[oneshot] and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing
Title: and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing
Pairing: miroslav klose/mesut ozil
Rating: nc17
Genre: romance, angst, au
Warnings: swearing, sex
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: if it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love. 8,493 words. written for an anon at footballkink who wanted au ozil/klose.
“And don’t come back until you can tell me you’ve broken up with your tramp of a fiancée!”
The door slams behind him and Mesut shoves his hands in his pockets, head bowed and ears still ringing from his mother’s latest tirade about Anna-Maria. He pulls his phone out and clicks three, holds until the screen lights up.
Hey kids, you’ve reached Thomas Muller’s sexy phone. Please leave your name, number, and a short message and I’ll get back to you when I get back to you (ASAP if you’re a hot chick, though)! Oh, yeah, and if this is Mesut, Holger’s throwing this huge-ass party tonight and you should come, I’ll text you later with all the details-
Mesut ends the call and buries the Blackberry in his pocket again, shoulders hunching over in frustration. Usually Thomas’s rather exuberant voicemail greeting would amuse him, but today is not one of those days. Anna-Maria was on some long, secluded trip abroad, his family would be of no help because they hated her, and his best friend was partying hard this weekend and couldn’t care less about his engagement woes.
She only wants you for your money! But that doesn’t make sense, Mesut thinks, shrugging off the call girls and shady salesmen on the streets of this seedier side of town, because the Lewes are some of the wealthiest people around. If she wanted a substantial increase in assets, she would have to marry someone like the heir to Mercedes-Benz. But he doesn’t want to think about this anymore-tonight is for going out and getting as wasted as he can and possibly landing a shit-faced picture of himself on the morning tabloids.
The first bar he sees is unfamiliar; the sign above the door proclaims a loud BABYLON in glaring, neon letters, and Mesut has just enough pent-up anger and reckless disregard streaming through his blood to stride boldly inside and slam himself into a high barstool.
“Classy establishment,” he mutters, looking around at the dim, flickering lights and peeling posters on the walls.
“Thank you,” comes a deep voice from behind the counter. “I quite like it myself.”
Mesut turns and comes face to face with the bartender, who is casually wiping at a filthy glass with a rag that’s several times filthier. “No problem,” he blurts out, suddenly uncertain of what to do. “Can I have two whiskeys and tonic?”
“Sure,” he replies easily, mixing the drinks and sliding them across the smooth tile to land next to Mesut’s clasped hands. “Looking to get absolutely smashed, are you?”
Mesut lifts one shoulder and downs half a glass in one gulp. “Maybe.”
“I’m Miroslav,” the bartender says a beat later, grinning, “but only my grandmother calls me that. You can call me Miro, bartender, ‘hey, you!’, ‘oh, God, yes’, or any other variation thereof.”
He cracks a smile. “Thanks, Miro.”
It’s always the eyes that get him, Mesut thinks later. Anna-Maria’s are bright and liquid when she looks at him and says she loves him, the only thing natural underneath the layers of hair-dye and caked-on make-up; Thomas’s are clear and honest to a fault, so that Mesut can read them like an open book whenever they speak, even when they’re hazed over from intoxication or the sweet smoke of a bong-and this person he has never even met before tonight, this Miro whose last name he doesn’t even know, his eyes are deep and focused beneath the stern line of his brow, the kind of eyes that make Mesut want to tell him everything.
So he does. He tells Miro about Anna-Maria’s alleged gold-digging ways, about his family’s intense disapproval, about Thomas’s complete dislike for his best friend’s fiancée. He tells him about how he feels torn apart, Anna-Maria breathing down his neck on one side and his mother tugging him away from her, yelling about filial piety and the Özil fortune and empire and how he’s so tired of it all, that he wished everyone would just get along so he could sleep easy at night. His voice fades out to a low rasp as the night wears on, Miro nodding and interjecting with a word or two at all the right places.
“And they always tell me that I’d be better off gay and sexually active with multiple men than with her,” he finishes morosely, thumbing at the rim of his third peach schnapps.
“Your parents have a very warped sense of what gay people are like,” the bartender comments.
“Are you saying I wouldn’t make a good homosexual man?” Mesut slurs.
Miro laughs and refills his glass. “I don’t know, would you?”
“Never tried it,” he replies, a warm buzz spreading through his limbs, weighing them down against the tabletop, “though I’m sure Thomas has.”
The bartender nods and lets it go, several moments of comfortable silence passing between them. When Mesut checks his phone again it’s four in the morning and he’s the only customer left in the small pub.
“You know, kid, if it doesn’t break your heart,” Miro says later, expression clear and serious, “it isn’t love.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Mesut sighs wearily, half-lidded eyes flicking towards the stream of alcohol from the pitcher in Miro’s hand.
He shrugs, tossing his dirty rag from hand to hand. “Then maybe you aren’t in love.”
“Why are you giving me relationship advice I never asked for?” Mesut snaps, head dropping to rest his chin on the counter.
“It’s part of the job description,” Miro returns, laughing. “As are my work hours, which tell me that you should’ve been out of the bar an hour ago.”
Mesut lets Miro shoo him out the door, tottering a bit before the bartender dips fluidly to support him, arm firm and warm around his back. “Do you remember where you live, or are you too drunk even for that?” Mesut waves him off and hails a taxi, vision swimming for a few seconds when he steps off the curb to get in.
“Özil residence,” he manages, poking his head out of the window to wave goodbye, beer goggles highlighting everything in Technicolor rainbow.
“Come back tomorrow,” Miro yells after him, eyes twinkling under the faint streetlights. “I’ll introduce you to some of my gay friends, give you a little LGBT 101 to pass on to your parents.”
He doesn’t know why-maybe because, when he wakes up in the morning with the worst hangover of his life, Anna-Maria is still somewhere in the Caribbean, enjoying the summer breeze of Jamaica or Puerto Rico while he is freezing his toes off in Berlin. Maybe because the first thing he sees when he opens his internet browser is a headline (and matching picture) linking to completely falsified accounts about the Özil heir’s drunken shenanigans of the previous night.
Or maybe Miro’s proposition intrigues him a little too much than is healthy, because Saturday afternoon finds him back in a tiny club that is now filled to bursting with a mishmash of people in various states of drunken debauchery, deafening dance music pouring through his ears. He shrugs a black, wool trench coat off his shoulders and plops himself down at the bar, two people of questionable gender making out in the chairs next to him. Miro is at the other end of the counter, bowtie hanging loose around his neck; he’s chatting idly with another customer, but before Mesut can do anything to catch his attention-
“Hello, sexy!” A strong hand grips his arm and twirls him to the left. In front of him stands a girl that can’t be older than sixteen, brilliant blonde hair piled up in a stylishly messy heap atop her head. Her tube top dips low, but not low enough to show much. She is beaming and eyeing his black vest and the three undone buttons of his white shirt with a distinct air of approval, hands cocked on her hips.
He starts to stutter out that he is quite happily engaged, but she just smiles wider and leans in, poking at his cheek. “I really, really like the ones who are already attached.”
“Down, boy,” someone roars amusedly over the music, and Mesut jerks his head in bewilderment to see Miro grinning from across the counter.
Then the comment registers and his jaw drops to about the region of his navel. “This is a guy?” he chokes out, gesticulating wildly at what he had assumed, for all intents and purposes, was completely female.
Miro reaches over and ruffles the girl-boy? man?-‘s hair and laughs. “Mesut, meet my good friend, Marko Marin. He enjoys cross dressing and scaring the shit out of people like you.”
“What do you mean, people like me?” Mesut asks, eyes narrowed and head still reeling.
Miro opens his mouth to answer but is cut off by a blur of hot pink and camo and a slower-moving person dressed in a dark shirt and slacks behind him.
“MIRO, MARKO,” booms the blur, ricocheting off the side of the bar and settling to a stop inches from Mesut’s seat. “What do you think of my outfit?”
“It’s very-”
“Unique is what I told him,” interrupts the better-dressed one.
“And who is this?” Mesut eases back as shocking, bleach-blond hair tries to blind him and Miro is grinning at him again, shaking his head.
“Try not to scare him away,” he says, pointing at the curious trio with a stern finger. “His name is Mesut.”
“Oh, God,” the one in the dark shirt gasps. “Are you that Mesut? Mesut Özil? I’m Lukas Podolski!”
Mesut almost chokes on his own spit. “What the fuck?”
“Right?” Lukas beams delightedly. “I haven’t seen you since your family carted you off to that swanky private school-”
“Enough about him,” Mr. Terrible Fashion Sense cuts in. “My name is Bastian Schweinsteiger, but you can call me Basti.”
“You should know,” Marko pipes up, “they’re in an extremely open relationship, so be sure to expect multiple propositions for sexual favors over the course of the evening. Or the next hour.”
“Ten minutes,” Miro corrects. “So, do you think you can handle them until morning, kid?” Lukas sends him a meaningful look that says I am definitely not as insane as these crazy fuckers.
“I really have no idea,” Mesut mutters, massaging his temples.
“Honest,” Bastian says. “I like him.”
It turns out to be the most interesting (and most eye-opening, to say the least) night he’s had since Anna-Maria left for vacation. A short bartender with intense eyes takes over for Miro and they leave the bar, Marko combing the streets for straight men to heckle (with varying degrees of success).
(“Please note,” Lukas says desperately as they stand half a block away from Marko, behind a large sign advertising condoms, “this is not an accurate representation of the gay population at all, I don’t know why Miro brought you to us of all people, though I guess he doesn’t really have any other interesting friends-”
Miro pulls him away before Lukas can finish and laughs until it looks like his face is about to break.)
By three in the morning, Mesut has been soaked in beer twice, approached and hit on by seven different people (including two transvestites, Bastian tells him later), and groped too many times to count. When they get back to Babylon, the other bartender is locking up-Miro snatches the keys out of his hand and waves him off good-naturedly.
Mesut treads to the counter and sinks into a chair, rubbing at where a migraine started forming hours ago from the combination of disgustingly cheap alcohol and a constant stream of loud pop music. Bastian and Marko are still chattering away about socially unacceptable topics as they walk in, voices rising higher and higher until-
“Will you two shut up and just accept that perhaps neither of you can give the excellent blowjobs that you so desire?” Lukas snaps.
“Fuck you, I give fucking fantastic head,” Bastian shouts indignantly.
“Oh yeah?” he snorts. “Prove it.”
“On who?”
