madrid is: part 1
Title: Madrid Is
Rating: R
Pairing: Cristiano Ronaldo / Mesut Özil
Word Count: 19,960
Summary: And he’s grateful, infinitely grateful that the Madrileños have taken to him the way they have, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is in Madrid and Madrid is not home.
A/N: For tankshallkill , my little cheerleader-who-could, without whom this never would have been written.
Madrid is-
Madrid is. Mesut doesn’t know what it is because he doesn’t go out much. It’s hard; he doesn’t speak the language and while it’s easy enough for him to pick up, easy as any other language, he’s only been studying it for a few weeks. That doesn’t stop people from coming up to him on the street when he’s out buying food or walking to his car, doesn’t stop them from talking to him in fast, rapid Spanish, words that he barely recognizes, words that he barely understands.
And he’s grateful, infinitely grateful that the Madrileños have taken to him the way they have, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is in Madrid and Madrid is not home.
When Mesut told Bastian that he was leaving, Bastian laughed his head off and said, “One good tournament and you’re forgetting all about us Bundesligers. I see how it is with you, Özil.”
Mesut wanted to say, “I couldn’t forget about you guys even if I tried,” but instead he said, “Thank you. For understanding.” And he did, that was the thing; Bastian did understand. If there was one thing he understood it was football and changing things around for football and giving things up -giving everything up-for football.
So Mesut doesn’t know the real Madrid, the real city, but he knows Real Madrid the club and Real Madrid the team and Real Madrid the legacy. He knows the ins and outs of the Bernabéu and Ciudad Real Madrid, how the grass sounds under his feet and which showers have the best pressure. He knows the way Alonso stands as he waits to take a corner, the noise that Iker makes when claps his gloved hands, how often Sergio slicks back his hair with water during practice.
Mesut knows his team, but-
Fuck if he knows what they’re saying.
“Come on,” Sami’s yelling from the living room. “It’s only our second week! If we’re late and they send me back to Stuttgart, I’m going to break your neck.”
“Sorry, sorry, my alarm didn’t go off,” Mesut yells back. He’s in his bedroom looking for socks and he can tell by the consistent thump, thump, thump that Sami’s kicking a football around, juggling it with his feet to keep it off the ground. He did the same thing the night before, the entire time Mesut was watching Das Experiment.
“You have such a sad DVD collection,” Sami had said, rolling the football around the on the floor with his toes. “You could have at least put on Das Wunder von Bern. I’d have at least watched that.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Mesut told him, and Sami just replied, “You’re right, I wouldn’t have,” and then: thump, thump, thump.
“Seriously, Mesut, we have to be there in thirty minutes,” Sami yells again, and Mesut comes running out of his room, toothbrush dangling from his mouth and an empty water bottle in hand. “You can get water at the Valdebebas,” Sami points out.
“I know,” Mesut says, spitting into the kitchen sink. He turns on the tap and shoves his bottle underneath it anyways.
“And don’t forget your Spanish workbook,” Sami says, and Mesut groans. He’s tired, tired physically and mentally and he wants to go back to bed. Instead, he picks up his bag and follows Sami out the door.
Mesut stretches.
It’s easy to be a part of the team when you’re just stretching; that doesn’t really seem to change much wherever you live, whatever language you speak.
Mourinho’s walking around, saying stuff to Iker and Dudek, patting Higuaín on the back. He seems nice, Mesut thinks, even though he’s stopped allowing translators into practice. “You’ll learn faster this way,” it was explained to him. “You can’t be on a team you can’t communicate with.” And Mesut gets that much, but it’s still hard, still awkward, still just him and Sami sticking together.
It’s a Tuesday which means they get to play footvolley, and Mesut loves that. He’s pretty terrible at it compared to some of the guys, but that’s okay; Mesut’s better at other things. He has to be, to be on a team like this, with players like this. Sometimes, though, and he’s never mentioned it to anyone, but sometimes-sometimes he wonders why he’s there, in the same colors as players like Kaká and Ronaldo and Alonso. He wonders where he fits in amongst Spanish greats like Sergio and Iker. And maybe they’re not that much older than him, but their track records are longer, their list of achievements greater.
He looks at Sami sometimes, and Sami fits, already on first-name basis with everyone, and if he doesn’t fit yet, Mesut can tell that he will. Mesut’s afraid that he won’t ever, that maybe he should have stayed at Werder Bremen. He doesn’t like that feeling.
Someone nudges him; Sergio. Mesut guesses Sergio was talking to him and he just didn’t know.
“¿Lo siento?” Mesut says, and he phrases it like a question in the hopes that Sergio will repeat himself, slowly.
Sergio just laughs, smiles all teeth and lips, and pushes Mesut in the direction of one of the nets.
“That team,” he says, and Mesut understands as much. Ese equipo.
Mesut’s side loses, but it doesn’t matter. He’s paired with Ángel, Ángel who speaks slowly and understands what it’s like to be new.
After practice, Mourinho pulls Mesut aside and asks how he’s doing, how he’s fitting in. Mesut appreciates it, appreciates that Mourinho cares because he’s knows what it’s like to have a coach that doesn’t, but the language barrier keeps things awkward. He doesn’t know what to call Mourinho-El Míster? Entrenador? Jefe? Mesut settles for not calling him anything and hopes that doesn’t come across as rude.
“¿Cómo va todo?” Mourinho asks. “¿Está haciendo bien?” And it must show on Mesut’s face that he doesn’t quite understand because Mourinho smiles and settles for a simple, “¿Cómo estás?” How are you?
Mesut understands, stutters out a “Fine, thank you,” and “I like this team.” Simple sentences, nothing fancy, but it gets the point across. “Spanish is hard. I am working a lot. Madrid is nice.” And Spanish is hard. He is working a lot. Madrid could be nice, but Mesut doesn’t know.
Mourinho sends him away with a smile and a request to send Ronaldo his way. Mesut understands. Comprendo. Entiendo. He understands.
Mesut walks into the locker room, past Dudek’s locker-veinticinco- and past Sami’s-veinticuatro-and past his own- veintitrés.
Sami says, “Where were you? I’ve already showered.”
“Sorry,” Mesut says. “Coach needed me. I’ll be quick.”
And they’ve lapsed into German without even realizing it-of course without realizing it, it’s what they know-and so everyone around them starts hollering, “No German! No German!” Sami laughs, waving his hands wildly, “¡Lo siento, lo siento!” It’s easy for him.
Mesut keeps walking. Diez, nueve, empty ocho. Siete. Ronaldo’s not there.
“¿Ronaldo?” he asks Benzema. Benzema’s Spanish sounds too French, almost indiscernible, but he asks anyways because Benzema’s right there.
“Steam room,” Benzema says. “His leg.” Short sentences. What Mesut needs.
Mesut thanks him and heads down to the steam room. He thinks about the Valdebebas. It’s nothing like the training grounds he had back home. Or maybe, maybe it is, only it’s bigger, much bigger. He could get lost here, he thinks.
He stands outside the steam room door, hands on his hips, and he thinks about how one of the world’s best players is right inside, just a door away.
Mesut heads in and Ronaldo’s there, just like Benzema said he would be. He’s leaning back, eyes closed, one hand absently massaging a kink in his calf. Mesut almost doesn’t want to interrupt him. He looks as tired as Mesut feels.
“Um,” he says, and Ronaldo looks up. “Lo siento, Ronaldo, pero Mourinho quiere-quiere ver, ah.” And he can’t get the words out of his mouth. He knows them, he knows he knows them, but they just stick to the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth.
Ronaldo laughs, but Mesut figures he knows how it is.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Thank you.” And he gets up, starts to gather his things, and so Mesut turns to leave because Sami is waiting for him and he still has to shower and he’s probably going to be late for his Spanish lesson.
And then-
“Cristiano,” Ronaldo says, one hand on his chest. “It’s-my name. It’s Cristiano.” And he’s got this smile, one with a lot of teeth but still nothing like Sergio’s, and it makes Mesut smile back, unrestrained.
