Not!Football AU
The Theoretical SIG Sauer
Chapter 6/8 ½
Rating: R
Summary: In which Xabi is an Arsenal fan.
Italics = Spanish
Walking, no talking turns out to be a policy Xabi can get behind one hundred percent because, theoretically, what he’s probably supposed to say is: I’m sorry… about earlier… And then Steven’s most likely supposed to mumble something about forgetting all about it and bitch at him for not walking fast enough. Xabi can recognize social protocols in the abstract, it’s just when it comes to putting them into practice that… well… he’s not sorry, for one thing. At all.
The change of scenery creeps up on him unnoticed, the trees are getting shorter and the air less humid. Civilization smacks them in the face in the form of a mostly empty road leading to a cluster of universally recognizable small town watering holes. A bodega neon flickers in the distant twilight promising adult entertainment and refreshments.
Steven looks at Xabi for the first time in three hours, a tired sort of realization on his stubbly face.
“We’re not exactly… conspicuous. You should probably lose the beard,” Steven concludes, a little mournfully.
“No!” It doesn’t sound negotiable. “Is there a Plan B?”
“We need transportation.”
“What, you want to try to hitchhike?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of stealing a ride.”
“Oh.”
Steven decides the neon-lit dive bar is the perfect establishment to target in order to put his quite literal plan in motion. They stalk a potential ride from behind a reeking alleyway and it’s not long before one presents itself in the form of a Ford pickup truck lazily parked the darkest corner of the alley across the bar. Steven motions for Xabi to move shortly after the Ford’s corpulent owner ambles into the bar for what is obviously not his first drink of the day. Xabi does his best to stand by the truck as casually as possible, hands shoved deep in his pockets, surveying the few patrons around the premise while Steven slides into the driver’s seat through the unlocked door.
A few minutes later, Xabi goes a bit restless as his mental clock ticks in silence despite Steven focusing his best efforts on fumbling with broken wires under the dashboard.
“This looks a lot easier in the movies,” Xabi says, jumping into the car once the engine finally spurs to life.
There’s a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary staring at him with a deeply unimpressed expression from the dashboard and various rosaries and semi-pagan trinkets hanging from the mirror.
“As do most things.”
“So… what now?”
“We need to steal a phone next,” Steven says, frowning at the blinking light behind the steering wheel. “Also… money for petrol. Mr. Responsible Driver doesn’t believe in keeping a full tank.”
“I feel like an evil Robin Hood, stealing from the poor…,” Xabi muses, but his scruples sound terribly half-hearted.
“You can personally park it back in its spot so the owner can drink and drive some more as soon as I get you to a safe house.”
Xabi looks out the window, but all there is out there is darkness and trees and he’s had enough of both for a lifetime over the last few days. There are quite a few other subjects he’d like to bring up at the moment, but all he can think of asking is:
“Do they teach you to steal cars in spy school?”
“I was fully qualified by the time I got anywhere near MI6. I graduated from the school of life on the streets of Liverpool,” Steven answers, melancholia completely absent from his voice. He only takes his eyes off the road for a second, but the surprise on Xabi’s face requires some sort of elaboration.
“I grew up in a part of town where your entry position in the professional world wasn’t at the local fish and chips shop if you had the sort of mates I had… By the time I was seventeen, I was quite high up the pecking order as an enforcer for one of the local bosses. I was too scrawny to beat money out of people, but I had other skills…”
Xabi smiles quietly, trying to picture it.
“Is there a feelgood story about how the army became your family and helped you see the light?”
“Not quite. I was just a beaut of a thug who got caught at the right time, before I could break someone’s limbs beyond repair. Judge McAllister was a retired Royal Marine and he made me an offer I wasn’t stupid enough to refuse.”
A gust of warmth lingers around the corners of Steven’s eyes, soon to be erased by high beams from incoming traffic.
“The most criminal thing I did by that age was using grandma’s eggs to throw at cars passing under the highway bridge,” Xabi says and he starts to mess with the car radio in search for an appropriate soundtrack. “I mean… I smoked weed in a summer camp once, but it was in the Netherlands so it probably doesn’t count.”
