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It happens one day when they’re packing for LA. Steven starts cleaning out the bedroom from one end to another while Alex goes grocery shopping. He sits at the end of the bed for a long while afterwards, staring at crisp white walls in such a gloomy grey time.
That night, he dreams.
.
(Steven’s feet are heavier than they’ve been in three years. He can’t move off the bench even though the match is five minutes away and his fate 2 hours further, can’t think can’t breathe can’t speak. Suarez enters the locker rooms before Steven can protest and he sits next to him, both hands on his legs and his eyes on the opposite wall.
“Stevie,” he says, his accent think and rolled around in his mouth, a language so full of beauty covered by rain and dark skies. “You remember what you say, yes? You remember what you say to us?”
Steven purses his lips and wants to cry, maybe laugh. He’d think that, by now, he wouldn’t believe what he was saying anymore.
“You believe,” Luis continues, and that was the whole problem right there. “You make us believe. So. We will make history.” We are history, we are living history, no?
“Yes,” he says, something large and suffocating rising in him. He nods like he’s reassuring himself and stands, cracks his knuckles and bends his knees. “Yes.” He says, stronger, and Luis smiles.
“Steven! Steven!” the reporters are climbing over each other to get to him and Steven just smiles, grins so hard his cheeks hurt and laughs too, so loud it’s all he hears and all he feels. “Amazing game!” he claims and there are pictures being taken and questions being asked but he sees nothing, understands nothing. His hands are stained of red and that is all that matters.
“Steven!” a reporter breaks through and pushes the mic close to his mouth, wide eyes and eager stance, asks- “Steven, Steven, how was getting that ball back? You must have feared then, yeah? How was it to get it back and score that goal?”
And Steven thinks- relief, such relief, and happiness, Oh God, and Steven says “I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I felt like the world dropped into my hands.” He doesn’t stop smiling and then Brendan is beside him and they’re hugging like two drunken bastards proclaiming their ever-growing love. Everyone quiets down and there’s an understanding, here.
“We’re going to win,” Steven’s voice is thick and desperate with hope and expectation, the sun shining through every window in the room. Brendan looks at him and grins, nods, and Steven hugs him again.
Steven’s heart stops momentarily before picking up with the force of a drum solo in a sold-out concert. It goes and goes and- faster faster faster- speeding oh oh- “We-“ he sputters and falls to the ground, the final whistle blowing piercingly and there are bodies, so many bodies piled on top of his own and he doesn’t feel fragile but rather strong, so strong, so strong. “We won the league!“ he screams his lungs out from the very bottom, face down on the grass, and everyone screams with him, and Steven thinks, this is it. This. This is it. Steven fists his hands one in green ad one in red and feels completely taken over by impossibility and miracles.
He cries and cries and, for every dream he’s had, he never transferred them over to reality for the sake of his state of mind. Then again, his state of mind goes completely down the drain when his fingers first touch the reflective silvery metal, his vision blurring out and his lungs scorching again, voice hoarse and nearly gone, his chest heaving as if he’s going to have a panic attack. He grips the cup so forcefully he never wants to let it go and lifts it in the air and stops, a second, a beat. Red and hearts. A pitch. A field. This is what it comes down to.
Steven kisses the cup and wonders if he’s ever felt this kind of love before. Suarez wraps his arms around him and the immense piece of silverware at the same time and yells, half spanish and half unrecognizable- “Told, si, I said! I said! We win- Es nuestro, es nuestro Steven! Ah, Dios-“
“Fuck,” Steven lets out, a long breath escaping him. “Oh, God. We won the league.”
He doesn’t stop shaking for two days.
Three days later, Steven opens the door to find a past. Xabi is warm brown eyes and trembling hands as he holds up four newspapers, a yellowed grin on his face, laughing out “Steven, you- I- you won, I-“
“I called you,” Steven says as if it’s an accusation, but it’s slightly too far from that. Xabi looks down and up again, scrapes his foot against the ground and nods, hands him the newspapers.
“Keep these. It’s your- your big. Big day.” Xabi offers, smiling less now, no explanation and no request to come inside. Steven thumbs the headlines and feels a different texture, smooth like victory, soft as metal. He eyes Xabi and can only really talk about what he sees, because the time where he could see beyond that is gone now. A barrier in between.
