all or nothing.
all or nothing
Daniel Agger, some Daniel Agger/Fernando Torres, mentions of others. | It's not a sudden burst of red-hot rage. It's a slow consuming burn.
It starts with a fight.
He's in the principal's office. His parents have already been called in, and he's staring at his fingernails instead of the man behind the desk.
"This is the third time in two weeks, Daniel. Why did you hit him?"
He means to say, Because he's an idiot.
Instead, "Because I wanted to," comes out.
(Actually, the other kid had started it. But this part is true too.)
He gets suspended. He spends his days kicking a ball around outside his house, not speaking to anyone.
The evening before he goes back to school, his father says, "You won't make it if you keep this up."
Daniel ignores him. Doesn't ask, Make it at what? (At football, at life, at anything.)
He grabs the ball, heads inside.
He doesn't hit anyone else for a while though.
Her name's Sara and she has delicate wrists. She talks a lot, maybe to compensate for her unintimidating stature. She talks enough for the both of them. Daniel speaks in short, terse sentences, always guarded, like he's afraid of what might come out if he doesn't stop it first. Like he's holding in something dangerous. He always speaks the truth, but not the entire truth.
She's tiny. Daniel thinks he could maybe snap her in two with one hand.
She kisses him first, though.
He breaks her heart in the end. He thinks she should have expected it. He doesn't get why girls are attracted to angry boys, doesn't get why they think they'll always be the one to change them, doesn't get why they want to try in the first place.
His temper's really kind of the dangerous type. It's not blind. It's concentrated, methodical. It's not a sudden burst of red-hot rage. It's a slow consuming burn. He thinks completely logically when he's angry. It's scarier that way, somehow.
He tries to keep it in check.
It's hard.
(It's like something scratching at his brain, something crawling under his skin. It's maddening, unbearable, unreachable -)
He gets his first tattoo, and he feels absolutely calm.
It's good, having something to concentrate completely on, for a while.
His fighter pilot dreams fall through (and after a while he thinks that's maybe for the best), but he starts learning how to use a needle. It's a precise thing, a meticulous thing; it makes him hold back, makes him think about soft touches rather than heavy ones. It's art, he supposes, after all. It steadies your hand, enough to create something beautiful, and gives all that feeling a purpose. It's maybe not that surprising that he's good at it; he's always been good at directing all his energy into one particular thing. Destroying, creating, it's the same concept sometimes. (You have to destroy one thing to create another, always.)
It's productive. It's something he can be completely proud of.
There are a lot of distractions in football though.
He doesn't break anyone's legs the first year. And that's good. That's good.
He learns to close his eyes, breathe in and out, sometimes shallowly, sometimes in sharp, rapid pants like he's trying to contain something within himself.
He wants this, he keeps telling himself. He has to get this.
That urge is almost as strong. Almost.
He gets inked again every time he almost breaks.
Carra is kind of terrifying, in the best possible way. He pretty much insults everything from his hair to his shoes within the first ten minutes of meeting him. It makes him feel good though, like he belongs. He claps him on the back, says, "Welcome to the best fucking club in the world," in that ridiculous accent, and Daniel can't help but smile.
They have a lot of passion, here, he realises. Maybe he's always had more of that than people gave him credit for.
It's something he can put his anger into.
And that goes well for a while.
Stevie asks him about his tattoos once, and it's strange, that he of all people would be interested.
"They're just tattoos," he says, of course. The default answer.
Stevie smiles, says, "Okay, okay," but there's something knowing in his eyes.
(It's a reminder: that he's not just something abstract floating through space, that he came from somewhere, that he is something, that he's a product of various things that came before him. People shouldn't be that complicated. It should be easier to define them. He's trying to make it easier. For other people. For himself. You get exactly what you see.
They define him so no one else will have to.
He wishes it were that simple. It's not.
The truth is: He just wants something beautiful on his skin. He thinks there's a lot of ugliness underneath it.)
Daniel's never seen anyone smile as much as Pepe in his life. That's equally, if not more, terrifying.