“On the other hand, you just stole a car in a foreign country and you’re about to steal a wallet,” Steven consoles him, his thumb drumming a silent baseline into the steering wheel accompanying the low female voice Xabi had selected from the three radio stations available. “You’re catching up.”
They pull over in front of what looks like a particularly seedy dive bar frequented by truck drivers and Xabi is once more charged with keeping watch over Steven’s felonies through a thick curtain of smoke mixed with way too loud bastardized currulao songs vomited by the jukebox in the corner. It’s Happy Hour judging by the crowd and not too many clients are more preoccupied with the two men entering the mix than they are with the free-flowing booze.
One of the bleary-eyed men engaged in a heated game of pool will eventually miss the leather jacket Steven swipes off a chair on his way to the bar, but by then it will be far too late.
As instructed, Xabi exits the locale a couple of minutes after he sees Steven heading out with his hands in his pockets and walks around the building to where they’d spotted a pay phone hanging off the wall of a nearby abandoned disco. Judging by the way Steven is repeatedly punching in numbers into the metal frame with no visible result, the small roadside town has fully embraced the smartphone era and never looked back.
“Out of coins?” Xabi asks, handing Steven a shiny Blackberry when he’s close enough to make sure nobody can see their illicit exchange in the faint light of the street lamp. “I’m catching up,” he adds, not without a certain amount of childish pride. “You’re turning me into a criminal mastermind.”
Steven looks from Xabi’s face to the cell phone and back again.
“I can see how conflicted you are…”
His mind is on everything at once and Xabi’s giddiness is somewhere towards the bottom of his list. And yet, for a couple of long seconds on their way back to the car, Steven can’t stop wanting to look at him and figure out from beyond the shadows that surround them why the last text in the Sent folder is not a distress call to some London number but a semi-illiterate tirade against an ex-wife named Claribel (as far as Steven can decipher from the drunken textspeak left behind by the former owner of the Blackberry).
“Hey, Meatwall, it’s me,” Steven says cautiously once they’re back inside the pickup truck. “I’m in the neighborhood with a friend, mind if we stop by?”
Xabi can’t really decipher much of the ensuing brief conversation, but once they’re back on the road Steven saves him the trouble of yet another unanswered question. He’s texting and driving with the dexterity that would make any valley girl proud.
“Are you checking your email?” Xabi asks, mostly to piss him off. Pissing Steven off is entertaining, he has to admit it, but there’s more to it than that for a change. “Can I check mine when you’re done?”
The driver’s window is cracked open three seconds later and out the Blackberry goes, disintegrating on the tarmac behind them.
“I left a breadcrumb for Lampard, it’s not a good idea to hang on to that number on an unsecured line,” Steven answers tersely.
“Is he your boss?”
The sound Steven makes amuses Xabi to no end.
“Fat Frank and I… collaborate occasionally, but we work on different teams... I report to him on this particular mission,” he eventually admits, resigned.
“Fat Frank...?”
Steven is so very tempted to put yet another chink in Xabi’s hollywoodized mental image of his job, but in the end truth prevails.
“He’s a good lad,” he chuckles. “Dependable. But he liked his mince pies a bit too much back in his days of flying with the boys in blue and the name just… stuck.”
“I wonder what he calls you…”
Xabi doesn’t feel too secure in the knowledge that apparently Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service is one big high school.
“Open the glove box. Can you see anything you could write with?”
What Xabi finds is mostly trash, but eventually he fishes a chewed-up pen and a crumpled phone bill from a pile of empty M&M packets and crushed cans of energizer drinks.
“Write down this number and don’t lose it in case I…”
“In case of what?”
“Just write it down: 05 664 0968. Pepe Reina. Call from a public phone if you must, don’t use cells. You’re now a thieving pro, I’m sure you’ll find coins no problem.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Paid to be a friend of yours actually. He’s the General Consul of the Kingdom of Spain in Cartagena. Big, loud, bald guy… has more children than he can keep track of and they’re all at his vacation house up the coast. You can trust him with your life; we’ve known each other… through work. That was before a bullet in a kneecap sent him into civilian machinations in your Majesty’s embassies.”
“Is he a… Spanish spy then?”