“It’s yours, too,” slowly, tasting each word, and he grabs Xabi’s wrist, squeezes it tightly.
This is how love stories go, an open door and a porch, a day packed with sun and a rainbow somewhere, the rain only caressing their skin. A way in and a way back, and Xabi scratches Steven’s palm lightly, bites his cheek.
“No. This is all yours.” He says, determined, and he is nothing but pain and regret. Steven tries to be something else than euphoria and ecstasy, but fails. Xabi goes back to Spain and Steven goes back to training.)
.
“Steven,” Alex calls gently, and Steven stirs exaggeratedly, a proof that yes, I am alive, and Alex lies still for a few more minutes before pushing the covers back and heading for the bathroom.
Mingled with darkness, his breath comes out in increasingly quicker puffs of air, his eyes stinging with imagination and craving, he wants, he wants, his fingers numb and reaching for something that’s not there, and his legs kick out in exasperation and anger, dread unhurriedly settling into his bones, sliding its way up to his throat. The tears soak his pillow and he punches it three times before collapsing back in the bed, his head in his hands, thinking about lost dreams and painful fantasies (why only fantasies, why could I only have them, why couldn’t I touch them).
“It’s not too late to go back,” she tries, knowing full well it is, has been since before the decision was even made, has been since May of 2014. “I can unbook our flight. We can tell the girls-“
“No.” Steven argued, pushing the covers up over his neck. Something slams at his chest when Alex pulls the blinds and the light breaks in, and a shiver runs up his spine, and she’s leaving the room with her head bowed when he asks- “It’s done, isn’t it? It’s over?”
Alex looks at him like she’s just as helpless as he is, and Steven smiles because bless this portion of good in his miserable surroundings. She tries to comfort him and Steven takes it as a yes, it is, even though she doesn’t really know what she’s saying yes to.
(Why did you wake me up?)
.
He goes for a walk after that. It starts raining five minutes in, and there’s thunder ten minutes after that, and Steven decides that walking by the water is probably the best idea he’s had. He stands four feet behind the railing and watches the drops fired like bullets against the massive body of water, watches as they fight restlessly against something so vast it’d overtake them in 0.23 seconds.
Steven watches and knows that this, this is his life. Pounding on a quest that was never going to let him in only to be punched back, falling on the floor bruised and battered, wrecked. Tired. Thinking of previous worlds, where he still thought that all that mattered was to believe and work and try. Try, because he could, and he would, he knew.
Steven laughs in spite of himself, wondering how raindrops could be so, so stupid.
.
Jamie nearly has to beg him to go out a week later. It’s two days before they leave to LA and Steven doesn’t want to, would rather bury himself in the couch and fall asleep with a craned neck and a searing pain on his lower back, but Alex looks at him once like she’s begging and he says, ok. Ok.
“You don’t know-“ he barks later, drunk on whisky and beer and maybe a little tequila, “How I’m afraid, mate, oh Lord-“ he laughs because where, where is Lord- “Christ- Jamie, mate, do you remember?” he downs a shot and doesn’t scrunch up his face anymore- just thanks God there’s still something in this world that can make him burn and feel alive for a night. “Remember how we thought we were so good? The greatest of ‘em all? Bullocks! Absolute bullocks!” his hands gesture, “Who the fuck is going to remember last year in a couple months? No one! Why the fuck did we even work! Sex and getting shitfaced, much better fucking occupation. Liverpool-“ he sneers, signals for another beer, or attempts to do so, “Liverpool, oh my God, who cares, who the fuck cares, we’re nothing, fuck- nothing! Nothing!” he yells, hits his fist on the table, and Jamie grabs his hand, a grip like steel and ice ripping him out of his delusion.
“Steven.” He grits out seriously, and Neville waves the bartender away. “What the fuck are you on about, huh? Do you think it’s fucking ok to say this? What?”
Steven’s eyes widen and he leans in, nodding, grinning like he has a secret. “Jamie. Jamie, mate. We gotta tell the truth sometimes, haven’t we?”
When Steven’s head is finally resting against his seat, it’s all too quiet. Neville clears his throat and lowers his voice unsuspiciously, and in false nonchalance, asks: “When was the last time he was with Alonso?”
Jamie raises an eyebrow and smirks, and Neville can’t help but laugh, either.
.