There's one incident the second year. Stevie grabs his wrist, urgently, forces him to look at him, and he breathes and the fire starts dissipating.
His skin tingles for the rest of that match. He scrubs at it, hard, in the shower afterwards until he's raw all over.
He sits next to him on the coach afterwards, turns to him with a serious expression.
"I know what it's like to feel too much sometimes. You think it makes you invincible, but it makes you weak in the end. Trust me."
Daniel does trust him. He trusts his captain who loves too much, who always goes down fighting, who shattered all the limits one night in Istanbul.
He doesn't believe him though. Not for a while. He doesn't think he believes himself either, not really. He wouldn't stop it if he could.
Xabi doesn't say a lot, but it's because he's self-assured enough to make his point in a few words. He looks uncomfortable sometimes, though, like he's started to wonder after time if he still belongs here. Started to wonder if it's the right decision, because he always makes the right decision. He doesn't ever have regrets.
When he leaves, Daniel thinks maybe he was afraid of something too.
(There's a piece of a conversation he remembers overhearing. Remembers Xabi saying, softly, It's too much sometimes.
And Stevie replying, I know, in the same voice he'd used before, sad but resigned.)
Finns is quiet most of the time. Not that tense kind of silence though. A content kind. Like he's happy enough just existing, and not arguing or trying to find meaning in other people's words or habits.
Daniel doesn't like the pain of a tattoo needle or the pain in other people's faces when he cuts them down. It's all about something greater. It's all about some greater meaning.
He thinks about him a lot after he's gone, thinks about his fingers curled around his wrist, the set of his jaw when he smiled at nothing in particular.
He fits in well, really well, and it's more of a relief than he would have thought.
He helps them get to their second final in three years, and that's enough, almost. (Of course, they lose.)
Then he gets injured.
He takes too many pills and passes out not long after.
He doesn't return any of the calls.
Daniel doesn't trust him.
It takes a while.
Daniel watches on the sidelines as a city falls in love with him.
Maybe you see things better from this vantage point.
They eye each other across the physio room a couple times. Fernando averts his eyes after a while, shy but...something else. Curious, too.
He wonders what he sees when he looks at him. It bothers him more than it should.
(He has this crazy thought about following him out to the parking lot, pressing him up against his fancy car, and - what, doing what - He's thinking about leaving bruises on his hips and marks on his neck, marks he'll have to cover up at his next photo op or whatever. He's thinking about leaving him marked. Leaving him broken too somehow.)
"I want to win," is the first thing he says in English to Daniel.
He wants to ask, Is that all?
It's after a loss when he fists his hands in Fernando's hair and pulls his mouth down to meet his. He licks into it, and Fernando only resists for a second. Then he's pushing him against a locker, and mouthing down the line of his throat.
He tastes like sweat and something sweet. He manages to get his shirt off without ripping it. He just wants to get at skin, to taste salt and sex and him. He's halfway down his stomach when he unexpectedly raises his head up again, crowds him against the metal, and cups him through his shorts. Fernando gasps and his head falls back with a crash. He opens his eyes again, breathing heavily. Daniel doesn't manage to hide a smirk before he leans down to kiss him again, reaching inside his underwear at the same time.
It doesn't take long to get him off after that. Fernando returns the favour, messily and kind of unfocused, but it's enough.
"Why -" he starts asking, voice still surprisingly calm.
"Because I wanted to."
He doesn't look at him before he leaves.
He asks him again, the next time, the next time when they're at Fernando's flat instead, and he fucks him slowly into the mattress.
Because you're hot.
Because you were there.
Because you're solid, strong, but you have soft edges. And I like that.
It doesn't mean anything else. (That's the lie.)
He says, "You know. It's just a rush. Pleasure. Pain. It's the same thing."
Fernando just bites his lip for a second, considering. "Do you want to hurt me sometimes?"
"Maybe."
He has this feeling though, this feeling that Fernando will hurt him first.
He won't let it happen.