“Cristiano.”
They break up into attack and defense to run some drills. He and Sami both head to the back of the line, both equally clueless and tired from the sprints.
“No, no,” Mourinho says, and he points at Mesut and then towards the front of the line. “Özil, second. Watch, then go.”
And Mesut-there’s not much he can do, so he listens to Mourinho and goes to stand behind Higuaín. It’s simple, pass to winger and then score on the cross, but Higuaín misses even though Iker’s using light resistance bands. And maybe that’s testament to them having the best keeper in the world, because then Mesut passes, shoots, misses as well.
Ronaldo-Cristiano-is next, and he shoots, scores, perfect. Mesut figures he shouldn’t be surprised, although he a little bit is, and he guesses his own frustration shows on his face because when Cristiano lines up again behind him, he jokes, “You look happy for me.” He reaches forward, one hand on either side of Mesut’s face, and bends Mesut’s mouth into a smile. “There,” he says, and Mesut understands all of it.
On his next try, Mesut shoots, scores, perfect-top left corner-and Cristiano is hollering, cheering for him like a lunatic. The rest of the guys laugh at his antics and Mesut heads to the back, head bowed and cheeks flushed.
It’s nice.
Mesut calls home often-his parents worry-but it takes a while before he reaches out, calls some of his old friends. He calls Thomas first, although he’s not really sure why. Maybe it’s because he’s still coming down from the World Cup high, still so used to being a partnership with him, but maybe not. Either way, he calls Thomas first.
“Mesut Özil,” Thomas says when he answers the phone. “And here I thought you were dead.”
“No,” Mesut says. “Just tired.” And that’s the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but the truth nonetheless.
“Yeah, maybe,” Thomas says, “but Sami still calls all the time.”
“Bastard,” Mesut jokes.
“Yeah, pretty much. So how’s Madrid?”
“It’s good,” Mesut says. “The team is-the team is intense, but good. How’s Germany?” Thomas laughs at that, although Mesut doesn’t get why. It’s a legitimate question.
“Germany?” Thomas asks. “Germany’s exactly the same except everyone loves me more now. So come on, what’s Madrid like? What’s Ronaldo like? And what about Casillas? I still hate that guy.”
“Madrid is great. I don’t really get to go out much and my Spanish is nonexistent, but it seems okay and Iker’s actually really nice, or he is when he’s in your goal, anyways.”
“And Ronaldo?”
“He’s good. Really good,” Mesut says, and it’s exactly what anyone else would say, only Mesut feels embarrassed by it and he doesn’t know why.
Mesut falls into pattern pretty easily. On the days that he has practice, that’s all he does, and on the days that he doesn’t, he sleeps in and then he and Sami play FIFA 10 in their boxers, talking about how awesome the next version is going to be and how neither of them can even believe that Mesut just filmed a commercial for it with Rooney and Iniesta when it seems like just yesterday that both of them were unknown. And then every night they eat dinner together, and then they go to bed, only to wake up to do it all over again.
Mesut’s just glad he actually likes Sami.
The last practice before the first game of the season is intense, frustrating. They’re working on formations and plays and back passes, and it all a little bit goes over Mesut’s head. He can do it, of course he can, but most of the time he doesn’t understand right away what Mourinho wants or what Iker wants or what Higuaín wants, and that frustrates everybody. There’s a lot of pressure riding on the team, on the galácticos, and Mesut knows that. Doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t know what the hell a golazo is.
Mesut’s sprawled out on the floor in their living room, arms and legs wide as he stares at the stucco ceiling. Gol Televisión is on, some English Premier League round-up that he doesn’t really care about and can’t really understand, and Mesut thinks of the game he just played.
“You know, we have a couch,” Sami says. He’s standing over Mesut and eating an apple; some juice lands on Mesut’s face the next time Sami takes a bite.
“First game,” Mesut says. “I was nice and useless. We might as well have been playing with ten.”
“Yeah?” Sami asks. “And what the fuck was I? Top goal-scorer? At least you played longer than I did.”
“I know,” Mesut says. “But that makes sense, though. I am better than you.”
Sami laughs and kicks Mesut in the ribs, not hard but hard enough that Mesut tries to avoid it.
“Hey!” Sami says. “Shut it.” There’s a pause where neither of them say anything and then, “Dinner tonight?”
“Yeah,” Mesut says. “What else would I do with my time?” He reaches a hand out and Sami takes it to help him up.
“Good, because I found a German restaurant around here,” he says. “Owned by some Spanish, of course, but they’re wearing lederhosen, so that’s got to be a good sign.”
Mesut laughs, just a bark of laughter that ends too quickly and is very uncharacteristic of him, and goes to find his shoes.
He wakes up on his next free morning to the sound of Sami wandering the apartment, singing something in Spanish, something that he got from one of the guys on the team, or maybe from somebody in South Africa.
“Todo es nuevo y viejo a la vez. Soy nuevo en el barrio y viejo en mi cuerpo. Me siento cansado otra vez,” Sami sings, and Mesut’s just in a bad mood, so he yells back, “No!” and hopes that Sami gets it.
He doesn’t and so Mesut sandwiches his head between two pillows and tries to go back to sleep.
Later, when he wakes up for real, he stumbles out of his room feeling like he barely slept. He goes to his Spanish lesson and Sami laughs at him because all of a sudden he’s mixing the tenses, forgetting proper conjugation and not making any sense.
When they get back home, it’s barely five o’clock and Mesut locks himself away in his room. He tells Sami that he’s not hungry, he climbs into bed, and he turns out the light.
He falls asleep almost right away.
Mesut’s bad mood carries over into the next day. It’s his turn to drive to practice, and he does, but he doesn’t talk the entire car ride there, doesn’t say anything when Sami messes with his stereo. When he stretches, he partners with Ángel, someone he’s more or less familiar with, and Ángel tries to start a conversation as much as Mesut tries to avoid one.
“So what do you think about Madrid?” Ángel asks as he laces his fingers together and grabs a hold of Mesut’s heel.
“It’s nice,” Mesut says, and he leans into the stretch.
“I think so, too,” Ángel smiles. “Friendly people.” And any other time, Mesut would have joked, “Yeah, but you’re also a futbolista.” He doesn’t this time, and Ángel carries on, “El Míster is nice, too. Smart as hell. At first, when I heard Mourinho was coaching-I don’t know what I thought. It’s crazy, this galáctico thing.”
“I like him, too. He’s been very good to Sami and I. It was hard because we don’t know Spanish, but-but-” Mesut pauses, looking for the words. “Él quieres que estamos en casa.” It’s a butchering of he wants us to feel at home, and Mesut knows it, but Ángel smiles and nods, says he agrees.
“Switch it up!” Iker yells out, a phrase Mesut knows only from its frequent use. “Change partners! Warm up feints and short passes.”
Everyone heads over to get a ball and Cristiano nudges him.
“Partners?” he asks, and Mesut shrugs. They loosen up with quick taps and work up to longer passes before moving on to feints. It’s only then that Cristiano says, “I heard you and di María talking trash about El Míster .”
“I wasn’t,” Mesut says. “I was-I just saying that-”
“I know,” Cristiano laughs. “I’m joking.”
“I was just saying that he wants us to feel at home,” Mesut explains anyways.
“I know,” Cristiano says. “But it’s él quiere. He wants. Quiere.”
Mesut throws his head back and groans. He’s such an idiot.
“I hate your language,” he says.
“Hey, now,” Cristiano says. “It’s not my language either. I just have more practice than you.”
And that-that makes Mesut blink. He’s sure he had known that, but somehow, amongst the football and the tutoring sessions and the loneliness, Mesut had just forgotten.
“Oh,” he says. “Right.”
Cristiano smiles. “You’ll get there,” he says, but Mesut doesn’t think he ever will.
He calls Lukas and Lukas laughs at him.
