and quietly gets swallowed by a wave.
and quietly gets swallowed by a wave
Summer!fic. They separate and they come together. Goodbyes are never easy, but they're meant to get harder. They're meant to get harder until you don't have to say them anymore. Sequel to Won't You Be My Solid Ground? and All Of Our Moments Stolen. J/L playlist.
i.
Letter-writing has long gone out of style, but Luca's always been fond of old-fashioned things. Jon would roll his eyes at him if he ever suggested it though, so he doesn't. He thinks about sending him other things though - objects, souvenirs. He browses displays in tiny shops, collects multi-coloured seashells on the beach. It's probably even cheesier though. He wishes he could bottle the Brazilian sunshine and send that to him instead.
All he ends up with are unsent hand-painted figurines and jewelery and nature-painted shells and rocks that he tries to squeeze into his suitcase at the end of the summer.
When Jon asks about them, he always says, distractedly, "They're just things."
He collects lots of things, even in Spain. It's nice to have tangible proof: of experiences and places and people. He could probably trace his life with the objects cluttering his room. The trouble with things, though, is that they don't last very long at all. They get thrown out, or left behind, or broken. They break so easily.
He thinks about Jon, miles and miles and oceans away, and wonders how easy it would be to break them.
*
He remembers the time he bought an old Polaroid. He thinks that was probably during his art phase (which Jon still teases him about). He'd taken lots of photos all over the city. Jon was in a significant number of them, near the edges or looking at something just out of frame.
There are still some of them stuck to his wall. (His favourite is still a side profile of Jon leaning over the railing of an old stone bridge. And maybe he's being pretentious again, but he thinks there's something very honest and very Jon about it. He should know anyway.) The rest are in an old shoebox under his bed, along with old ticket stubs and birthday cards and poems he'd written when he was thirteen without knowing who they were about yet.
*
He always misses Madrid. Jon's always felt restless and confined within the city, but he's always loved it. There's something comforting and familiar about the streets and buildings in Madrid. He likes how ancient it feels, like there's history buried in every brick and bit of concrete. It's home, and always has been. The city's become an old friend by now, in ways it would never be to his parents.
He's never felt that yearning for São Paulo that his parents probably do. He's never dreamt of every other city in the world in which he could be living a different life the way Jon does.
But out of everywhere he's been, he's always liked the big cities the most, the sounds of people and vehicles and life. It's less lonely that way.
He's never quite felt like he belonged here. It's always been someone else's country. He's still just a tourist. Here, it's too sparse, too fresh, too new somehow.
It's too quiet sometimes. He's left alone with his thoughts, and that's a bit scary.
There's a lot to think about, though. There are decisions to make that he's been avoiding for as long as he could.
*
His grandparents' house is nice, but it's too big and empty.
He spends most of the summer sitting under a tree in the garden, writing and sending emails to Jon. Jon's always seem more enthusiastic and detailed than his ever are.
It's still always weird thinking about him an ocean away. It's even a little worse now, though, he supposes.
Maybe they're allowed to be a little cheesy now, but he still never types I miss you.
ii.
When the plane lands, Jon tries really hard not to think about saying goodbye to Luca.
It hadn't been anything special, probably even more casual than their goodbyes had been before. He hadn't even kissed him, just held his hand a little longer than necessary before he had to let go.
It's probably even more fragile ground now, saying goodbye. Jon kind of wishes he never, ever had to again. It's a strange feeling.
*
Jon likes Liverpool a lot. Not as much as his dad does, but he was born here, as Xabi's always quick to remind him, and the city's kind of sunk into his bones too. He often thinks about what coming here with Luca would be like - if he'd like it too - but it's a little hard to imagine though. He wonders if he'd feel out of place. (Jon had been to Milan with him, though, and he'd loved it. But his wanderlust has always been greater anyway.) He knows they'd probably visit together (or do more than that) someday, and it makes him a tiny bit excited to think about walking around on the docks with him, eating fish and chips, maybe taking him to a pub, and obviously taking him to Anfield. Luca's heard enough about it, but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself. Jon loves it more than the Bernabéu sometimes. Maybe most of the time.
His dad still has a flat here. It's as much home as anywhere else. Jon knows he always gets sad when they have to leave again. It's apparent by just a hollow look in his eyes. Jon gets a little sad for him too.
