your driver called, it's time to go
For callings: Five times Sheva said goodbye (without saying a word).
1.
Sheva leaves Ukraine for the first time when he is fourteen, off to some strange western island where he imagines all the houses to be beautiful and the children neatly dressed, in polished shoes and white, white shirts. He's doing more than just trying his luck, because doing well in this tournament means impressing scouts. It means playing for bigger teams, traveling the world, leaving his home to chase some ghost of a dream. So when he kisses his mother on the cheek, promises her to go to sleep on time and brush his teeth every night, what he is really saying is: I'm leaving, and even if I come back, it won't be the whole of me. I'm leaving, and from this day on, I'll always be leaving, always be moving on, and that means leaving this life, this house, these chairs and photographs and memories behind.
At fourteen, he doesn't know this, of course, but it is already something buried in his joints, the thin hollow of his bones, walls of his veins. Sheva leaves Ukraine at fourteen to find a dream, and this is the first goodbye of many.
2.
During his last hours in Italy, Sheva feels like a ghost. None of it feels real, not the empty apartment he's just locked up, not the fact that Kristen and Jordan are already in London, nothing. He's discarding a life, shedding its skin and cutting his ties, so the last thing he wants to see at the airport is Kaká standing at his terminal, hands in his pockets, mouth a flat level line but his eyes just barely pleading.
He can't do this.
"You'll be okay," he says, touching a hand to his shoulder softly, "Milan will be okay." What he means is: Life doesn't always work out the right way, not even for you. What he means is: Don't be angry with me.
I'd rather you forget me than that.
3.
Elena doesn't want him to leave Dynamo. The day his flight is set to depart, she cries, says, Sheva, Sheva, why do you want to leave our country, our family, me. He kisses her on the forehead, wipes the corners of her eyes with a tissue. "I'll be back soon."
(What he really thinks is: Our country? Our country? You were born in Potsdam; you don't know what it was like, that year, you don't remember, do you. How could you remember, how could you know why I want to get away from this place, how I see ashes everywhere I go, broken walls and rusting metal, fires still waiting to go out. You will never know, because I love you too much to tell you, but goddamn it.)
4.
At Lobanovsky's funeral, Sheva puts a single rose on the pile of flowers rapidly growing by his grave - hundreds and hundreds of them, bouquets and wreaths and wildflowers and his single red rose, disappearing from sight. He doesn't say a single word at the ceremony, because Valery isn't truly gone, and he won't be until Sheva keeps that promise.
He does, two years later. Winning the Champions League is how he says goodbye to a man who made him into who he is, for better or worse, a man who was almost as much his father as his real one.
5.
Each time his father is called to duty again, Sheva helps him pack his suitcases. Often, they haven't even been unpacked properly from the last time his father had to drive tanks through Germany or guard a base along the border. Sheva is not yet ten when he first carries a gun in his hands, fingers clumsy and childish against its heartless metal; by the time he is sixteen, Sheva can put together a rifle blind-folded, can identify the make through touch alone. It is not something he is proud of. Nonetheless, it's what they do. Sheva folds his father's shirts, places them over an envelope full of paperwork, wraps the guns in old cotton. They don't speak until the very end, when Sheva clicks the suitcase closed and hands it over to his father, who will say, "Son, someday you will carry this same suitcase. Someday you will replace me." Sheva nods, bows his head, does not say how terrifying this thought is to him, how it still freezes his fingers and throat after all these years, how he would rather die for a sport than die for his nation.
For niche: Five times Xabi counselled Cesc on Cesc's love troubles.
1.
So.
One early morning with the Spanish squad, Cesc comes back quietly if clumsily into the room he's sharing with Xabi, clothes a little haphazardly arranged, hair sticking out in the most ridiculous places, and starving (he keeps telling Joaquin that it's unhealthy to live on seltzer water and lollipops, but he never listens). Tries to make his footsteps soft, closes the door behind him silently only to turn around and see Xabi already awake, waiting for him, the expression on his face knowing and a little weary, but not accusing.
Cesc begins to open his mouth, feels as if he should justify himself, perhaps, at least explain - but what is there to explain, what could he possibly say? Xabi puts up a hand to stop him and tells him, very quietly, something deeply tired around the way his mouth fits around the syllables: "Don't forget the people who already love you." Love, Cesc wants to repeat, almost in astonishment, because the idea of someone loving him is a terrifying thing, makes him feel small and low and wholly undeserving. Xabi tells him, "Maybe you don't see it. But it's there, he's there."