“Well, not me, since I’m the one arguing with you,” Lukas reasons. “And Marko whipping it out in the open would kind of undermine his plan to flirt with every moving thing on the planet. Mesut is straight, so that leaves-”
“Great,” Miro interrupts before he can finish, looking around at the empty club. “I guess Basti can suck himself off?”
“Negative,” Bastian says, giving him a lopsided, cheery half-smile and bounding behind the counter to pull him out.
“Do we really have to do this now?” Miro persists, casting Mesut a dubious glance.
Marko sighs and puts a hand on Mesut’s arm. “Do you mind?”
“Not particularly,” he replies, slumping over in a tired heap against the cool marble and closing his eyes. “And even if I said I did, Bastian would do it anyway.”
“Quick learner, this one,” Bastian comments. Mesut hears the quiet click of a belt buckle and then the slow sound of unzipping; Marko’s giggling quietly in the background and Lukas coughs twice, loud and jarring in the near silence.
It’s like a force of nature is pulling at his eyelids and he cracks them open just a tad to see Bastian on his knees in the low light, Miro’s cock already in his mouth. Mesut’s gaze slides up to Miro’s face, and he can’t help but watch as a flicker of emotion passes over it, his mouth twisting into a grimace of need and a hand coming up to muffle a soft, prolonged hum of approval. His whole body lurches forward when he comes, and Marko whistles long and high. Mesut tucks his head back into the crook of his arm before any of them can notice.
There’s a smack of lips and more rustling of clothing before Mesut can bring himself to look up again, cheeks burning.
“I told you,” Bastian says with a pointed look at Lukas, crossing his arms in satisfaction. The utterly content expression stays on his face until Miro kicks them out of the bar at four, Lukas and Bastian still bickering with each other and Mesut barely able to stand up, he’s so tired.
“Next time, we can give you a make-over!” Marko exclaims, clapping his hands as they walk to the end of the street.
“Hell no. I mean, thank you, but no,” Mesut says smoothly. “Stop that,” he adds when Marko starts fucking pouting at him. He says his goodbyes and hails a taxi, the pale-yellow vehicle peeling away from the curb in a way that makes his vision swim.
Later that night, Mesut has a lucid dream for the first time in years. He is walking outside, stark naked, damp grass underneath his feet and tall, overgrown hedges paving a road ahead. Maze, he thinks, speeding up to a quick jog. By the time he makes it to the center of the labyrinth, he’s totally out of breath, a thin film of sweat covering his skin.
A noise from across the clearing has him jerking his head up to see a fully-clothed Anna-Maria, complete with enigmatic smile and perfectly plucked eyebrows. He takes a step back as she drifts forward and reaches a hand out to brush his chest-and then the whole world is twisting sideways and backwards and upside down; Mesut sees stars for a brief moment, but then he blinks and they are standing in the middle of an unrecognizable bedroom.
Except when the afterimages fade, it’s not Anna-Maria pressed against him anymore but Miro who is standing by the bed, Miro who mouths found you against the shell of his ear, who pushes him down onto the blood-red sheets and starts palming his dick with slow, easy friction.
If Mesut recalls correctly, this is the first wet dream he’s had in years as well. He wakes up panting hard, like he’s just run a long marathon, boxers soaked with come and sheets bunched up low around his hips. There is an odd sort of yearning pull still fermenting in the pit of his abdomen, half confusion and half desire for more than just a phantom handjob, and it scares the shit out of him because he is not supposed to feel like this, not when Anna-Maria will be back anytime in the next two weeks.
(It doesn’t occur to him until later that he doesn’t even think about the fact that they are engaged, but only that she is returning.)
The next several days consist of dull meetings with his father and attempts to match-make on his mother’s part (no matter how much he complains, though, they give him an excuse to avoid going out). Thomas sends him drunken texts in the evenings that take his mind off the monotony of helping run the family business and the endless parade of nice, rich (boring) girls, but in the back of his mind he can’t stop thinking about the stupid dream and Miro’s crazy friends.
Holger throws another party on Friday night and Thomas cons him into going (or, rather, Mesut lets himself be conned into going because, really, anything is better than staying at home with a stack of unfinished paperwork and thinking about how he might be gay) through a series of increasingly conspicuous ploys to get him out of the mansion.
“Mesut, you came!” Holger bellows over the roar of noise streaming out of his three-story bachelor pad, taking their coats when they come in through the back door.
“That’s what she said,” Thomas snickers.
Mesut grins and shakes his head, reaching for a cup of punch and wading through the crowd of people to find an open seat on the sofa. Thomas wedges himself in next to him, already chatting up a group of girls; one of them laughs high and shrill and it forcibly reminds him of Marko, white teeth glistening underneath Babylon’s purple strobe lights.
He pushes the thought away and takes a large gulp of his drink, coughing at the bitter tang of alcohol. Some of it spills on Mesut’s shirt and he curses quietly; Thomas leans over with a napkin and tries to dab it off, purses his lips when the stain stubbornly refuses to disappear.
“Bathroom?” he shouts, and Mesut nods, standing with him to shove his way into a less populated hallway.
The restroom is blessedly quiet. He shrugs his shirt off and dumps it into the large sink, Thomas grabbing a bar of soap and going to work. “Holger went to get you one of his shirts,” he says, and Mesut grunts in acknowledgement before sinking down onto the linoleum tile and letting the room lapse into comfortable silence.
Thomas hangs his shirt over the towel rack to dry and sits down next to him. “How was your week?”
“Not bad, besides company stuff and my mother’s nagging,” he replies, Thomas groaning with sympathy. “Went out a couple of nights and met some new people-you’d like them.”
“Really?” his best friend asks, grinning. “Where’d you go?”
“Friedrichshain.”
“A lot of gay bars and clubs there, right?”
“Yes,” he says, peering at Thomas, gaze tentative and questioning.
“Holger goes there often,” Thomas says, and then claps a hand over his mouth. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
Mesut smiles weakly and leans back against the bathroom cabinets, woodwork digging into the back of his head. “Okay,” he tries, “say your friend befriended a bunch of gay people and is now questioning his own sexuality-what would you tell him?”
There’s a short pause. Then, “You’re not very subtle, dude,” Thomas says.
“This is coming from you?” Mesut retorts without heat. “But seriously, Thomas. I think I might be-”
“Gay?” He shrugs, hooking an arm over Mesut’s shoulder and gracing him with a greasy smirk. “Who cares? Plus, I know everyone wants a piece of me, even straight-laced guys like you-”
“Disgusting,” Mesut mutters, pushing him away with a laugh.
“Really though,” Thomas sighs. “You love Anna-Maria, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he responds automatically, before staring hard at the tiled floor. “Just-”
“So maybe you’re bisexual.”
He exhales and turns his head, meets Thomas’s steady gaze-takes the easy way out. “Maybe.”
Afterwards, Thomas gives him so much hell about meeting Miro and Co. that Mesut can’t put them out of his mind. I’m free tomorrow night, Thomas tells him, enthusiasm written all over his face as he jerks on Mesut’s arm.
The crudely paved sidewalk is packed with people when they climb out of the taxi. His heart pounds a stuttering staccato in his chest, and he takes the front steps two at a time now that he’s here; all his previous reluctance goes to shit underneath the flashing lights, is lost amid the sweaty crush of bodies.
Miro’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he sees them from across the dance floor, and by the time they reach the bar, he already has two acidic looking drinks set out on the counter.
“Miro,” he greets, mouth dry and trying as hard as he can to not think any ridiculously inappropriate thoughts. “This is my best friend, Thomas Muller.”
They shake hands, the bartender’s lips tilting upward. “Do I know you from somewhere? Have we met before?” Thomas blurts out, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.
“Perhaps? Faces start to blur after so many nights working in a club,” he responds, eyebrows raising for a moment before he slides the glasses of alcohol in front of them. “Anyway, Basti gave me a recipe for some new concoction yesterday-”
“So we’re to be your guinea pigs, are we?”
“Good man,” Miro says, rolling his sleeves up and digging around in his apron before pulling his phone out. “But don’t drink it until they get here, Basti probably wants to see your beautiful faces in person.”
Thomas chatters excitedly as they wait; a sick, nervous feeling swirls in Mesut’s chest and he is hyperaware of every move Miro makes-every quirk of his lips, every shift and pull of his starch-white shirt, every time their hands meet when Miro passes him another beer.
It seems like forever before Bastian finally bursts out from amidst the gyrating crowd, Lukas lurking behind him and Marko flirting with three different guys at once not too far from them. Thomas looks vaguely impressed.
“Oh, thank God,” Bastian says when he sees Mesut. “I thought we’d scared you away!”
He reassures Bastian that this was not the case-and it’s really a half-truth, he thinks, casting sidelong glances at Miro as he introduces Thomas to the other two and strikes up a lively conversation, a half-truth because it wasn’t anything that Bastian or Lukas or Marko did that had him confused and strangely turned on and waking up panting in the middle of the night.
There is a look of terrible sympathy on Bastian’s face when Mesut turns back towards him. He pats Mesut’s hand and says, “Miro is a complicated one, that’s all I’m going to say. Be prepared.”
The cryptic comment just confuses him even more, clouds his judgment, and it’s a bit mortifying to know that he’s so obvious, let alone to someone he has only met once before tonight. Bastian’s alcoholic mixes end up making him want to puke (Thomas and his stomach of steel fair much better, all things considered) and so he flees rinse his mouth out, cheeks burning with a mixture of humiliation and discomfort at Miro’s closeness.
I’ve been spending unnecessarily large amounts of time in the bathroom, recently, he thinks, annoyed, knuckles whitening as he grips the edges of the sink and stares at his own reflection.
He splashes water on his face in a vain attempt to get rid of the flush, ignoring the door as it swings open.
“Mesut.”
He tenses up immediately and whirls around in a rigid circle-Miro darkens the entrance for a second before stepping inside, the quiet click behind him muting out sounds of raucous laughter and singing.
“Are you okay?” Mesut can’t seem to speak-his mouth opens, closes, opens again, but nothing comes out except a sort of choked noise.
“Did I do something to make you feel uncomfortable?”
“Not at all,” he says finally, the tightness in his chest spreading out towards his limbs, and then Mesut’s crossing the small distance between them and pulling him down by the collar, slanting his mouth over Miro’s.
The bartender jerks away quickly, eyes round and mouth half-open in dazed surprise. “Don’t you-don’t you have a fiancée?”
