Work Text:
Military interventions must fulfill a certain set of prerequisites if they want to fly under the guise of the jus ad bellum doctrine. They must have a just cause, like righting an offense or coming to the aid of a third party, they must be waged by a competent authority and they must only employed as a last resort. The missions should have a clear chance of success and the means used should be proportional to the initial aggression. Besides the obvious subjectivity of all these requirements, there is another reason that makes the just war tradition particularly attractive to the neoliberal superpower du jour. Some theorists argue that having other political, economic or strategic interests is by no means an obstacle to the morality of the expenditure; as long as at least one of the reasons is just in nature the just cause condition is fulfilled.
This train of thought may certainly entertain policy makers all over the world, but does very little to comfort Alex Gerrard as she’s booking plane tickets for Dubai. Probably because she and Xabi haven’t branched out into non-fiction territory just yet. And even if they had, there’s only so much self-delusion a person with a faulty memory can afford.
Yes, Stevie deserves a hell lot more than tea laced with crushed Xanax and reruns of the X Factor and there’s not much else she can offer. The girls help, nudge and crawl over his bruised body, trying to distract him. They have that acute sense of intuition reserved for small children and particularly nasty hyenas.
But ever since that fucking match he’s either been enclosed in a state of catatonic sadness or trying to cover four different positions on the field. She prefers the later. She wishes for that erratic craze since it’s at least partly fuelled by adrenaline which works as a natural pain reliever and keeps the feeling of attending one’s own funeral to the minimum. It’s selfish, of course, but by the time he gets home he needs to be lulled out of the car with the promise of leaking pipes and other things that need fixing.
She looks at him while he’s trying to find out where all the water’s coming and there are so many things itching just on the tip of her tongue. All sorts of things he wouldn’t believe, all sorts of things he’d gently ignore because she can’t really understand, all sorts of things he himself has to repeat to others with a straight face and a heavy heart. She reins all those things in, plus a confession about hiring someone to break the main shower pipe in the guest bedroom, and keeps her mouth shut.
She just stays awake listening to Stevie falling in and out of sleep. She doesn’t know how else to deal with open wounds.
This doesn’t make her less of a coward as she decides to leave him to the wolves and go perfect her tan.
He doesn’t even look surprised when she tells him.
She cries in her car.
It is perhaps amusing in the very great scheme of things that she’s married to the ultimate incarnation of the selfless hero archetype.
She sends Xabi a copy of Bukowski’s short story collection and underlines the title of the first one, appropriately called Confessions of a Coward, twice.
She also calls him the next day being as unsubtle as humanly possible.
She may be a coward, but sloppy she is not.
***
In battle, surprise can make up for a great deal of material or numerical disadvantages. It shatters the conceptions on which military thinking rested and results in confusion and broken courage in the enemy’s ranks, which can be then further exploited by a capable general. Despite the obvious secrecy attempted by those planning an attack, there are always signals that put together can predict their plans. Unfortunately, the difference between these signals and mere noise can only clearly be seen in retrospect.
And yet, sometimes, even a last minute warning can make a great difference.
Steven Gerrard is not taken completely by surprise when he opens the door to see Xabi on the other side. He had to buzz him in through the security gates not five minutes ago which gave him just enough time to hide the raspberry flavored vodka between the sofa’s cushions and to change the TV channel from where he was watching highlights from the Manchester City game.
Now he’s resting against the door, feeling Xabi move his weight from one foot to another and minutely glancing at one of the guard dogs who’s snarling at his rental. He must admit this is a tad more entertaining than watching his dreams go up in flames in full HD. Stevie even gets a brief moment of amusement imaging Xabi having to walk back to the airport if the dog gets loose and eats his tires.
‘Your dog doesn’t seem too happy to see me.’
‘You are aware that the one who jumped into your arms as if you were filming the bloody Notebook was probably laser trained, right?’
Xabi forces his face into an exhausted smile, glad to get the required Emidio Tucci joke out of the way.
The door shuts behind him with a soft click.
Xabi collapses against it under Stevie’s blank stare. As far as reunions go, this one is turning out to be more awkward than the one between him and the Weimaraner.
‘Hello.’
‘’Hi.’
‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’
It takes some time for the sheer idiocy of these words to reach Stevie, but when it does his laughter is only 57% bitterness which warms something inside of Xabi. Something else warms up when he sees Stevie making his way towards him.
His movements are graceless, his bones heavy, his brain-to-limbs coordination impaired by dull rage and all of Alex’s low calorie cocktails he found in the pastry, but he still manages to unbutton most of Xabi’s shirt and then rest his head in the crook oh his neck.
Xabi cradles the back of his skull with all the tenderness he feels capable after losing two planes and a league.
Their beaten hearts rest against each other as waves of fierce longing and raw exhaustion crash over them.
Their fingers intertwine and everything hurts a thousand times more and a thousand times better.
Stevie is quite at a loss as to what to do with Xabi. The shower in the main guest bedroom is still leaking, the bed in the other guestroom is not that sturdy and the TV in the living room is blasting about Real’s loss because in his haste he changed it from Sky Sports 1 to Sky Sports 2.
