plain and simple.
4. He scores and then he doesn’t and the fans are unwilling to leave him alone. He finds himself stepping up the reporters, laughing like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He wants to display confidence and certainty.
“Don’t worry,” he boldly declares. “It’s just a temporary dry spell. It’ll get better.”
It’s a promise that rolls off his tongue too easily for the uncertainty behind it. That doesn’t matter. He assumes that it has served his purpose. The fans can now get off his back (oh, if only he could remove the name there) and he can relax.
5. He starts to compare his new captain to his old and then stops because he cannot fathom such an idea. It’s impossible to imagine AC Milan without Paolo Maldini wearing that armband. He is AC Milan. He is a man whose playing years could be related as an epic that’s told for years to come.
(Sheva pictures a lyrical tale of shipwrecks and sirens, patient wives and one-eyed men. He thinks the idea should make him laugh but it’s sobering to realize how realistic an idea it is.)
It’s strange to play away from the watchful eyes of his hero.
6. He stops scoring goals and he thinks about giving up other things. It’s foolish because he knows he didn’t choose to stop scoring - he’d probably remember doing something like that - but he still considers a sacrifice. Maybe his life was too full and his form was taken away to make room. Maybe eliminating breathing or smiling or sleeping will make him play better. Maybe there was some agreement he made with the devil for - for what? Hadn’t he sacrificed enough already? What could be worth giving up the last thing he had? How could he possibly survive without his soul?
7. He wants to say You don’t understand. He wants it to be true so he can still be special in a way that doesn’t involve not scoring goals. He wants to say You don’t know what it’s like to leave everything you know - home, country, team, even language - behind and start over with only your reputation. But he can’t. Or he could, but that wouldn’t help the situation. It would be blind and selfish. It would push Micha away when he desperately wants to keep him close; wants to dig his nails into his skin just to keep him there.
8. He’s horrified to see the videos and hear the stories about the stadium violence occurring all over the world. He wonders if there’s an element of play on the pitch that implies more violent conduct than he’d realized and he’s sure that there isn’t. For all the players with extreme tempers there are red and yellow cards to hold them in place. What are the fans trying to prove with their actions? How far would they (could they) go to make that point?
The game may be his life, but he’s not sure that he’s ready to die for it.
9. He’s lost here, with the strange accents and thick air. The words aren’t clicking and the effort it takes to string together whole sentences is not decreasing. Hand gestures are reaching their limit; they’re apparently not as universal as he’d believed.
It’s nothing new to be in a strange land where everything flies past his head before he can get a handle on it. But the world feels heavier now (or is that just the expectations?) and he feels his grip on life slipping away.
When he loses his ability to talk entirely, who, or what, will he be then?
10. His life is a nightmare and he’s stopped finding refuge in sleep. He makes a show of climbing into bed and holding Kristen until she’s asleep but he doesn’t let his brain shut off. It’s easier than he expects. He thinks he should be blinking a lot or that the lamp across the room should be getting blurry. But he’s not and it’s not.
When he crawls out off bed in the morning he’s triumphant over a victory - for once - but he stumbles when he sees the bags under his eyes and imagines them weighing him down on the pitch.
11. (It’s not always doom and gloom, or slogging through misery for a burst of happiness that passes by all too quickly. There is sunshine and sometimes it lasts for many days. He smiles and laughs and stops asking questions. He plays with his sons and loves football and kisses without wondering if anyone’s watching. He forgets Milan, or at least he’s comfortable in blue. The confusion over language and customs lifts to reveal a clearer world in which he is not an outsider. He doesn’t wince at the sound of his own name.
He stops being afraid of the world.)
12. Jose’s face reflects concern and another element, maybe sympathy. He says he’s not sure that Sheva should play. He says that perhaps Sheva should take some time off to figure out what’s wrong. Sheva looks closer at his face and can now discern anger and impatience, and maybe a bit of I’m wasting my time. There are a million conflicting emotions there and Sheva’s not sure how to respond. He finally settles for the truth and says “Don’t worry. It’ll get better. I’ll get better.”
He can only hope that he does not sound as desperate as he is feeling.
13. Sheva remembers Kaka. He remembers his smile, his passion, his grace. He remembers the stoic adult facade that could give way to childlike innocence in a split second. He always looked like a child as he slept and then he could wake up and utter some bit of wisdom far beyond his years. That is the heart of it all, though. He is still just a kid, no matter what his mind is like.
(He remembers lips on his that made him forget about age differences and little kids.)
It hurts to know that he’ll miss seeing Kaka grow up.
14. Sometimes he wonders about God, although he doesn’t do it as often as he used to. In the past there were conversations with Kaka that could last for minutes or days on end. Kaka usually brought it up but every now and then Sheva was the curious one. He wanted to know about sacrifice and faith, about living your life for someone you can’t even see. He asked questions that were patiently answered and slowly began to file away the outer layers of religion.
He sometimes wonders if he was trying to get to the heart of God or Kaka.