Xabi arches an eyebrow, finding the very idea extremely odd. Spies still seem like celluloid creations to him, even though he’s had his hands all over the one sitting next to him and knows too well that he’s undeniably and deliciously real.
“They’re not called spies in the diplomatic corps. They’re… cultural envoys of your nation.”
Xabi throws his back against the headrest, closes his eyes and laughs at the absurd turn of his existence.
~
They can’t see the ocean through the thick darkness, but Xabi can hear it lapping at cliffs near the gated beach villa they arrive at shortly after sunset the next day. There are armed guards waving them through the check-point stationed in front of the wrought-iron gates and security cameras craning their wiry necks at them as soon as they step onto the porch, but nothing feels quite as unsettling to Xabi as the loud shriek that pierces his ears moments after a moon-faced maid opens the front door.
“Uncle Eshteben!”
There’s a torrent whirling through the hallway and it doesn’t stop until it clutches at Steven’s legs and shrieks some more when he picks the little girl up and lifts her high above his head.
“Is this my Gracie?!? It can’t be!” Steven’s eyes go wide and he beams at the blonde head floating above his face. “Who is this giant girl, huh? And what have you done to my stumpy?”
Xabi looks on in alarm as another blonde head peers from behind the legs of their host, but at least this one is quiet.
“Get over here, you Scouse hijo de puta!”
Pepe Reina is immense, bald, loud and he truly does have a lot of children, two of which are permanently attached to various parts of Steven from the moment they step into the plush vacation home. He’s holding a sleeping baby when he’s introduced to Xabi, beaming his million watt smile at them and promising a paella feast for dinner that even snobbish Basques would not dare to turn down.
His wife, a bright-eyed, statuesque brunette introduces herself as Yolanda. She sets yet another blonde toddler into a high chair before she gives Steven a half-hug made almost impossible by the rigid grip her oldest daughter has on the man’s neck.
“Another one?” Steven asks Yolanda indignantly. “Christ, I can’t understand how you even let this ugly bastard anywhere near you.”
Xabi’s a bit relieved to realize he’s apparently not expected to show much interest in or excitement about children since at least fifty percent of them are completely fascinated by Steven anyway.
“Scousers,” Yolanda quips, “nobody else understands them so they have to make sure they stick together.”
“That one was born in Liverpool during my NATO deployment, that one too…,” Pepe points to his daughters, who are simultaneously cooing their excitement to Steven and trying to show him something in a picture book as he sits in between them on the couch. “This one,” he nods towards the dozing baby in his arms, “is 100% madrileño. That one… I don’t remember.”
“Italia!” Yolanda yells out from the dining room where she’s setting the table.
Throughout dinner, Xabi answers polite questions in a mixture of Spanish and English for Steven’s benefit, talks about his work and his life in the Basque Country - it hasn’t been home in a way in a very long time, but of course it always will be and after the second bottle of wine Pepe is in a distinctly patriotic mood, doubled by a welcome gossipy streak responsible for revealing at least one embarrassing story about Major Gerrard’s misadventures in karaoke bars.
The subject of Xabi’s encounter with Steven or their eventual destination is carefully avoided by both sides, so it’s overall a warm, friendly affair with good food and excellent wine, two things Xabi’s missed dearly. He finds it somewhat disappointing that he doesn’t have to come up with any elaborate cover story about his background or his and Steven’s plans for the immediate future, but Xabi’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that the missions of secret agents are often quite mundane and involve hours spent either walking in silence or dozing off on long car rides. Well, there are occasional gunshot wounds and pushing innocent engineers into waterfalls…
“I’m not even going to ask how you got caught up in this with Gerrard, don’t want to know.”
Pepe hands Xabi another plate to dry.
That switch again, Xabi thinks, almost startled by how fast the tipsy, gentle giant who talks a mile an hour at the dinner table morphs into this steely, completely lucid man with whom he’s on cleaning duty in the kitchen while Yolanda puts the toddler population to bed. Steven’s been deployed to read the book about an adventurous, globetrotting bunny to the girls for the third time since dessert and Pepe and Xabi have a clear view from the kitchen to the faces he makes as he turns the pages, a girl curled into a ball under each arm between his torso and the couch.