He’s delaying any sort of decision by purposefully biting on Xabi’s earlobe, relishing in the sounds he manages to extract from the younger man. Xabi turns his head to lay his lips all across Stevie’s temple with studied clumsiness.
Their hands travel unhurried but shaking, under half closed eyes.
They are lit to the bone by the usual slow desperation.
They laugh into each other’s mouths after a while, in silent agreement that they’re too old to fuck against the entrance door.
They make their way to the kitchen because Stevie can still hear the commentators in the other room waging in how this could have been a historic year for Real.
‘We shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.’
‘Is that what we’re doing?’, Stevie asks while opening a bottle of wine. His stomach is already coated in raspberry vodka so there’s no harm.
He watches as Xabi frets around with pans and sauces, muttering nonsense as he chops things, paying more attention to Stevie’s forehead lines than to his own fingers and the huge knife closing in on them.
Stevie is not really sure how to feel about this. As unhygienic as it may sound, he was planning to use the kitchen table for something different.
To be fair, he’s not entirely sure how to feel about anything. With Alex and the girls gone there is no reason for him to even attempt normal behavior. No reason to inspect his insides to calculate exactly how long he’s allowed to stay in bed, unmoving, without worrying anyone.
By the time he finishes half of the wine bottle he’s aware of just one thing: he’s not at all hungry.
He makes his way to Xabi who’s stirring God knows, untucks his shirt and splays his fingers on the small of his back. He stays there for a moment, leaning on him, enjoying every irregular intake of breath like a personal achievement. He then moves his hand around to Xabi’s belt and oh, that sound definitely counts as a victory.
‘Xabi?’
‘Mmm?’
Stevie’s other hand finds its way to Xabi’s neck, carding his fingers through the short hairs there as his mouth seems absolutely fascinated with all the freckles dusted on Xabi’s shoulder blades.
He tugs his hair with a little more force than strictly necessary and he can barely hear Xabi’s gasp from all the ringing in his ears.
‘If I wanted comfort food I’d have gone to my mothers’.’
Xabi’s hands get so intoxicated with the sudden need to touch Stevie, one of them gets firmly planted on the stove ring that was heating for the sauce.
With the kind of day they both had, it barely registers as a surprise.
Xabi still swears in three languages as Stevie drags him to the bathroom, telling him he’s worse than Lourdes.
Stevie kneels on the cold tile floor, looking for band aids in the small cupboard. Standing is not really an option. He has to use most of his energy just to ignore Xabi’s pitiful moans from where he's resting on the edge of the bathtub. He wonders for a moment if his relationships with both him and Alex don’t betray some Freudian attraction to Carra.
Five minutes of almost dismembering the cupboard only result in him offering Xabi a selection of 6 different types of tampons. He briefly considers calling Alex to ask. He knows back in that place of his brain he never goes to that she’d take it in a stride, answer and then complain about being woken up but not ask anything else.
He rests his head on Xabi’s knee.
Exhaustion blurs need.
But on the other hand, when has he ever been anything but exhausted?
He smiles up at Xabi who answers with a twitchy flick of the tongue Stevie understands to mean something along ‘do your worst’.
Which ends up with him biting Xabi’s hipbones with a ferocity unbecoming for 3 and a half in the morning.
He makes a relatively fast job of riding Xabi of his trousers and starts mouthing at the thin cotton, spreading his fingers all over Xabi’s ribcage to savor every passing tremor.
‘Tell me, is your underwear also Versace?’
Xabi’s head connects to the wall with a dull thud, half laughing, half moaning.
Stevie starts sucking bruises on the insides of his thighs, still somehow managing to look like a picture perfect catholic school boy.
‘Why don’t you take them off and find out?’
‘Fuck, Xabi, how do you even get laid with these lines?’
‘Hard, hopefully.’
‘My God, just shut up and look pretty.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Stevie stifles his laughter in that place where Xabi’s groin meets his leg.
The underwear turns out not be Versace.
From then on, instinct takes over.
Stevie even has the customary joke prepared when he feels Xabi’s fingers kneading his shoulder in desperation.
‘Stevie..’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you mad at Alex?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Are you.. are you doing this because you’re mad at Alex?’, Xabi asks in a stupidly small voice while seemingly fascinated by the ingredients of some feet deodorant.
Stevie almost starts laughing but Xabi looks so breakable in the cold light he decides the situation asks for something more jarring.
‘Yes.’
Xabi looks beautifully torn for just a second more than it was strictly enjoyable for Stevie.
‘The first time I opened myself for you it was because I was mad at Alex.’
He kisses along Xabi’s thighs with unhurried reverence, not even looking to see his reaction.
‘I wake up in the dead of night and buy plane tickets for Northern Spain- tickets that I never pick up, mind you- because I am so, so mad at Alex.’
Stevie nuzzles his beard along Xabi’s stomach, mindlessly enjoying the wrecked sounds the Spaniard is making.