2006
“Xabi, just pick one,” Steven scolds mildly, and Xabi frowns at him, pursing his lips.
“No, Steven, this is important.” He quips, twirling the scarves in his hands. “What do you think? All red or stripped?”
“All red,” Steven answers without thinking, and Xabi’s smirk is narrow enough for Steven not to notice.
“All red it is,” Xabi echoes, all youth and positive and countless paths in front of his quick feet. “Do you want one too?” Xabi asks when they’re walking towards the line and Steven laughs, crosses his arms over his chest, raises an eyebrow- do you even know how many of those I have?
“Just ask- asking.” Xabi murmurs, thumbing the crest. Steven taps him with his foot and winks, says “Thank you,” and Xabi smiles wider now, certain and proud. “It’s good to see you like this. Pre-season’s been taking its toll on you.”
“Oh,” Xabi mouths, advancing in the line. The material is soft beneath his fingertips, a cloud or a blanket or grass. “I’m- you know. It’s tough to, uhm, get back.”
They pay for the scarf and Steven drives him home. When they stop at a red light Steven turns and- “Is that all?” as if the conversation had never stopped, and he realizes that maybe it’s a bit unrealistic that Xabi will even know what he’s talking about, it’s not like he would be thinking about it this whole-
“The champions league,” Xabi cuts him mid trail, can’t help the smile that draws itself onto his lips as he remembers, “Steven, I do not think I will ever have that again. What could be better than that? This year, what are we going to be doing? Nothing ever will be as good.”
Steven goes from baffled to quiet. He sits back and taps his fingers on the wheel, eyes the red and doesn’t know if he’s willing it to turn around or eye him straight on. He figures he likes it too much to want it far, and the light, surprisingly, doesn’t change. “It’s not about being as good. Believe me-“ he coughs a little, if only to hide his resentment. Xabi shifts in the sit beside him. “We just have to try. What else is there to do? Maybe we won’t get them a champions league again. Maybe we won’t hear them as impossibly loud as we did that night. Shit, mate-“ Steven swears and hits the horn, curses at the unmoving cars in front of him, suddenly irritated by them. “Let’s at least get them a fucking league.”
Xabi turns his head slowly back to the road, then to his hands, then to the road again as he wraps his scarf around his neck. Steven breathes a little heavier but doesn’t move.
“A league sounds good,” Xabi says softly, humorous but not laughing at all. He half-punches Steven’s shoulder and grins proudly, “We’re a pair of reds. Look.”
Steven smiles as if to say I am.
.
2008
“I think I will leave,” Xabi says out of nowhere, collected and sure and Steven feels like the floor is shaking beneath him.
“Ok.” he acknowledges, and loves the way Xabi can’t mask his surprise fast enough, loves the way the hurt settles just on the corner of his eyes because he’s become that, lately, someone who loves to hurt and hurt him, and then maybe the ache would be duller and faded. It wasn’t.
“Ok? Ok.” he scoffs and puts down his glass, stuffs his hands in his pockets and goes out the door. Steven looks around and really does consider not going, this is a party after all, it wouldn’t be polite, but there’s that pressure again two inches under his throat, close to his heart. He’s felt it before with shots that should have been goals and games that should have been victories. He puts down his own glass and grunts, nearly jogs all the way to the door to find Xabi standing on the balcony, looking at the moon that isn’t quite full yet.
“Tomorrow,” he says, voice straining to get louder and bigger, more powerful, angrier, truthful- “I swear I’ll tell you all you need to hear, and I’ll act like your fucking captain and the captain of this club, but right now, fuck, if you want to leave-“ he breathes in sharply and Xabi’s back straightens and Steven- “Fucking leave mate, go. Go. Get out while you still can, and maybe we’ll forget all about this while we’re young and there’ll be no need to suffer much more than this. So go. You have my fucking blessing.”
Xabi has his head tipped up to the clear light. The sky is stripped of clouds and bathed in stars, and Steven despises it with all his heart. Who the fuck deserves happiness in this cruel, cruel world.
Xabi turns to him and walks until Steven feels the wall hitting the muscles on his back and Xabi’s eyes piercing and searching, trying to scrape at the surface but Steven won’t let him, he won’t. “Steven. Steven.”
