Work Text:
The previous week, most of the Liverpool players had felt pretty good about themselves. After a dismal run of form, things were finally looking up a little.
Their conversations, previously worried and hushed, now began to fill with the little things they bantered about. Training, other matches, times gone by. Robertson’s birthday, especially.
But no matter how much he tried to, Alisson just couldn’t relax like his other teammates were. He couldn't sleep, nor eat, or relax. All he could do was train and practice extra hard and long, and even then that was a mere distraction from his constant fear that something would go wrong and ruin the fragile foundation he’d built among his teammates.
It was Klopp who’d overheard him pacing at three in the morning, unable to sleep. After a heart-to-heart, Alisson had agreed to try and attend a therapy session with the club’s therapist, Ishbel Straker. She mainly worked with the youth squads, but upon Klopp’s request she’d booked Alisson an appointment of one hour.
Straker wasn’t as scary or stiff as Alisson thought she’d be. After listening to him ramble for heaven knows how long, she’d asked him to start a poetry journal as a means of coping. Not a slew of pills, or recommendation to a mental asylum; just simple creative poetry about his frustrations and fears.
Straker had also said that Alisson could come again at any time. Alisson wasn’t one to admit it just like that, but Straker made him feel at ease, almost like how Klopp did.
He’d written his first poem before the loss on the weekend. It had been really hard to get the words out of his mind and onto the paper, but eventually Alisson managed to write four lines:
Nervous as heck,
My teeth are chattering
I'll try to do my best
But can I rely on those around me?
It was short, mismatched and didn’t rhyme, no matter how much Alisson tried to see the positive in it. But Straker had said that every word written was better than writing nothing; so he guessed he was doing pretty well.
*
Alisson had known for nearly a month that Liverpool would be knocked out of the Champion’s League. Right up until Benzema had scored, he thought they could at least escape with a goalless draw, or maybe even a win.
But Vinicius, his own compatriot, had managed to give a pass while sitting down. It was terrible, abjectly miserable, and Liverpool slid right out of the round of 16 without so much as a whimper.
For once in his life, Alisson didn’t want to talk to anybody. Not Firmino, not Van Dijk, not Klopp. He didn’t want to see anybody; so he locked himself inside a broom closet in the stadium before Klopp could find him. Of course the others would search too, but Klopp always managed to find Alisson when nobody else could. He was a one-man GPS system when it came to the boys.
Alisson sat on a bucket, and something bumped against him in his knapsack: his poetry journal. Straker had told him that times like these were good times to write poetry, as his emotions and thoughts were already at the surface, ready to spill over.
He opened the door to let a little light in, hunched over the journal and began to write. He wrote and wrote, careful not to cross out or edit anything. As Straker had so helpfully told him, with her fluffy curls shaking along with her head, “we can’t edit how we feel to make it look better”.
Out of the blue, the door opened fully, revealing Van Dijk. Alisson startled, rushing to hide his notebook. He’d succeeded in keeping the details of him and Straker’s conversation secret from anyone else, but this time there hadn’t been any calls or footsteps or other signals that someone was coming.
“Hate to interrupt you, but the press want you for an interview in half an hour,” Van Dijk announced, sitting on the floor next to Alisson. “I’ll be waiting right here for you. Here, give me your knapsack.”
Alisson hesitated, clutching the canvas tote closer to him. “Actually…I’ll take it along with me, Virgil. Don’t worry, everything’s perfectly normal.”
Van Dijk raised a suspicious, perfectly arched eyebrow. Alisson could have slapped him for it. “Every signal in the world is telling me the opposite. I might not be the boss, but give me some credit for knowing you a little.”
“Like what?”
“You’re in the broom closet, alone, you’re not freaking out or completely broken, and you brought a knapsack with you?! Spill the beans.” Van Dijk gestured towards the knapsack with a knowing look. “Is it the therapy session you attended?”
Alisson’s eyes widened in surprise. “H-how’d you guess?”
“Stefan told me Ishbel had an appointment with you,” Van Dijk explained, calm as ever. “Did she recommend journaling?”
“Well…sort of.” Alisson hadn’t wanted to tell anybody that he’d started poetry writing. None of his current hobbies could be described as tough or non-sappy at all, a complex that he often struggled with. But he could trust Van Dijk; the Dutchman could hear a hundred secrets and never tell a soul.
“It’s a poetry journal,” he confessed at last, taking the forest green journal from the knapsack. “Ishbel told me to do this to help with stress. I’m not so good at it, but I think it’s helping.”
Van Dijk shrugged, his features twitching into a half-amused, half-dejected smirk. “Whatever floats your boat. Can I see one?”
“Well…you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“My lips are zipped,” Van Dijk promised, “and come hell or high water, I won’t tell a soul.”
Alisson opened the journal, skimming the pages until he got to the fourth one. “I wrote this just now.”
Van Dijk glanced over Alisson’s shoulder, squinting at the pages. “Lovely handwriting, but…is this English?”
“Oh, yeah.” Alisson blushed hotly; he’d completely forgotten that he’d written the poems solely in Portuguese. “Why don’t I translate for you?”
Van Dijk leant against a pile of brooms and yawned. “Be my guest.”
Alisson inched closer to Van Dijk and leaned on his shoulder, stifling a yawn of his own. He couldn’t help the quiver in his voice as he read his own words aloud.
It's hard to try, then fail.
It's even harder to try and win;
And then everybody else you love loses.
It's hard to fail at your one job.
It's even harder to succeed at your one job;
And then have everybody fail at theirs.
And then the whole team dies slowly...
There's a one man GPS, an older brother who shares my birthday
A younger brother who's skinny as a chopstick and a Dutch wall of butter
Searching for me. I know they're going to find me
It feels good, actually, knowing they'll have my back off the pitch.
I just wish more people had my back on it.