‘When I’ll come down your throat twenty minutes from now, it’ll be because I’m mad at Alex.. You. Fucking. Moron.’
He takes him to the hilt and swallows one, two, three times Jesus Fucking Christ and then stands up and leaves him there.
Hard, wet and knuckles white from clutching the sink.
Xabi makes his way to the living room a while after, even wearing his trousers.
He sits next to Stevie and whispers ‘I’m sorry’.
It sounds deafening.
Stevie shrugs with his bad shoulder.
‘It’s okay, I found your flask.’
They share small smiles, the flask until it empties and what’s left of the raspberry vodka. They also end up watching reruns of Eurovision, splayed over each other.
‘You beard is better.’
‘Now you’re just stroking my ego.’
‘You complaining?’
‘Never. ’
Xabi starts tracing the pads of Stevie’s fingers with his tongue.
‘But there are other things you could stroke instead.’
Stevie’s laughter vibrates all the way to Xabi’s toes.
‘Jesus, Xabs, that was awful.’
‘Fuck me, I’m out of touch.’
Stevie bites along Xabi’s chin, still shaking with laughter.
‘That was even worse. Just shut up for a while, okay?’
Xabi does shut up for a while. Or at least doesn’t form any coherent words.
They fall asleep warm and sated, their bodies resting against each other like bruised anchors.
***
To make people spy on their countries, most intelligence agencies initially rely on four basic human motivations which can be described by the acronym MICE: money, ideology, conscience and ego. Material transactions are more often than not present, even when ideology is the primary reason for defecting. Dmitri Polyakov, described by CIA director James Woolsey as the ‘the jewel in the crown’, offered vast and crucial information: the names of four U.S. military officers working as spies for the Soviet Union, hard evidence of Beijing's deepening animus towards Moscow and technical data on Soviet-made antitank missiles. In a discussion with his American handler he said he was doing it all for his country. ‘I am born a Russian and I will die a Russian.’
He didn’t accept much money, and what he did accept was under the form of Black & Decker power tools, work overalls, fishing gear and shotguns. Sometimes he also asked for lighters and pens.
But however symbolic, every man has its price.
Xabi mouths this revelation along Stevie’s collarbone, who’s still dazed with sleep.
‘Did you wake me up to finally tell me exactly just how much Madrid paid for you?’
‘No.’
‘Then?’
‘Do you remember Mr. Evans?’
‘The head of the cleaners’ staff?’
‘Mhm.’
Stevie prompts himself on his elbow to look at Xabi surrounded in white morning light.
‘What did you do to our 70 years old janitor?’
‘Nothing. ’
‘Xabi..’
‘Just let me get my jacket.’
Stevie is sidetracked for a moment by the image of Xabi’s backside. He then flops back on the mess of pillows and blankets they made out of the living room floor of a house which has 7 bedrooms.
Upon his return, Xabi looks almost sheepish. Stevie’s body instantly goes into survival mode.
Xabi crawls over Stevie’s torso with drunken grace. And Stevie lets him have his fill while his mind is still spinning on remote locations where they can hide Mr. Evans body, if need arose.
Xabi bites his lips, looking a lot younger than his thirty two years and his magnificent beard would suggest.
Stevie kisses him slowly, defeated to whatever disaster the man in his arms managed to generate in the 6 hours he’s spent on English soil.
Xabi thrusts a premier league medal in his hand and Stevie almost chokes on his tongue. He traces the inscriptions dreamlike not sure if he wants to punch Xabi or bury him alive.
Xabi probably feels this because he hides his face in Stevie chest and lets his hands roam south of his navel, trying to postpone his utter demise by half an hour.
‘How much did this cost you?’
‘That? Nothing. He did it for free.’
Xabi circles Stevie’s left nipple with his tongue just enough times to make Stevie wonder what he did wrong (or terribly right) in a former life.
‘The one he stole for me, though.. That cost me more than my Hublot watch.’
Stevie follows Xabi’s hands to where he’s now trying to extract from his jacket a similar medal.
He collapses in a crisis of amused, dry sobs.
He then fucks Xabi against the French windows within an inch of both their lives. Or until his back looks as if he wrestled a particularly violent cat.
***
The Hundred Year War actually lasted 116 years. Due to its duration it naturally gave birth to a great number of legends and weird incidents. Supposedly, on one of the many battles, the fog was so thick, two days were necessary to make out who was the victor and who the defeated.
Steven Gerrard wakes up at around noon the next day thirsty and sore. As the fog rises from his disoriented brain, he’s left with the image of bruised lips laying a slow, wet, filthy kiss on the jutted bone of someone’s ankle.
Nine and a half times out of ten he’d put his money on Xabi. Now, he’s not entirely sure. He watches the entire scene over and over again as if from above. For fact checking purposes.
He makes a note in his phone to replace Alex’s raspberry vodka and then makes his way up to an actual bed.
He looks at the two medals on his nightstand and mad laughter bubbles in his throat.
41% bitter.
He falls asleep to the sound of leaking pipes from the next door bedroom.
He may or may not be clutching those two pieces of nickel.