“Don’t,” he grunts, looks away, and Xabi is too close, too there, and Xabi looks away as well, and this is them. Always playing with possibility and never reality. And this is Steven. Always playing with dreams and never diving into them headfirst because- what if they’re not? Real?
“How many times have you wanted to kiss me?” Xabi asks instead, a very different subject but not really, no. Steven’s laughter rings laced with pain and a little choked, a little worn-out, and Xabi smiles along with him because this is their secret and theirs alone, and there’s no one else in the world now, is there?
“Ah, Christ,” Steven says and grabs at the fabric of Xabi’s shirt, his hand tense and sure. “Swear to me we won’t.”
“Why?”
“We haven’t destroyed this yet,” he replies, pressing at the buttons. “It’s not like we’re going to have it again. Glory. I’ll try here, but not with you, so. Swear to me.”
Xabi’s forehead touches his and the muffled clinking of glasses from inside disappears altogether. Their hearts beat everywhere- their ears and their heads and their stomachs, heavy with the weight of something horrible and needed, wanted. Xabi’s breath comes out in two and he bites his tongue and they could, right now, they could, and Steven dreams it all in his head, how he’ll palm Xabi’s neck and reach up with his lips and kiss him like he’s never kissed Alex before, and how Xabi will commit to this like he’s never committed to this city or to his own heart, and it’ll be toxic and beautiful in its downfall. Steven dreams but Xabi doesn’t swear anything and moves away, and he’s left alone in the balcony, with a moon that isn’t full and stars that have never shone for him.
“Ah, well,” he offers to no one, and sits against the wall, leans back, and dreams.
.
(He retires with red stained permanently on his skin. He grabs the crest as the crowd applauds him and sings, Steven Gerrard Steven Gerrard Steven Gerrard, tears of joy spilling and he just smiles, gathers the team for one last huddle and says: “This is all yours now. Make me proud, boys. You gotta go again.”
We will, we fucking will! they promise, lips young and carefree, unexperienced enough to be sure of everything good on a pitch. Steven doesn’t put them down and instead they bring him up, up and up towards the sky he jumps, feels like a kid when his father would grab him by the torso and toss him around and around until he was dizzy and full of life, full of palpable seconds.
“To our captain!” they yell and bring him down, crush him in hugs and words and chants, and Steven isn’t their captain anymore but he’s captain in his own eyes at last, and it’s 2017 and he’s got a premier league and a champions league and that’s what he’s always wanted, isn’t it? That and to be him, a legend, and he finally, finally feels like he is.
“It was beautiful,” Xabi says later, on the phone, a rustle of fabric and emotions transferred over miles. “The fans, Stevie. They sang so-“
“I know,” the feeling so raw it was cutting him open and stitching him closed at the same time, a shoulder aching and bended but there was no place for pain now, was there? He’d have plenty of time later. “Xabi, it was so- I wish you could have been there.” he admits, more sincere than usual because he can, he can, now.
Xabi sounds like he wants to say something but he just licks his lips, and closes his eyes, and faces the throbbing sun again. “God, I miss them. I miss it so much. Munich is gorgeous but- it isn’t home, Stevie, it isn’t home.”
“I know,” he says again and can’t help the burst of delight that’s running through his every vein, every fear and every detail wrapped up and cleared to the side as he just enjoys, and he may have retired but it’s more of a closure than a circle that goes on and on until he’s legless and desperate for any real feeling he can throw himself into. “I know.” He repeats, his lids falling and his arms weighting him down in a sweet, sugary ending to a chapter that could have tasted so bitter in the end.
They travel everywhere they have and haven’t been. Italy is crowded streets and small, tucked in cafes in corners full of colors and bright drinks. Germany is yellow and dense and harsh, magnificent in its straight lines. Mexico is laughter and music and warmth, his cheeks hurting and his eyes watering, his veins burning with alcohol. New York is demanding and commanding, a show of orders and strength, clear windows with splashes of white. LA is hot, easier to like, illusions settled on whims and ambition made out of something else. Portugal is simplicity and culture and richness, and recollections, and heartbreak merged with red wine (Tell me now, what should we say? How should we love?). Alex covers his hand in hers from across a table in Lisbon, says “I’m so glad we did this.” And he says “Yeah,” flashes of another body that was never quite his.
It’s silent in Istanbul, like a preserved memory. He knows he can’t shatter what’s behind thin glass, but sometimes he wishes he could step onto a replay of flames and melodies and cover his mouth with his hand and scream- Yes, yes, yes.