Mesut licks his lips and tugs Miro closer, reaches up his shirt to smooth a shaky hand against Miro’s stomach. “What about her?”
‘”Okay,” Miro says easily, and the next few minutes are a jumble of kissing and touching and migrating from the bathroom to the kitchen behind the counter. Mesut catches a flash of Bastian’s shock of hair in the middle of the dance floor with Thomas’s brown bobbing beside him and then he’s being pushed into the back room.
A tall, lanky man with dirty-blond hair is standing half-dressed in a bartending outfit next to the boiler; when he spots them, he rolls his eyes and shrugs his top on, striding towards the exit.
“Come on, Phil,” he drawls, an amused smile playing at his lips. “Our shift’s starting early tonight.”
“Thanks, Per,” Miro manages, and then he and Mesut are attached at the lips again. The other barkeepers are barely out the door before it is shoved shut and Mesut’s face is pressed against it, Miro nibbling a trail of kisses down his neck and reaching around his waist to unbuckle his belt.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Mm,” Mesut hums in approval. The rest of the night is a rushed jumble of limbs, of mingled breaths and strangled sighs and the crisp sheets of a bed in the back. Miro falls asleep after he comes for the third time and his face looks peaceful, smooth and unlined under the pale lights.
He ends up leaving the club alone, Thomas and the others nowhere to be found when he pulls his clothes back on and scours the diminished crowd for them. The moon is high in the sky on his ride home, cold and unreachable in its lone course across a sea of black and fuck, maybe he should just ditch the family business and become a poet instead, given the amount of time he spends on completely useless thought.
In the comfort of his own bed, Mesut thinks that Bastian was wrong. Miro isn’t complicated at all-just a man like any other man, looking for a way to satisfy himself. Like Mesut, who needs something to hold onto in the midst of all this confusion and anger and chaos in his life. Just a friendly fuck that they can forget about tomorrow, because everything will be fine and no one will mention his serious lack of judgment, no one will ask about how he plans to fix something that he didn’t even know was broken.
If he keeps telling himself that, perhaps he’ll eventually believe it.
Anna-Maria returns three days later in a flurry of souvenirs from the Caribbean and staunch determination to have dinner with his parents.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks her dubiously. “You know how they feel about you.”
She tosses her hair back and grins, the line of her mouth firm and unshakeable, and Mesut has to resist the urge to kiss her. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Anna-Maria sleeps off jetlag at the house through the morning and noon. He accompanies his father on business errands for most of the day, pausing to grab coffee at intermittent intervals. Thomas texts him in at three to give him about two-seconds’ notice before his phone is bombarded with a series of drunken photos from what could only be Bastian’s cell; Mesut doesn’t know whether to laugh or throw his phone out the window.
dude, who else did you give my number out to... he sends back, and his heart does a funny hop-skip in his chest when Thomas replies: um, everyone we met yesterday? marko and lukas and miro and basti. i might’ve accidentally given a couple of girls ur number instead of mine, too ^_^. He squishes any stray thoughts into the back of his mind and concentrates on the stock exchange and his father’s droning-but it doesn’t stop him from checking his phone every half hour.
When he walks through the arched entrance where the terrace meets the back of the house, he already knows something is wrong. Anna-Maria is standing next to the door of the living room, his mother across the coffee table holding up a stack of paper and waving it at her furiously.
“What’s going on?” he asks, striding into the room to stand between them.
“Have you seen these bills?” his mother cries shrilly, throwing them at him. He picks one sheet up and sees charges for jewelry and expensive meals over the past three weeks. He glances at Anna-Maria, who looks like she’s about to burst into tears.
“This money was supposed to go to the wedding,” she goes on, Anna-Maria cringing with every word that comes out of her mouth.
“Mother,” he cuts in, straightening up, “it’s not like we don’t have enough money to cover the charges-”
“No,” she spits, “but it’s the principle of the thing! If your fiancée cannot be responsible with our money before she’s even married you, how do you expect her to keep up with finances afterwards?”
Mustafa walks in, takes one look at the situation, and walks out again.
“How come you never complain when Mutlu brings his girls around?”
“Do I even have to answer that?” his mother slams a hand onto the coffee table and knocks the rest of the papers onto the ground. “He gave his rights as heir to you a long time ago.”
“So he gets to decide what he wants to do with his life and I don’t?” Mesut throws his hands in the air.
“We’re already letting you marry her! Isn’t that enough already without her running around buying everything she wants and nothing she needs?”
Anna-Maria bites back a stifled sob and flings the door open, runs out. Mesut shoots a disgusted glare at his mother and runs after her, following footsteps that echo loudly through the hallways.
He finds her in their room, crying into one of the decorative pillows on the bed. “Sorry about them,” he mutters into her hair, an arm coming around to encircle her. She shakes her head and presses her face into his shoulder, exhales.
“’S not their fault,” she manages before getting up. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughs a watery laugh at smeared make-up, excusing herself to the restroom.
A buzz from his pocket has him pulling his blackberry out, an unfamiliar number gracing the screen. Are you and your friend Thomas coming by again anytime soon? :) the text reads, and Mesut texts back a quizzical if i knew who this was, i could give you an answer even though the only person it could be is Miro.
Anna-Maria climbs back into bed as he scrolls through Miro’s long message about Bastian and Lukas’s weekend plans and asking if he was available. “Who’s that?” she murmurs settling against his side.
He presses a kiss to her temple and tucks the phone back into his pocket. “Just a friend,” he answers, hoping beyond hope that it’s the truth.
It isn’t.
It isn’t the truth because even though Anna-Maria is back from her vacation, he still goes to Babylon with Thomas (and sometimes Holger), and sleeping with Miro is not just a one-time thing. In February, Miro’s number replaces Anna-Maria’s 2 on speed dial-hers drops to a measly 5 because he never really needs to call her (she never picks up when he does, anyway) and she comes and goes as she pleases.
Miro is kind and patient and listens to him when he speaks, when he tells him about his parents’ fights with Anna-Maria and how he feels fucking incompetent because he can never rectify the situation. Mesut feels kind of bad, dumping all his problems on Miro, but the man always says the perfect things, knows how to cheer him up when his life feels like a messed up shithole.
So he spends longer time out with the boys than he does (ever did) with Anna, and (he knows it’s selfish of him) he can’t help but feel that something is wrong because she never objects, never calls him out for it, never asks him to spend more time with her.
In retrospect, having a heated argument on the phone while driving on the Autobahnen probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Later, Mesut will not even remember what the fight was about: its contents were so trivial and the fury so unwarranted. But at the time, Anna’s voice is a prickly sting in his ear as he swerves on the highway, and then the slush that covers the road works its physics on the wheels of his expensive car, sends the vehicle skidding into a pole and hanging in a precarious perch above the traffic below.
Later, he does not remember hitting that 2 on speed-dial before his mother’s 1, does not remember the static as Miro screams at him, does not remember hanging up and feverishly calling Thomas’s 3. He doesn’t remember the non-feeling in his lower body, doesn’t remember the gush of warm wetness pooling at his collarbone. He does not remember spending two hours in a crushed car with emergency paramedics trying to fish him out, does not remember finally being wheeled off in a stretcher.
He does not remember Miro grabbing his bloody hand and whispering I love you into his ear before being loaded onto the waiting ambulance.
She doesn’t visit him in the hospital. Thomas and Miro visit, and sometimes Lukas and Basti-even fucking Marko Marin comes in to see him, bringing chocolates and flowers and sickeningly sappy get-well-soon cards.
The doctors stay optimistic; they say his legs will heal in time and that he’ll be able to relearn how to walk. Being invalid is as frustrating as it is dull, but Miro likes to pop in unaccounced and keep him company, waving off Mesut’s concerns about his bartending job with a quick Philipp and Per can take care of it, and no one really stops by during the day anyway.
He tells Mesut about crazy things like sailing down the Nile on a wooden raft, like spending weeks in a Shaolin temple in China. There is a deep peace in his words when he talks about the colors of the Amazon Rainforest and hiking in the Virgin Islands, such deep peace and tremendous understanding that Mesut cannot accept them as anything but genuine.
“Why did you go to all these places?” Mesut asks him (when really, he wants to ask why he never thought about going to those places himself). “For the adventure?”
Miro shakes his head, gives a mysterious answer. “I went to find myself,” he says, and then launches into another story about the Ivory Coast.
Long weeks pass and the doctors send him home; they caution him not to participate in any strenuous activity for two months and Mesut generally complies. Anna-Maria leaves before he wakes up and comes home after he falls asleep, and he only sees her when she needs his opinion on wedding details or his credit card information. Mesut tells the boys from Babylon not to come over because his parents will be answering the door.
Mustafa plans an important dinner on the night of Mesut’s last visit to the hospital, a sort of congratulatory party for his recovery as well as an opportunity for business deals. Aside from that, his parents leave him alone, for the most part. They seem rather pleased that they’re seeing less and less of Anna-Maria. Thomas texts to say he and Holger have been invited to the party with their parents, as have (or so it seems) the rest of Germany’s wealthiest elite.
so glad you two will be there, then he replies, because given the roster, it’ll probably be the dullest gathering i’ve been to in the last half-year. lol, pretty much Thomas types, except maybe holger’s mom will take her top off if i spike the punch again.
It’s ridiculously cheesy, but Miro’s constant stream of text messages kind of keeps him sane through the duration of his bed rest. He briefly wonders if his parents would really approve of this, this whatever-it-is they have, any more than they approved of his fiancée, and then shakes the errant thought out of his head.
The physical therapists deem him fit in late May, a couple of days before his last check-up with Dr. Wohlfahrt. He ditches paperwork and sneaks out of the house to meet Thomas; they go joyriding and Mesut notes with surprise that despite his crash in February, he has no problem with Thomas’s shitty driving (except perhaps a distinct urge to puke on his sharper turns). The warm almost-summer breeze blows against his face and carries his worries aloft and away.
The day of his party dawns bright and sunny, the electric blue of Berlin sky peeking in through his window. It feels good to be able to move, to put his own clothes on and walk down the stairs for breakfast. This is one of those rare occasions that Mutlu is in town and Mesut feels doubly blessed to have his brother there, grinning at him over a glass of orange juice from the other side of the dining table.
“Speeding, were you?”
Mesut punches him in the shoulder and takes a seat, grabbing Nutella and a piece of toast. “Did Mom and Dad tell you that?”