He doesn't stop reminiscing from pretty much the time they land until they leave. Jon listens to the stories he's heard time and time again attentively. He can almost feel the nostalgia himself, more so when they're actually here where it all happened. He's a part of those stories too, Xabi always says. Jon feels proud of that, inexplicably.
*
They go out for dinner with the Gerrards and the Carraghers, which is kind of a chaotic affair. Jon likes that though; it feels like being with real family. It's always kind of amazing to think about how under the social and cultural differences, they're all basically the same after all. He has the feeling Luca would be proud of his philosophical musing, and has to bite his lip to keep from smiling. Then George asks him about his coaches at the Academy, and the moment passes. He's pretty sure Steven's gaze lingers on him a moment too long though, and he's definitely been looking at him slightly oddly (fond maybe, but a little concerned too) all night. And of course his dad would tell Steven fucking Gerrard about his love life; that's not weird at all.
He calls Luca from the Gerrards' bathroom later on.
"Hi," he answers, and he sounds even softer than usual.
"Hey," Jon says, kind of weakly. His chest feels a little constricted.
"You okay?" And of course Luca would pick up on that from a thousand miles away. Fuck, he misses him already. It's kind of pathetic.
"I'm - I'm fine. Probably the wine or something."
"Okay, so we're partying it up already, huh?" Jon can tell he's smirking.
"Shut up."
"How's everyone doing?"
"Great. Over there?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Isabella let the younger girls paint my toenails pink today."
Jon doesn't succeed in muffling his loud laughter.
"Of course you would take pleasure in my suffering," Luca says, mock-insulted.
"You should take a picture of that. For posterity."
"For you, you mean."
"Yes, obviously."
"Well, I'll let you get back to your much better behaved family now. I'll talk to you later."
"Yeah," and then, after a beat, "Love you."
"You too," Luca says, sounding shy again. "Bye."
*
He's just entered the living room again when he hears two unmistakeable voices coming from the balcony.
"So," Steven's saying, "You ever going to come back for good?"
There's a pause before his father replies, "That's up to him now, really."
iii.
His room is too empty here. All the cousins have left already, so there are no sounds from downstairs. No sounds at all. Isabella passes by and gives him a pointed look from the corridor, but he ignores it. He pushes the door shut, lies back on his bed with his clothes and shoes still on. The ceiling's too bare. Everything's too bare. He sighs and sits up a little. He grabs the book he was reading on the plane from the bedside table and falls asleep with his glasses still perched precariously on the end of his nose.
When he wakes up, it's after midnight. It's morning in Europe already, he realises. He probably has a bit of jetlag. He thinks about Jon waking up in a city he's never seen, wonders if time is as big a divider as space, if the past could keep two people apart forever, if the future can change someone beyond recognition.
He wants time to just stop moving forward sometimes. He wants it all to stop.
He starts an email to Jon - something about early Brazilian mornings and time standing still - but pauses halfway through. He considers deleting it, but saves it instead.
Another unsent thing.
*
Predictably, Isabella's pretty much climbing the walls after a week. After pestering their mum to go shopping again, and failing this time, she stomps outside to Luca's tree and wordlessly sits down on the grass facing him. Luca doesn't look up, pen moving steadily over notebook paper. He's finally hit a good stride for the first time in days.
"What are you writing?" she asks after a respectable period.
His hand kind of twitches but he doesn't stop. He sighs and says, "Nothing."
"God, you're so weird." And it's kind of disturbing how much she sounds like Jon sometimes.
Luca finally stops writing and looks at her. She absently plucks a tiny stray flower from in between the grass and starts pulling off petals, head lowered.
"Shut up, Bella," he says, but she meets his smile with one of her own.
He returns to his writing, but looser than before.
"I want to go back home," she says quietly, before she blows the tiny petals away into the wind.
"You'll find something else exciting to do in about an hour and you'll forget you ever said that," he says, distractedly.
"What about you?" Luca can feel her gaze on his face, and she's always been able to see through him better than anyone else.
"You know me. I always want to go back home." His smile then is really more of a grimace.
"How's Jon?" she asks, then, ignoring it.
"Good, as far as I can tell. Having fun." And he really didn't mean the last part to come out so bitterly.
"Why don't you just tell him?"
"Tell him what?"
"You know what. Everything."
It's supremely unfair that his thirteen-year-old sister can come up with a solution so easily.
He wishes he had her kind of bravery most of the time.