“I’m probably not allowed to tell you or he’ll kill me,” Xabi smiles. “Or I’d have to kill you, I’m not sure which applies. I’m not really used to this… parallel universe you people live in. I don’t know how you manage such a normal life.”
“By practically retiring from active duty. What I do now is also… important, but in a different way. And I get to come home to my family every night, so it works out well. Not all of us are cut out for it though…”
Pepe follows Xabi’s eyes towards the living room where Gracie (whom Steven refuses to call Grecia because, as he’d told Pepe many times, naming your child after the geographical location where they were conceived is a dick move) squirms and dissolves into a fit of giggles when Steven tickles her side.
“He’s really good at what he does,” he continues, rinsing the last of the wine glasses. “Too good.”
It’s quite obvious Pepe doesn’t mean bedtime stories, although it’s hard to imagine that a man who’s so at ease with miniature people who usually make Xabi feel completely clueless is not cut out for a normal life.
“Don’t know how much you know about him,” Pepe says, politely trying to avoid the question.
“He doesn’t talk much.”
“Need to get quite a few drinks in him first.”
“Was he always like this?” It’s Xabi’s turn to fail at casual disinterest.
“As Scouse as it gets for as long as I’ve known him,” Pepe says with a wry grin, “but Afghanistan…” His smile fades and he waits for Xabi to finish drying off a long-stemmed glass. “Snipers work with partners; his was his best mate from the academy. An even crankier, loud hijo de puta from Liverpool named Carragher. They were captured together… held for weeks…”
There’s no need for Pepe to go into any details because Xabi knows held is a convenient euphemism for what he’s seen on Steven’s back.
“Only one of them came back and he was half-dead when they found him. I don’t think Steven’s ever talked to anybody about and well… I don’t like to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but word is he joined MI6 to finish the other half of the job and they’re more than happy to use him for these kinds of missions.”
“He seems quite… composed to me,” Xabi says, trying not to sound too hopeful.
“Hombre, I can only hope the rumors aren’t true, I love that fucker. But I know after what he’s been through, he would have never been on active duty again in NATO intelligence. The MI6 directorate is a different kind of animal,” Pepe frowns in the manner of a man who’d prefer to not go into details.
~
“You’re going to have to sleep eventually,” Xabi’s voice punctures the silence hanging over the balcony of Pepe’s guest bedroom. “There are armed guards downstairs…”
“I’m good for now,” Steven insists, bent over the stone railing, supporting himself on his elbows and scanning the darkness around the villa. His voice is rusty and dry and he’s turned away from Xabi so that less than half of his clean-shaven face is visible.
Xabi joins him, his bare toes curling on the cold slab of granite, although without his glasses the sea might as well not exist somewhere near the horizon he sees blurred in the distance.
“Are we still in danger?” I don’t mean in the philosophical way… Do you think Pérez’s men would find us here?”
“We gave them no reason to, but… I don’t know.”
Xabi can see the ever present tension in Steven’s shoulders straining in a coil at the back of his neck.
“I’d hate to think I’m putting Pepe’s family in danger, all because of a stupid…”
“Pepe wouldn’t have us here if he didn’t think it was a reasonable risk to take for a few hours, Xabi. We’ll be on our way to Cartagena in the morning; once I get you on Spanish soil at the Consulate, you’ll be somebody else’s problem,” Steven says, thinking vaguely that Xabi’s face looks weird right now and he doesn’t seem to be interested in taking the banter bait.
“I’m driving tomorrow then. Try to go to sleep, you’ll need all the energy you can get to get away from those little girls, they’re like a terrifying human tornado.”
“It’s the Reina DNA,” Steven smiles with wry fondness.
Xabi waits for a couple of moments, lets the silent plea hang in there for just long enough to make him feel awkward and stupid and seventeen, then heads towards the sliding door, throwing the words over his shoulder in a soft, almost apologetic tone:
“I promise to wake you up if the dreams come back.”
He’s already out of the small balcony, but he hears it nonetheless:
“They’re not dreams. They’re memories.”
~
Xabi’s face is still buried in his pillow when he feels a hand on his shoulder followed by a palm clamping his mouth shut when he tries to scream.
