I never know what to get people for their birthdays
Title: Coordinates
Rating: Er... you better be an adult. It's smut, OK? Whatever rating people use for smut these days.
Summary: They fuck in Manchester a lot.
Believe it or not, this was inspired by a Stewart Downing interview.
The Dexter theme song starts playing in Xabi’s head the second after the sweaty, bespectacled journalist begins to spout off his non-question about the nonexistent internal… frictions and the completely made-up, in no way based in anything remotely resembling fact - no, señor - dressing room turmoil.
Do you have any idea how easy it would be to make it look like an accident?
There aren’t even that many eyewitnesses just now, most of his fellow reporters starting to cluster in the opposite corner of the press area getting ready to have a good, long, sticky wank over every one of Jürgen Klopp’s uproarious guffaws.
“Our focus now is to finish the season well, we only think of the next game and of playing together as a team for a common goal. We have a young team, a very valuable team and hopefully next year we can make it further,” Xabi says out loud, his voice a pointy icicle almost as hollow as his eyes.
It’s Mr. Bullshit (middle name: PR) to you and he’ll be damned if he’s about to take the bait from a snot-nosed runt.
At least this is the last of any bullshit he’ll have to peddle tonight, a thought that’s comforting to entertain until Xabi heads back into the belly of the Bernabéu and bumps into Nuri again. Luckily, the kid’s the one (practically) German he doesn’t hate tonight; he’d made sure of it when they shared a friendly pat on the back on the pitch, after the game. Just in case.
“Someone’s here to see you,” says Nuri, forgetting that he’s not supposed to smile with those supernova eyes tonight, out of a sense of decorum.
A little flare of alarm goes up in Xabi’s brain stem.
He relaxes a bit into Carra’s bearhug when they step inside one of the posher VIP rooms of the stadium, but his eyes never stop scanning the premises. All he finds are young lads whose names don’t always ring a bell trying hard not to ogle them in awe, as if they’ve just stepped inside the British Museum’s natural history wing for the first time. And then there’s Stewart Downing. Xabi’s glad it wasn't his turn to pee in UEFA’s cup for the doping test tonight because he’s not so sure anymore that he’s not in some sort of altered state, if not outright high as a kite.
“..fookin’ Germans,” Carra finally lets him breathe, closing out an R-rated sentence that’s flown right past Xabi’s conscious mind.
“What are y…,” no, that’s hardly the right thing to say, is it? “Well, this is a nice surprise!”
“Our brave Captain’s idea of a retirement do for an auldarse,” Carra eyerolls through the explanation, eyes shining with a beery gloss, but not enough to hide the mix of forced joviality and the subtle probing look of one who knows exactly what to search for on Xabi’s face.
“Was he too cheap to book you a box at the Camp Nou for tomorrow instead?”
The door opens on cue behind them.
“There you go, official Real Madrid Eurobeer. Also known as the most expensive horsepiss on the contine…”
“Hello, Steven.”
Carra’s not fussy enough to not relieve Stevie of both bottles. It frees up his hands for a perfunctory hug, the kind where your shoulders are barely touching, over quick nice to see yous and great game anyways and a few more fookin’ Germans as a polite afterthought.
“Why don’t we get you proper pissed, Xabs?” Carra asks, the proverbial lightbulb ping-ing over his head. “Let’s find a place that serves good English pints and sing 10 German Bombers till they kick us out at 6 am! We can take pictures and text Didi.”
From the corner of his eye, Xabi can see Stewart Downing starting to go green in the face.
They agree to do brunch before the flight back to England instead, energy levels being what they are these days, despite Carra’s protests that they’ve turned into the birds from Sex and the City. On his way out, Xabi can still hear Carra trying to feign ignorance about Mr. Big and implausibly explain it all away by blaming Nicola’s DVD nights.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Xabi’s sitting in his car, ignoring the yellow light flashing over the deserted intersection. His phone screen doesn’t keep him waiting for much longer.
44B
The hotel door opens and closes with a muted whoosh across the thick carpet. It’s long past 2 am. They kiss against the door, instantly open-mouthed and filthy wet, thirst scorching their tongues.
It hasn’t even been that long by their standards, thanks to Champions League ties. Stevie’s not used to having only week-old memories of the peppered milk taste of Xabi's skin in his mouth; it usually has months to wash over his senses and settle in at the back of his throat before it returns to haunt him at the worst possible times, hours away from the nearest hot shower. The copper beard burn marks have barely healed on his lower belly.