"Want to go to a movie tonight?" he asks, after a beat.
She positively beams at him then.
iv.
Xabi doesn't say anything, but he keeps looking at him as if he's asking a question, as if he's asking him if he's reconsidering.
It's still early. There's still time. Jon keeps telling himself this. Maybe it's his dad projecting these thoughts at him too, half-desperate and half-optimistic.
But tough decisions come with the territory. And you have to make them eventually. You can't just stick with what's safe, what's familiar. You can't avoid the choice.
He knows his dad has always thought he was impulsive, but maybe he's actually been the more careful of the two of them.
Maybe he's been scared of just this.
He feels extremely alone suddenly. And there's one thing he always does when that happens.
*
"Hey," comes Luca's voice, sounding kind of surprised.
"Hey, how're you doing?"
"Going slightly insane. But hanging in there. Just one more week."
"Yeah. Hey, so have you thought about what you're doing in the fall?" he asks, trying to sound casual.
Luca doesn't hesitate more than a second.
"Going back to school, I guess. Should finally be bearable without you there."
"Well, that's good. Have fun with all those exams," he finishes, dryly.
He knows Luca's smiling.
"So, what about you? How many Liverpool legends have begged you to come over there so far?"
"Oh, loads. You know how it is."
"Yeah. I do," he replies, soberly.
"I miss you a lot," Jon says, all in a rush before he can rein it in.
"I miss you too."
"One week."
"Yeah, one week."
Jon lets him count down the days, the hours, for both of them. He wonders about less certain times, and if it's really counting down when you don't know where it ends.
*
Jon hangs out with George at Melwood the day before they leave. They'd tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on whatever serious business Steven and Jamie had been discussing before the latter had practically slammed a door in their faces. So they're resigned to just sitting around and watching the bare ground.
"It's always strange when it's empty," George says, typically terse but thoughtful.
"Yeah," Jon agrees, but he isn't just thinking about this ground, the ground both their fathers trained on for years, the ground George probably would in a few short years' time, the ground Jon...
He's thinking about all the grounds he's ever played on, since he was old enough to kick a ball, and all the huge, fabled stadiums he's been to in his life.
It's remarkable, how different they all are, but how they are, still, exactly the same.
"It's not ever really empty though," he says.
It can't be, with all the souls and ghosts and dreams, long dead and already lived and yet to be fulfilled, populating the air and the grass and the foundations under their feet.
"I can't wait to train here," George says. He's probably said it or thought it a hundred times before, but there's still that light in his blue eyes as he imagines it. Jon's seen it before, on his father, on tape and in photographs, reflecting silverware and glory, or hope, just hope and nothing more (but that was everything - and still is).
Jon almost says, Me too.
v.
There's a boy who lives in a city he never was meant to call home. His parents long for other places, for other choices they could have made but can't ever change. He has one real friend who he never was supposed to have. Sometimes he has dreams of trying to hold on to this friend, but he keeps slipping right out of his fingers, like sand or a wish. He wakes up clutching at sheets and pillows and thin air.
He doesn't realise that that's what love feels like for a long while.
It's not unrequited. Maybe it's harder this way, less simple, because people love each other in countless different ways. People love with pieces of themselves, pieces of their hearts, rarely with the whole. If they do, it's only for a while. Only for short periods at a time.
But they love, for now, because it's the only thing you can ever really do. It's the thing that comes most naturally, especially to people who feel nostalgia for foreign places or detachment from their own hometown.
In the end, it's not about the place, but the people you share it with. Home is something you carry deep inside of you that you can't lose as long as someone else carries it too.
They separate and they come together. Goodbyes are never easy, but they're meant to get harder. They're meant to get harder until you don't have to say them anymore.
And maybe none of it was ever supposed to happen.
But that doesn't matter, because the second boy taught the first boy that sometimes amazing things happen for no particular reason. It's not about destiny or fate; it's random coincidence, and that's what it makes it all the more wonderful.
*
Isabella is the only person in the world he actually lets read anything he writes. He likes watching her while she does it; she's so absolutely quiet and completely focused. It's the only time she really stays still for more than a minute.
He can tell everything he needs to know from her eyes, narrowed and then widening, and her furrowed brow, the tiniest hint of smile playing at the corner of her mouth that she tries to bite down.
She looks up, serious but approving, and hands his notebook back to him.
"You should show it to him. Someday," she finishes, because he knows he's still not quite ready for that.