He doesn't call him much - things just seem to happen, and they happen pretty frequently over the next two seasons too - but his hand is cool against his face where it's wrapped too tightly around the phone, and he wants to say, I understand. Sort of. It's kind of shit though, isn't it, World Cup coming up and all. Yeah. I just. I just want to say -
Instead, he says, "Good luck. With everything." (Somehow, after, he considers it, remembers it sounding almost like a goodbye.)
He wins the World Cup, though, and Daniel has to laugh. Because of course. Of course he would.
He wakes up with a splitting headache. It's all he registers for a long while.
He drifts off, comes back to. He starts looking around.
He's in his bedroom, definitely. It's daytime. It could be 6am or noon, he has no fucking idea. He has no idea what day it is.
He wonders if he blacked out; he wonders what triggered it. Wonders if he did something.
He sits straight up in bed, breathing hard, when he starts remembering.
The tunnel, match day, Anfield, first day of the season -
He thinks, Jesus Christ.
He wonders if he missed the match; he wonders if there was a match or if it was just the kind of dream you have the night before something important happens. Was there? His head is still pounding. It feels real; fragmented but real.
He reaches for his phone. The first message is from Martin. He doesn't bother to listen to any of them, just calls him back.
He's saying all kind of things: you were so out of it, concussion, worried, so messed up, so glad you -
Daniel thinks, Okay. Thinks, Thank God. He thinks he laughs into the phone at an inappropriate moment. Martin says his name, sounds worried again.
"I'm fine, I'm okay," and then, "Hey. What day is it?"
"Uh - Wednesday." Still worried.
Okay, okay. He's missed two days. He would ask what happened; he would ask how the match ended and if he was any good, if they were any good, but he kind of doesn't want to know yet.
He hangs up, closes his eyes. He starts seeing images again. He lets himself be surprised.
It's kind of freeing, not having that control for once. Letting it go.
They tell him he'll be out for two months, and he thinks, Fuck, but that's all. It's like a full stop at the end of something. It's kind of like acceptance. It's kind of like surrender. It shouldn't be happening, not again, but everything is shit now anyway. It doesn't make a difference, doesn't fucking matter. Maybe the season's already over for all of them. He kind of wants to stop fighting so hard against everything and everyone for once. He just wants to breathe.
He goes to physio, doesn't complain, doesn't glare at anyone murderously when he's at Melwood, returns Stevie's calls. He still feels like shit (useless, a waste of space) when he crawls onto his couch and stays there until the next morning though. There's still some frustration (still some hope) left in him. It's a part of him now. It's not bubbling at the surface. It's buried deep, deep down.
He's dozing off the last effects of the painkillers when he opens his eyes and sees Fernando leaning against his kitchen counter.
He squints at him for a minute as he comes closer; he just looks like a blurry bright spot in the dark of his apartment. He sits up a little, starts asking a not fully formed question, but stops. Of course he'd left his door unlocked when he came in. He'd probably been doing it for the last week.
Fernando tosses him a can of something; it lands on his stomach.
"Sorry."
He reaches for it, tries to shake away the sensation that the room is tilting ever so slightly to the left. (He doesn't fall off the couch though; he considers it an accomplishment.)
"No beer?" he asks.
"You're on medication," he says, pointedly.
He kind of wants to say, I liked you more when your English was shit. I liked you more when you didn't say much so you chose your words carefully. You meant what you said. He's not frustrated, not like Daniel is. He's become cynical (like Daniel used to be). It's the beginning of the end, something inside of him is trying to tell him.
"I meant - I didn't mean -" He stops. He wonders what he means, what he wants. If he wants Fernando drunk and wanton and begging - and right there. Wonders if that'll make anything better.
"Move over," he says in response.
They watch a replay of the match, and Daniel falls asleep again.
He wakes up to Fernando's lips on his, softer than any kiss he's ever had.
He just blinks for a second, wonders if he's dreaming.
When his vision clears, he's already gone.
He leaves, he leaves because he wants to win. Because he's looking at the bigger picture.
Daniel enjoys that match. (The rush, pleasure, pain. It's that simple. Finally.)
He's alone, back in Liverpool in his car, when he stops with his hand on the ignition. Everything's just quiet for a moment.