It changes nothing.
Xabi lunges at his now stubbly neck just as ferociously as if they were in Dubai after almost a year of trying to make do with texts and avoid frequent phone calls to preserve their delusions of dignity.
It’s just another hotel room in Madrid, where it had started all over again under a cloud of volcanic ash on the horizon. (No, that’s not quite true, they’d fucked on Xabi’s first night back at Anfield as a spectator, when they were supposed to say goodbye properly and ask each other’s forgiveness and promise to stay friends. They’re bloody awful at it, never quite got the hang of it around each other. But it hadn’t felt like a fresh start, rather like an end of something weighing heavily on their shoulders instead). The rest is simply geography.
The coordinates play randomly in Stevie’s mind in some of his more unforgiving nights. London, Madrid, Manchester, Huelva… this one is their summer inside joke, a riddle for the Google Map aficionados and their fifth grade math teachers. If Footballer A drives from Cadiz and Footballer B from the Algarve, how long before they come all over each other, fucking frantically against the wall of a suburban apartment in Huelva, paid for with Mikel’s credit card? (Never a hotel when they’re alone, always a beachside rental in the middle of nowhere where nothing of any consequence ever happens for an afternoon)… Manchester, Dubai, Kyiv, Manchester…
They fuck in Manchester a lot. Stevie blames UEFA.
He dives in to nip harshly at Xabi’s jaw and thinks it’s fitting for who they are and what they do that somehow that’s the most perverse aspect of it all, as opposed to… say… driving down the M62 on an early spring morning with Xabi’s family heading in the opposite direction for sightseeing and kit shopping. Xabi throws his head back, hitting the wall with a clunk. His right hand slips around Stevie’s waist and dips under the back of his jeans to scrape his too short fingernails across the small of his back. It sends Stevie’s hips rocketing into his own and Xabi lets out a hoarse grunt against his temple.
It’s been far, far too long.
A shirt lands on the floor at last, Stevie’s button-down yanked harshly down his arms.
He starts to say something about how Mourinho’s going to hunt him down with a flamethrower if he finds out how much strain they’re putting on Xabi’s groin right now, but Xabi grabs him by what little hair he has and hauls him even closer for another kiss, sealing shut every pocket of air between their bodies. They’re wearing too many clothes still, but they’re not quite willing to move yet because the rough slide of their dicks against each other, covered by layers of cotton and denim, aches in the best kind of way. Stevie notices it when his belt buckle rubs too hard against Xabi’s crotch, the spark of life in his dilated pupils, the way his nostrils flare up…
Fuck yes, he wants to hurt. He needs to ache without the fading injections getting in the way because it’s been a shit night, a whole week’s worth of shit nights actually, and he needs to stop thinking about football karma demanding its pound of flesh back. Is the dumbest, eventually dooming, penalty ever conceded a fair floating rate interest for a miracle rebound? Are eight years enough borrowed time? If you could choose one… No contest. He doesn’t believe in that shit anyway.
This is real. The coolness of the sheets against his stomach is real. The haphazard stream of clothes and shoes and smartphones left behind on the floor is still going to be there when he opens his eyes. When Stevie straddles him and pins him facedown to the bed with the muscles in his thighs, the spike of pain from ailing flesh awakened from its opiate sleep is as close to alive as Xabi’s felt in a week. Or possibly longer. Stevie runs his fingertips down each vertebra in his spine, making his cock jolt against the sheets, and Xabi almost worries Stevie’s going to spend ages using his fingers and tongue to open him up raw and wide while he bites into the pillow and begs to get fucked already, puta madre.. or I’ll fucking strangle you! He wouldn’t exactly not enjoy it, but that’s not what he needs right now.
He thinks he understands what Stevie’s been looking for when he feels a thumb sinking down hard into the stud-shaped bruise starting to form on the top of one of his buttocks (Götze, fucking chipmunk-faced fetus). The pain stretches over Xabi’s skin in a warm wave, making him sink his teeth into his bottom lip. It turns out he’s wrong, but he barely has any time to realize it. He cranes his neck at a new angle over the sheets and sees Stevie placing a half-empty whiskey glass back on the nightstand. A solitary ice cube swirls in the half-inch of Jack Daniels abandoned in the glass. The other is now dripping over his bruise from Stevie’s fingers right before it’s rammed hard into his ass and Stevie’s weight is almost not enough to keep both of them from flying off the bed as Xabi coils and springs underneath him, vibrating with shock and then with shock mixed with cold and the amped up voltage rippling through his skin.