*
He decides, then, that it'll be okay. He'll turn into exactly who he's supposed to be, and so will Jon. And there are lots of things that will get in the way, but there always has been. And it won't change anything.
Sometimes you love with as much as you can for as long as you can.
And sometimes it's enough.
*
Luca types up a long, rambling paragraph about his last week in Brazil, clicks on send before he can decide not to.
Jon probably won't read it until they're both back home, which defeats the purpose, but it doesn't matter either way.
vi.
Jon still has glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his ceiling. When he was ten, he was obsessed with astronomy. He can still name most of the constellations, if he's feeling particularly generous. Luca picked up on some of it, but he was never as interested. Jon knows he likes when they sit on his porch steps, heads tilted back to the sky, and he points them out to him, though. They haven't done it in a while. It's felt like they've been growing up too fast recently, like time has started accelerating constantly. Like they've been making up for time they don't have, like they've been anticipating an ending that is growing nearer and nearer every day but is still vague enough to be unsettling.
Jon's always tried to live like there won't be any second chances, but he kind of wants to slow it all down too. He wants to have time, more time than he knows what to do with. He wants a future that stretches out in front of him endlessly.
He doesn't want it for himself. He wants bright spots and quiet moments and endless possibilities. He wants all of it.
Luca tugs him in gently for a kiss on the porch, and he gets a glimpse of it.
*
"So...you're going to be some kind of big shot writer?"
"Depends. You're going to be some kind of big shot footballer?"
"Depends." Jon cracks a smile.
"It'll be weird going back to school without you," Luca says. "Well, not that we actually went to that many classes together."
"Hey, shut up. I did my time."
Luca rolls his eyes, but finally acquiesces. "Yeah, you did."
"It feels like something's changing," he says after a while.
"It doesn't have to," Luca says, and it's like a conviction.
"Yeah."
*
Jon just listens while he tells him things, about the last few weeks, about Brazil and his family, answers all the questions he's brushed off noncommittally for years.
"It's home too, I guess," he finishes "Just different." He looks at him like he knows Jon understands too.
They're always kind of been in a constant state of displacement. It's a part of who they are now. And maybe it's been confusing sometimes, but it's been for the best, in the end.
"I think my dad wants to go back to Liverpool someday," he admits.
"Yeah? And what about you?" Luca's gaze is just curious and not accusing.
"Maybe I do too."
"Okay."
*
"Think you're going to stay here for uni?" he asks, after a while of just staring at the sky.
"Yeah, I'm happy here."
Jon knows he is. And he is too, mostly. Sometimes, when he thinks about though, he wonders if he only likes Madrid so much because of how much Luca loves it.
"I think I write more easily when I'm Brazil though," he says as an afterthought. "Is that weird?"
Jon laughs a little. "No, I don't think so."
*
"There's going to be an eclipse at the end of the month," Jon says, almost to himself.
"Really? We should watch it." Luca's genuine enthusiasm is so rare that Jon just looks across at him for a long moment. He looks really content. Jon ducks his head after a while, grinning, before he looks up again.
Jon likes watching the moon's progress every month, from his bedroom window or outside Luca's house. He likes how certain it is, that no matter what happens, it will inevitably get to its fullest, and it will brighten that night more than any other in the cycle. Jon likes the night before the full moon the most though; it makes him think about someone taking their final steps to being the best possible version of themselves, who they were meant to be. Or, maybe, it feels like someone finally showing their true self, being brave enough to do that.
It's never himself he's thinking about then.
*
They go up to Luca's room after that. He's only half-unpacked, and there are things spilling out his suitcase onto the floor. Jon carefully steps over some clothes and tries his best to not make any sarcastic remarks.
Luca doesn't seem to notice any of that though.
"I, uh, I have something for you."
Luca gives him a small framed painting he'd bought. He holds it away from himself at an angle, nodding appreciatively.
"Well, that's good then," he says.
"You have too much stuff," he finishes, smiling, gently kicking at one of the legs of his desk which is pretty much laden with things he's collected over years and years, barely an inch of space left empty, just like his walls and bookshelves. He doesn't say, I know why. It's easier to stay when you've built something to come back to.
Another time, Luca would just silently avert his eyes.
Instead he says, "There's something I want to show you."
Luca kneels next to his bed, reaches under it and pulls out a box.
He opens it as he sinks down on the bed.