“If you wanted to join a winning team and not have to learn a new language, Cologne was waiting with open arms,” he says.
“Didn’t you just lose your first two games?” Mesut asks.
“Yes, and I really don’t want to talk about it!” Lukas jokes.
They talk about nothing for a while, just practice stories and early trade rumors, gossip about people they know and about people they don’t. Mesut tells Lukas how Sami was pantsed earlier that day and Lukas tells him how word on the street is that he’s headed back to Bayern Munich, “although that’s just wishful thinking but, I mean, can you blame them? I’m actually coming to Real Madrid; when can I move in?”
And just before they hang up, Lukas says, “Once you work it all out? The goals will come and they won’t stop. You’ll get it sooner or later.”
Mesut thinks, sooner or later. Thinks, más temprano que tarde. Thinks, prays, hopes it’s sooner.
Cristiano comes up to him one day as he’s passing with Sergio one training after the Real Sociedad match and asks, “What are you doing for dinner?”
“I don’t know?” Mesut says, and he says it like a question because he thinks maybe he misunderstood.
“I cook,” Cristiano says, and he’s raising an eyebrow and tilting his head like that should mean anything.
“Okay,” Mesut says, because in situations like this he thinks it’s best to just pretend he knows what’s going on. He cooks? Maybe that’s like nutmeg, just another football term that he doesn’t know.
“Okay, great!” Cristiano says. “¡Fantástico! Eight o’clock?” And then he’s shooting Mesut two thumbs up and jogging away, back to where he was passing with Pepe.
“I don’t know about his cooking,” Sergio tells him. “But good luck.”
Mesut just stares at him and says, “What… what?”
Sergio laughs.
He tells Sami on the way home and Sami laughs at him too.
“Oh my god,” he says. “He’s like, taking you under his wing and stuff. You’ll be in Prada ads before you know it.”
“Armani,” Mesut says. “And I don’t even know what’s going on. I didn’t even understand what he was saying; Sergio had to tell me after I’d already agreed.” Sami finds that hilarious and he laughs so much Mesut thinks he’s going to crash the car.
“Watch the road!” Mesut says. “And shut up. It’s going to be so awkward.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sami says. “First dates are always awkward.” Mesut punches Sami in the arm, but he just keeps laughing and laughing. “I can’t wait to tell Thomas!”
Mesut groans, looks out the window. His life.
Cristiano answers the door and he’s dressed casual, or as casual as Cristiano ever gets. His jeans probably cost more than Mesut’s iPod and his earrings more than Mesut’s car, but his hair is messy and his shirt is an old Portugal t-shirt, and that relaxes Mesut.
“Come in, come in,” Cristiano says, and so Mesut does, just stands in the foyer and says, “Um. Hello.”
Cristiano laughs, leads him into the living room saying, “Just us. My son is at my mother’s tonight.” And Mesut knew that Cristiano had a son, would have to be blind and deaf not to, but he somehow just forgot. In practice and on the pitch, Cristiano never struck Mesut as a father, not the way Miro did, not the way Alonso did. “Water? Soda?”
Mesut wants to say, “Why are you doing this? Why are you being so nice to me?” but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Water, please.”
He wanders the living room while Cristiano’s in the kitchen, trying to look around without looking like he’s actively doing so. There are a lot of pictures-pictures of his family and of a small baby, pictures of Portugal and Real Madrid and Kaká.
“You will see him,” Cristiano says, sneaking up behind Mesut. He’s pointing at a picture of him and Kaká in last year’s away kit, making grabby hands at each other as they celebrate a goal. “On the pitch, I mean. And you won’t be able to believe that someone could be so good.”
He talks slow like he’s talking to a foreigner, not slow like he’s talking to an idiot. There’s a difference, Mesut thinks. He’s become so used to the latter.
“Is he really?” Mesut asks. He doesn’t have the words to finish his sentence, but Cristiano understands him anyways.
“No,” he says. “Better.”
“You are good friends, then?”
“Yes,” Cristiano says. He’s smiling but he doesn’t look very happy, and Mesut doesn’t understand. He thinks about playing for Germany without Bastian or Thomas, or for Werder Bremen without Marko, and then Mesut maybe gets it. “Very good friends.”
They sit there for a few more minutes and then Cristiano’s shaking his head as if to clear something out from in front of his eyes.
“You any good at billiards?” he asks, and then he makes and hand gesture to convey using a pool cue.
“Not really,” Mesut says. “I’m okay.” He’s lying; he knows he’s good.
“A bet, then!” Cristiano says, and Mesut smiles. He’s an easy read, Cristiano.
“I don’t know,” Mesut says, and Cristiano leads him into a game room-there’s a pool table in the center, and a huge tv with video game consoles off to one side. Most of the walls are lined with framed game shirts, some posters. It’s nice, Mesut thinks. He’d want one like this when he a buys a house.
“Hundred euro,” Cristiano says. “Almost nothing.”
“Okay,” Mesut says, and Cristiano’s only sunk two balls by the time he’s calling, “Eight ball, that-uh-”
“Bolsillo,” Cristiano says, but he doesn’t sound too happy about it. “Pocket.”
“Yeah,” Mesut says. “That pocket.”
He sinks it and smiles the entire time Cristiano is digging out his wallet.
Practice that week ranges from bad to good and then back again.
At first Mesut just thought that it was how Mourinho worked, pushing people and pushing people and pushing people, but now he’s not so sure. He’s not like this with anyone else but Mesut.
“No, no, no! Mesut, no!” he’s yelling. “Again, faster! And not like that!”
And so Mesut does it again-whatever drill it is, it’s always the same reaction.
“Mesut! Why use your right foot there? Use your left. Left! Again!” and “Why would you pass? You had open goal!” and “Why didn’t you pass? Higuaín was right there!”
It’s just something Mesut doesn’t like to deal with. The other guys notice it, bump shoulders with him and say, “Good pass,” or clap him on the back and say, “Nice footwork, there,” but Mesut knows they just say it because they feel bad. He’s doesn’t like that.
But it’s not all bad. He likes his teammates, he really does, and he can’t wait until he can actually talk to them. Either way, though, they’re nice and they welcome Mesut like a brother.
One day, about midweek, Marcelo says something snarky to Álvaro-Mesut doesn’t know what, doesn’t know the words but can guess just by the voice he uses-and Álvaro rolls his eyes. He waits, must have the patience of a saint, because Mesut’s forgotten all about it by the time that Marcelo bends over to tie his shoe and Álvaro just pushes him.
He just-pushes him. Just pushes him lightly and Marcelo’s toppling over, on the ground saying, “Yeah, yeah,” only then when he tries to get back up, Álvaro pushes him again and again, laughing and saying something back at him, something too fast for Mesut to follow, but he gets that it’s payback. So Marcelo darts his arms out, wraps them around Álvaro’s calves, and he yells, “Help!” and then-and then-
“Mesut! Help! Tackle him! Something!” And whatever he says after that is irrelevant because he’s calling for Mesut, calling for Mesut by name when they’re on a field full of his closest friends, and so Mesut doesn’t hesitate to fling himself on Álvaro’s back, and then Pepe’s joining in, and Carvalho, and they’re all just wrestling and joking around until Iker comes by, breaks up, and says that they’ve got to get back to training.
They do, and then it’s back to-
“Faster, Mesut!” and, “You go first, Mesut,” and “Why didn’t you shoot, Mesut?”
In the car, Sami tries to tell him not to let Mourinho get to him because he’s good, he’s a good footballer with killer instincts, but Mesut just can’t do that.
He rests his head against the window and doesn’t talk the entire ride. He doesn’t get what he did wrong.
Mesut goes outside, sits on a bench along some random street and calls Marko. He supposes he could have done it inside, but Sami’s there and he doesn’t want Sami to overhear. It’s-this call is a big deal to Mesut, one he’s been putting off for a while because he doesn’t know what to say and because maybe-because maybe Marko just doesn’t want to hear it.