Says, "You would be stupid, really fucking stupid, to let go of that for anything." Says, "There are a lot of things you don't think you'll regret, but you will." Says, "Cesc."
Says it as if he is overly familiar with this very regret and is now living with it, day to day, punishing himself by suffocating any possibility of redemption or renewal. Denying himself the chance, because indulgence is a horribly destructive thing, and Cesc is still young enough to believe that it's a nothing but a right you can earn, the right to act without ever thinking about how much it can fucking hurt.
2.
Cesc is fifteen when he and the rest of the world outside San Sebastian learn about Xabi Alonso, sixteen when he moves to England, eighteen when he asks Xabi to kiss him.
Upon retrospect, it is nearly as embarrassing as it sounds.
("Wait -- what?"
"You heard what I said."
"You want me to do this why?"
"I, well, wanted to see if it was different." Cesc very carefully did not fidget. Xabi gave him a look.
"And, okay, I'd like to save some future humiliation. I mean, I just want to know. What it's like. I mean."
"So you came to me because I'm the resident expert." He got the feeling that Xabi was trying very hard, and unsuccessfully, not to laugh.
"Oh, shut up, forget I said --"
Just as he finished the sentence and began to turn away, Xabi reached out, grabbed his chin firmly, keeping his face in place, and stepped towards him. Grinned, more than a little amused and definitely smug - it was enough blackmail material for years, said: "Senderos would absolutely murder me if he found out." Before Cesc could let out an indignant protest of what the hell is that supposed to mean, Xabi was kissing him, easy but careful, and Cesc had pretty much forgotten what he was going to say.
"You kiss," Xabi told him afterwards, "kind of like a girl." Cesc, in what he believed to be an enormous display of maturity and inhuman restraint, did not punch him.)
3.
"He makes me crepes. Motherfucking crepes," you tell him, cold, your head pounding, exhausted enough so that you shouldn't feel such sentimentality at the thought of a name, a face, a pair of hands flipping thin pancakes onto a plate. "They're stupidly good. And we went to Camden market together for the first time, I still have some horrible souvenir postcards I bought at a stall, and the strip of photos from one of those booth things, you know?"
On the pitch, Spain is losing, but you can't quite bring yourself to care - or maybe you care so much that it's become a new transmutation of apathy. Either way, you try not to think about it much.
"It sounds like a good thing to have," he offers.
"But how do I keep it?"
For a minute, then, looking at him, he seems incredibly far away - too old for understanding, too cynically empathetic for kindness, foreign and unmovable. The moment passes and he slips back into focus. You wonder who, what, he was thinking about then. He shrugs.
"You just do your best, I think. There's not much more you can do."
"I've never been to Switzerland."
"That's right, you've never been. You should go sometime." He nudges his foot against yours, leans over and lifts your chin. "Don't look like that. I might have to call your parents." He's sitting on that bench, not playing and not showing that frustration, that helplessness you know he has to be feeling, voice scratched around the edges, half-smiling at you. It's an absurd, necessary sort of comfort that you are quietly and profoundly grateful for.
4.
"So, last night, we decided to try something different."
"Francesc Fabregas Soler. We are not having this conversation."
"Right, but I have an important question --"
"No. You really don't."
5.
Two days after Arsenal beats Liverpool, Cesc calls Xabi. It is, maybe, spectacularly bad timing, but nothing ever seems to go as planned for him.
"Look," he says, "I have a question. A hypothetical sort of situation." Xabi continues breathing. He takes this as encouragement. "What do you think about long distance relationships?"
A practiced silence drifts through the phone.
"Like, if you really enjoy spending time with someone and it's mutual only you're in different countries and barely call each other let alone see the other person face to face and you have no idea what else they might be doing during their lives, if they've found someone else --"
"Cesc. I don't think I can talk to you about this right now."
"Shit, I'm sorry, I know it's five in the morning, but, just."
"No, it's not that. Call him, talk it out, do whatever you want, but don't let it get too complicated -- why are you asking me about this anyway? Carlota would be a better choice."
"She's my sister."
"Yeah, exactly."
Xabi tends to be blunt when he's in a bad mood; before the connection dies, Cesc can hear someone mumbling who is it in the background, that awfully distinctive accent thick with sleep, and Cesc thinks that Xabi should follow his own advice more often. Or maybe it's too late for that.