“No,” Mutlu replies, sipping his juice idly. “They blamed your fiancée.”
He rolls his eyes. “They blame her for everything.”
“You don’t seem concerned.”
Mesut shrugs. “I’m not sure I want to marry her anymore.”
“Oh.” Mutlu seems taken aback for a second but quickly composes himself. “Why not?”
“Is it possible to just-just fall out of love with someone?” he asks, propping his head on his hand. “Not because of something they do-or did-but because of the things they never do?”
His brother opens his mouth to answer but the dining room door clicks open before he can say anything; their mother sweeping in to usher them out shopping and the conversation is lost.
Mesut fidgets in his new Boss suit, the collar rubbing uncomfortably against the skin of his neck. From the party beyond, Thomas texts him pictures of the decked out ballroom and the cute chicks he sees, of Holger and his newest boyfriend and their mothers downing cups of punch together.
He’s under the eaves outside the back door, waiting to make his entrance. Mutlu sneaks him a couple of tiny hors d’oeuvres squashed into a napkin under pretense of going to the bathroom, and he inhales them even though they just make his stomach queasy. He has never been good at these semi-public appearances, not like his father or Mutlu who can make conversation out of nothing, give a fluid, impromptu speech like they’ve had hours of practice.
Applause resounds in his ears when he makes his way down a set of large steps to take a seat. Anna-Maria is beaming for the cameras when he gets to her, and she’s wearing more make-up and perfume than he’s ever seen (or smelled) on her before. They dance twice, a waltz and a foxtrot, and then Thomas laughingly whisks him off for drinks at the refreshment tables.
Half an hour later, Mustafa almost catches them pouring a generous helping of vodka into the punch bowl. “Mesut,” he says sternly, and Thomas, under the table, grabs the bottle as he turns around to face his father.
“Yes?”
Mustafa points to an older couple next to a plate of caviar and Mesut’s eyes widen. “Go talk to the Kloses-they’ve taken the time out of their busy schedules to attend our little gathering.”
Little is exactly how I would describe this, Mesut thinks, meandering through groups of people with a tentative smile on his face. The man has an oddly familiar look about him, severe and deep-set eyes, and the wife’s face looks indescribably sad.
“Mr. and Mrs. Klose,” he murmurs when he gets closer, shaking the man’s hand and kissing the back of his wife’s glove. “So glad you could make it.”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman titters, eyes twinkling in the chandelier’s light. “Our son should be coming later, we’ll introduce you!”
“It would be my pleasure to meet him,” he returns smoothly, but in his head, he’s thinking it’s going to be another young, dull heir like the rest of them.
“Attention, everyone!” Mustafa is standing on a dais at the front of the ballroom, clinking a fork against the wineglass in his hand. “Thank you all for visiting our humble abode-” a couple of chuckles erupt around the room, “-and joining us in congratulating Mesut for his fast recovery.” There is a rustle of polite clapping.
“I would like to take this time to announce that our son will be taking over the company at the start of the next year,” his father continues, with the air of someone cradling a large bomb. “Please welcome the future of the our corporation, Mutlu Özil!”
Mesut is halfway out of his chair before Mustafa’s words sink in. Thomas’s jaw is on the floor, his eyes darting between the stage and Mesut’s frozen figure. Anna-Maria has sucked in a sharp breath a few feet away from him, and it is this noise that stirs him into action, propels his feet forward-and the door is just an object to be tossed aside, an object between him and the muggy summer air.
“Wait, Mesut!” He can hear footsteps pounding behind him, and when his arm is yanked he turns to see his brother’s face.
“There was never a right time to tell you,” Mutlu says, a desperate look in his eyes that implores Mesut to believe him, to trust him like little brothers are supposed to.
“So you thought that announcing it at my party would be a good idea?” Mesut asks incredulously, jerking his hand out of Mutlu’s grasp.
“Father just did it! And, Mesut, you don’t even enjoy working at the company-anyone would say that you hate it-”
“Fuck you, Mutlu.”
The light from a car pulling into their driveway blinds them momentarily and Mesut throws an arm up to block the beam. A figure steps out from within the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and when the afterimages weaken, he is shocked to see Miro standing there, looking impeccable and tall and lovely against the backdrop of their well-trimmed hedges.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was invited to the party,” he says, looking confused.
Mesut turns to his brother, who is openly gawking at them. “Miroslav Klose?”
Klose, and the last name rings in his head, Klose Industries, and he’s striding towards Miro’s car, wrenches the passenger’s side door open and smashes himself into the soft seat.
“Miro, take me somewhere we can speak in private,” he snarls angrily, and the glare in his eyes must be so dangerous that Miro’s reaction is instantaneous. They leave Mutlu behind in a cloud of dust.
Miro starts at the beginning.
Mesut can see it all in his head, like it’s a spool of film being drawn across his mind’s eye. Sylvia is young and beautiful and completely unattainable because of her lacking social status, and Miro is a wealthy playboy with four address-books’ worth of phone numbers and the immediate heir to his parents’ fortune.
Some way or another (Miro doesn’t take the time to elaborate and Mesut is impatient), he falls in love with this girl, and she is pregnant with his child. It is inevitable that his parents do not approve, that they want him to abort and get rid of both mother and offspring. But Miro is stubborn and stupid and in love, and Sylvia gives birth to twins, two giggly boys with their father’s features and their mother’s heart-shaped face.
They are happy for a grand total of five days, and then, like something out of a tragic soap opera, Sylvia dies (complications from childbirth, the doctors tell him).
And because Miro is still stubborn and stupid and in love, he leaves his post as his father’s successor and entrusts Noah and Luan to Sylvia’s sister, and he disappears. Miroslav Klose is nowhere to be found.
(“Ah, I kind of remember,” Mesut interjects here, “it was all over the news when I was twelve.” Miro nods, driving slowly down a dark, winding country road.)
“But where did you go?” he asks when they stop at an intersection with the main street.
“I already told you about that,” he replies, raising his eyebrows, and Mesut realizes now that everything he’d said about Egypt and Brazil was from after Miro had left Germany and his old life.
The grudging empathy during Miro’s previous story gives way to Mesut’s initial, roiling simmer of anger. “Did you not trust me?” he mutters.
“What?”
Mesut exhales into his clenched fists, elbows propped against the dashboard. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before, that you were really some wealthy trust-fund heir? Was it because you didn’t trust me enough? I was one of the rich kids you’d known all your life and you couldn’t-”
“No, I just-”
“Well, that’s sure as hell what it seems like!”
Miro slams on the brakes and stops next to the curb. “I never pretended to have all the answers,” he says quietly.
“I thought it was part of the job description,” he retorts, shoving the car door open and scrambling out.
Mesut hails a taxi and leaves. Miro lets him.
He tells Anna-Maria that he’s breaking off the engagement early the next morning.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks immediately, looking twenty years older than she should in the armchair of his sitting room. “What am I supposed to do? Our family business is going bankrupt, I can’t not marry you.”
A cold feeling like an egg being cracked open over his head spreads down and he tenses, ears straining in disbelief. “So all you ever wanted was my money. Why didn’t you just go for Mutlu, then-”
“No!” she yells, wringing her hands frantically. “I want to marry you because I love you-Mesut, I converted to Islam for you-”
He shakes his head, pinches the bridge of his nose. “If that was your only reason, you shouldn’t have done it. You should convert because you believe in something, not because-”
“I thought it would make you love me more,” she whispers.
He closes his eyes, opens them again. “Goodbye, Anna-Maria.” He tries to turn and leave, but she runs across the tiled floor, stilettos clacking against the marble, and grabs his arm.
“But I love you,” Anna-Maria says shakily, but Mesut is unmoved by the tears in her eyes.
“No, you don’t. You love my name and my status. You love the things I have. You don’t even know me, Anna.”
“What are you saying, of course I know you-”
“Do you? What type of music do I enjoy? What is my favorite attribute of yours?” Hip hop. Your eyes. “You never even listened when I told you.”
She swallows, the beautiful line of her neck dipping, and he wonders when he had stopped wanting to kiss her, when he had realized everything everyone said about her was true.
“Even if we’ve broken it off, you’ve still got three other wealthy heirs wrapped around your pinky finger, don’t you?”
She says nothing, and the silence rings thunderous affirmation.
“If you really loved me, you sure did a shit job of showing it,” he says with an air of finality, grabbing his keys from their bowl on the kitchen counter and slamming the door behind him.
The sound of a heart breaking is not like shattered glass, nor a loud, sickening crack of wood, nor the rumble of muted rage. It is not like a scream of frustration or the screech of nails on a chalkboard, of a car running into a pole on the freeway. The sound of a heart breaking is the quiet click when an old key doesn’t fit into a new lock; it is the scratch of a pen-tip scrawling a signature onto divorce papers and the sound of a wedding ring set down on a table, never to be picked up and worn again.
It’s the rustle of a letter that Bastian hands him when he goes looking for Miro at Babylon around noon. Miro’s message is brief and impersonal, reveals nothing but that he’s gone abroad again. At the bottom of the page, scrawled untidily in the margins, is a short sentence:
Go find yourself.
When Mesut shakes the envelope, a small key to a foreign deposit box falls out.
Mesut makes his grand escape during the first week of June. Thomas helps make sure that no one will be able to track him and drives him to the airport, says a tearful goodbye and promises to find and kill him if he doesn’t write (or text).
There will be time to pen letters on soggy postcards in the Amazon, to climb a snow-capped mountain in Tibet, to almost die of heat stroke in the Sahara. He will have time to go spelunking in Manila, to skydive in Central America, to teach a group of South African children how to speak German. There will be time to pave roads in the Virgin Islands, to plant trees in Inner Mongolia, to send Bastian cases of clothes from Milan and Thomas crates of tequila from Mexico.
He will have time to forgive Mutlu and Anna-Maria and himself, will have time to make things right with his parents and figure out what he really wants to do with his life.
And there will be time to unlock a certain deposit box in Switzerland, to fly to Poland in the middle of winter and drive a rental car across iced-over streets, to walk in the front door of a small, warm cottage and find Miro there with a book and hot chocolate and an ear to hear.
fin
A/N: thank you to pause, freefallskyline, envoler, and boyfolk for holding my hand all through this one T_T cannot believe the prompt inspired me to write this long monster :( summary & title from switchfoot (yet & let that be enough, respectively).