When he misses Liverpool, he goes back.
He visits Anfield, and it’s been, what, a year? The guilt reaches his sternum but stops and slides downwards to where it came from, because he knows how special it had to be the first time he returned- after getting back home, England, Liverpool. He wills his fingertips to relearn the chairs and flags and boards and railings, something they’d never actually forgotten about, won’t ever. Brendan greets him by the exit with an excited gleam in his eyes and Steven thinks he might be on the way to becoming a legend, too.
“How are you?” he shakes his hand and hugs him in the end, his expression glowing, “Come on, you have to see the new lads, they’ve been dying to meet you, they have-“
“Uhm,” he bites his lip, looks at the striking white lines. “I was wondering if- maybe I could, I don’t know, hold off on that for a bit? I was hoping to- just, look around for a while. I’ve missed-“
“Yes,” Brendan nods, grabs his hands and squeezes them quickly. “Yes, Steven, of course. It is Liverpool after all, isn’t it?”
The corner of his mouth curls up, yes, it is, but he suspects they might not have the same affection to the word. He wouldn’t describe it with numbers, instead with an amount of emptiness and the drops of red that ran over his face in a battlefield- how he used to touch the grass just to have something to grab, sometimes. When he felt too little or too much.
“Is that-“, “Holy hell!”, “It is!”, “Gosh, bugger, I haven’t got me good clothes on-“ he hears but doesn’t listen. He sits in a blood-red chair and notices how the sky looked so gloom, once, but it was, in fact, as blue as his reflection in the water.
Steven feels the guilt crawl back when the sound of a ball hitting the net flies into his ears, though maybe he wouldn’t call it guilt anymore. Nostalgia? Remorse? Projection? Remembering?
(Love? He asks as the team gathers in celebration of a goal. That’s the one that never really runs out- it just runs).
Brendan looks at him and waves and Steven almost wants to ask him for his boots back. His chest tightens. Almost.)
.
“How’s the hangover?”
“Mostly cured,” he replies, his head pounding in irony. “Yours?”
“Mine? Stevie, fuckin’ hell, you had about twice the total of our drinks. You were-“
“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, squinting at the date on the top of the only orange juice can he has on the refrigerator. “Smashed, hammered, I got the picture. Thanks for driving me home, I’m gonna go ta-“
“Oi.” Jamie cuts in calmly, his tone revealing so much more than needed. Steven sighs and slumps down on the chair, facing empty walls and empty rooms. “Are you ready?”
Steven shrugs. “My bag’s packed.”
There’s a silence. “Are you ready to leave Liverpool, Steven?”
He wants to say, haven’t I already? but he knows better, now that he’s older and unable to get away with lying as swiftly as he did when he was 25 and in love. He knows better when the realization hits him that he’s grown into Liverpool so deeply there’s no ocean that can separate the roots and the branches because they’ll always connect, somehow. Water has never been an obstacle for him.
“Hmm,” He murmurs, never, he means, dispassionately waiting for a reply. Jamie is quiet and Steven thinks maybe he’s hurting, too, since that’s all he sees these days, anyway.
.
2005
The reason Steven kisses him isn’t a reason at all. It’s more of a strike of moments and seconds that won’t repeat themselves no matter the years or days. It’s an array of colors flashing before his eyes that he can only really grasp if he finds their match.
Steven still wants to kiss him, afterwards, because he thinks that maybe they could be a time machine and happiness could be their destiny. He wants to palm Xabi’s ribcage and grab Xabi’s hand and say- “Come with me. I miss the bliss.” And he wants to wipe the look Xabi would give him with a kiss and another (and another).
Steven doesn’t kiss him again because he convinces himself that opportunities come once. Xabi doesn’t kiss him again because he’s easily addicted to pleasure and rapture (Istanbul, God, Istanbul).
They still taste each other in the dark.
.
Alex finds him in the trophy room when she gets home. He’s staring at the vitrine where his shirt used to be, now shipped out on a plane to LA.