It rings a few times before he picks up, but when he does, he says, “Hey, Mesut,” just like he always did.
Mesut says, “Marko, hey, I-hey,” and Marko laughs a little.
“How’s Madrid?” Marko asks. Mesut can’t tell if it’s small talk or something much, much heavier than that.
“It’s-it’s great, really great,” he says, and Marko laughs again, just a little bit, quietly.
“And how is it really?” he asks. And Mesut-he just crumples because Marko knows, just like Marko’s always known, and Mesut should have known, too.
“It’s-hard,” Mesut says. “I hate the language, and the coach-Mourinho-keeps riding me and I don’t know why, and I live with Sami, who I like, I really like, but he’s not you, and he doesn’t get it, and it’s just really-” Mesut cuts himself off.
“You made the right decision, though,” Marko says. “To leave, I mean.” And that-
“Really?” Mesut says. “You’re not still mad?”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay,” Mesut says. “Good. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” Marko says. “But you’re where you’re supposed to be.”
It’s hot out for how late in the year it is, but it doesn’t really bother Mesut. He’s used to the heat, he’s used to the cold; he’s used to it all. It’s all the same to him.
During a break between running sets, he jogs over to where the water bottles were left and is about to pop the top on his when Canales stops him.
“Mesut, wait,” he says. He had told everyone to call him Sergio, but Sergio Ramos said he pulled rank and so everyone calls him Canales. “I think that one’s Sami’s. Yours is the one next to it.”
“Oh,” Mesut says. “Thanks.” And it happens all the time, mixing up water bottles. It doesn’t really matter, but at any rate, he switches out the bottles. He thinks he must have chugged about half of it before his body realizes that he’s not drinking water or Lucozade, but saltwater, and he starts coughing like crazy and spits out what’s still in his mouth.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Canales asks. His eyes are big and wide and Mesut can’t bring himself to hate him.
“No, it’s-it’s water-with salt,” Mesut says between coughs. He doesn’t know the Spanish word for saltwater, all he knows is that his eyes are stinging and watering.
“Joder, I swear I didn’t know!” Canales is saying, thumping Mesut on the back like that actually helps. “Sami just told me to-and he’s your friend, so I thought-”
Mesut looks over to where Sami is. He’s with Raúl and Marcelo and Esteban, and they’re all laughing. Pranks are pretty common during practice, and Mesut figured it was only a matter of time until someone got him. Still, what a traitor. Mesut flicks him off.
He turns to Mourinho who’s just a few feet away and says, “I’m going-I’ll be-”
Mourinho just waves a hand, says, “Take care of it,” and then Mesut’s off, coughing and jogging to the water fountain a ways away. He gets there and he coughs some more-almost coughs up a lung, to be honest-and then rinses out his bottle before filling it up. He jogs back to the other side of the pitch where everyone is and they’re all standing practically on top of each other; something exciting must have happened.
“Hey, Mesut!” Sergio says. “Look who’s come to visit!”
And as Mesut looks closer, he can see who it is-Kaká. He’s still in street clothes, obviously not there to practice, but what Mesut notices more is how Cristiano’s got his arm slung around Kaká’s waist, his face buried in Kaká’s shoulder as he laughs about something.
“Hello, Mesut!” Kaká says when he notices him. They’ve only met a handful of times and Kaká has never been anything but nice. “I was just telling everyone that I’m only stopping by for a few minutes on the way to the physio’s. Wanted to see how everyone was doing.”
“I’d be doing a lot better if I was on vacation like you are,” Higuaín says, and they all laugh.
Mourinho interjects then, says, “Alright, alright, everyone back to practice,” and they all scatter, get back into lines to run the ladder or sprint between cones. When he finishes his first sprint, Mesut looks back to where Kaká was. He’s still there, and Cristiano is still with him.
They’re standing close, real close, and Kaká is saying something and then nudging Cristiano. Cristiano throws his head back and laughs, and then hides his face in his hands as Kaká throws an arm around him, raises a hand to mess up his hair. Cristiano pushes him away, laughs some more.
“Your turn,” Benzema says to him, and Mesut snaps out of it. He takes off on his next sprint and thinks, oh, because he didn’t know, couldn’t have know, feels like an idiot for not guessing sooner.
Very good friends, Cristiano had said.
Mesut gets it now.
For the Champions League game against Auxerre, Mesut learns that’s he’s not in the starting eleven and he’s-well, he’s mad, yeah, upset and disappointed, but mostly he’s just confused.
“I don’t get it,” he says to Sami, and he makes sure it’s in German and even though no one else will understand, he speaks fast and low and tilts his head down. “I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? I know I haven’t scored yet, but why-why keep me around if you’re not going to fucking play me? If they don’t trust me to help us win?”
“You might still play. You probably will,” Sami says, but then again, he’s starting, so what would he know?
“That’s not the point,” Mesut says. “Never mind, forget it. It was stupid, anyways.”
Mesut shakes his head and starts to walk away to get dressed, to get ready to warm the bench, when Iker grabs him by the elbow.
“What’s up?” he says. “Is everything okay?”
And Mesut knows that Sami’s watching, can feel the weight of Sami’s gaze when he forces a smile and says, “Yes, everything’s fine.”
“Okay then,” Iker says. “But no German in the locker room, yeah? We’re a team.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Mesut says. He knows the rules.
Fifty-eight minutes after the first whistle, Mesut is subbed on for Benzema. He passes to Ángel in the eighty-first for an assist, but Mesut doesn’t score. Not a surprise; Mourinho probably already figured he wouldn’t do much, anyways.
“What’s wrong?” Cristiano asks as they all pile into the bus. “¿Qué pasó? We won.”
“I know,” Mesut says, and he does. He knows that they won and he knows that he should just be glad that he played and he knows that he’s being childish. Either way, he still goes in his bag and pulls out his headphones as he sits down, the big ones that block out any noise and that signal that he doesn’t want to talk.
Unfortunately, Cristiano sits next to him and ignores the signal, removing the earpiece from one ear and saying, “Seriously, tell me. It’s better to talk about it.”
“You want to know?” Mesut asks. He doesn’t want to deal with pity talks.
“Yes.”
“I can’t score,” Mesut says, and he’s glad it’s a football matter because those are the words he knows, the words he’s around all the time.
“You didn’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t,” he says and Mesut tells him that they’re the one in the same. Cristiano lets out a string of really fast Spanish when he hears that, something that he doesn’t normally do because he’s usually so careful around Mesut, but then he catches himself. He says, “I didn’t score; di María did. Doesn’t mean we don’t have that madridismo.”
“You score a lot,” Mesut says as the bus pulls away from the curb. “In other matches. I’m-I don’t know-not working.”
“You’re not broken,” Cristiano says. “Por favor.”
Mesut just shrugs, looks out the window. He’s not really in the mood for this conversation, but Cristiano wanted to have it, so.
“You do things,” Cristiano says, “on the pitch, that I can’t do. You’re furtivo,” he says.
“What?”
“Um. Quiet?” he says. “No, no, more like you’re like a-a fantasma, the way you go in and out of the box like that,” Cristiano says. And that-that’s a word Mesut doesn’t know.
“Like a what?” he asks, and if Cristiano’s aim was to cheer him up, it wasn’t working. Mesut can’t even understand him.
“A fantasma,” Cristiano repeats. “Wait, wait, one second.” And then he’s going into his bag and pulling out a pocket German dictionary and something swells in Mesut’s chest, some kind of emotion that he can’t put a name to. “A-a gespenst,” he says with the worst German accent Mesut has ever heard, and he can’t help but laugh. “What?” Cristiano says. “What?”
“Nothing,” Mesut tells him, but it’s not nothing, it’s the exact opposite of nothing. “But thank you.”
Cristiano smiles and Mesut smiles back, and then they both settle in and shut their eyes, tuning out their teammates and the traffic and the engine of the bus, working steady beneath their bodies.