He lets a small smile drift across his face.
Daniel Agger, some Daniel Agger/Fernando Torres, mentions of others. | It's not a sudden burst of red-hot rage. It's a slow consuming burn.
It starts with a fight.
He's in the principal's office. His parents have already been called in, and he's staring at his fingernails instead of the man behind the desk.
"This is the third time in two weeks, Daniel. Why did you hit him?"
He means to say, Because he's an idiot.
Instead, "Because I wanted to," comes out.
(Actually, the other kid had started it. But this part is true too.)
He gets suspended. He spends his days kicking a ball around outside his house, not speaking to anyone.
The evening before he goes back to school, his father says, "You won't make it if you keep this up."
Daniel ignores him. Doesn't ask, Make it at what? (At football, at life, at anything.)
He grabs the ball, heads inside.
He doesn't hit anyone else for a while though.
Her name's Sara and she has delicate wrists. She talks a lot, maybe to compensate for her unintimidating stature. She talks enough for the both of them. Daniel speaks in short, terse sentences, always guarded, like he's afraid of what might come out if he doesn't stop it first. Like he's holding in something dangerous. He always speaks the truth, but not the entire truth.
She's tiny. Daniel thinks he could maybe snap her in two with one hand.
She kisses him first, though.
He breaks her heart in the end. He thinks she should have expected it. He doesn't get why girls are attracted to angry boys, doesn't get why they think they'll always be the one to change them, doesn't get why they want to try in the first place.
His temper's really kind of the dangerous type. It's not blind. It's concentrated, methodical. It's not a sudden burst of red-hot rage. It's a slow consuming burn. He thinks completely logically when he's angry. It's scarier that way, somehow.
He tries to keep it in check.
It's hard.
(It's like something scratching at his brain, something crawling under his skin. It's maddening, unbearable, unreachable -)
He gets his first tattoo, and he feels absolutely calm.
It's good, having something to concentrate completely on, for a while.
His fighter pilot dreams fall through (and after a while he thinks that's maybe for the best), but he starts learning how to use a needle. It's a precise thing, a meticulous thing; it makes him hold back, makes him think about soft touches rather than heavy ones. It's art, he supposes, after all. It steadies your hand, enough to create something beautiful, and gives all that feeling a purpose. It's maybe not that surprising that he's good at it; he's always been good at directing all his energy into one particular thing. Destroying, creating, it's the same concept sometimes. (You have to destroy one thing to create another, always.)
It's productive. It's something he can be completely proud of.
There are a lot of distractions in football though.
He doesn't break anyone's legs the first year. And that's good. That's good.
He learns to close his eyes, breathe in and out, sometimes shallowly, sometimes in sharp, rapid pants like he's trying to contain something within himself.
He wants this, he keeps telling himself. He has to get this.
That urge is almost as strong. Almost.
He gets inked again every time he almost breaks.
Carra is kind of terrifying, in the best possible way. He pretty much insults everything from his hair to his shoes within the first ten minutes of meeting him. It makes him feel good though, like he belongs. He claps him on the back, says, "Welcome to the best fucking club in the world," in that ridiculous accent, and Daniel can't help but smile.
They have a lot of passion, here, he realises. Maybe he's always had more of that than people gave him credit for.
It's something he can put his anger into.
And that goes well for a while.
Stevie asks him about his tattoos once, and it's strange, that he of all people would be interested.
"They're just tattoos," he says, of course. The default answer.
Stevie smiles, says, "Okay, okay," but there's something knowing in his eyes.
(It's a reminder: that he's not just something abstract floating through space, that he came from somewhere, that he is something, that he's a product of various things that came before him. People shouldn't be that complicated. It should be easier to define them. He's trying to make it easier. For other people. For himself. You get exactly what you see.
They define him so no one else will have to.
He wishes it were that simple. It's not.
The truth is: He just wants something beautiful on his skin. He thinks there's a lot of ugliness underneath it.)
Daniel's never seen anyone smile as much as Pepe in his life. That's equally, if not more, terrifying.
There's one incident the second year. Stevie grabs his wrist, urgently, forces him to look at him, and he breathes and the fire starts dissipating.