15. The transfer windows opens and Sheva’s picture is in every newspaper again. The demands that he be traded are nothing new only now it’s more real because it’s possible something might actually happen. There are letters to Roman and Jose with pleas of mercy for the fans and Sheva soon has to turn away to hide his shame over how he is perceived. He imagines not wearing blue and that’s easy (too easy) but then there aren’t any colors he can replace it with. It’s not leaving Chelsea that he fears the most but rather not ending up somewhere else.
16. “You could be happy.”
It’s the root of his life, of how he approaches the world. As though happiness is always just around the corner, always just a few goals away. He thinks that this attitude should be weighing him down, but he finds it to be the opposite. It’s easier to live with life when he fools himself into believing that he could be happy at any moment. He wishes he didn’t feel that he was tricking himself, wishes he didn’t believe that he could trick himself. He wishes it wasn’t so necessary to rely on such an anthem.
You, According to Me
100 words
17. You will always be the one who could discuss football until 2 a.m., the one who says How do you say so much with so little and sees my word conservation as magic. You are the one who blurs the line between fiction and truth, between how it is and how it should be. You sketch beauty with your words. You are the better writer, the better friend, the better person. You are the reason I do not kill myself, the person who always makes me laugh.
You are not simple enough to be summed up in only 100 words.
Misc A/N: Title taken from the poem “Epic” by Patrick Kavanaugh. (We discussed it in Irish Lit and my first thought was “I should write that down so I can use it for something Sheva-related.”) Drabble 16 was heavily influenced by Snow Patrol. This collection could also be called “How Lisa Romanticizes Andriy Shevchenko, AC Milan, and Football.” I played with Sheva a little here, and I hope it worked out for other eyes. Finally, I nearly wrote Stef/Jonathan Bornstein but I decided that I would be more comfortable with that if I could see a picture of you. So, you know, you might want to get on that before next year.
17 drabbles for 17 years. 16 of footie, one bonus at the end. The footie ones are connected by the main character and little more.
gods make their own importance
Andriy Shevchenko gen (with appearances by assorted ships), PG-13
1600 words
1. He finds a strange common ground with the boys in blue when Liverpool is mentioned. They were all victims of the same team in the 2005 Champions League, even if it was on different levels. Even if Sheva’s was a personal failure that would never be forgotten while Chelsea’s was a collective one that was already starting to heal. He stands in front of the army of red and thinks This is it. Thinks this is the chance to make up for everything that’s gone wrong since. But he can’t turn back time and he’s left with the same mistakes.
2. He imagines a day when his time at Milan is just a small memory, a slight blip in his past, and he wonders if such a thing would ever be possible. What great events must happen to render what are now the best years of his life so insignificant? He pictures the future, tries to see a life in which he felt unending happiness, but all he can do is transplant the joy of the past few years to accompany stereotypical images of life. But he just can’t see how anything could compare to those days of black and red.
3. He loves the good days on the pitch. He loves the crisp grass under his feet and the faint hint of skin beneath his spikes after a clean tackle. He loves the way time can seem to slow down even as the game picks up its pace. He loves the sight of the ball flying through the air or rolling in front of him. He loves the sound of the net being pushed back when the ball lands in the goal. He loves being crushed by his teammates when he does the right thing.
He loves playing, plain and simple.
4. He scores and then he doesn’t and the fans are unwilling to leave him alone. He finds himself stepping up the reporters, laughing like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He wants to display confidence and certainty.
“Don’t worry,” he boldly declares. “It’s just a temporary dry spell. It’ll get better.”
It’s a promise that rolls off his tongue too easily for the uncertainty behind it. That doesn’t matter. He assumes that it has served his purpose. The fans can now get off his back (oh, if only he could remove the name there) and he can relax.
5. He starts to compare his new captain to his old and then stops because he cannot fathom such an idea. It’s impossible to imagine AC Milan without Paolo Maldini wearing that armband. He is AC Milan. He is a man whose playing years could be related as an epic that’s told for years to come.
(Sheva pictures a lyrical tale of shipwrecks and sirens, patient wives and one-eyed men. He thinks the idea should make him laugh but it’s sobering to realize how realistic an idea it is.)
It’s strange to play away from the watchful eyes of his hero.
6. He stops scoring goals and he thinks about giving up other things. It’s foolish because he knows he didn’t choose to stop scoring - he’d probably remember doing something like that - but he still considers a sacrifice. Maybe his life was too full and his form was taken away to make room. Maybe eliminating breathing or smiling or sleeping will make him play better. Maybe there was some agreement he made with the devil for - for what? Hadn’t he sacrificed enough already? What could be worth giving up the last thing he had? How could he possibly survive without his soul?
7. He wants to say You don’t understand. He wants it to be true so he can still be special in a way that doesn’t involve not scoring goals. He wants to say You don’t know what it’s like to leave everything you know - home, country, team, even language - behind and start over with only your reputation. But he can’t. Or he could, but that wouldn’t help the situation. It would be blind and selfish. It would push Micha away when he desperately wants to keep him close; wants to dig his nails into his skin just to keep him there.