That was almost 2,000 words, WHAT. No wonder these things take me so long.
1.
Sheva leaves Ukraine for the first time when he is fourteen, off to some strange western island where he imagines all the houses to be beautiful and the children neatly dressed, in polished shoes and white, white shirts. He's doing more than just trying his luck, because doing well in this tournament means impressing scouts. It means playing for bigger teams, traveling the world, leaving his home to chase some ghost of a dream. So when he kisses his mother on the cheek, promises her to go to sleep on time and brush his teeth every night, what he is really saying is: I'm leaving, and even if I come back, it won't be the whole of me. I'm leaving, and from this day on, I'll always be leaving, always be moving on, and that means leaving this life, this house, these chairs and photographs and memories behind.
At fourteen, he doesn't know this, of course, but it is already something buried in his joints, the thin hollow of his bones, walls of his veins. Sheva leaves Ukraine at fourteen to find a dream, and this is the first goodbye of many.
2.
During his last hours in Italy, Sheva feels like a ghost. None of it feels real, not the empty apartment he's just locked up, not the fact that Kristen and Jordan are already in London, nothing. He's discarding a life, shedding its skin and cutting his ties, so the last thing he wants to see at the airport is Kaká standing at his terminal, hands in his pockets, mouth a flat level line but his eyes just barely pleading.
He can't do this.
"You'll be okay," he says, touching a hand to his shoulder softly, "Milan will be okay." What he means is: Life doesn't always work out the right way, not even for you. What he means is: Don't be angry with me.
I'd rather you forget me than that.
3.
Elena doesn't want him to leave Dynamo. The day his flight is set to depart, she cries, says, Sheva, Sheva, why do you want to leave our country, our family, me. He kisses her on the forehead, wipes the corners of her eyes with a tissue. "I'll be back soon."
(What he really thinks is: Our country? Our country? You were born in Potsdam; you don't know what it was like, that year, you don't remember, do you. How could you remember, how could you know why I want to get away from this place, how I see ashes everywhere I go, broken walls and rusting metal, fires still waiting to go out. You will never know, because I love you too much to tell you, but goddamn it.)
4.
At Lobanovsky's funeral, Sheva puts a single rose on the pile of flowers rapidly growing by his grave - hundreds and hundreds of them, bouquets and wreaths and wildflowers and his single red rose, disappearing from sight. He doesn't say a single word at the ceremony, because Valery isn't truly gone, and he won't be until Sheva keeps that promise.
He does, two years later. Winning the Champions League is how he says goodbye to a man who made him into who he is, for better or worse, a man who was almost as much his father as his real one.
5.
Each time his father is called to duty again, Sheva helps him pack his suitcases. Often, they haven't even been unpacked properly from the last time his father had to drive tanks through Germany or guard a base along the border. Sheva is not yet ten when he first carries a gun in his hands, fingers clumsy and childish against its heartless metal; by the time he is sixteen, Sheva can put together a rifle blind-folded, can identify the make through touch alone. It is not something he is proud of. Nonetheless, it's what they do. Sheva folds his father's shirts, places them over an envelope full of paperwork, wraps the guns in old cotton. They don't speak until the very end, when Sheva clicks the suitcase closed and hands it over to his father, who will say, "Son, someday you will carry this same suitcase. Someday you will replace me." Sheva nods, bows his head, does not say how terrifying this thought is to him, how it still freezes his fingers and throat after all these years, how he would rather die for a sport than die for his nation.
For niche: Five times Xabi counselled Cesc on Cesc's love troubles.
1.
So.
One early morning with the Spanish squad, Cesc comes back quietly if clumsily into the room he's sharing with Xabi, clothes a little haphazardly arranged, hair sticking out in the most ridiculous places, and starving (he keeps telling Joaquin that it's unhealthy to live on seltzer water and lollipops, but he never listens). Tries to make his footsteps soft, closes the door behind him silently only to turn around and see Xabi already awake, waiting for him, the expression on his face knowing and a little weary, but not accusing.
Cesc begins to open his mouth, feels as if he should justify himself, perhaps, at least explain - but what is there to explain, what could he possibly say? Xabi puts up a hand to stop him and tells him, very quietly, something deeply tired around the way his mouth fits around the syllables: "Don't forget the people who already love you." Love, Cesc wants to repeat, almost in astonishment, because the idea of someone loving him is a terrifying thing, makes him feel small and low and wholly undeserving. Xabi tells him, "Maybe you don't see it. But it's there, he's there."