Chapter 6/8 ½
Rating: R
Summary: In which Xabi is an Arsenal fan.
Italics = Spanish
Walking, no talking turns out to be a policy Xabi can get behind one hundred percent because, theoretically, what he’s probably supposed to say is: I’m sorry… about earlier… And then Steven’s most likely supposed to mumble something about forgetting all about it and bitch at him for not walking fast enough. Xabi can recognize social protocols in the abstract, it’s just when it comes to putting them into practice that… well… he’s not sorry, for one thing. At all.
The change of scenery creeps up on him unnoticed, the trees are getting shorter and the air less humid. Civilization smacks them in the face in the form of a mostly empty road leading to a cluster of universally recognizable small town watering holes. A bodega neon flickers in the distant twilight promising adult entertainment and refreshments.
Steven looks at Xabi for the first time in three hours, a tired sort of realization on his stubbly face.
“We’re not exactly… conspicuous. You should probably lose the beard,” Steven concludes, a little mournfully.
“No!” It doesn’t sound negotiable. “Is there a Plan B?”
“We need transportation.”
“What, you want to try to hitchhike?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of stealing a ride.”
“Oh.”
Steven decides the neon-lit dive bar is the perfect establishment to target in order to put his quite literal plan in motion. They stalk a potential ride from behind a reeking alleyway and it’s not long before one presents itself in the form of a Ford pickup truck lazily parked the darkest corner of the alley across the bar. Steven motions for Xabi to move shortly after the Ford’s corpulent owner ambles into the bar for what is obviously not his first drink of the day. Xabi does his best to stand by the truck as casually as possible, hands shoved deep in his pockets, surveying the few patrons around the premise while Steven slides into the driver’s seat through the unlocked door.
A few minutes later, Xabi goes a bit restless as his mental clock ticks in silence despite Steven focusing his best efforts on fumbling with broken wires under the dashboard.
“This looks a lot easier in the movies,” Xabi says, jumping into the car once the engine finally spurs to life.
There’s a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary staring at him with a deeply unimpressed expression from the dashboard and various rosaries and semi-pagan trinkets hanging from the mirror.
“As do most things.”
“So… what now?”
“We need to steal a phone next,” Steven says, frowning at the blinking light behind the steering wheel. “Also… money for petrol. Mr. Responsible Driver doesn’t believe in keeping a full tank.”
“I feel like an evil Robin Hood, stealing from the poor…,” Xabi muses, but his scruples sound terribly half-hearted.
“You can personally park it back in its spot so the owner can drink and drive some more as soon as I get you to a safe house.”
Xabi looks out the window, but all there is out there is darkness and trees and he’s had enough of both for a lifetime over the last few days. There are quite a few other subjects he’d like to bring up at the moment, but all he can think of asking is:
“Do they teach you to steal cars in spy school?”
“I was fully qualified by the time I got anywhere near MI6. I graduated from the school of life on the streets of Liverpool,” Steven answers, melancholia completely absent from his voice. He only takes his eyes off the road for a second, but the surprise on Xabi’s face requires some sort of elaboration.
“I grew up in a part of town where your entry position in the professional world wasn’t at the local fish and chips shop if you had the sort of mates I had… By the time I was seventeen, I was quite high up the pecking order as an enforcer for one of the local bosses. I was too scrawny to beat money out of people, but I had other skills…”
Xabi smiles quietly, trying to picture it.
“Is there a feelgood story about how the army became your family and helped you see the light?”
“Not quite. I was just a beaut of a thug who got caught at the right time, before I could break someone’s limbs beyond repair. Judge McAllister was a retired Royal Marine and he made me an offer I wasn’t stupid enough to refuse.”
A gust of warmth lingers around the corners of Steven’s eyes, soon to be erased by high beams from incoming traffic.
“The most criminal thing I did by that age was using grandma’s eggs to throw at cars passing under the highway bridge,” Xabi says and he starts to mess with the car radio in search for an appropriate soundtrack. “I mean… I smoked weed in a summer camp once, but it was in the Netherlands so it probably doesn’t count.”