8. He’s horrified to see the videos and hear the stories about the stadium violence occurring all over the world. He wonders if there’s an element of play on the pitch that implies more violent conduct than he’d realized and he’s sure that there isn’t. For all the players with extreme tempers there are red and yellow cards to hold them in place. What are the fans trying to prove with their actions? How far would they (could they) go to make that point?
The game may be his life, but he’s not sure that he’s ready to die for it.
9. He’s lost here, with the strange accents and thick air. The words aren’t clicking and the effort it takes to string together whole sentences is not decreasing. Hand gestures are reaching their limit; they’re apparently not as universal as he’d believed.
It’s nothing new to be in a strange land where everything flies past his head before he can get a handle on it. But the world feels heavier now (or is that just the expectations?) and he feels his grip on life slipping away.
When he loses his ability to talk entirely, who, or what, will he be then?
10. His life is a nightmare and he’s stopped finding refuge in sleep. He makes a show of climbing into bed and holding Kristen until she’s asleep but he doesn’t let his brain shut off. It’s easier than he expects. He thinks he should be blinking a lot or that the lamp across the room should be getting blurry. But he’s not and it’s not.
When he crawls out off bed in the morning he’s triumphant over a victory - for once - but he stumbles when he sees the bags under his eyes and imagines them weighing him down on the pitch.
11. (It’s not always doom and gloom, or slogging through misery for a burst of happiness that passes by all too quickly. There is sunshine and sometimes it lasts for many days. He smiles and laughs and stops asking questions. He plays with his sons and loves football and kisses without wondering if anyone’s watching. He forgets Milan, or at least he’s comfortable in blue. The confusion over language and customs lifts to reveal a clearer world in which he is not an outsider. He doesn’t wince at the sound of his own name.
He stops being afraid of the world.)
12. Jose’s face reflects concern and another element, maybe sympathy. He says he’s not sure that Sheva should play. He says that perhaps Sheva should take some time off to figure out what’s wrong. Sheva looks closer at his face and can now discern anger and impatience, and maybe a bit of I’m wasting my time. There are a million conflicting emotions there and Sheva’s not sure how to respond. He finally settles for the truth and says “Don’t worry. It’ll get better. I’ll get better.”
He can only hope that he does not sound as desperate as he is feeling.
13. Sheva remembers Kaka. He remembers his smile, his passion, his grace. He remembers the stoic adult facade that could give way to childlike innocence in a split second. He always looked like a child as he slept and then he could wake up and utter some bit of wisdom far beyond his years. That is the heart of it all, though. He is still just a kid, no matter what his mind is like.
(He remembers lips on his that made him forget about age differences and little kids.)
It hurts to know that he’ll miss seeing Kaka grow up.
14. Sometimes he wonders about God, although he doesn’t do it as often as he used to. In the past there were conversations with Kaka that could last for minutes or days on end. Kaka usually brought it up but every now and then Sheva was the curious one. He wanted to know about sacrifice and faith, about living your life for someone you can’t even see. He asked questions that were patiently answered and slowly began to file away the outer layers of religion.
He sometimes wonders if he was trying to get to the heart of God or Kaka.
15. The transfer windows opens and Sheva’s picture is in every newspaper again. The demands that he be traded are nothing new only now it’s more real because it’s possible something might actually happen. There are letters to Roman and Jose with pleas of mercy for the fans and Sheva soon has to turn away to hide his shame over how he is perceived. He imagines not wearing blue and that’s easy (too easy) but then there aren’t any colors he can replace it with. It’s not leaving Chelsea that he fears the most but rather not ending up somewhere else.
16. “You could be happy.”
It’s the root of his life, of how he approaches the world. As though happiness is always just around the corner, always just a few goals away. He thinks that this attitude should be weighing him down, but he finds it to be the opposite. It’s easier to live with life when he fools himself into believing that he could be happy at any moment. He wishes he didn’t feel that he was tricking himself, wishes he didn’t believe that he could trick himself. He wishes it wasn’t so necessary to rely on such an anthem.
You, According to Me
100 words
17. You will always be the one who could discuss football until 2 a.m., the one who says How do you say so much with so little and sees my word conservation as magic. You are the one who blurs the line between fiction and truth, between how it is and how it should be. You sketch beauty with your words. You are the better writer, the better friend, the better person. You are the reason I do not kill myself, the person who always makes me laugh.
You are not simple enough to be summed up in only 100 words.
Misc A/N: Title taken from the poem “Epic” by Patrick Kavanaugh. (We discussed it in Irish Lit and my first thought was “I should write that down so I can use it for something Sheva-related.”) Drabble 16 was heavily influenced by Snow Patrol. This collection could also be called “How Lisa Romanticizes Andriy Shevchenko, AC Milan, and Football.” I played with Sheva a little here, and I hope it worked out for other eyes. Finally, I nearly wrote Stef/Jonathan Bornstein but I decided that I would be more comfortable with that if I could see a picture of you. So, you know, you might want to get on that before next year.