Part 2
Rating: R
Pairing: Cristiano Ronaldo / Mesut Özil
Word Count: 19,960
Summary: And he’s grateful, infinitely grateful that the Madrileños have taken to him the way they have, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is in Madrid and Madrid is not home.
A/N: For tankshallkill , my little cheerleader-who-could, without whom this never would have been written.
Madrid is-
Madrid is. Mesut doesn’t know what it is because he doesn’t go out much. It’s hard; he doesn’t speak the language and while it’s easy enough for him to pick up, easy as any other language, he’s only been studying it for a few weeks. That doesn’t stop people from coming up to him on the street when he’s out buying food or walking to his car, doesn’t stop them from talking to him in fast, rapid Spanish, words that he barely recognizes, words that he barely understands.
And he’s grateful, infinitely grateful that the Madrileños have taken to him the way they have, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is in Madrid and Madrid is not home.
When Mesut told Bastian that he was leaving, Bastian laughed his head off and said, “One good tournament and you’re forgetting all about us Bundesligers. I see how it is with you, Özil.”
Mesut wanted to say, “I couldn’t forget about you guys even if I tried,” but instead he said, “Thank you. For understanding.” And he did, that was the thing; Bastian did understand. If there was one thing he understood it was football and changing things around for football and giving things up -giving everything up-for football.
So Mesut doesn’t know the real Madrid, the real city, but he knows Real Madrid the club and Real Madrid the team and Real Madrid the legacy. He knows the ins and outs of the Bernabéu and Ciudad Real Madrid, how the grass sounds under his feet and which showers have the best pressure. He knows the way Alonso stands as he waits to take a corner, the noise that Iker makes when claps his gloved hands, how often Sergio slicks back his hair with water during practice.
Mesut knows his team, but-
Fuck if he knows what they’re saying.
“Come on,” Sami’s yelling from the living room. “It’s only our second week! If we’re late and they send me back to Stuttgart, I’m going to break your neck.”
“Sorry, sorry, my alarm didn’t go off,” Mesut yells back. He’s in his bedroom looking for socks and he can tell by the consistent thump, thump, thump that Sami’s kicking a football around, juggling it with his feet to keep it off the ground. He did the same thing the night before, the entire time Mesut was watching Das Experiment.
“You have such a sad DVD collection,” Sami had said, rolling the football around the on the floor with his toes. “You could have at least put on Das Wunder von Bern. I’d have at least watched that.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Mesut told him, and Sami just replied, “You’re right, I wouldn’t have,” and then: thump, thump, thump.
“Seriously, Mesut, we have to be there in thirty minutes,” Sami yells again, and Mesut comes running out of his room, toothbrush dangling from his mouth and an empty water bottle in hand. “You can get water at the Valdebebas,” Sami points out.
“I know,” Mesut says, spitting into the kitchen sink. He turns on the tap and shoves his bottle underneath it anyways.
“And don’t forget your Spanish workbook,” Sami says, and Mesut groans. He’s tired, tired physically and mentally and he wants to go back to bed. Instead, he picks up his bag and follows Sami out the door.
Mesut stretches.
It’s easy to be a part of the team when you’re just stretching; that doesn’t really seem to change much wherever you live, whatever language you speak.
Mourinho’s walking around, saying stuff to Iker and Dudek, patting Higuaín on the back. He seems nice, Mesut thinks, even though he’s stopped allowing translators into practice. “You’ll learn faster this way,” it was explained to him. “You can’t be on a team you can’t communicate with.” And Mesut gets that much, but it’s still hard, still awkward, still just him and Sami sticking together.
It’s a Tuesday which means they get to play footvolley, and Mesut loves that. He’s pretty terrible at it compared to some of the guys, but that’s okay; Mesut’s better at other things. He has to be, to be on a team like this, with players like this. Sometimes, though, and he’s never mentioned it to anyone, but sometimes-sometimes he wonders why he’s there, in the same colors as players like Kaká and Ronaldo and Alonso. He wonders where he fits in amongst Spanish greats like Sergio and Iker. And maybe they’re not that much older than him, but their track records are longer, their list of achievements greater.
He looks at Sami sometimes, and Sami fits, already on first-name basis with everyone, and if he doesn’t fit yet, Mesut can tell that he will. Mesut’s afraid that he won’t ever, that maybe he should have stayed at Werder Bremen. He doesn’t like that feeling.
Someone nudges him; Sergio. Mesut guesses Sergio was talking to him and he just didn’t know.
“¿Lo siento?” Mesut says, and he phrases it like a question in the hopes that Sergio will repeat himself, slowly.
Sergio just laughs, smiles all teeth and lips, and pushes Mesut in the direction of one of the nets.
“That team,” he says, and Mesut understands as much. Ese equipo.
Mesut’s side loses, but it doesn’t matter. He’s paired with Ángel, Ángel who speaks slowly and understands what it’s like to be new.
After practice, Mourinho pulls Mesut aside and asks how he’s doing, how he’s fitting in. Mesut appreciates it, appreciates that Mourinho cares because he’s knows what it’s like to have a coach that doesn’t, but the language barrier keeps things awkward. He doesn’t know what to call Mourinho-El Míster? Entrenador? Jefe? Mesut settles for not calling him anything and hopes that doesn’t come across as rude.
“¿Cómo va todo?” Mourinho asks. “¿Está haciendo bien?” And it must show on Mesut’s face that he doesn’t quite understand because Mourinho smiles and settles for a simple, “¿Cómo estás?” How are you?
Mesut understands, stutters out a “Fine, thank you,” and “I like this team.” Simple sentences, nothing fancy, but it gets the point across. “Spanish is hard. I am working a lot. Madrid is nice.” And Spanish is hard. He is working a lot. Madrid could be nice, but Mesut doesn’t know.
Mourinho sends him away with a smile and a request to send Ronaldo his way. Mesut understands. Comprendo. Entiendo. He understands.
Mesut walks into the locker room, past Dudek’s locker-veinticinco- and past Sami’s-veinticuatro-and past his own- veintitrés.
Sami says, “Where were you? I’ve already showered.”
“Sorry,” Mesut says. “Coach needed me. I’ll be quick.”
And they’ve lapsed into German without even realizing it-of course without realizing it, it’s what they know-and so everyone around them starts hollering, “No German! No German!” Sami laughs, waving his hands wildly, “¡Lo siento, lo siento!” It’s easy for him.
Mesut keeps walking. Diez, nueve, empty ocho. Siete. Ronaldo’s not there.
“¿Ronaldo?” he asks Benzema. Benzema’s Spanish sounds too French, almost indiscernible, but he asks anyways because Benzema’s right there.
“Steam room,” Benzema says. “His leg.” Short sentences. What Mesut needs.
Mesut thanks him and heads down to the steam room. He thinks about the Valdebebas. It’s nothing like the training grounds he had back home. Or maybe, maybe it is, only it’s bigger, much bigger. He could get lost here, he thinks.
He stands outside the steam room door, hands on his hips, and he thinks about how one of the world’s best players is right inside, just a door away.
Mesut heads in and Ronaldo’s there, just like Benzema said he would be. He’s leaning back, eyes closed, one hand absently massaging a kink in his calf. Mesut almost doesn’t want to interrupt him. He looks as tired as Mesut feels.
“Um,” he says, and Ronaldo looks up. “Lo siento, Ronaldo, pero Mourinho quiere-quiere ver, ah.” And he can’t get the words out of his mouth. He knows them, he knows he knows them, but they just stick to the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth.
Ronaldo laughs, but Mesut figures he knows how it is.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Thank you.” And he gets up, starts to gather his things, and so Mesut turns to leave because Sami is waiting for him and he still has to shower and he’s probably going to be late for his Spanish lesson.
And then-
“Cristiano,” Ronaldo says, one hand on his chest. “It’s-my name. It’s Cristiano.” And he’s got this smile, one with a lot of teeth but still nothing like Sergio’s, and it makes Mesut smile back, unrestrained.