Jon sits next to him.
Summer!fic. They separate and they come together. Goodbyes are never easy, but they're meant to get harder. They're meant to get harder until you don't have to say them anymore. Sequel to Won't You Be My Solid Ground? and All Of Our Moments Stolen. J/L playlist.
i.
Letter-writing has long gone out of style, but Luca's always been fond of old-fashioned things. Jon would roll his eyes at him if he ever suggested it though, so he doesn't. He thinks about sending him other things though - objects, souvenirs. He browses displays in tiny shops, collects multi-coloured seashells on the beach. It's probably even cheesier though. He wishes he could bottle the Brazilian sunshine and send that to him instead.
All he ends up with are unsent hand-painted figurines and jewelery and nature-painted shells and rocks that he tries to squeeze into his suitcase at the end of the summer.
When Jon asks about them, he always says, distractedly, "They're just things."
He collects lots of things, even in Spain. It's nice to have tangible proof: of experiences and places and people. He could probably trace his life with the objects cluttering his room. The trouble with things, though, is that they don't last very long at all. They get thrown out, or left behind, or broken. They break so easily.
He thinks about Jon, miles and miles and oceans away, and wonders how easy it would be to break them.
*
He remembers the time he bought an old Polaroid. He thinks that was probably during his art phase (which Jon still teases him about). He'd taken lots of photos all over the city. Jon was in a significant number of them, near the edges or looking at something just out of frame.
There are still some of them stuck to his wall. (His favourite is still a side profile of Jon leaning over the railing of an old stone bridge. And maybe he's being pretentious again, but he thinks there's something very honest and very Jon about it. He should know anyway.) The rest are in an old shoebox under his bed, along with old ticket stubs and birthday cards and poems he'd written when he was thirteen without knowing who they were about yet.
*
He always misses Madrid. Jon's always felt restless and confined within the city, but he's always loved it. There's something comforting and familiar about the streets and buildings in Madrid. He likes how ancient it feels, like there's history buried in every brick and bit of concrete. It's home, and always has been. The city's become an old friend by now, in ways it would never be to his parents.
He's never felt that yearning for São Paulo that his parents probably do. He's never dreamt of every other city in the world in which he could be living a different life the way Jon does.
But out of everywhere he's been, he's always liked the big cities the most, the sounds of people and vehicles and life. It's less lonely that way.
He's never quite felt like he belonged here. It's always been someone else's country. He's still just a tourist. Here, it's too sparse, too fresh, too new somehow.
It's too quiet sometimes. He's left alone with his thoughts, and that's a bit scary.
There's a lot to think about, though. There are decisions to make that he's been avoiding for as long as he could.
*
His grandparents' house is nice, but it's too big and empty.
He spends most of the summer sitting under a tree in the garden, writing and sending emails to Jon. Jon's always seem more enthusiastic and detailed than his ever are.
It's still always weird thinking about him an ocean away. It's even a little worse now, though, he supposes.
Maybe they're allowed to be a little cheesy now, but he still never types I miss you.
ii.
When the plane lands, Jon tries really hard not to think about saying goodbye to Luca.
It hadn't been anything special, probably even more casual than their goodbyes had been before. He hadn't even kissed him, just held his hand a little longer than necessary before he had to let go.
It's probably even more fragile ground now, saying goodbye. Jon kind of wishes he never, ever had to again. It's a strange feeling.
*
Jon likes Liverpool a lot. Not as much as his dad does, but he was born here, as Xabi's always quick to remind him, and the city's kind of sunk into his bones too. He often thinks about what coming here with Luca would be like - if he'd like it too - but it's a little hard to imagine though. He wonders if he'd feel out of place. (Jon had been to Milan with him, though, and he'd loved it. But his wanderlust has always been greater anyway.) He knows they'd probably visit together (or do more than that) someday, and it makes him a tiny bit excited to think about walking around on the docks with him, eating fish and chips, maybe taking him to a pub, and obviously taking him to Anfield. Luca's heard enough about it, but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself. Jon loves it more than the Bernabéu sometimes. Maybe most of the time.
His dad still has a flat here. It's as much home as anywhere else. Jon knows he always gets sad when they have to leave again. It's apparent by just a hollow look in his eyes. Jon gets a little sad for him too.