“You know everything’s been cleaned out, right, Stevie?” she stands by his side and he looks at her and smiles, thinks emotions can’t be wiped and I still see it all. The distant tunes ring in an uproar on the back of his mind and sometimes he wishes he never had it, never had Istanbul or the goal or the trophy, sometimes he wishes he never really had anything so that maybe he could say- wasn’t destined to, you know. Could never have happened, didn’t stand a chance – but he did, didn’t he? He had the universe in his hand and he let it drop before he even felt it swirling through his fingers.
So maybe it was selfish, wishing he never knew the five beats his pulse skips when he can’t register much else than the lift of the crowd and the turmoil that follows. Maybe it was selfish and needed, but he always needs so much more than that, in the end.
“I know,” he replies, and “I was supposed to go to Anfield today.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He shrugs. The glass reflects the lightbulbs in the ceiling and the way his eyes mirror a star (falling). “Do you think they’ll miss me?” he asks, a bit too vulnerable.
Alex looks at him like she wants to sow him back together. “Stevie, they won’t know how not to miss you. ‘Once a red’, isn’t that how it goes?” she strokes his cheek. She’s beautiful. “You’re more than a red. You’re a hero.”
Steven feels nothing but words, but slides his hand over hers and links their fingers nonetheless. He decides he’ll never unlearn the tears this team ripped out of him and how sour they sat on his tongue, and how he was so used to them he couldn’t point a better reward. He also decides that he isn’t a hero, not by any written standards, and that being a red has been victory enough (he almost believes himself).
“Ok.” he nods, and they step out of the room together. The glass reflects nothing but harsh light, now.
They leave the house in the morning. Alex glances back, and Steven doesn’t- he files it under another memory he doesn’t want to ruin. The last thing he decides is that having power weights him down, and that not having it is worse.
(Is it too late to-
Yes.)
.
He gets one call from his agent and two from his parents. The air conditioning is too turned up and he’s shivering by the time they check in, and Alex gives him a minute under the pretense of buying a magazine and grabbing a quick coffee.
He calls the only person he wants to say anything to but Xabi doesn’t pick up. It’s seven in the morning in Munich and Steven knows he wakes up at 6:37 every day and he gets the message loud and clear, really. He types a few words into his phone but deletes them later, thinks that if he was willing to hear his voice, he’d have answered.
As he watches Alex approaching, he thinks about the years that have been inevitably leading up to this: he thinks about 2007 when they lose half the number of matches they win and he shouts “Next fucking year!” repeatedly until they’re saying it along with him- how he rests his head against Xabi’s shoulder and whispers “Maybe next year, then?” when they have to hand a cup over, even if just metaphorically. Kaka’s face is burned into his sight and Xabi fists his hand in Steven’s shirt and- “Next year, Gerrard. Stevie. Next year.”
He thinks about 2008 when they finish fourth and Fernando is elected best player and thick dimly lit hope gathers in a pool pressing down on his stomach, remembers- “Maybe, next year, yes?” “Yes, fucking definitely.”, and 2009 when- “One day, I’ll be back, ok? One day.”
He thinks about 2011 when his thigh started protesting and betraying him before the rest of his body followed suit and the desolation that came after- how he just kept muttering “God, maybe, next year, yeah? When we’re alright and healed, we’ll- we will.”
He thinks the same in 2014 because there isn’t much else he can think about now. He says “Maybe.” with brilliant plans and tactics in his eyes and Brendan seems almost relieved by it, and Steven realizes that maybe he’s also good at pretending. Maybe, he says, gathering leftover balls from training, maybe, he says, Xabi’s hand warm on his knee, maybe, he says, visiting Madrid in 2010, maybe, he says, when they win against Chelsea and celebrate like deranged men, maybe, he says, praising Coutinho left and right with hallucinations growing high, maybe, he thinks, fighting through interviews one at a time when there’s only four games, four games, maybe, he says, when the end comes and his hands are empty. Maybe, he says, signing a new contract. Maybe, he says, boarding a plane to LA, but- there’s no maybe now, is there?
There’s no time left to run alongside the greatest and fall in a mess of limbs on top of each other in the corner of a field with noise blasting all around. There’s no time left to say one day because one day is today and he’s always wanted to reach the skies, hasn’t he? He’s getting on a plane. Perhaps he should have made better wishes while he still could.
“Let’s go?” it isn’t a question and he knows the answer would have destroyed her. She hands Lou over and grabs the hands of the other two blondes who look up at him with bouncy feet.