“Cristiano.”
They break up into attack and defense to run some drills. He and Sami both head to the back of the line, both equally clueless and tired from the sprints.
“No, no,” Mourinho says, and he points at Mesut and then towards the front of the line. “Özil, second. Watch, then go.”
And Mesut-there’s not much he can do, so he listens to Mourinho and goes to stand behind Higuaín. It’s simple, pass to winger and then score on the cross, but Higuaín misses even though Iker’s using light resistance bands. And maybe that’s testament to them having the best keeper in the world, because then Mesut passes, shoots, misses as well.
Ronaldo-Cristiano-is next, and he shoots, scores, perfect. Mesut figures he shouldn’t be surprised, although he a little bit is, and he guesses his own frustration shows on his face because when Cristiano lines up again behind him, he jokes, “You look happy for me.” He reaches forward, one hand on either side of Mesut’s face, and bends Mesut’s mouth into a smile. “There,” he says, and Mesut understands all of it.
On his next try, Mesut shoots, scores, perfect-top left corner-and Cristiano is hollering, cheering for him like a lunatic. The rest of the guys laugh at his antics and Mesut heads to the back, head bowed and cheeks flushed.
It’s nice.
Mesut calls home often-his parents worry-but it takes a while before he reaches out, calls some of his old friends. He calls Thomas first, although he’s not really sure why. Maybe it’s because he’s still coming down from the World Cup high, still so used to being a partnership with him, but maybe not. Either way, he calls Thomas first.
“Mesut Özil,” Thomas says when he answers the phone. “And here I thought you were dead.”
“No,” Mesut says. “Just tired.” And that’s the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but the truth nonetheless.
“Yeah, maybe,” Thomas says, “but Sami still calls all the time.”
“Bastard,” Mesut jokes.
“Yeah, pretty much. So how’s Madrid?”
“It’s good,” Mesut says. “The team is-the team is intense, but good. How’s Germany?” Thomas laughs at that, although Mesut doesn’t get why. It’s a legitimate question.
“Germany?” Thomas asks. “Germany’s exactly the same except everyone loves me more now. So come on, what’s Madrid like? What’s Ronaldo like? And what about Casillas? I still hate that guy.”
“Madrid is great. I don’t really get to go out much and my Spanish is nonexistent, but it seems okay and Iker’s actually really nice, or he is when he’s in your goal, anyways.”
“And Ronaldo?”
“He’s good. Really good,” Mesut says, and it’s exactly what anyone else would say, only Mesut feels embarrassed by it and he doesn’t know why.
Mesut falls into pattern pretty easily. On the days that he has practice, that’s all he does, and on the days that he doesn’t, he sleeps in and then he and Sami play FIFA 10 in their boxers, talking about how awesome the next version is going to be and how neither of them can even believe that Mesut just filmed a commercial for it with Rooney and Iniesta when it seems like just yesterday that both of them were unknown. And then every night they eat dinner together, and then they go to bed, only to wake up to do it all over again.
Mesut’s just glad he actually likes Sami.
The last practice before the first game of the season is intense, frustrating. They’re working on formations and plays and back passes, and it all a little bit goes over Mesut’s head. He can do it, of course he can, but most of the time he doesn’t understand right away what Mourinho wants or what Iker wants or what Higuaín wants, and that frustrates everybody. There’s a lot of pressure riding on the team, on the galácticos, and Mesut knows that. Doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t know what the hell a golazo is.
Mesut’s sprawled out on the floor in their living room, arms and legs wide as he stares at the stucco ceiling. Gol Televisión is on, some English Premier League round-up that he doesn’t really care about and can’t really understand, and Mesut thinks of the game he just played.
“You know, we have a couch,” Sami says. He’s standing over Mesut and eating an apple; some juice lands on Mesut’s face the next time Sami takes a bite.
“First game,” Mesut says. “I was nice and useless. We might as well have been playing with ten.”
“Yeah?” Sami asks. “And what the fuck was I? Top goal-scorer? At least you played longer than I did.”
“I know,” Mesut says. “But that makes sense, though. I am better than you.”
Sami laughs and kicks Mesut in the ribs, not hard but hard enough that Mesut tries to avoid it.
“Hey!” Sami says. “Shut it.” There’s a pause where neither of them say anything and then, “Dinner tonight?”
“Yeah,” Mesut says. “What else would I do with my time?” He reaches a hand out and Sami takes it to help him up.
“Good, because I found a German restaurant around here,” he says. “Owned by some Spanish, of course, but they’re wearing lederhosen, so that’s got to be a good sign.”
Mesut laughs, just a bark of laughter that ends too quickly and is very uncharacteristic of him, and goes to find his shoes.
He wakes up on his next free morning to the sound of Sami wandering the apartment, singing something in Spanish, something that he got from one of the guys on the team, or maybe from somebody in South Africa.
“Todo es nuevo y viejo a la vez. Soy nuevo en el barrio y viejo en mi cuerpo. Me siento cansado otra vez,” Sami sings, and Mesut’s just in a bad mood, so he yells back, “No!” and hopes that Sami gets it.
He doesn’t and so Mesut sandwiches his head between two pillows and tries to go back to sleep.
Later, when he wakes up for real, he stumbles out of his room feeling like he barely slept. He goes to his Spanish lesson and Sami laughs at him because all of a sudden he’s mixing the tenses, forgetting proper conjugation and not making any sense.
When they get back home, it’s barely five o’clock and Mesut locks himself away in his room. He tells Sami that he’s not hungry, he climbs into bed, and he turns out the light.
He falls asleep almost right away.
Mesut’s bad mood carries over into the next day. It’s his turn to drive to practice, and he does, but he doesn’t talk the entire car ride there, doesn’t say anything when Sami messes with his stereo. When he stretches, he partners with Ángel, someone he’s more or less familiar with, and Ángel tries to start a conversation as much as Mesut tries to avoid one.
“So what do you think about Madrid?” Ángel asks as he laces his fingers together and grabs a hold of Mesut’s heel.
“It’s nice,” Mesut says, and he leans into the stretch.
“I think so, too,” Ángel smiles. “Friendly people.” And any other time, Mesut would have joked, “Yeah, but you’re also a futbolista.” He doesn’t this time, and Ángel carries on, “El Míster is nice, too. Smart as hell. At first, when I heard Mourinho was coaching-I don’t know what I thought. It’s crazy, this galáctico thing.”
“I like him, too. He’s been very good to Sami and I. It was hard because we don’t know Spanish, but-but-” Mesut pauses, looking for the words. “Él quieres que estamos en casa.” It’s a butchering of he wants us to feel at home, and Mesut knows it, but Ángel smiles and nods, says he agrees.
“Switch it up!” Iker yells out, a phrase Mesut knows only from its frequent use. “Change partners! Warm up feints and short passes.”
Everyone heads over to get a ball and Cristiano nudges him.
“Partners?” he asks, and Mesut shrugs. They loosen up with quick taps and work up to longer passes before moving on to feints. It’s only then that Cristiano says, “I heard you and di María talking trash about El Míster .”
“I wasn’t,” Mesut says. “I was-I just saying that-”
“I know,” Cristiano laughs. “I’m joking.”
“I was just saying that he wants us to feel at home,” Mesut explains anyways.
“I know,” Cristiano says. “But it’s él quiere. He wants. Quiere.”
Mesut throws his head back and groans. He’s such an idiot.
“I hate your language,” he says.
“Hey, now,” Cristiano says. “It’s not my language either. I just have more practice than you.”
And that-that makes Mesut blink. He’s sure he had known that, but somehow, amongst the football and the tutoring sessions and the loneliness, Mesut had just forgotten.
“Oh,” he says. “Right.”
Cristiano smiles. “You’ll get there,” he says, but Mesut doesn’t think he ever will.
He calls Lukas and Lukas laughs at him.
“If you wanted to join a winning team and not have to learn a new language, Cologne was waiting with open arms,” he says.