He doesn't stop reminiscing from pretty much the time they land until they leave. Jon listens to the stories he's heard time and time again attentively. He can almost feel the nostalgia himself, more so when they're actually here where it all happened. He's a part of those stories too, Xabi always says. Jon feels proud of that, inexplicably.
*
They go out for dinner with the Gerrards and the Carraghers, which is kind of a chaotic affair. Jon likes that though; it feels like being with real family. It's always kind of amazing to think about how under the social and cultural differences, they're all basically the same after all. He has the feeling Luca would be proud of his philosophical musing, and has to bite his lip to keep from smiling. Then George asks him about his coaches at the Academy, and the moment passes. He's pretty sure Steven's gaze lingers on him a moment too long though, and he's definitely been looking at him slightly oddly (fond maybe, but a little concerned too) all night. And of course his dad would tell Steven fucking Gerrard about his love life; that's not weird at all.
He calls Luca from the Gerrards' bathroom later on.
"Hi," he answers, and he sounds even softer than usual.
"Hey," Jon says, kind of weakly. His chest feels a little constricted.
"You okay?" And of course Luca would pick up on that from a thousand miles away. Fuck, he misses him already. It's kind of pathetic.
"I'm - I'm fine. Probably the wine or something."
"Okay, so we're partying it up already, huh?" Jon can tell he's smirking.
"Shut up."
"How's everyone doing?"
"Great. Over there?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Isabella let the younger girls paint my toenails pink today."
Jon doesn't succeed in muffling his loud laughter.
"Of course you would take pleasure in my suffering," Luca says, mock-insulted.
"You should take a picture of that. For posterity."
"For you, you mean."
"Yes, obviously."
"Well, I'll let you get back to your much better behaved family now. I'll talk to you later."
"Yeah," and then, after a beat, "Love you."
"You too," Luca says, sounding shy again. "Bye."
*
He's just entered the living room again when he hears two unmistakeable voices coming from the balcony.
"So," Steven's saying, "You ever going to come back for good?"
There's a pause before his father replies, "That's up to him now, really."
iii.
His room is too empty here. All the cousins have left already, so there are no sounds from downstairs. No sounds at all. Isabella passes by and gives him a pointed look from the corridor, but he ignores it. He pushes the door shut, lies back on his bed with his clothes and shoes still on. The ceiling's too bare. Everything's too bare. He sighs and sits up a little. He grabs the book he was reading on the plane from the bedside table and falls asleep with his glasses still perched precariously on the end of his nose.
When he wakes up, it's after midnight. It's morning in Europe already, he realises. He probably has a bit of jetlag. He thinks about Jon waking up in a city he's never seen, wonders if time is as big a divider as space, if the past could keep two people apart forever, if the future can change someone beyond recognition.
He wants time to just stop moving forward sometimes. He wants it all to stop.
He starts an email to Jon - something about early Brazilian mornings and time standing still - but pauses halfway through. He considers deleting it, but saves it instead.
Another unsent thing.
*
Predictably, Isabella's pretty much climbing the walls after a week. After pestering their mum to go shopping again, and failing this time, she stomps outside to Luca's tree and wordlessly sits down on the grass facing him. Luca doesn't look up, pen moving steadily over notebook paper. He's finally hit a good stride for the first time in days.
"What are you writing?" she asks after a respectable period.
His hand kind of twitches but he doesn't stop. He sighs and says, "Nothing."
"God, you're so weird." And it's kind of disturbing how much she sounds like Jon sometimes.
Luca finally stops writing and looks at her. She absently plucks a tiny stray flower from in between the grass and starts pulling off petals, head lowered.
"Shut up, Bella," he says, but she meets his smile with one of her own.
He returns to his writing, but looser than before.
"I want to go back home," she says quietly, before she blows the tiny petals away into the wind.
"You'll find something else exciting to do in about an hour and you'll forget you ever said that," he says, distractedly.
"What about you?" Luca can feel her gaze on his face, and she's always been able to see through him better than anyone else.
"You know me. I always want to go back home." His smile then is really more of a grimace.
"How's Jon?" she asks, then, ignoring it.
"Good, as far as I can tell. Having fun." And he really didn't mean the last part to come out so bitterly.
"Why don't you just tell him?"
"Tell him what?"
"You know what. Everything."
It's supremely unfair that his thirteen-year-old sister can come up with a solution so easily.
He wishes he had her kind of bravery most of the time.
"Want to go to a movie tonight?" he asks, after a beat.