Pairing: miroslav klose/mesut ozil
Rating: nc17
Genre: romance, angst, au
Warnings: swearing, sex
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: if it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love. 8,493 words. written for an anon at footballkink who wanted au ozil/klose.
“And don’t come back until you can tell me you’ve broken up with your tramp of a fiancée!”
The door slams behind him and Mesut shoves his hands in his pockets, head bowed and ears still ringing from his mother’s latest tirade about Anna-Maria. He pulls his phone out and clicks three, holds until the screen lights up.
Hey kids, you’ve reached Thomas Muller’s sexy phone. Please leave your name, number, and a short message and I’ll get back to you when I get back to you (ASAP if you’re a hot chick, though)! Oh, yeah, and if this is Mesut, Holger’s throwing this huge-ass party tonight and you should come, I’ll text you later with all the details-
Mesut ends the call and buries the Blackberry in his pocket again, shoulders hunching over in frustration. Usually Thomas’s rather exuberant voicemail greeting would amuse him, but today is not one of those days. Anna-Maria was on some long, secluded trip abroad, his family would be of no help because they hated her, and his best friend was partying hard this weekend and couldn’t care less about his engagement woes.
She only wants you for your money! But that doesn’t make sense, Mesut thinks, shrugging off the call girls and shady salesmen on the streets of this seedier side of town, because the Lewes are some of the wealthiest people around. If she wanted a substantial increase in assets, she would have to marry someone like the heir to Mercedes-Benz. But he doesn’t want to think about this anymore-tonight is for going out and getting as wasted as he can and possibly landing a shit-faced picture of himself on the morning tabloids.
The first bar he sees is unfamiliar; the sign above the door proclaims a loud BABYLON in glaring, neon letters, and Mesut has just enough pent-up anger and reckless disregard streaming through his blood to stride boldly inside and slam himself into a high barstool.
“Classy establishment,” he mutters, looking around at the dim, flickering lights and peeling posters on the walls.
“Thank you,” comes a deep voice from behind the counter. “I quite like it myself.”
Mesut turns and comes face to face with the bartender, who is casually wiping at a filthy glass with a rag that’s several times filthier. “No problem,” he blurts out, suddenly uncertain of what to do. “Can I have two whiskeys and tonic?”
“Sure,” he replies easily, mixing the drinks and sliding them across the smooth tile to land next to Mesut’s clasped hands. “Looking to get absolutely smashed, are you?”
Mesut lifts one shoulder and downs half a glass in one gulp. “Maybe.”
“I’m Miroslav,” the bartender says a beat later, grinning, “but only my grandmother calls me that. You can call me Miro, bartender, ‘hey, you!’, ‘oh, God, yes’, or any other variation thereof.”
He cracks a smile. “Thanks, Miro.”
It’s always the eyes that get him, Mesut thinks later. Anna-Maria’s are bright and liquid when she looks at him and says she loves him, the only thing natural underneath the layers of hair-dye and caked-on make-up; Thomas’s are clear and honest to a fault, so that Mesut can read them like an open book whenever they speak, even when they’re hazed over from intoxication or the sweet smoke of a bong-and this person he has never even met before tonight, this Miro whose last name he doesn’t even know, his eyes are deep and focused beneath the stern line of his brow, the kind of eyes that make Mesut want to tell him everything.
So he does. He tells Miro about Anna-Maria’s alleged gold-digging ways, about his family’s intense disapproval, about Thomas’s complete dislike for his best friend’s fiancée. He tells him about how he feels torn apart, Anna-Maria breathing down his neck on one side and his mother tugging him away from her, yelling about filial piety and the Özil fortune and empire and how he’s so tired of it all, that he wished everyone would just get along so he could sleep easy at night. His voice fades out to a low rasp as the night wears on, Miro nodding and interjecting with a word or two at all the right places.
“And they always tell me that I’d be better off gay and sexually active with multiple men than with her,” he finishes morosely, thumbing at the rim of his third peach schnapps.
“Your parents have a very warped sense of what gay people are like,” the bartender comments.
“Are you saying I wouldn’t make a good homosexual man?” Mesut slurs.
Miro laughs and refills his glass. “I don’t know, would you?”
“Never tried it,” he replies, a warm buzz spreading through his limbs, weighing them down against the tabletop, “though I’m sure Thomas has.”
The bartender nods and lets it go, several moments of comfortable silence passing between them. When Mesut checks his phone again it’s four in the morning and he’s the only customer left in the small pub.
“You know, kid, if it doesn’t break your heart,” Miro says later, expression clear and serious, “it isn’t love.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Mesut sighs wearily, half-lidded eyes flicking towards the stream of alcohol from the pitcher in Miro’s hand.
He shrugs, tossing his dirty rag from hand to hand. “Then maybe you aren’t in love.”
“Why are you giving me relationship advice I never asked for?” Mesut snaps, head dropping to rest his chin on the counter.
“It’s part of the job description,” Miro returns, laughing. “As are my work hours, which tell me that you should’ve been out of the bar an hour ago.”
Mesut lets Miro shoo him out the door, tottering a bit before the bartender dips fluidly to support him, arm firm and warm around his back. “Do you remember where you live, or are you too drunk even for that?” Mesut waves him off and hails a taxi, vision swimming for a few seconds when he steps off the curb to get in.
“Özil residence,” he manages, poking his head out of the window to wave goodbye, beer goggles highlighting everything in Technicolor rainbow.
“Come back tomorrow,” Miro yells after him, eyes twinkling under the faint streetlights. “I’ll introduce you to some of my gay friends, give you a little LGBT 101 to pass on to your parents.”
He doesn’t know why-maybe because, when he wakes up in the morning with the worst hangover of his life, Anna-Maria is still somewhere in the Caribbean, enjoying the summer breeze of Jamaica or Puerto Rico while he is freezing his toes off in Berlin. Maybe because the first thing he sees when he opens his internet browser is a headline (and matching picture) linking to completely falsified accounts about the Özil heir’s drunken shenanigans of the previous night.
Or maybe Miro’s proposition intrigues him a little too much than is healthy, because Saturday afternoon finds him back in a tiny club that is now filled to bursting with a mishmash of people in various states of drunken debauchery, deafening dance music pouring through his ears. He shrugs a black, wool trench coat off his shoulders and plops himself down at the bar, two people of questionable gender making out in the chairs next to him. Miro is at the other end of the counter, bowtie hanging loose around his neck; he’s chatting idly with another customer, but before Mesut can do anything to catch his attention-
“Hello, sexy!” A strong hand grips his arm and twirls him to the left. In front of him stands a girl that can’t be older than sixteen, brilliant blonde hair piled up in a stylishly messy heap atop her head. Her tube top dips low, but not low enough to show much. She is beaming and eyeing his black vest and the three undone buttons of his white shirt with a distinct air of approval, hands cocked on her hips.
He starts to stutter out that he is quite happily engaged, but she just smiles wider and leans in, poking at his cheek. “I really, really like the ones who are already attached.”
“Down, boy,” someone roars amusedly over the music, and Mesut jerks his head in bewilderment to see Miro grinning from across the counter.
Then the comment registers and his jaw drops to about the region of his navel. “This is a guy?” he chokes out, gesticulating wildly at what he had assumed, for all intents and purposes, was completely female.
Miro reaches over and ruffles the girl-boy? man?-‘s hair and laughs. “Mesut, meet my good friend, Marko Marin. He enjoys cross dressing and scaring the shit out of people like you.”
“What do you mean, people like me?” Mesut asks, eyes narrowed and head still reeling.
Miro opens his mouth to answer but is cut off by a blur of hot pink and camo and a slower-moving person dressed in a dark shirt and slacks behind him.
“MIRO, MARKO,” booms the blur, ricocheting off the side of the bar and settling to a stop inches from Mesut’s seat. “What do you think of my outfit?”
“It’s very-”
“Unique is what I told him,” interrupts the better-dressed one.
“And who is this?” Mesut eases back as shocking, bleach-blond hair tries to blind him and Miro is grinning at him again, shaking his head.
“Try not to scare him away,” he says, pointing at the curious trio with a stern finger. “His name is Mesut.”
“Oh, God,” the one in the dark shirt gasps. “Are you that Mesut? Mesut Özil? I’m Lukas Podolski!”
Mesut almost chokes on his own spit. “What the fuck?”
“Right?” Lukas beams delightedly. “I haven’t seen you since your family carted you off to that swanky private school-”
“Enough about him,” Mr. Terrible Fashion Sense cuts in. “My name is Bastian Schweinsteiger, but you can call me Basti.”
“You should know,” Marko pipes up, “they’re in an extremely open relationship, so be sure to expect multiple propositions for sexual favors over the course of the evening. Or the next hour.”
“Ten minutes,” Miro corrects. “So, do you think you can handle them until morning, kid?” Lukas sends him a meaningful look that says I am definitely not as insane as these crazy fuckers.
“I really have no idea,” Mesut mutters, massaging his temples.
“Honest,” Bastian says. “I like him.”
It turns out to be the most interesting (and most eye-opening, to say the least) night he’s had since Anna-Maria left for vacation. A short bartender with intense eyes takes over for Miro and they leave the bar, Marko combing the streets for straight men to heckle (with varying degrees of success).
(“Please note,” Lukas says desperately as they stand half a block away from Marko, behind a large sign advertising condoms, “this is not an accurate representation of the gay population at all, I don’t know why Miro brought you to us of all people, though I guess he doesn’t really have any other interesting friends-”
Miro pulls him away before Lukas can finish and laughs until it looks like his face is about to break.)
By three in the morning, Mesut has been soaked in beer twice, approached and hit on by seven different people (including two transvestites, Bastian tells him later), and groped too many times to count. When they get back to Babylon, the other bartender is locking up-Miro snatches the keys out of his hand and waves him off good-naturedly.
Mesut treads to the counter and sinks into a chair, rubbing at where a migraine started forming hours ago from the combination of disgustingly cheap alcohol and a constant stream of loud pop music. Bastian and Marko are still chattering away about socially unacceptable topics as they walk in, voices rising higher and higher until-
“Will you two shut up and just accept that perhaps neither of you can give the excellent blowjobs that you so desire?” Lukas snaps.
“Fuck you, I give fucking fantastic head,” Bastian shouts indignantly.
“Oh yeah?” he snorts. “Prove it.”
“On who?”