“Didn’t you just lose your first two games?” Mesut asks.
“Yes, and I really don’t want to talk about it!” Lukas jokes.
They talk about nothing for a while, just practice stories and early trade rumors, gossip about people they know and about people they don’t. Mesut tells Lukas how Sami was pantsed earlier that day and Lukas tells him how word on the street is that he’s headed back to Bayern Munich, “although that’s just wishful thinking but, I mean, can you blame them? I’m actually coming to Real Madrid; when can I move in?”
And just before they hang up, Lukas says, “Once you work it all out? The goals will come and they won’t stop. You’ll get it sooner or later.”
Mesut thinks, sooner or later. Thinks, más temprano que tarde. Thinks, prays, hopes it’s sooner.
Cristiano comes up to him one day as he’s passing with Sergio one training after the Real Sociedad match and asks, “What are you doing for dinner?”
“I don’t know?” Mesut says, and he says it like a question because he thinks maybe he misunderstood.
“I cook,” Cristiano says, and he’s raising an eyebrow and tilting his head like that should mean anything.
“Okay,” Mesut says, because in situations like this he thinks it’s best to just pretend he knows what’s going on. He cooks? Maybe that’s like nutmeg, just another football term that he doesn’t know.
“Okay, great!” Cristiano says. “¡Fantástico! Eight o’clock?” And then he’s shooting Mesut two thumbs up and jogging away, back to where he was passing with Pepe.
“I don’t know about his cooking,” Sergio tells him. “But good luck.”
Mesut just stares at him and says, “What… what?”
Sergio laughs.
He tells Sami on the way home and Sami laughs at him too.
“Oh my god,” he says. “He’s like, taking you under his wing and stuff. You’ll be in Prada ads before you know it.”
“Armani,” Mesut says. “And I don’t even know what’s going on. I didn’t even understand what he was saying; Sergio had to tell me after I’d already agreed.” Sami finds that hilarious and he laughs so much Mesut thinks he’s going to crash the car.
“Watch the road!” Mesut says. “And shut up. It’s going to be so awkward.”
“You’ll be fine,” Sami says. “First dates are always awkward.” Mesut punches Sami in the arm, but he just keeps laughing and laughing. “I can’t wait to tell Thomas!”
Mesut groans, looks out the window. His life.
Cristiano answers the door and he’s dressed casual, or as casual as Cristiano ever gets. His jeans probably cost more than Mesut’s iPod and his earrings more than Mesut’s car, but his hair is messy and his shirt is an old Portugal t-shirt, and that relaxes Mesut.
“Come in, come in,” Cristiano says, and so Mesut does, just stands in the foyer and says, “Um. Hello.”
Cristiano laughs, leads him into the living room saying, “Just us. My son is at my mother’s tonight.” And Mesut knew that Cristiano had a son, would have to be blind and deaf not to, but he somehow just forgot. In practice and on the pitch, Cristiano never struck Mesut as a father, not the way Miro did, not the way Alonso did. “Water? Soda?”
Mesut wants to say, “Why are you doing this? Why are you being so nice to me?” but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Water, please.”
He wanders the living room while Cristiano’s in the kitchen, trying to look around without looking like he’s actively doing so. There are a lot of pictures-pictures of his family and of a small baby, pictures of Portugal and Real Madrid and Kaká.
“You will see him,” Cristiano says, sneaking up behind Mesut. He’s pointing at a picture of him and Kaká in last year’s away kit, making grabby hands at each other as they celebrate a goal. “On the pitch, I mean. And you won’t be able to believe that someone could be so good.”
He talks slow like he’s talking to a foreigner, not slow like he’s talking to an idiot. There’s a difference, Mesut thinks. He’s become so used to the latter.
“Is he really?” Mesut asks. He doesn’t have the words to finish his sentence, but Cristiano understands him anyways.
“No,” he says. “Better.”
“You are good friends, then?”
“Yes,” Cristiano says. He’s smiling but he doesn’t look very happy, and Mesut doesn’t understand. He thinks about playing for Germany without Bastian or Thomas, or for Werder Bremen without Marko, and then Mesut maybe gets it. “Very good friends.”
They sit there for a few more minutes and then Cristiano’s shaking his head as if to clear something out from in front of his eyes.
“You any good at billiards?” he asks, and then he makes and hand gesture to convey using a pool cue.
“Not really,” Mesut says. “I’m okay.” He’s lying; he knows he’s good.
“A bet, then!” Cristiano says, and Mesut smiles. He’s an easy read, Cristiano.
“I don’t know,” Mesut says, and Cristiano leads him into a game room-there’s a pool table in the center, and a huge tv with video game consoles off to one side. Most of the walls are lined with framed game shirts, some posters. It’s nice, Mesut thinks. He’d want one like this when he a buys a house.
“Hundred euro,” Cristiano says. “Almost nothing.”
“Okay,” Mesut says, and Cristiano’s only sunk two balls by the time he’s calling, “Eight ball, that-uh-”
“Bolsillo,” Cristiano says, but he doesn’t sound too happy about it. “Pocket.”
“Yeah,” Mesut says. “That pocket.”
He sinks it and smiles the entire time Cristiano is digging out his wallet.
Practice that week ranges from bad to good and then back again.
At first Mesut just thought that it was how Mourinho worked, pushing people and pushing people and pushing people, but now he’s not so sure. He’s not like this with anyone else but Mesut.
“No, no, no! Mesut, no!” he’s yelling. “Again, faster! And not like that!”
And so Mesut does it again-whatever drill it is, it’s always the same reaction.
“Mesut! Why use your right foot there? Use your left. Left! Again!” and “Why would you pass? You had open goal!” and “Why didn’t you pass? Higuaín was right there!”
It’s just something Mesut doesn’t like to deal with. The other guys notice it, bump shoulders with him and say, “Good pass,” or clap him on the back and say, “Nice footwork, there,” but Mesut knows they just say it because they feel bad. He’s doesn’t like that.
But it’s not all bad. He likes his teammates, he really does, and he can’t wait until he can actually talk to them. Either way, though, they’re nice and they welcome Mesut like a brother.
One day, about midweek, Marcelo says something snarky to Álvaro-Mesut doesn’t know what, doesn’t know the words but can guess just by the voice he uses-and Álvaro rolls his eyes. He waits, must have the patience of a saint, because Mesut’s forgotten all about it by the time that Marcelo bends over to tie his shoe and Álvaro just pushes him.
He just-pushes him. Just pushes him lightly and Marcelo’s toppling over, on the ground saying, “Yeah, yeah,” only then when he tries to get back up, Álvaro pushes him again and again, laughing and saying something back at him, something too fast for Mesut to follow, but he gets that it’s payback. So Marcelo darts his arms out, wraps them around Álvaro’s calves, and he yells, “Help!” and then-and then-
“Mesut! Help! Tackle him! Something!” And whatever he says after that is irrelevant because he’s calling for Mesut, calling for Mesut by name when they’re on a field full of his closest friends, and so Mesut doesn’t hesitate to fling himself on Álvaro’s back, and then Pepe’s joining in, and Carvalho, and they’re all just wrestling and joking around until Iker comes by, breaks up, and says that they’ve got to get back to training.
They do, and then it’s back to-
“Faster, Mesut!” and, “You go first, Mesut,” and “Why didn’t you shoot, Mesut?”
In the car, Sami tries to tell him not to let Mourinho get to him because he’s good, he’s a good footballer with killer instincts, but Mesut just can’t do that.
He rests his head against the window and doesn’t talk the entire ride. He doesn’t get what he did wrong.
Mesut goes outside, sits on a bench along some random street and calls Marko. He supposes he could have done it inside, but Sami’s there and he doesn’t want Sami to overhear. It’s-this call is a big deal to Mesut, one he’s been putting off for a while because he doesn’t know what to say and because maybe-because maybe Marko just doesn’t want to hear it.