They settle at the back and Alex stops him before he gets his seatbelt on. “We’re by your side, Steven.” She says seriously, her hand soothing. He swallows dryly around a rough bump on his throat and doesn’t know how to articulate the necessary words to explain that he feels like he’s leaving everything behind, and something unfinished.
.
(It’s 2022 and, coincidently, the first time Xabi steps foot in his house ever since they won the league. Phone calls and texts and letters and pictures and skype, but. It’s the first time.
Xabi sits and stares at the framed picture in front of him, how Steven kisses the trophy he’s holding will all the passion he can gather, and how if he presses harder it will crumble in his hands but it won’t matter because- it’s never been about a trophy, not exactly.
“Being able to tell me girls,” Steven starts, and the rawness in his voice is nothing but a distant memory, time has cured him, Xabi thinks, and maybe if he’d believed half as hard- “Ah, it’s the best, Xabi. Makes you feel a bit high, honestly. Not that, you know, I’ve ever been high.” he laughs, rubbing at the back of his neck. “But you’d know the feeling, wouldn’t you?”
Xabi shifts. This used to be easy, back when they were both welled up in the same boat, drowning at the same speed. “Winning a league with Liverpool? No, Stevie.” he smiles, knows there’s no one to blame but himself.
Steven wants to say he still knows, but he doesn’t. He’d never come close to know until he could gather the last piece of an endless puzzle and fit it in proudly, so how could Xabi know? How could he know the feeling, the happiness, the exhilarating sounds, the cheering and singing, the crowded bars and bursting streets, the bus half drunk and half on its way, the parade they’d been entitled to for so long, the love, the love. How could Xabi know how he’d dreamt of nothing the night he won the league because there wasn’t anything to dream anymore? How could he know how it felt to be so whole his body was ripping itself at the seams?
“Stevie?” tentative and unsure, something new, “Is it like we’ve always dreamed? Like Istanbul?”
And Steven wants to lean close and say yes, just like Istanbul, but better, about a million times or so, give or take, God, Xabi, it’s so much more than a dream, it’s so much more than we’ve ever been, and he wants to kiss him to remind him of the ache and he wants to ruin him, in the end, because he left, didn’t he? And he may have not always believed, but he stayed, didn’t he?
“Yes.” He says, because he may want to hurt but he still loves with too many arteries in his heart. The blood inside seems to spray towards the walls and the floor feels itchy, sticking out in specks of green. Xabi’s eyes are still trained on him.
“Stevie? Stevie, what was it like? Losing the league?”
“What-“ he chokes, a tremor running down his spine. “Xabi, what- what are you- I won. I-”
“Yes.” Xabi replies vigorously, and he goes to sit beside him on the couch that isn’t a couch, more of a large bench with black leather sits. “Did it hurt? Did it hurt to see the wave crash into shore and washing the elegance away? Did it hurt more than all those other times, Stevie?”
“Fuck, Xabi!” he shouts and something’s grabbing at his foot and his leg and his chest, pulling him back and he hears laughter and songs and yells and- he comes up for air in a rush to hold onto reality. Lilly-Ella looks at him curiously with her small sleepy eyes and he thinks that nothing can really hurt more than this.
.
2009
Xabi has the door open and this is where it ends. He’s going to get in a car and finish a sentence and a chapter with a single dot. Steven is toying with the ends of the scarf Xabi has wrapped around his neck.
“If we want it hard enough,” he muses with the eloquence of something broken. “It will eventually happen. It has to happen, right?”
Steven doesn’t know if he’s talking about them or the club but they’ve blurred the lines a little throughout the years. He thinks that maybe if he goes home and dreams, he can kiss Xabi, even if just for five seconds, just to feel it a second time and pray he won’t get addicted. He thinks that maybe if he goes back to Anfield he can leave everything on the pitch and hope he’ll get there when it matters, like something he’s dying to cross off his grocery list.
- win a premier league
and
- have Xabi
He doesn’t know if he’ll get them when he most needs them. He memorizes the itch of Xabi’s scarf on his hand. “Yeah, Xabs. If we give ourselves over, something has to give in.” he pauses, makes sure he means it. “We’ll do this.”
With a long breath, he confesses: “I believe in us.”
.
“Stevie. We’re here.” Alex murmurs, her wedding ring cold on his feverish skin.
Steven misses Liverpool.