She positively beams at him then.
iv.
Xabi doesn't say anything, but he keeps looking at him as if he's asking a question, as if he's asking him if he's reconsidering.
It's still early. There's still time. Jon keeps telling himself this. Maybe it's his dad projecting these thoughts at him too, half-desperate and half-optimistic.
But tough decisions come with the territory. And you have to make them eventually. You can't just stick with what's safe, what's familiar. You can't avoid the choice.
He knows his dad has always thought he was impulsive, but maybe he's actually been the more careful of the two of them.
Maybe he's been scared of just this.
He feels extremely alone suddenly. And there's one thing he always does when that happens.
*
"Hey," comes Luca's voice, sounding kind of surprised.
"Hey, how're you doing?"
"Going slightly insane. But hanging in there. Just one more week."
"Yeah. Hey, so have you thought about what you're doing in the fall?" he asks, trying to sound casual.
Luca doesn't hesitate more than a second.
"Going back to school, I guess. Should finally be bearable without you there."
"Well, that's good. Have fun with all those exams," he finishes, dryly.
He knows Luca's smiling.
"So, what about you? How many Liverpool legends have begged you to come over there so far?"
"Oh, loads. You know how it is."
"Yeah. I do," he replies, soberly.
"I miss you a lot," Jon says, all in a rush before he can rein it in.
"I miss you too."
"One week."
"Yeah, one week."
Jon lets him count down the days, the hours, for both of them. He wonders about less certain times, and if it's really counting down when you don't know where it ends.
*
Jon hangs out with George at Melwood the day before they leave. They'd tried unsuccessfully to eavesdrop on whatever serious business Steven and Jamie had been discussing before the latter had practically slammed a door in their faces. So they're resigned to just sitting around and watching the bare ground.
"It's always strange when it's empty," George says, typically terse but thoughtful.
"Yeah," Jon agrees, but he isn't just thinking about this ground, the ground both their fathers trained on for years, the ground George probably would in a few short years' time, the ground Jon...
He's thinking about all the grounds he's ever played on, since he was old enough to kick a ball, and all the huge, fabled stadiums he's been to in his life.
It's remarkable, how different they all are, but how they are, still, exactly the same.
"It's not ever really empty though," he says.
It can't be, with all the souls and ghosts and dreams, long dead and already lived and yet to be fulfilled, populating the air and the grass and the foundations under their feet.
"I can't wait to train here," George says. He's probably said it or thought it a hundred times before, but there's still that light in his blue eyes as he imagines it. Jon's seen it before, on his father, on tape and in photographs, reflecting silverware and glory, or hope, just hope and nothing more (but that was everything - and still is).
Jon almost says, Me too.
v.
There's a boy who lives in a city he never was meant to call home. His parents long for other places, for other choices they could have made but can't ever change. He has one real friend who he never was supposed to have. Sometimes he has dreams of trying to hold on to this friend, but he keeps slipping right out of his fingers, like sand or a wish. He wakes up clutching at sheets and pillows and thin air.
He doesn't realise that that's what love feels like for a long while.
It's not unrequited. Maybe it's harder this way, less simple, because people love each other in countless different ways. People love with pieces of themselves, pieces of their hearts, rarely with the whole. If they do, it's only for a while. Only for short periods at a time.
But they love, for now, because it's the only thing you can ever really do. It's the thing that comes most naturally, especially to people who feel nostalgia for foreign places or detachment from their own hometown.
In the end, it's not about the place, but the people you share it with. Home is something you carry deep inside of you that you can't lose as long as someone else carries it too.
They separate and they come together. Goodbyes are never easy, but they're meant to get harder. They're meant to get harder until you don't have to say them anymore.
And maybe none of it was ever supposed to happen.
But that doesn't matter, because the second boy taught the first boy that sometimes amazing things happen for no particular reason. It's not about destiny or fate; it's random coincidence, and that's what it makes it all the more wonderful.
*
Isabella is the only person in the world he actually lets read anything he writes. He likes watching her while she does it; she's so absolutely quiet and completely focused. It's the only time she really stays still for more than a minute.
He can tell everything he needs to know from her eyes, narrowed and then widening, and her furrowed brow, the tiniest hint of smile playing at the corner of her mouth that she tries to bite down.
She looks up, serious but approving, and hands his notebook back to him.
"You should show it to him. Someday," she finishes, because he knows he's still not quite ready for that.