“Well, not me, since I’m the one arguing with you,” Lukas reasons. “And Marko whipping it out in the open would kind of undermine his plan to flirt with every moving thing on the planet. Mesut is straight, so that leaves-”
“Great,” Miro interrupts before he can finish, looking around at the empty club. “I guess Basti can suck himself off?”
“Negative,” Bastian says, giving him a lopsided, cheery half-smile and bounding behind the counter to pull him out.
“Do we really have to do this now?” Miro persists, casting Mesut a dubious glance.
Marko sighs and puts a hand on Mesut’s arm. “Do you mind?”
“Not particularly,” he replies, slumping over in a tired heap against the cool marble and closing his eyes. “And even if I said I did, Bastian would do it anyway.”
“Quick learner, this one,” Bastian comments. Mesut hears the quiet click of a belt buckle and then the slow sound of unzipping; Marko’s giggling quietly in the background and Lukas coughs twice, loud and jarring in the near silence.
It’s like a force of nature is pulling at his eyelids and he cracks them open just a tad to see Bastian on his knees in the low light, Miro’s cock already in his mouth. Mesut’s gaze slides up to Miro’s face, and he can’t help but watch as a flicker of emotion passes over it, his mouth twisting into a grimace of need and a hand coming up to muffle a soft, prolonged hum of approval. His whole body lurches forward when he comes, and Marko whistles long and high. Mesut tucks his head back into the crook of his arm before any of them can notice.
There’s a smack of lips and more rustling of clothing before Mesut can bring himself to look up again, cheeks burning.
“I told you,” Bastian says with a pointed look at Lukas, crossing his arms in satisfaction. The utterly content expression stays on his face until Miro kicks them out of the bar at four, Lukas and Bastian still bickering with each other and Mesut barely able to stand up, he’s so tired.
“Next time, we can give you a make-over!” Marko exclaims, clapping his hands as they walk to the end of the street.
“Hell no. I mean, thank you, but no,” Mesut says smoothly. “Stop that,” he adds when Marko starts fucking pouting at him. He says his goodbyes and hails a taxi, the pale-yellow vehicle peeling away from the curb in a way that makes his vision swim.
Later that night, Mesut has a lucid dream for the first time in years. He is walking outside, stark naked, damp grass underneath his feet and tall, overgrown hedges paving a road ahead. Maze, he thinks, speeding up to a quick jog. By the time he makes it to the center of the labyrinth, he’s totally out of breath, a thin film of sweat covering his skin.
A noise from across the clearing has him jerking his head up to see a fully-clothed Anna-Maria, complete with enigmatic smile and perfectly plucked eyebrows. He takes a step back as she drifts forward and reaches a hand out to brush his chest-and then the whole world is twisting sideways and backwards and upside down; Mesut sees stars for a brief moment, but then he blinks and they are standing in the middle of an unrecognizable bedroom.
Except when the afterimages fade, it’s not Anna-Maria pressed against him anymore but Miro who is standing by the bed, Miro who mouths found you against the shell of his ear, who pushes him down onto the blood-red sheets and starts palming his dick with slow, easy friction.
If Mesut recalls correctly, this is the first wet dream he’s had in years as well. He wakes up panting hard, like he’s just run a long marathon, boxers soaked with come and sheets bunched up low around his hips. There is an odd sort of yearning pull still fermenting in the pit of his abdomen, half confusion and half desire for more than just a phantom handjob, and it scares the shit out of him because he is not supposed to feel like this, not when Anna-Maria will be back anytime in the next two weeks.
(It doesn’t occur to him until later that he doesn’t even think about the fact that they are engaged, but only that she is returning.)
The next several days consist of dull meetings with his father and attempts to match-make on his mother’s part (no matter how much he complains, though, they give him an excuse to avoid going out). Thomas sends him drunken texts in the evenings that take his mind off the monotony of helping run the family business and the endless parade of nice, rich (boring) girls, but in the back of his mind he can’t stop thinking about the stupid dream and Miro’s crazy friends.
Holger throws another party on Friday night and Thomas cons him into going (or, rather, Mesut lets himself be conned into going because, really, anything is better than staying at home with a stack of unfinished paperwork and thinking about how he might be gay) through a series of increasingly conspicuous ploys to get him out of the mansion.
“Mesut, you came!” Holger bellows over the roar of noise streaming out of his three-story bachelor pad, taking their coats when they come in through the back door.
“That’s what she said,” Thomas snickers.
Mesut grins and shakes his head, reaching for a cup of punch and wading through the crowd of people to find an open seat on the sofa. Thomas wedges himself in next to him, already chatting up a group of girls; one of them laughs high and shrill and it forcibly reminds him of Marko, white teeth glistening underneath Babylon’s purple strobe lights.
He pushes the thought away and takes a large gulp of his drink, coughing at the bitter tang of alcohol. Some of it spills on Mesut’s shirt and he curses quietly; Thomas leans over with a napkin and tries to dab it off, purses his lips when the stain stubbornly refuses to disappear.
“Bathroom?” he shouts, and Mesut nods, standing with him to shove his way into a less populated hallway.
The restroom is blessedly quiet. He shrugs his shirt off and dumps it into the large sink, Thomas grabbing a bar of soap and going to work. “Holger went to get you one of his shirts,” he says, and Mesut grunts in acknowledgement before sinking down onto the linoleum tile and letting the room lapse into comfortable silence.
Thomas hangs his shirt over the towel rack to dry and sits down next to him. “How was your week?”
“Not bad, besides company stuff and my mother’s nagging,” he replies, Thomas groaning with sympathy. “Went out a couple of nights and met some new people-you’d like them.”
“Really?” his best friend asks, grinning. “Where’d you go?”
“Friedrichshain.”
“A lot of gay bars and clubs there, right?”
“Yes,” he says, peering at Thomas, gaze tentative and questioning.
“Holger goes there often,” Thomas says, and then claps a hand over his mouth. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
Mesut smiles weakly and leans back against the bathroom cabinets, woodwork digging into the back of his head. “Okay,” he tries, “say your friend befriended a bunch of gay people and is now questioning his own sexuality-what would you tell him?”
There’s a short pause. Then, “You’re not very subtle, dude,” Thomas says.
“This is coming from you?” Mesut retorts without heat. “But seriously, Thomas. I think I might be-”
“Gay?” He shrugs, hooking an arm over Mesut’s shoulder and gracing him with a greasy smirk. “Who cares? Plus, I know everyone wants a piece of me, even straight-laced guys like you-”
“Disgusting,” Mesut mutters, pushing him away with a laugh.
“Really though,” Thomas sighs. “You love Anna-Maria, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” he responds automatically, before staring hard at the tiled floor. “Just-”
“So maybe you’re bisexual.”
He exhales and turns his head, meets Thomas’s steady gaze-takes the easy way out. “Maybe.”
Afterwards, Thomas gives him so much hell about meeting Miro and Co. that Mesut can’t put them out of his mind. I’m free tomorrow night, Thomas tells him, enthusiasm written all over his face as he jerks on Mesut’s arm.
The crudely paved sidewalk is packed with people when they climb out of the taxi. His heart pounds a stuttering staccato in his chest, and he takes the front steps two at a time now that he’s here; all his previous reluctance goes to shit underneath the flashing lights, is lost amid the sweaty crush of bodies.
Miro’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he sees them from across the dance floor, and by the time they reach the bar, he already has two acidic looking drinks set out on the counter.
“Miro,” he greets, mouth dry and trying as hard as he can to not think any ridiculously inappropriate thoughts. “This is my best friend, Thomas Muller.”
They shake hands, the bartender’s lips tilting upward. “Do I know you from somewhere? Have we met before?” Thomas blurts out, scratching the back of his head awkwardly.
“Perhaps? Faces start to blur after so many nights working in a club,” he responds, eyebrows raising for a moment before he slides the glasses of alcohol in front of them. “Anyway, Basti gave me a recipe for some new concoction yesterday-”
“So we’re to be your guinea pigs, are we?”
“Good man,” Miro says, rolling his sleeves up and digging around in his apron before pulling his phone out. “But don’t drink it until they get here, Basti probably wants to see your beautiful faces in person.”
Thomas chatters excitedly as they wait; a sick, nervous feeling swirls in Mesut’s chest and he is hyperaware of every move Miro makes-every quirk of his lips, every shift and pull of his starch-white shirt, every time their hands meet when Miro passes him another beer.
It seems like forever before Bastian finally bursts out from amidst the gyrating crowd, Lukas lurking behind him and Marko flirting with three different guys at once not too far from them. Thomas looks vaguely impressed.
“Oh, thank God,” Bastian says when he sees Mesut. “I thought we’d scared you away!”
He reassures Bastian that this was not the case-and it’s really a half-truth, he thinks, casting sidelong glances at Miro as he introduces Thomas to the other two and strikes up a lively conversation, a half-truth because it wasn’t anything that Bastian or Lukas or Marko did that had him confused and strangely turned on and waking up panting in the middle of the night.
There is a look of terrible sympathy on Bastian’s face when Mesut turns back towards him. He pats Mesut’s hand and says, “Miro is a complicated one, that’s all I’m going to say. Be prepared.”
The cryptic comment just confuses him even more, clouds his judgment, and it’s a bit mortifying to know that he’s so obvious, let alone to someone he has only met once before tonight. Bastian’s alcoholic mixes end up making him want to puke (Thomas and his stomach of steel fair much better, all things considered) and so he flees rinse his mouth out, cheeks burning with a mixture of humiliation and discomfort at Miro’s closeness.
I’ve been spending unnecessarily large amounts of time in the bathroom, recently, he thinks, annoyed, knuckles whitening as he grips the edges of the sink and stares at his own reflection.
He splashes water on his face in a vain attempt to get rid of the flush, ignoring the door as it swings open.
“Mesut.”
He tenses up immediately and whirls around in a rigid circle-Miro darkens the entrance for a second before stepping inside, the quiet click behind him muting out sounds of raucous laughter and singing.
“Are you okay?” Mesut can’t seem to speak-his mouth opens, closes, opens again, but nothing comes out except a sort of choked noise.
“Did I do something to make you feel uncomfortable?”
“Not at all,” he says finally, the tightness in his chest spreading out towards his limbs, and then Mesut’s crossing the small distance between them and pulling him down by the collar, slanting his mouth over Miro’s.
The bartender jerks away quickly, eyes round and mouth half-open in dazed surprise. “Don’t you-don’t you have a fiancée?”