He possibly groans something sacrilegious about a saint or communion bread in Basque, he can’t even tell anymore.
Stevie moves a thigh out of the way enough to make room for Xabi to roll on his back underneath him. His whole face slackens along with his mouth when he sees Xabi’s cock flushed and leaking already.
“Fuck! Look at you…”
He will never know how to say no to this. The sight of that violin bow body wound tight beneath him, of Xabi’s ocher eyes burning with need, the mesmerizing contour of his shoulders he has to fight to keep down on the mattress will always, always leave Stevie dizzy and helpless.
Xabi needs a few deep breaths before he can even attempt to sputter some clever line about improvisation because come on… this is slightly ridiculous when you look at the technicalities; his body is clenching around Stevie’s warm fingers and a rapidly melting piece of ice… Jesus fucking Christ! Later, when he can think at all and has time to process it, it’ll make so much sense though. Stevie fucks like he plays.
He grabs Stevie’s hard on and brings it to his own cock, wrapping his fingers around both of them, watching Stevie’s eyes darken and close to savor the unbearable heat of their flesh under his palm. When he opens them again, he’s bending over to suck on Xabi’s tongue, making them both taste of sour mash. Xabi jerks them off faster and Stevie sighs, rocking harder into his fist.
“Need to… nghh…”
And he needs to fast.
He moves off of Xabi, shoving his thighs apart; the yelp of pain is meant and understood as an encouragement and Stevie has to once more chase Mourinho’s terrifying wrath from his mind to avoid a rather mortifying mishap. Muscle memory takes over though and once he’s inside him, everything that isn’t Xabi goes on the backburner, static Stevie can’t be bothered with, not while he’s got Xabi’s nails raking stinging trails down his back and his cock slicked and desperate between his own fingers.
The beautifully filthy gasping noises coming from Xabi’s throat set his blood on fire and when they start to assemble into a string of words he eventually identifies as his own name, Stevie loses control of his hips, drives into him so forcefully the headboard is chaffing against the wall. Xabi looks absolutely fucking wrecked - gorgeous - and all he can do by now is squeeze down, twisting his hips just a bit and throwing his head back, fucking sobbing for it. Stevie lowers himself on shaky arms to try to lick at his lips again, but all they manage is to pant desperately into each other’s mouths. His tongue flickers down lower over a small scab on Xabi’s neck and he bites it open, making the cut sting again, filling his mouth with a metal-edged saltiness as Xabi keens against him and his vision whites out.
Xabi squeezes his fingers punishingly around Stevie’s shoulder when he comes. He knows exactly which shoulder to maim, the one that aches. They’re good at this, at hurting each other. Practice makes perfect.
Stevie breaks off with a choked groan to rest his forehead into Xabi’s shoulder He has no idea how long he’s been out, his eyes don’t start to focus again until he feels Xabi’s palm slide across his temple, his thumb resting on the skin behind Stevie’s ear with a slow swirling motion. Their breaths slow down together.
“Carra thought I was going mad with how hard I was cheering when you slapped that Polish lad,” Stevie says in the sex-stupid tone Xabi’s so used to by now. “Been waiting for a week to see you smack Mario whatshisface… that Justin Bieber-faced little shit… and don’t even try to pretend you don’t know who that is,” he adds preemptively.
Xabi kisses him lazily and Stevie shuts up for the time being because Xabi’s tongue is doing exquisite things in his mouth.
“Were we ever that… slappable at his age?”
Stevie’s laughter vibrates through both their ribcages and they both know the real question is” Were we ever his age?
They don’t really talk anymore after that, not even in the shower after a paltry four hours of sleep, because there’s nothing left to say. There'll be another hotel room somewhere, eventually, and it doesn't make them good people and it doesn't make anything better, but so be it. They used to do guilt and shame and self-loathing (the last one had always been more of Stevie’s domain, but still). Not anymore.
I'm working on a few assumptions here, the first of which is that everyone's watched the BVB-RM Champions League semi and its aftermath. Xabi gave an interview where he looks completely removed from his body, Kloppo quoted Yeats (or possibly Eliot), Stevie took the Liverpool boys to Madrid as an... ahem... gift to Carra. It was glorious.
Just in case any Germans are reading this, please note that I have intense, sticky wanks every time Kloppo laughs (or opens his mouth for any reason), this is just my characters angsting, no offense intended, etc. Unless you're Mario Götze, in which case... fuck you, I don't like you anyway.