*
He decides, then, that it'll be okay. He'll turn into exactly who he's supposed to be, and so will Jon. And there are lots of things that will get in the way, but there always has been. And it won't change anything.
Sometimes you love with as much as you can for as long as you can.
And sometimes it's enough.
*
Luca types up a long, rambling paragraph about his last week in Brazil, clicks on send before he can decide not to.
Jon probably won't read it until they're both back home, which defeats the purpose, but it doesn't matter either way.
vi.
Jon still has glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his ceiling. When he was ten, he was obsessed with astronomy. He can still name most of the constellations, if he's feeling particularly generous. Luca picked up on some of it, but he was never as interested. Jon knows he likes when they sit on his porch steps, heads tilted back to the sky, and he points them out to him, though. They haven't done it in a while. It's felt like they've been growing up too fast recently, like time has started accelerating constantly. Like they've been making up for time they don't have, like they've been anticipating an ending that is growing nearer and nearer every day but is still vague enough to be unsettling.
Jon's always tried to live like there won't be any second chances, but he kind of wants to slow it all down too. He wants to have time, more time than he knows what to do with. He wants a future that stretches out in front of him endlessly.
He doesn't want it for himself. He wants bright spots and quiet moments and endless possibilities. He wants all of it.
Luca tugs him in gently for a kiss on the porch, and he gets a glimpse of it.
*
"So...you're going to be some kind of big shot writer?"
"Depends. You're going to be some kind of big shot footballer?"
"Depends." Jon cracks a smile.
"It'll be weird going back to school without you," Luca says. "Well, not that we actually went to that many classes together."
"Hey, shut up. I did my time."
Luca rolls his eyes, but finally acquiesces. "Yeah, you did."
"It feels like something's changing," he says after a while.
"It doesn't have to," Luca says, and it's like a conviction.
"Yeah."
*
Jon just listens while he tells him things, about the last few weeks, about Brazil and his family, answers all the questions he's brushed off noncommittally for years.
"It's home too, I guess," he finishes "Just different." He looks at him like he knows Jon understands too.
They're always kind of been in a constant state of displacement. It's a part of who they are now. And maybe it's been confusing sometimes, but it's been for the best, in the end.
"I think my dad wants to go back to Liverpool someday," he admits.
"Yeah? And what about you?" Luca's gaze is just curious and not accusing.
"Maybe I do too."
"Okay."
*
"Think you're going to stay here for uni?" he asks, after a while of just staring at the sky.
"Yeah, I'm happy here."
Jon knows he is. And he is too, mostly. Sometimes, when he thinks about though, he wonders if he only likes Madrid so much because of how much Luca loves it.
"I think I write more easily when I'm Brazil though," he says as an afterthought. "Is that weird?"
Jon laughs a little. "No, I don't think so."
*
"There's going to be an eclipse at the end of the month," Jon says, almost to himself.
"Really? We should watch it." Luca's genuine enthusiasm is so rare that Jon just looks across at him for a long moment. He looks really content. Jon ducks his head after a while, grinning, before he looks up again.
Jon likes watching the moon's progress every month, from his bedroom window or outside Luca's house. He likes how certain it is, that no matter what happens, it will inevitably get to its fullest, and it will brighten that night more than any other in the cycle. Jon likes the night before the full moon the most though; it makes him think about someone taking their final steps to being the best possible version of themselves, who they were meant to be. Or, maybe, it feels like someone finally showing their true self, being brave enough to do that.
It's never himself he's thinking about then.
*
They go up to Luca's room after that. He's only half-unpacked, and there are things spilling out his suitcase onto the floor. Jon carefully steps over some clothes and tries his best to not make any sarcastic remarks.
Luca doesn't seem to notice any of that though.
"I, uh, I have something for you."
Luca gives him a small framed painting he'd bought. He holds it away from himself at an angle, nodding appreciatively.
"Well, that's good then," he says.
"You have too much stuff," he finishes, smiling, gently kicking at one of the legs of his desk which is pretty much laden with things he's collected over years and years, barely an inch of space left empty, just like his walls and bookshelves. He doesn't say, I know why. It's easier to stay when you've built something to come back to.
Another time, Luca would just silently avert his eyes.
Instead he says, "There's something I want to show you."
Luca kneels next to his bed, reaches under it and pulls out a box.
He opens it as he sinks down on the bed.
Jon sits next to him.