Mesut licks his lips and tugs Miro closer, reaches up his shirt to smooth a shaky hand against Miro’s stomach. “What about her?”
‘”Okay,” Miro says easily, and the next few minutes are a jumble of kissing and touching and migrating from the bathroom to the kitchen behind the counter. Mesut catches a flash of Bastian’s shock of hair in the middle of the dance floor with Thomas’s brown bobbing beside him and then he’s being pushed into the back room.
A tall, lanky man with dirty-blond hair is standing half-dressed in a bartending outfit next to the boiler; when he spots them, he rolls his eyes and shrugs his top on, striding towards the exit.
“Come on, Phil,” he drawls, an amused smile playing at his lips. “Our shift’s starting early tonight.”
“Thanks, Per,” Miro manages, and then he and Mesut are attached at the lips again. The other barkeepers are barely out the door before it is shoved shut and Mesut’s face is pressed against it, Miro nibbling a trail of kisses down his neck and reaching around his waist to unbuckle his belt.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Mm,” Mesut hums in approval. The rest of the night is a rushed jumble of limbs, of mingled breaths and strangled sighs and the crisp sheets of a bed in the back. Miro falls asleep after he comes for the third time and his face looks peaceful, smooth and unlined under the pale lights.
He ends up leaving the club alone, Thomas and the others nowhere to be found when he pulls his clothes back on and scours the diminished crowd for them. The moon is high in the sky on his ride home, cold and unreachable in its lone course across a sea of black and fuck, maybe he should just ditch the family business and become a poet instead, given the amount of time he spends on completely useless thought.
In the comfort of his own bed, Mesut thinks that Bastian was wrong. Miro isn’t complicated at all-just a man like any other man, looking for a way to satisfy himself. Like Mesut, who needs something to hold onto in the midst of all this confusion and anger and chaos in his life. Just a friendly fuck that they can forget about tomorrow, because everything will be fine and no one will mention his serious lack of judgment, no one will ask about how he plans to fix something that he didn’t even know was broken.
If he keeps telling himself that, perhaps he’ll eventually believe it.
Anna-Maria returns three days later in a flurry of souvenirs from the Caribbean and staunch determination to have dinner with his parents.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks her dubiously. “You know how they feel about you.”
She tosses her hair back and grins, the line of her mouth firm and unshakeable, and Mesut has to resist the urge to kiss her. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Anna-Maria sleeps off jetlag at the house through the morning and noon. He accompanies his father on business errands for most of the day, pausing to grab coffee at intermittent intervals. Thomas texts him in at three to give him about two-seconds’ notice before his phone is bombarded with a series of drunken photos from what could only be Bastian’s cell; Mesut doesn’t know whether to laugh or throw his phone out the window.
dude, who else did you give my number out to... he sends back, and his heart does a funny hop-skip in his chest when Thomas replies: um, everyone we met yesterday? marko and lukas and miro and basti. i might’ve accidentally given a couple of girls ur number instead of mine, too ^_^. He squishes any stray thoughts into the back of his mind and concentrates on the stock exchange and his father’s droning-but it doesn’t stop him from checking his phone every half hour.
When he walks through the arched entrance where the terrace meets the back of the house, he already knows something is wrong. Anna-Maria is standing next to the door of the living room, his mother across the coffee table holding up a stack of paper and waving it at her furiously.
“What’s going on?” he asks, striding into the room to stand between them.
“Have you seen these bills?” his mother cries shrilly, throwing them at him. He picks one sheet up and sees charges for jewelry and expensive meals over the past three weeks. He glances at Anna-Maria, who looks like she’s about to burst into tears.
“This money was supposed to go to the wedding,” she goes on, Anna-Maria cringing with every word that comes out of her mouth.
“Mother,” he cuts in, straightening up, “it’s not like we don’t have enough money to cover the charges-”
“No,” she spits, “but it’s the principle of the thing! If your fiancée cannot be responsible with our money before she’s even married you, how do you expect her to keep up with finances afterwards?”
Mustafa walks in, takes one look at the situation, and walks out again.
“How come you never complain when Mutlu brings his girls around?”
“Do I even have to answer that?” his mother slams a hand onto the coffee table and knocks the rest of the papers onto the ground. “He gave his rights as heir to you a long time ago.”
“So he gets to decide what he wants to do with his life and I don’t?” Mesut throws his hands in the air.
“We’re already letting you marry her! Isn’t that enough already without her running around buying everything she wants and nothing she needs?”
Anna-Maria bites back a stifled sob and flings the door open, runs out. Mesut shoots a disgusted glare at his mother and runs after her, following footsteps that echo loudly through the hallways.
He finds her in their room, crying into one of the decorative pillows on the bed. “Sorry about them,” he mutters into her hair, an arm coming around to encircle her. She shakes her head and presses her face into his shoulder, exhales.
“’S not their fault,” she manages before getting up. She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and laughs a watery laugh at smeared make-up, excusing herself to the restroom.
A buzz from his pocket has him pulling his blackberry out, an unfamiliar number gracing the screen. Are you and your friend Thomas coming by again anytime soon? :) the text reads, and Mesut texts back a quizzical if i knew who this was, i could give you an answer even though the only person it could be is Miro.
Anna-Maria climbs back into bed as he scrolls through Miro’s long message about Bastian and Lukas’s weekend plans and asking if he was available. “Who’s that?” she murmurs settling against his side.
He presses a kiss to her temple and tucks the phone back into his pocket. “Just a friend,” he answers, hoping beyond hope that it’s the truth.
It isn’t.
It isn’t the truth because even though Anna-Maria is back from her vacation, he still goes to Babylon with Thomas (and sometimes Holger), and sleeping with Miro is not just a one-time thing. In February, Miro’s number replaces Anna-Maria’s 2 on speed dial-hers drops to a measly 5 because he never really needs to call her (she never picks up when he does, anyway) and she comes and goes as she pleases.
Miro is kind and patient and listens to him when he speaks, when he tells him about his parents’ fights with Anna-Maria and how he feels fucking incompetent because he can never rectify the situation. Mesut feels kind of bad, dumping all his problems on Miro, but the man always says the perfect things, knows how to cheer him up when his life feels like a messed up shithole.
So he spends longer time out with the boys than he does (ever did) with Anna, and (he knows it’s selfish of him) he can’t help but feel that something is wrong because she never objects, never calls him out for it, never asks him to spend more time with her.
In retrospect, having a heated argument on the phone while driving on the Autobahnen probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Later, Mesut will not even remember what the fight was about: its contents were so trivial and the fury so unwarranted. But at the time, Anna’s voice is a prickly sting in his ear as he swerves on the highway, and then the slush that covers the road works its physics on the wheels of his expensive car, sends the vehicle skidding into a pole and hanging in a precarious perch above the traffic below.
Later, he does not remember hitting that 2 on speed-dial before his mother’s 1, does not remember the static as Miro screams at him, does not remember hanging up and feverishly calling Thomas’s 3. He doesn’t remember the non-feeling in his lower body, doesn’t remember the gush of warm wetness pooling at his collarbone. He does not remember spending two hours in a crushed car with emergency paramedics trying to fish him out, does not remember finally being wheeled off in a stretcher.
He does not remember Miro grabbing his bloody hand and whispering I love you into his ear before being loaded onto the waiting ambulance.
She doesn’t visit him in the hospital. Thomas and Miro visit, and sometimes Lukas and Basti-even fucking Marko Marin comes in to see him, bringing chocolates and flowers and sickeningly sappy get-well-soon cards.
The doctors stay optimistic; they say his legs will heal in time and that he’ll be able to relearn how to walk. Being invalid is as frustrating as it is dull, but Miro likes to pop in unaccounced and keep him company, waving off Mesut’s concerns about his bartending job with a quick Philipp and Per can take care of it, and no one really stops by during the day anyway.
He tells Mesut about crazy things like sailing down the Nile on a wooden raft, like spending weeks in a Shaolin temple in China. There is a deep peace in his words when he talks about the colors of the Amazon Rainforest and hiking in the Virgin Islands, such deep peace and tremendous understanding that Mesut cannot accept them as anything but genuine.
“Why did you go to all these places?” Mesut asks him (when really, he wants to ask why he never thought about going to those places himself). “For the adventure?”
Miro shakes his head, gives a mysterious answer. “I went to find myself,” he says, and then launches into another story about the Ivory Coast.
Long weeks pass and the doctors send him home; they caution him not to participate in any strenuous activity for two months and Mesut generally complies. Anna-Maria leaves before he wakes up and comes home after he falls asleep, and he only sees her when she needs his opinion on wedding details or his credit card information. Mesut tells the boys from Babylon not to come over because his parents will be answering the door.
Mustafa plans an important dinner on the night of Mesut’s last visit to the hospital, a sort of congratulatory party for his recovery as well as an opportunity for business deals. Aside from that, his parents leave him alone, for the most part. They seem rather pleased that they’re seeing less and less of Anna-Maria. Thomas texts to say he and Holger have been invited to the party with their parents, as have (or so it seems) the rest of Germany’s wealthiest elite.
so glad you two will be there, then he replies, because given the roster, it’ll probably be the dullest gathering i’ve been to in the last half-year. lol, pretty much Thomas types, except maybe holger’s mom will take her top off if i spike the punch again.
It’s ridiculously cheesy, but Miro’s constant stream of text messages kind of keeps him sane through the duration of his bed rest. He briefly wonders if his parents would really approve of this, this whatever-it-is they have, any more than they approved of his fiancée, and then shakes the errant thought out of his head.
The physical therapists deem him fit in late May, a couple of days before his last check-up with Dr. Wohlfahrt. He ditches paperwork and sneaks out of the house to meet Thomas; they go joyriding and Mesut notes with surprise that despite his crash in February, he has no problem with Thomas’s shitty driving (except perhaps a distinct urge to puke on his sharper turns). The warm almost-summer breeze blows against his face and carries his worries aloft and away.
The day of his party dawns bright and sunny, the electric blue of Berlin sky peeking in through his window. It feels good to be able to move, to put his own clothes on and walk down the stairs for breakfast. This is one of those rare occasions that Mutlu is in town and Mesut feels doubly blessed to have his brother there, grinning at him over a glass of orange juice from the other side of the dining table.
“Speeding, were you?”
Mesut punches him in the shoulder and takes a seat, grabbing Nutella and a piece of toast. “Did Mom and Dad tell you that?”