“On the other hand, you just stole a car in a foreign country and you’re about to steal a wallet,” Steven consoles him, his thumb drumming a silent baseline into the steering wheel accompanying the low female voice Xabi had selected from the three radio stations available. “You’re catching up.”
They pull over in front of what looks like a particularly seedy dive bar frequented by truck drivers and Xabi is once more charged with keeping watch over Steven’s felonies through a thick curtain of smoke mixed with way too loud bastardized currulao songs vomited by the jukebox in the corner. It’s Happy Hour judging by the crowd and not too many clients are more preoccupied with the two men entering the mix than they are with the free-flowing booze.
One of the bleary-eyed men engaged in a heated game of pool will eventually miss the leather jacket Steven swipes off a chair on his way to the bar, but by then it will be far too late.
As instructed, Xabi exits the locale a couple of minutes after he sees Steven heading out with his hands in his pockets and walks around the building to where they’d spotted a pay phone hanging off the wall of a nearby abandoned disco. Judging by the way Steven is repeatedly punching in numbers into the metal frame with no visible result, the small roadside town has fully embraced the smartphone era and never looked back.
“Out of coins?” Xabi asks, handing Steven a shiny Blackberry when he’s close enough to make sure nobody can see their illicit exchange in the faint light of the street lamp. “I’m catching up,” he adds, not without a certain amount of childish pride. “You’re turning me into a criminal mastermind.”
Steven looks from Xabi’s face to the cell phone and back again.
“I can see how conflicted you are…”
His mind is on everything at once and Xabi’s giddiness is somewhere towards the bottom of his list. And yet, for a couple of long seconds on their way back to the car, Steven can’t stop wanting to look at him and figure out from beyond the shadows that surround them why the last text in the Sent folder is not a distress call to some London number but a semi-illiterate tirade against an ex-wife named Claribel (as far as Steven can decipher from the drunken textspeak left behind by the former owner of the Blackberry).
“Hey, Meatwall, it’s me,” Steven says cautiously once they’re back inside the pickup truck. “I’m in the neighborhood with a friend, mind if we stop by?”
Xabi can’t really decipher much of the ensuing brief conversation, but once they’re back on the road Steven saves him the trouble of yet another unanswered question. He’s texting and driving with the dexterity that would make any valley girl proud.
“Are you checking your email?” Xabi asks, mostly to piss him off. Pissing Steven off is entertaining, he has to admit it, but there’s more to it than that for a change. “Can I check mine when you’re done?”
The driver’s window is cracked open three seconds later and out the Blackberry goes, disintegrating on the tarmac behind them.
“I left a breadcrumb for Lampard, it’s not a good idea to hang on to that number on an unsecured line,” Steven answers tersely.
“Is he your boss?”
The sound Steven makes amuses Xabi to no end.
“Fat Frank and I… collaborate occasionally, but we work on different teams... I report to him on this particular mission,” he eventually admits, resigned.
“Fat Frank...?”
Steven is so very tempted to put yet another chink in Xabi’s hollywoodized mental image of his job, but in the end truth prevails.
“He’s a good lad,” he chuckles. “Dependable. But he liked his mince pies a bit too much back in his days of flying with the boys in blue and the name just… stuck.”
“I wonder what he calls you…”
Xabi doesn’t feel too secure in the knowledge that apparently Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service is one big high school.
“Open the glove box. Can you see anything you could write with?”
What Xabi finds is mostly trash, but eventually he fishes a chewed-up pen and a crumpled phone bill from a pile of empty M&M packets and crushed cans of energizer drinks.
“Write down this number and don’t lose it in case I…”
“In case of what?”
“Just write it down: 05 664 0968. Pepe Reina. Call from a public phone if you must, don’t use cells. You’re now a thieving pro, I’m sure you’ll find coins no problem.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Paid to be a friend of yours actually. He’s the General Consul of the Kingdom of Spain in Cartagena. Big, loud, bald guy… has more children than he can keep track of and they’re all at his vacation house up the coast. You can trust him with your life; we’ve known each other… through work. That was before a bullet in a kneecap sent him into civilian machinations in your Majesty’s embassies.”
“Is he a… Spanish spy then?”