His skin tingles for the rest of that match. He scrubs at it, hard, in the shower afterwards until he's raw all over.
He sits next to him on the coach afterwards, turns to him with a serious expression.
"I know what it's like to feel too much sometimes. You think it makes you invincible, but it makes you weak in the end. Trust me."
Daniel does trust him. He trusts his captain who loves too much, who always goes down fighting, who shattered all the limits one night in Istanbul.
He doesn't believe him though. Not for a while. He doesn't think he believes himself either, not really. He wouldn't stop it if he could.
Xabi doesn't say a lot, but it's because he's self-assured enough to make his point in a few words. He looks uncomfortable sometimes, though, like he's started to wonder after time if he still belongs here. Started to wonder if it's the right decision, because he always makes the right decision. He doesn't ever have regrets.
When he leaves, Daniel thinks maybe he was afraid of something too.
(There's a piece of a conversation he remembers overhearing. Remembers Xabi saying, softly, It's too much sometimes.
And Stevie replying, I know, in the same voice he'd used before, sad but resigned.)
Finns is quiet most of the time. Not that tense kind of silence though. A content kind. Like he's happy enough just existing, and not arguing or trying to find meaning in other people's words or habits.
Daniel doesn't like the pain of a tattoo needle or the pain in other people's faces when he cuts them down. It's all about something greater. It's all about some greater meaning.
He thinks about him a lot after he's gone, thinks about his fingers curled around his wrist, the set of his jaw when he smiled at nothing in particular.
He fits in well, really well, and it's more of a relief than he would have thought.
He helps them get to their second final in three years, and that's enough, almost. (Of course, they lose.)
Then he gets injured.
He takes too many pills and passes out not long after.
He doesn't return any of the calls.
Daniel doesn't trust him.
It takes a while.
Daniel watches on the sidelines as a city falls in love with him.
Maybe you see things better from this vantage point.
They eye each other across the physio room a couple times. Fernando averts his eyes after a while, shy but...something else. Curious, too.
He wonders what he sees when he looks at him. It bothers him more than it should.
(He has this crazy thought about following him out to the parking lot, pressing him up against his fancy car, and - what, doing what - He's thinking about leaving bruises on his hips and marks on his neck, marks he'll have to cover up at his next photo op or whatever. He's thinking about leaving him marked. Leaving him broken too somehow.)
"I want to win," is the first thing he says in English to Daniel.
He wants to ask, Is that all?
It's after a loss when he fists his hands in Fernando's hair and pulls his mouth down to meet his. He licks into it, and Fernando only resists for a second. Then he's pushing him against a locker, and mouthing down the line of his throat.
He tastes like sweat and something sweet. He manages to get his shirt off without ripping it. He just wants to get at skin, to taste salt and sex and him. He's halfway down his stomach when he unexpectedly raises his head up again, crowds him against the metal, and cups him through his shorts. Fernando gasps and his head falls back with a crash. He opens his eyes again, breathing heavily. Daniel doesn't manage to hide a smirk before he leans down to kiss him again, reaching inside his underwear at the same time.
It doesn't take long to get him off after that. Fernando returns the favour, messily and kind of unfocused, but it's enough.
"Why -" he starts asking, voice still surprisingly calm.
"Because I wanted to."
He doesn't look at him before he leaves.
He asks him again, the next time, the next time when they're at Fernando's flat instead, and he fucks him slowly into the mattress.
Because you're hot.
Because you were there.
Because you're solid, strong, but you have soft edges. And I like that.
It doesn't mean anything else. (That's the lie.)
He says, "You know. It's just a rush. Pleasure. Pain. It's the same thing."
Fernando just bites his lip for a second, considering. "Do you want to hurt me sometimes?"
"Maybe."
He has this feeling though, this feeling that Fernando will hurt him first.
He won't let it happen.