“No,” Mutlu replies, sipping his juice idly. “They blamed your fiancée.”
He rolls his eyes. “They blame her for everything.”
“You don’t seem concerned.”
Mesut shrugs. “I’m not sure I want to marry her anymore.”
“Oh.” Mutlu seems taken aback for a second but quickly composes himself. “Why not?”
“Is it possible to just-just fall out of love with someone?” he asks, propping his head on his hand. “Not because of something they do-or did-but because of the things they never do?”
His brother opens his mouth to answer but the dining room door clicks open before he can say anything; their mother sweeping in to usher them out shopping and the conversation is lost.
Mesut fidgets in his new Boss suit, the collar rubbing uncomfortably against the skin of his neck. From the party beyond, Thomas texts him pictures of the decked out ballroom and the cute chicks he sees, of Holger and his newest boyfriend and their mothers downing cups of punch together.
He’s under the eaves outside the back door, waiting to make his entrance. Mutlu sneaks him a couple of tiny hors d’oeuvres squashed into a napkin under pretense of going to the bathroom, and he inhales them even though they just make his stomach queasy. He has never been good at these semi-public appearances, not like his father or Mutlu who can make conversation out of nothing, give a fluid, impromptu speech like they’ve had hours of practice.
Applause resounds in his ears when he makes his way down a set of large steps to take a seat. Anna-Maria is beaming for the cameras when he gets to her, and she’s wearing more make-up and perfume than he’s ever seen (or smelled) on her before. They dance twice, a waltz and a foxtrot, and then Thomas laughingly whisks him off for drinks at the refreshment tables.
Half an hour later, Mustafa almost catches them pouring a generous helping of vodka into the punch bowl. “Mesut,” he says sternly, and Thomas, under the table, grabs the bottle as he turns around to face his father.
“Yes?”
Mustafa points to an older couple next to a plate of caviar and Mesut’s eyes widen. “Go talk to the Kloses-they’ve taken the time out of their busy schedules to attend our little gathering.”
Little is exactly how I would describe this, Mesut thinks, meandering through groups of people with a tentative smile on his face. The man has an oddly familiar look about him, severe and deep-set eyes, and the wife’s face looks indescribably sad.
“Mr. and Mrs. Klose,” he murmurs when he gets closer, shaking the man’s hand and kissing the back of his wife’s glove. “So glad you could make it.”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman titters, eyes twinkling in the chandelier’s light. “Our son should be coming later, we’ll introduce you!”
“It would be my pleasure to meet him,” he returns smoothly, but in his head, he’s thinking it’s going to be another young, dull heir like the rest of them.
“Attention, everyone!” Mustafa is standing on a dais at the front of the ballroom, clinking a fork against the wineglass in his hand. “Thank you all for visiting our humble abode-” a couple of chuckles erupt around the room, “-and joining us in congratulating Mesut for his fast recovery.” There is a rustle of polite clapping.
“I would like to take this time to announce that our son will be taking over the company at the start of the next year,” his father continues, with the air of someone cradling a large bomb. “Please welcome the future of the our corporation, Mutlu Özil!”
Mesut is halfway out of his chair before Mustafa’s words sink in. Thomas’s jaw is on the floor, his eyes darting between the stage and Mesut’s frozen figure. Anna-Maria has sucked in a sharp breath a few feet away from him, and it is this noise that stirs him into action, propels his feet forward-and the door is just an object to be tossed aside, an object between him and the muggy summer air.
“Wait, Mesut!” He can hear footsteps pounding behind him, and when his arm is yanked he turns to see his brother’s face.
“There was never a right time to tell you,” Mutlu says, a desperate look in his eyes that implores Mesut to believe him, to trust him like little brothers are supposed to.
“So you thought that announcing it at my party would be a good idea?” Mesut asks incredulously, jerking his hand out of Mutlu’s grasp.
“Father just did it! And, Mesut, you don’t even enjoy working at the company-anyone would say that you hate it-”
“Fuck you, Mutlu.”
The light from a car pulling into their driveway blinds them momentarily and Mesut throws an arm up to block the beam. A figure steps out from within the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and when the afterimages weaken, he is shocked to see Miro standing there, looking impeccable and tall and lovely against the backdrop of their well-trimmed hedges.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was invited to the party,” he says, looking confused.
Mesut turns to his brother, who is openly gawking at them. “Miroslav Klose?”
Klose, and the last name rings in his head, Klose Industries, and he’s striding towards Miro’s car, wrenches the passenger’s side door open and smashes himself into the soft seat.
“Miro, take me somewhere we can speak in private,” he snarls angrily, and the glare in his eyes must be so dangerous that Miro’s reaction is instantaneous. They leave Mutlu behind in a cloud of dust.
Miro starts at the beginning.
Mesut can see it all in his head, like it’s a spool of film being drawn across his mind’s eye. Sylvia is young and beautiful and completely unattainable because of her lacking social status, and Miro is a wealthy playboy with four address-books’ worth of phone numbers and the immediate heir to his parents’ fortune.
Some way or another (Miro doesn’t take the time to elaborate and Mesut is impatient), he falls in love with this girl, and she is pregnant with his child. It is inevitable that his parents do not approve, that they want him to abort and get rid of both mother and offspring. But Miro is stubborn and stupid and in love, and Sylvia gives birth to twins, two giggly boys with their father’s features and their mother’s heart-shaped face.
They are happy for a grand total of five days, and then, like something out of a tragic soap opera, Sylvia dies (complications from childbirth, the doctors tell him).
And because Miro is still stubborn and stupid and in love, he leaves his post as his father’s successor and entrusts Noah and Luan to Sylvia’s sister, and he disappears. Miroslav Klose is nowhere to be found.
(“Ah, I kind of remember,” Mesut interjects here, “it was all over the news when I was twelve.” Miro nods, driving slowly down a dark, winding country road.)
“But where did you go?” he asks when they stop at an intersection with the main street.
“I already told you about that,” he replies, raising his eyebrows, and Mesut realizes now that everything he’d said about Egypt and Brazil was from after Miro had left Germany and his old life.
The grudging empathy during Miro’s previous story gives way to Mesut’s initial, roiling simmer of anger. “Did you not trust me?” he mutters.
“What?”
Mesut exhales into his clenched fists, elbows propped against the dashboard. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before, that you were really some wealthy trust-fund heir? Was it because you didn’t trust me enough? I was one of the rich kids you’d known all your life and you couldn’t-”
“No, I just-”
“Well, that’s sure as hell what it seems like!”
Miro slams on the brakes and stops next to the curb. “I never pretended to have all the answers,” he says quietly.
“I thought it was part of the job description,” he retorts, shoving the car door open and scrambling out.
Mesut hails a taxi and leaves. Miro lets him.
He tells Anna-Maria that he’s breaking off the engagement early the next morning.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks immediately, looking twenty years older than she should in the armchair of his sitting room. “What am I supposed to do? Our family business is going bankrupt, I can’t not marry you.”
A cold feeling like an egg being cracked open over his head spreads down and he tenses, ears straining in disbelief. “So all you ever wanted was my money. Why didn’t you just go for Mutlu, then-”
“No!” she yells, wringing her hands frantically. “I want to marry you because I love you-Mesut, I converted to Islam for you-”
He shakes his head, pinches the bridge of his nose. “If that was your only reason, you shouldn’t have done it. You should convert because you believe in something, not because-”
“I thought it would make you love me more,” she whispers.
He closes his eyes, opens them again. “Goodbye, Anna-Maria.” He tries to turn and leave, but she runs across the tiled floor, stilettos clacking against the marble, and grabs his arm.
“But I love you,” Anna-Maria says shakily, but Mesut is unmoved by the tears in her eyes.
“No, you don’t. You love my name and my status. You love the things I have. You don’t even know me, Anna.”
“What are you saying, of course I know you-”
“Do you? What type of music do I enjoy? What is my favorite attribute of yours?” Hip hop. Your eyes. “You never even listened when I told you.”
She swallows, the beautiful line of her neck dipping, and he wonders when he had stopped wanting to kiss her, when he had realized everything everyone said about her was true.
“Even if we’ve broken it off, you’ve still got three other wealthy heirs wrapped around your pinky finger, don’t you?”
She says nothing, and the silence rings thunderous affirmation.
“If you really loved me, you sure did a shit job of showing it,” he says with an air of finality, grabbing his keys from their bowl on the kitchen counter and slamming the door behind him.
The sound of a heart breaking is not like shattered glass, nor a loud, sickening crack of wood, nor the rumble of muted rage. It is not like a scream of frustration or the screech of nails on a chalkboard, of a car running into a pole on the freeway. The sound of a heart breaking is the quiet click when an old key doesn’t fit into a new lock; it is the scratch of a pen-tip scrawling a signature onto divorce papers and the sound of a wedding ring set down on a table, never to be picked up and worn again.
It’s the rustle of a letter that Bastian hands him when he goes looking for Miro at Babylon around noon. Miro’s message is brief and impersonal, reveals nothing but that he’s gone abroad again. At the bottom of the page, scrawled untidily in the margins, is a short sentence:
Go find yourself.
When Mesut shakes the envelope, a small key to a foreign deposit box falls out.
Mesut makes his grand escape during the first week of June. Thomas helps make sure that no one will be able to track him and drives him to the airport, says a tearful goodbye and promises to find and kill him if he doesn’t write (or text).
There will be time to pen letters on soggy postcards in the Amazon, to climb a snow-capped mountain in Tibet, to almost die of heat stroke in the Sahara. He will have time to go spelunking in Manila, to skydive in Central America, to teach a group of South African children how to speak German. There will be time to pave roads in the Virgin Islands, to plant trees in Inner Mongolia, to send Bastian cases of clothes from Milan and Thomas crates of tequila from Mexico.
He will have time to forgive Mutlu and Anna-Maria and himself, will have time to make things right with his parents and figure out what he really wants to do with his life.
And there will be time to unlock a certain deposit box in Switzerland, to fly to Poland in the middle of winter and drive a rental car across iced-over streets, to walk in the front door of a small, warm cottage and find Miro there with a book and hot chocolate and an ear to hear.
fin
A/N: thank you to pause, freefallskyline, envoler, and boyfolk for holding my hand all through this one T_T cannot believe the prompt inspired me to write this long monster :( summary & title from switchfoot (yet & let that be enough, respectively).