Xabi arches an eyebrow, finding the very idea extremely odd. Spies still seem like celluloid creations to him, even though he’s had his hands all over the one sitting next to him and knows too well that he’s undeniably and deliciously real.
“They’re not called spies in the diplomatic corps. They’re… cultural envoys of your nation.”
Xabi throws his back against the headrest, closes his eyes and laughs at the absurd turn of his existence.
~
They can’t see the ocean through the thick darkness, but Xabi can hear it lapping at cliffs near the gated beach villa they arrive at shortly after sunset the next day. There are armed guards waving them through the check-point stationed in front of the wrought-iron gates and security cameras craning their wiry necks at them as soon as they step onto the porch, but nothing feels quite as unsettling to Xabi as the loud shriek that pierces his ears moments after a moon-faced maid opens the front door.
“Uncle Eshteben!”
There’s a torrent whirling through the hallway and it doesn’t stop until it clutches at Steven’s legs and shrieks some more when he picks the little girl up and lifts her high above his head.
“Is this my Gracie?!? It can’t be!” Steven’s eyes go wide and he beams at the blonde head floating above his face. “Who is this giant girl, huh? And what have you done to my stumpy?”
Xabi looks on in alarm as another blonde head peers from behind the legs of their host, but at least this one is quiet.
“Get over here, you Scouse hijo de puta!”
Pepe Reina is immense, bald, loud and he truly does have a lot of children, two of which are permanently attached to various parts of Steven from the moment they step into the plush vacation home. He’s holding a sleeping baby when he’s introduced to Xabi, beaming his million watt smile at them and promising a paella feast for dinner that even snobbish Basques would not dare to turn down.
His wife, a bright-eyed, statuesque brunette introduces herself as Yolanda. She sets yet another blonde toddler into a high chair before she gives Steven a half-hug made almost impossible by the rigid grip her oldest daughter has on the man’s neck.
“Another one?” Steven asks Yolanda indignantly. “Christ, I can’t understand how you even let this ugly bastard anywhere near you.”
Xabi’s a bit relieved to realize he’s apparently not expected to show much interest in or excitement about children since at least fifty percent of them are completely fascinated by Steven anyway.
“Scousers,” Yolanda quips, “nobody else understands them so they have to make sure they stick together.”
“That one was born in Liverpool during my NATO deployment, that one too…,” Pepe points to his daughters, who are simultaneously cooing their excitement to Steven and trying to show him something in a picture book as he sits in between them on the couch. “This one,” he nods towards the dozing baby in his arms, “is 100% madrileño. That one… I don’t remember.”
“Italia!” Yolanda yells out from the dining room where she’s setting the table.
Throughout dinner, Xabi answers polite questions in a mixture of Spanish and English for Steven’s benefit, talks about his work and his life in the Basque Country - it hasn’t been home in a way in a very long time, but of course it always will be and after the second bottle of wine Pepe is in a distinctly patriotic mood, doubled by a welcome gossipy streak responsible for revealing at least one embarrassing story about Major Gerrard’s misadventures in karaoke bars.
The subject of Xabi’s encounter with Steven or their eventual destination is carefully avoided by both sides, so it’s overall a warm, friendly affair with good food and excellent wine, two things Xabi’s missed dearly. He finds it somewhat disappointing that he doesn’t have to come up with any elaborate cover story about his background or his and Steven’s plans for the immediate future, but Xabi’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that the missions of secret agents are often quite mundane and involve hours spent either walking in silence or dozing off on long car rides. Well, there are occasional gunshot wounds and pushing innocent engineers into waterfalls…
“I’m not even going to ask how you got caught up in this with Gerrard, don’t want to know.”
Pepe hands Xabi another plate to dry.
That switch again, Xabi thinks, almost startled by how fast the tipsy, gentle giant who talks a mile an hour at the dinner table morphs into this steely, completely lucid man with whom he’s on cleaning duty in the kitchen while Yolanda puts the toddler population to bed. Steven’s been deployed to read the book about an adventurous, globetrotting bunny to the girls for the third time since dessert and Pepe and Xabi have a clear view from the kitchen to the faces he makes as he turns the pages, a girl curled into a ball under each arm between his torso and the couch.