Rating: Er... you better be an adult. It's smut, OK? Whatever rating people use for smut these days.
Summary: They fuck in Manchester a lot.
Believe it or not, this was inspired by a Stewart Downing interview.
The Dexter theme song starts playing in Xabi’s head the second after the sweaty, bespectacled journalist begins to spout off his non-question about the nonexistent internal… frictions and the completely made-up, in no way based in anything remotely resembling fact - no, señor - dressing room turmoil.
Do you have any idea how easy it would be to make it look like an accident?
There aren’t even that many eyewitnesses just now, most of his fellow reporters starting to cluster in the opposite corner of the press area getting ready to have a good, long, sticky wank over every one of Jürgen Klopp’s uproarious guffaws.
“Our focus now is to finish the season well, we only think of the next game and of playing together as a team for a common goal. We have a young team, a very valuable team and hopefully next year we can make it further,” Xabi says out loud, his voice a pointy icicle almost as hollow as his eyes.
It’s Mr. Bullshit (middle name: PR) to you and he’ll be damned if he’s about to take the bait from a snot-nosed runt.
At least this is the last of any bullshit he’ll have to peddle tonight, a thought that’s comforting to entertain until Xabi heads back into the belly of the Bernabéu and bumps into Nuri again. Luckily, the kid’s the one (practically) German he doesn’t hate tonight; he’d made sure of it when they shared a friendly pat on the back on the pitch, after the game. Just in case.
“Someone’s here to see you,” says Nuri, forgetting that he’s not supposed to smile with those supernova eyes tonight, out of a sense of decorum.
A little flare of alarm goes up in Xabi’s brain stem.
He relaxes a bit into Carra’s bearhug when they step inside one of the posher VIP rooms of the stadium, but his eyes never stop scanning the premises. All he finds are young lads whose names don’t always ring a bell trying hard not to ogle them in awe, as if they’ve just stepped inside the British Museum’s natural history wing for the first time. And then there’s Stewart Downing. Xabi’s glad it wasn't his turn to pee in UEFA’s cup for the doping test tonight because he’s not so sure anymore that he’s not in some sort of altered state, if not outright high as a kite.
“..fookin’ Germans,” Carra finally lets him breathe, closing out an R-rated sentence that’s flown right past Xabi’s conscious mind.
“What are y…,” no, that’s hardly the right thing to say, is it? “Well, this is a nice surprise!”
“Our brave Captain’s idea of a retirement do for an auldarse,” Carra eyerolls through the explanation, eyes shining with a beery gloss, but not enough to hide the mix of forced joviality and the subtle probing look of one who knows exactly what to search for on Xabi’s face.
“Was he too cheap to book you a box at the Camp Nou for tomorrow instead?”
The door opens on cue behind them.
“There you go, official Real Madrid Eurobeer. Also known as the most expensive horsepiss on the contine…”
“Hello, Steven.”
Carra’s not fussy enough to not relieve Stevie of both bottles. It frees up his hands for a perfunctory hug, the kind where your shoulders are barely touching, over quick nice to see yous and great game anyways and a few more fookin’ Germans as a polite afterthought.
“Why don’t we get you proper pissed, Xabs?” Carra asks, the proverbial lightbulb ping-ing over his head. “Let’s find a place that serves good English pints and sing 10 German Bombers till they kick us out at 6 am! We can take pictures and text Didi.”
From the corner of his eye, Xabi can see Stewart Downing starting to go green in the face.
They agree to do brunch before the flight back to England instead, energy levels being what they are these days, despite Carra’s protests that they’ve turned into the birds from Sex and the City. On his way out, Xabi can still hear Carra trying to feign ignorance about Mr. Big and implausibly explain it all away by blaming Nicola’s DVD nights.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Xabi’s sitting in his car, ignoring the yellow light flashing over the deserted intersection. His phone screen doesn’t keep him waiting for much longer.
44B
The hotel door opens and closes with a muted whoosh across the thick carpet. It’s long past 2 am. They kiss against the door, instantly open-mouthed and filthy wet, thirst scorching their tongues.
It hasn’t even been that long by their standards, thanks to Champions League ties. Stevie’s not used to having only week-old memories of the peppered milk taste of Xabi's skin in his mouth; it usually has months to wash over his senses and settle in at the back of his throat before it returns to haunt him at the worst possible times, hours away from the nearest hot shower. The copper beard burn marks have barely healed on his lower belly.
It changes nothing.