It rings a few times before he picks up, but when he does, he says, “Hey, Mesut,” just like he always did.
Mesut says, “Marko, hey, I-hey,” and Marko laughs a little.
“How’s Madrid?” Marko asks. Mesut can’t tell if it’s small talk or something much, much heavier than that.
“It’s-it’s great, really great,” he says, and Marko laughs again, just a little bit, quietly.
“And how is it really?” he asks. And Mesut-he just crumples because Marko knows, just like Marko’s always known, and Mesut should have known, too.
“It’s-hard,” Mesut says. “I hate the language, and the coach-Mourinho-keeps riding me and I don’t know why, and I live with Sami, who I like, I really like, but he’s not you, and he doesn’t get it, and it’s just really-” Mesut cuts himself off.
“You made the right decision, though,” Marko says. “To leave, I mean.” And that-
“Really?” Mesut says. “You’re not still mad?”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay,” Mesut says. “Good. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” Marko says. “But you’re where you’re supposed to be.”
It’s hot out for how late in the year it is, but it doesn’t really bother Mesut. He’s used to the heat, he’s used to the cold; he’s used to it all. It’s all the same to him.
During a break between running sets, he jogs over to where the water bottles were left and is about to pop the top on his when Canales stops him.
“Mesut, wait,” he says. He had told everyone to call him Sergio, but Sergio Ramos said he pulled rank and so everyone calls him Canales. “I think that one’s Sami’s. Yours is the one next to it.”
“Oh,” Mesut says. “Thanks.” And it happens all the time, mixing up water bottles. It doesn’t really matter, but at any rate, he switches out the bottles. He thinks he must have chugged about half of it before his body realizes that he’s not drinking water or Lucozade, but saltwater, and he starts coughing like crazy and spits out what’s still in his mouth.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Canales asks. His eyes are big and wide and Mesut can’t bring himself to hate him.
“No, it’s-it’s water-with salt,” Mesut says between coughs. He doesn’t know the Spanish word for saltwater, all he knows is that his eyes are stinging and watering.
“Joder, I swear I didn’t know!” Canales is saying, thumping Mesut on the back like that actually helps. “Sami just told me to-and he’s your friend, so I thought-”
Mesut looks over to where Sami is. He’s with Raúl and Marcelo and Esteban, and they’re all laughing. Pranks are pretty common during practice, and Mesut figured it was only a matter of time until someone got him. Still, what a traitor. Mesut flicks him off.
He turns to Mourinho who’s just a few feet away and says, “I’m going-I’ll be-”
Mourinho just waves a hand, says, “Take care of it,” and then Mesut’s off, coughing and jogging to the water fountain a ways away. He gets there and he coughs some more-almost coughs up a lung, to be honest-and then rinses out his bottle before filling it up. He jogs back to the other side of the pitch where everyone is and they’re all standing practically on top of each other; something exciting must have happened.
“Hey, Mesut!” Sergio says. “Look who’s come to visit!”
And as Mesut looks closer, he can see who it is-Kaká. He’s still in street clothes, obviously not there to practice, but what Mesut notices more is how Cristiano’s got his arm slung around Kaká’s waist, his face buried in Kaká’s shoulder as he laughs about something.
“Hello, Mesut!” Kaká says when he notices him. They’ve only met a handful of times and Kaká has never been anything but nice. “I was just telling everyone that I’m only stopping by for a few minutes on the way to the physio’s. Wanted to see how everyone was doing.”
“I’d be doing a lot better if I was on vacation like you are,” Higuaín says, and they all laugh.
Mourinho interjects then, says, “Alright, alright, everyone back to practice,” and they all scatter, get back into lines to run the ladder or sprint between cones. When he finishes his first sprint, Mesut looks back to where Kaká was. He’s still there, and Cristiano is still with him.
They’re standing close, real close, and Kaká is saying something and then nudging Cristiano. Cristiano throws his head back and laughs, and then hides his face in his hands as Kaká throws an arm around him, raises a hand to mess up his hair. Cristiano pushes him away, laughs some more.
“Your turn,” Benzema says to him, and Mesut snaps out of it. He takes off on his next sprint and thinks, oh, because he didn’t know, couldn’t have know, feels like an idiot for not guessing sooner.
Very good friends, Cristiano had said.
Mesut gets it now.
For the Champions League game against Auxerre, Mesut learns that’s he’s not in the starting eleven and he’s-well, he’s mad, yeah, upset and disappointed, but mostly he’s just confused.
“I don’t get it,” he says to Sami, and he makes sure it’s in German and even though no one else will understand, he speaks fast and low and tilts his head down. “I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? I know I haven’t scored yet, but why-why keep me around if you’re not going to fucking play me? If they don’t trust me to help us win?”
“You might still play. You probably will,” Sami says, but then again, he’s starting, so what would he know?
“That’s not the point,” Mesut says. “Never mind, forget it. It was stupid, anyways.”
Mesut shakes his head and starts to walk away to get dressed, to get ready to warm the bench, when Iker grabs him by the elbow.
“What’s up?” he says. “Is everything okay?”
And Mesut knows that Sami’s watching, can feel the weight of Sami’s gaze when he forces a smile and says, “Yes, everything’s fine.”
“Okay then,” Iker says. “But no German in the locker room, yeah? We’re a team.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Mesut says. He knows the rules.
Fifty-eight minutes after the first whistle, Mesut is subbed on for Benzema. He passes to Ángel in the eighty-first for an assist, but Mesut doesn’t score. Not a surprise; Mourinho probably already figured he wouldn’t do much, anyways.
“What’s wrong?” Cristiano asks as they all pile into the bus. “¿Qué pasó? We won.”
“I know,” Mesut says, and he does. He knows that they won and he knows that he should just be glad that he played and he knows that he’s being childish. Either way, he still goes in his bag and pulls out his headphones as he sits down, the big ones that block out any noise and that signal that he doesn’t want to talk.
Unfortunately, Cristiano sits next to him and ignores the signal, removing the earpiece from one ear and saying, “Seriously, tell me. It’s better to talk about it.”
“You want to know?” Mesut asks. He doesn’t want to deal with pity talks.
“Yes.”
“I can’t score,” Mesut says, and he’s glad it’s a football matter because those are the words he knows, the words he’s around all the time.
“You didn’t. Doesn’t mean you can’t,” he says and Mesut tells him that they’re the one in the same. Cristiano lets out a string of really fast Spanish when he hears that, something that he doesn’t normally do because he’s usually so careful around Mesut, but then he catches himself. He says, “I didn’t score; di María did. Doesn’t mean we don’t have that madridismo.”
“You score a lot,” Mesut says as the bus pulls away from the curb. “In other matches. I’m-I don’t know-not working.”
“You’re not broken,” Cristiano says. “Por favor.”
Mesut just shrugs, looks out the window. He’s not really in the mood for this conversation, but Cristiano wanted to have it, so.
“You do things,” Cristiano says, “on the pitch, that I can’t do. You’re furtivo,” he says.
“What?”
“Um. Quiet?” he says. “No, no, more like you’re like a-a fantasma, the way you go in and out of the box like that,” Cristiano says. And that-that’s a word Mesut doesn’t know.
“Like a what?” he asks, and if Cristiano’s aim was to cheer him up, it wasn’t working. Mesut can’t even understand him.
“A fantasma,” Cristiano repeats. “Wait, wait, one second.” And then he’s going into his bag and pulling out a pocket German dictionary and something swells in Mesut’s chest, some kind of emotion that he can’t put a name to. “A-a gespenst,” he says with the worst German accent Mesut has ever heard, and he can’t help but laugh. “What?” Cristiano says. “What?”
“Nothing,” Mesut tells him, but it’s not nothing, it’s the exact opposite of nothing. “But thank you.”
Cristiano smiles and Mesut smiles back, and then they both settle in and shut their eyes, tuning out their teammates and the traffic and the engine of the bus, working steady beneath their bodies.
Part 2