“I’m probably not allowed to tell you or he’ll kill me,” Xabi smiles. “Or I’d have to kill you, I’m not sure which applies. I’m not really used to this… parallel universe you people live in. I don’t know how you manage such a normal life.”
“By practically retiring from active duty. What I do now is also… important, but in a different way. And I get to come home to my family every night, so it works out well. Not all of us are cut out for it though…”
Pepe follows Xabi’s eyes towards the living room where Gracie (whom Steven refuses to call Grecia because, as he’d told Pepe many times, naming your child after the geographical location where they were conceived is a dick move) squirms and dissolves into a fit of giggles when Steven tickles her side.
“He’s really good at what he does,” he continues, rinsing the last of the wine glasses. “Too good.”
It’s quite obvious Pepe doesn’t mean bedtime stories, although it’s hard to imagine that a man who’s so at ease with miniature people who usually make Xabi feel completely clueless is not cut out for a normal life.
“Don’t know how much you know about him,” Pepe says, politely trying to avoid the question.
“He doesn’t talk much.”
“Need to get quite a few drinks in him first.”
“Was he always like this?” It’s Xabi’s turn to fail at casual disinterest.
“As Scouse as it gets for as long as I’ve known him,” Pepe says with a wry grin, “but Afghanistan…” His smile fades and he waits for Xabi to finish drying off a long-stemmed glass. “Snipers work with partners; his was his best mate from the academy. An even crankier, loud hijo de puta from Liverpool named Carragher. They were captured together… held for weeks…”
There’s no need for Pepe to go into any details because Xabi knows held is a convenient euphemism for what he’s seen on Steven’s back.
“Only one of them came back and he was half-dead when they found him. I don’t think Steven’s ever talked to anybody about and well… I don’t like to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but word is he joined MI6 to finish the other half of the job and they’re more than happy to use him for these kinds of missions.”
“He seems quite… composed to me,” Xabi says, trying not to sound too hopeful.
“Hombre, I can only hope the rumors aren’t true, I love that fucker. But I know after what he’s been through, he would have never been on active duty again in NATO intelligence. The MI6 directorate is a different kind of animal,” Pepe frowns in the manner of a man who’d prefer to not go into details.
~
“You’re going to have to sleep eventually,” Xabi’s voice punctures the silence hanging over the balcony of Pepe’s guest bedroom. “There are armed guards downstairs…”
“I’m good for now,” Steven insists, bent over the stone railing, supporting himself on his elbows and scanning the darkness around the villa. His voice is rusty and dry and he’s turned away from Xabi so that less than half of his clean-shaven face is visible.
Xabi joins him, his bare toes curling on the cold slab of granite, although without his glasses the sea might as well not exist somewhere near the horizon he sees blurred in the distance.
“Are we still in danger?” I don’t mean in the philosophical way… Do you think Pérez’s men would find us here?”
“We gave them no reason to, but… I don’t know.”
Xabi can see the ever present tension in Steven’s shoulders straining in a coil at the back of his neck.
“I’d hate to think I’m putting Pepe’s family in danger, all because of a stupid…”
“Pepe wouldn’t have us here if he didn’t think it was a reasonable risk to take for a few hours, Xabi. We’ll be on our way to Cartagena in the morning; once I get you on Spanish soil at the Consulate, you’ll be somebody else’s problem,” Steven says, thinking vaguely that Xabi’s face looks weird right now and he doesn’t seem to be interested in taking the banter bait.
“I’m driving tomorrow then. Try to go to sleep, you’ll need all the energy you can get to get away from those little girls, they’re like a terrifying human tornado.”
“It’s the Reina DNA,” Steven smiles with wry fondness.
Xabi waits for a couple of moments, lets the silent plea hang in there for just long enough to make him feel awkward and stupid and seventeen, then heads towards the sliding door, throwing the words over his shoulder in a soft, almost apologetic tone:
“I promise to wake you up if the dreams come back.”
He’s already out of the small balcony, but he hears it nonetheless:
“They’re not dreams. They’re memories.”
~
Xabi’s face is still buried in his pillow when he feels a hand on his shoulder followed by a palm clamping his mouth shut when he tries to scream.