Xabi lunges at his now stubbly neck just as ferociously as if they were in Dubai after almost a year of trying to make do with texts and avoid frequent phone calls to preserve their delusions of dignity.
It’s just another hotel room in Madrid, where it had started all over again under a cloud of volcanic ash on the horizon. (No, that’s not quite true, they’d fucked on Xabi’s first night back at Anfield as a spectator, when they were supposed to say goodbye properly and ask each other’s forgiveness and promise to stay friends. They’re bloody awful at it, never quite got the hang of it around each other. But it hadn’t felt like a fresh start, rather like an end of something weighing heavily on their shoulders instead). The rest is simply geography.
The coordinates play randomly in Stevie’s mind in some of his more unforgiving nights. London, Madrid, Manchester, Huelva… this one is their summer inside joke, a riddle for the Google Map aficionados and their fifth grade math teachers. If Footballer A drives from Cadiz and Footballer B from the Algarve, how long before they come all over each other, fucking frantically against the wall of a suburban apartment in Huelva, paid for with Mikel’s credit card? (Never a hotel when they’re alone, always a beachside rental in the middle of nowhere where nothing of any consequence ever happens for an afternoon)… Manchester, Dubai, Kyiv, Manchester…
They fuck in Manchester a lot. Stevie blames UEFA.
He dives in to nip harshly at Xabi’s jaw and thinks it’s fitting for who they are and what they do that somehow that’s the most perverse aspect of it all, as opposed to… say… driving down the M62 on an early spring morning with Xabi’s family heading in the opposite direction for sightseeing and kit shopping. Xabi throws his head back, hitting the wall with a clunk. His right hand slips around Stevie’s waist and dips under the back of his jeans to scrape his too short fingernails across the small of his back. It sends Stevie’s hips rocketing into his own and Xabi lets out a hoarse grunt against his temple.
It’s been far, far too long.
A shirt lands on the floor at last, Stevie’s button-down yanked harshly down his arms.
He starts to say something about how Mourinho’s going to hunt him down with a flamethrower if he finds out how much strain they’re putting on Xabi’s groin right now, but Xabi grabs him by what little hair he has and hauls him even closer for another kiss, sealing shut every pocket of air between their bodies. They’re wearing too many clothes still, but they’re not quite willing to move yet because the rough slide of their dicks against each other, covered by layers of cotton and denim, aches in the best kind of way. Stevie notices it when his belt buckle rubs too hard against Xabi’s crotch, the spark of life in his dilated pupils, the way his nostrils flare up…
Fuck yes, he wants to hurt. He needs to ache without the fading injections getting in the way because it’s been a shit night, a whole week’s worth of shit nights actually, and he needs to stop thinking about football karma demanding its pound of flesh back. Is the dumbest, eventually dooming, penalty ever conceded a fair floating rate interest for a miracle rebound? Are eight years enough borrowed time? If you could choose one… No contest. He doesn’t believe in that shit anyway.
This is real. The coolness of the sheets against his stomach is real. The haphazard stream of clothes and shoes and smartphones left behind on the floor is still going to be there when he opens his eyes. When Stevie straddles him and pins him facedown to the bed with the muscles in his thighs, the spike of pain from ailing flesh awakened from its opiate sleep is as close to alive as Xabi’s felt in a week. Or possibly longer. Stevie runs his fingertips down each vertebra in his spine, making his cock jolt against the sheets, and Xabi almost worries Stevie’s going to spend ages using his fingers and tongue to open him up raw and wide while he bites into the pillow and begs to get fucked already, puta madre.. or I’ll fucking strangle you! He wouldn’t exactly not enjoy it, but that’s not what he needs right now.
He thinks he understands what Stevie’s been looking for when he feels a thumb sinking down hard into the stud-shaped bruise starting to form on the top of one of his buttocks (Götze, fucking chipmunk-faced fetus). The pain stretches over Xabi’s skin in a warm wave, making him sink his teeth into his bottom lip. It turns out he’s wrong, but he barely has any time to realize it. He cranes his neck at a new angle over the sheets and sees Stevie placing a half-empty whiskey glass back on the nightstand. A solitary ice cube swirls in the half-inch of Jack Daniels abandoned in the glass. The other is now dripping over his bruise from Stevie’s fingers right before it’s rammed hard into his ass and Stevie’s weight is almost not enough to keep both of them from flying off the bed as Xabi coils and springs underneath him, vibrating with shock and then with shock mixed with cold and the amped up voltage rippling through his skin.