Says, "You would be stupid, really fucking stupid, to let go of that for anything." Says, "There are a lot of things you don't think you'll regret, but you will." Says, "Cesc."
Says it as if he is overly familiar with this very regret and is now living with it, day to day, punishing himself by suffocating any possibility of redemption or renewal. Denying himself the chance, because indulgence is a horribly destructive thing, and Cesc is still young enough to believe that it's a nothing but a right you can earn, the right to act without ever thinking about how much it can fucking hurt.
2.
Cesc is fifteen when he and the rest of the world outside San Sebastian learn about Xabi Alonso, sixteen when he moves to England, eighteen when he asks Xabi to kiss him.
Upon retrospect, it is nearly as embarrassing as it sounds.
("Wait -- what?"
"You heard what I said."
"You want me to do this why?"
"I, well, wanted to see if it was different." Cesc very carefully did not fidget. Xabi gave him a look.
"And, okay, I'd like to save some future humiliation. I mean, I just want to know. What it's like. I mean."
"So you came to me because I'm the resident expert." He got the feeling that Xabi was trying very hard, and unsuccessfully, not to laugh.
"Oh, shut up, forget I said --"
Just as he finished the sentence and began to turn away, Xabi reached out, grabbed his chin firmly, keeping his face in place, and stepped towards him. Grinned, more than a little amused and definitely smug - it was enough blackmail material for years, said: "Senderos would absolutely murder me if he found out." Before Cesc could let out an indignant protest of what the hell is that supposed to mean, Xabi was kissing him, easy but careful, and Cesc had pretty much forgotten what he was going to say.
"You kiss," Xabi told him afterwards, "kind of like a girl." Cesc, in what he believed to be an enormous display of maturity and inhuman restraint, did not punch him.)
3.
"He makes me crepes. Motherfucking crepes," you tell him, cold, your head pounding, exhausted enough so that you shouldn't feel such sentimentality at the thought of a name, a face, a pair of hands flipping thin pancakes onto a plate. "They're stupidly good. And we went to Camden market together for the first time, I still have some horrible souvenir postcards I bought at a stall, and the strip of photos from one of those booth things, you know?"
On the pitch, Spain is losing, but you can't quite bring yourself to care - or maybe you care so much that it's become a new transmutation of apathy. Either way, you try not to think about it much.
"It sounds like a good thing to have," he offers.
"But how do I keep it?"
For a minute, then, looking at him, he seems incredibly far away - too old for understanding, too cynically empathetic for kindness, foreign and unmovable. The moment passes and he slips back into focus. You wonder who, what, he was thinking about then. He shrugs.
"You just do your best, I think. There's not much more you can do."
"I've never been to Switzerland."
"That's right, you've never been. You should go sometime." He nudges his foot against yours, leans over and lifts your chin. "Don't look like that. I might have to call your parents." He's sitting on that bench, not playing and not showing that frustration, that helplessness you know he has to be feeling, voice scratched around the edges, half-smiling at you. It's an absurd, necessary sort of comfort that you are quietly and profoundly grateful for.
4.
"So, last night, we decided to try something different."
"Francesc Fabregas Soler. We are not having this conversation."
"Right, but I have an important question --"
"No. You really don't."
5.
Two days after Arsenal beats Liverpool, Cesc calls Xabi. It is, maybe, spectacularly bad timing, but nothing ever seems to go as planned for him.
"Look," he says, "I have a question. A hypothetical sort of situation." Xabi continues breathing. He takes this as encouragement. "What do you think about long distance relationships?"
A practiced silence drifts through the phone.
"Like, if you really enjoy spending time with someone and it's mutual only you're in different countries and barely call each other let alone see the other person face to face and you have no idea what else they might be doing during their lives, if they've found someone else --"
"Cesc. I don't think I can talk to you about this right now."
"Shit, I'm sorry, I know it's five in the morning, but, just."
"No, it's not that. Call him, talk it out, do whatever you want, but don't let it get too complicated -- why are you asking me about this anyway? Carlota would be a better choice."
"She's my sister."
"Yeah, exactly."
Xabi tends to be blunt when he's in a bad mood; before the connection dies, Cesc can hear someone mumbling who is it in the background, that awfully distinctive accent thick with sleep, and Cesc thinks that Xabi should follow his own advice more often. Or maybe it's too late for that.
That was almost 2,000 words, WHAT. No wonder these things take me so long.