He doesn't call him much - things just seem to happen, and they happen pretty frequently over the next two seasons too - but his hand is cool against his face where it's wrapped too tightly around the phone, and he wants to say, I understand. Sort of. It's kind of shit though, isn't it, World Cup coming up and all. Yeah. I just. I just want to say -
Instead, he says, "Good luck. With everything." (Somehow, after, he considers it, remembers it sounding almost like a goodbye.)
He wins the World Cup, though, and Daniel has to laugh. Because of course. Of course he would.
He wakes up with a splitting headache. It's all he registers for a long while.
He drifts off, comes back to. He starts looking around.
He's in his bedroom, definitely. It's daytime. It could be 6am or noon, he has no fucking idea. He has no idea what day it is.
He wonders if he blacked out; he wonders what triggered it. Wonders if he did something.
He sits straight up in bed, breathing hard, when he starts remembering.
The tunnel, match day, Anfield, first day of the season -
He thinks, Jesus Christ.
He wonders if he missed the match; he wonders if there was a match or if it was just the kind of dream you have the night before something important happens. Was there? His head is still pounding. It feels real; fragmented but real.
He reaches for his phone. The first message is from Martin. He doesn't bother to listen to any of them, just calls him back.
He's saying all kind of things: you were so out of it, concussion, worried, so messed up, so glad you -
Daniel thinks, Okay. Thinks, Thank God. He thinks he laughs into the phone at an inappropriate moment. Martin says his name, sounds worried again.
"I'm fine, I'm okay," and then, "Hey. What day is it?"
"Uh - Wednesday." Still worried.
Okay, okay. He's missed two days. He would ask what happened; he would ask how the match ended and if he was any good, if they were any good, but he kind of doesn't want to know yet.
He hangs up, closes his eyes. He starts seeing images again. He lets himself be surprised.
It's kind of freeing, not having that control for once. Letting it go.
They tell him he'll be out for two months, and he thinks, Fuck, but that's all. It's like a full stop at the end of something. It's kind of like acceptance. It's kind of like surrender. It shouldn't be happening, not again, but everything is shit now anyway. It doesn't make a difference, doesn't fucking matter. Maybe the season's already over for all of them. He kind of wants to stop fighting so hard against everything and everyone for once. He just wants to breathe.
He goes to physio, doesn't complain, doesn't glare at anyone murderously when he's at Melwood, returns Stevie's calls. He still feels like shit (useless, a waste of space) when he crawls onto his couch and stays there until the next morning though. There's still some frustration (still some hope) left in him. It's a part of him now. It's not bubbling at the surface. It's buried deep, deep down.
He's dozing off the last effects of the painkillers when he opens his eyes and sees Fernando leaning against his kitchen counter.
He squints at him for a minute as he comes closer; he just looks like a blurry bright spot in the dark of his apartment. He sits up a little, starts asking a not fully formed question, but stops. Of course he'd left his door unlocked when he came in. He'd probably been doing it for the last week.
Fernando tosses him a can of something; it lands on his stomach.
"Sorry."
He reaches for it, tries to shake away the sensation that the room is tilting ever so slightly to the left. (He doesn't fall off the couch though; he considers it an accomplishment.)
"No beer?" he asks.
"You're on medication," he says, pointedly.
He kind of wants to say, I liked you more when your English was shit. I liked you more when you didn't say much so you chose your words carefully. You meant what you said. He's not frustrated, not like Daniel is. He's become cynical (like Daniel used to be). It's the beginning of the end, something inside of him is trying to tell him.
"I meant - I didn't mean -" He stops. He wonders what he means, what he wants. If he wants Fernando drunk and wanton and begging - and right there. Wonders if that'll make anything better.
"Move over," he says in response.
They watch a replay of the match, and Daniel falls asleep again.
He wakes up to Fernando's lips on his, softer than any kiss he's ever had.
He just blinks for a second, wonders if he's dreaming.
When his vision clears, he's already gone.
He leaves, he leaves because he wants to win. Because he's looking at the bigger picture.
Daniel enjoys that match. (The rush, pleasure, pain. It's that simple. Finally.)
He's alone, back in Liverpool in his car, when he stops with his hand on the ignition. Everything's just quiet for a moment.
He lets a small smile drift across his face.