He possibly groans something sacrilegious about a saint or communion bread in Basque, he can’t even tell anymore.
Stevie moves a thigh out of the way enough to make room for Xabi to roll on his back underneath him. His whole face slackens along with his mouth when he sees Xabi’s cock flushed and leaking already.
“Fuck! Look at you…”
He will never know how to say no to this. The sight of that violin bow body wound tight beneath him, of Xabi’s ocher eyes burning with need, the mesmerizing contour of his shoulders he has to fight to keep down on the mattress will always, always leave Stevie dizzy and helpless.
Xabi needs a few deep breaths before he can even attempt to sputter some clever line about improvisation because come on… this is slightly ridiculous when you look at the technicalities; his body is clenching around Stevie’s warm fingers and a rapidly melting piece of ice… Jesus fucking Christ! Later, when he can think at all and has time to process it, it’ll make so much sense though. Stevie fucks like he plays.
He grabs Stevie’s hard on and brings it to his own cock, wrapping his fingers around both of them, watching Stevie’s eyes darken and close to savor the unbearable heat of their flesh under his palm. When he opens them again, he’s bending over to suck on Xabi’s tongue, making them both taste of sour mash. Xabi jerks them off faster and Stevie sighs, rocking harder into his fist.
“Need to… nghh…”
And he needs to fast.
He moves off of Xabi, shoving his thighs apart; the yelp of pain is meant and understood as an encouragement and Stevie has to once more chase Mourinho’s terrifying wrath from his mind to avoid a rather mortifying mishap. Muscle memory takes over though and once he’s inside him, everything that isn’t Xabi goes on the backburner, static Stevie can’t be bothered with, not while he’s got Xabi’s nails raking stinging trails down his back and his cock slicked and desperate between his own fingers.
The beautifully filthy gasping noises coming from Xabi’s throat set his blood on fire and when they start to assemble into a string of words he eventually identifies as his own name, Stevie loses control of his hips, drives into him so forcefully the headboard is chaffing against the wall. Xabi looks absolutely fucking wrecked - gorgeous - and all he can do by now is squeeze down, twisting his hips just a bit and throwing his head back, fucking sobbing for it. Stevie lowers himself on shaky arms to try to lick at his lips again, but all they manage is to pant desperately into each other’s mouths. His tongue flickers down lower over a small scab on Xabi’s neck and he bites it open, making the cut sting again, filling his mouth with a metal-edged saltiness as Xabi keens against him and his vision whites out.
Xabi squeezes his fingers punishingly around Stevie’s shoulder when he comes. He knows exactly which shoulder to maim, the one that aches. They’re good at this, at hurting each other. Practice makes perfect.
Stevie breaks off with a choked groan to rest his forehead into Xabi’s shoulder He has no idea how long he’s been out, his eyes don’t start to focus again until he feels Xabi’s palm slide across his temple, his thumb resting on the skin behind Stevie’s ear with a slow swirling motion. Their breaths slow down together.
“Carra thought I was going mad with how hard I was cheering when you slapped that Polish lad,” Stevie says in the sex-stupid tone Xabi’s so used to by now. “Been waiting for a week to see you smack Mario whatshisface… that Justin Bieber-faced little shit… and don’t even try to pretend you don’t know who that is,” he adds preemptively.
Xabi kisses him lazily and Stevie shuts up for the time being because Xabi’s tongue is doing exquisite things in his mouth.
“Were we ever that… slappable at his age?”
Stevie’s laughter vibrates through both their ribcages and they both know the real question is” Were we ever his age?
They don’t really talk anymore after that, not even in the shower after a paltry four hours of sleep, because there’s nothing left to say. There'll be another hotel room somewhere, eventually, and it doesn't make them good people and it doesn't make anything better, but so be it. They used to do guilt and shame and self-loathing (the last one had always been more of Stevie’s domain, but still). Not anymore.
I'm working on a few assumptions here, the first of which is that everyone's watched the BVB-RM Champions League semi and its aftermath. Xabi gave an interview where he looks completely removed from his body, Kloppo quoted Yeats (or possibly Eliot), Stevie took the Liverpool boys to Madrid as an... ahem... gift to Carra. It was glorious.
Just in case any Germans are reading this, please note that I have intense, sticky wanks every time Kloppo laughs (or opens his mouth for any reason), this is just my characters angsting, no offense intended, etc. Unless you're Mario Götze, in which case... fuck you, I don't like you anyway.