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On the first day off that Marc gets after weeks of grueling training, he takes his rented Audi down to the beach.
Growing up in Mönchengladbach didn’t exactly give one an affinity for water, but Marc had always been a special case. His mom always said he was a happy baby that seemed happiest when left alone in the bath for as long as the water permitted, playing with his rubber duckies and plastic ships. When he grew a little bit older, there was a small pond behind his grandma's house that was too dirty for him to swim in, so he sat on the banks for hours, watching the dragonflies buzz past and the rushes rustle with the whisper of a passing frog. He learned to swim in his school’s chlorinated pool, blinking away the sting in his eyes, diving again and again, trying to get it right.
“Are you aiming to be a professional swimmer now?” his dad asked, watching Marc over the glowing report of his swim teacher. “Is football on the backburner now?”
Marc gave him a look. It worked on all the kids on the playground who made fun of his patched up goalkeeper gloves. His dad just laughed.
When he was fifteen, their family went on a roadtrip to the seaside. Hours in the back of a cramped vehicle, kicking at Jean-Marcel because older brothers were so annoying, and it was all forgotten the moment he caught sight of the tempestuous blue on the horizon.
The sea was unlike anything he’d ever seen, impossibly big and vast, controlled chaos. It was too cold to swim in, but he went anyway, rolling his pants to his knees and running out into the waves. The strength of thm against his legs grounded him and the cold sharpened his focus, until his mind was blank of doubt and fear, entirely at peace. He walked out grinning, and didn’t stop, even when his mom yelled at him and his brother put him in a headlock for eating the last gummi bear.
His love affair with the sea continued, though he rarely got to see it, increasingly bogged down with trainings and matches and trials. But that was okay. It mean he was making it, and he’d been ready to sacrifice anything for that.
He’d never told anyone this, but Barcelona’s proximity to the sea had a big influence on his decision to move. Mönchengladbach was home. He knew every backstreet, every underpass, had played football on every muddy football pitch in the city. The club had given him opportunity, the fans had given him love and in return, he’d tried to give them loyalty and his best.
FC Barcelona came calling, shining and immense and undeniable. And it had the sea. Marc had packed his bags and left, though it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his young life.
And Marc had stood in the goal at Camp Nou and felt the shouts wash over him in a giant wave of sound, let them steady him like the sea waiting just beyond city limits.
But the first day off he had, he woke up early and got into his car.
It’s just before sunrise, in the moment when the world is grey and dab, and the streets are almost deserted while the streetlight are stuck deciding if they should switch off or keep shining for a few more hours. The roads are easier to navigate this time of the morning and he takes the turn for Castelldefels, knowing the beach there is nice.
He’s been there once before, to visit Ivan and his lovely wife, and their equally precious daughter, but he’d only gotten to see the sea on his way there in Ivan’s car and from his spacious terrace.
When he get there now, it seems too bright still, a few silhouettes of early joggers already visible. So he keeps driving, until he spots a dirt road diverging from the road and makes a driving violation or two to get to it.
He parks just as the first vestiges of dawn claw their way laboriously across the horizon, painting it in muted pinks and bright yellows, reflecting on the sea surface in bright flares. He’s close enough to hear the sound of the waves lapping against the sand and to smell the salt in the air. His legs sink in when he steps into the sand and maybe he shouldn’t have worn sneakers, but it’s mid-autumn in Barcelona and the wind is cold.
He doesn’t go into the water, wincing at the thought of the scolding he’d get from his agent if he got a cold at this point in the season. Instead, he chooses the risky activity of climbing onto a large rock outcropping, aiming for the biggest one, nearest to the water. The stone is cold and his hands keep slipping, but eventually he gets there, feeling a pinprick in his hand as he hurdles over the last rock. There’s a cut on his finger, already welling up with blood. It’s hardly big enough to start a fuss, but it’ll be enough to sting the moment he starts sweating in his gloves.
“You should put it in the water. It’s supposed to help with the healing.”
Marc looks up, startled by the sudden voice appearing out of nowhere. There’s a man in the water, his head propped up on his arms, leaning on the furthest rock, watching him. He doesn’t seem to be cold, despite the freezing temperature of the water.
He’s also speaking in perfect German.
There are several questions clamouring for attention in his head, but the don’t seem so pressing when the man smiles at him, revealing a neat row of blindingly white teeth.
“Um, I think it’s just a scratch. Nothing to fuss about.”
The man tilts his head to the side, still grinning. The tips of his teeth are the tiniest bit pointed.
“Not many things are, in the end,” the man says cryptically, leaning the side of his head against the rock, apparently unbothered by its rough surface. The position should make him look vulnerable. It doesn’t. “So what brings you to the beach so early in the morning?”
“I just wanted some peace and quiet,” Marc says, hoping that his tone isn’t showing how disgruntled he is at having it interrupted. He should probably leave, maybe find another beach, free of crazy half-naked men. Or just go home, since he’d obviously failed at what he’d come for. There’s nothing calm about what he feels when he catches a glimpse of tanned chest as the man gets rocked by a wave.
“And here I am, distracting you,” the man says. He almost seems disappointed.
“It’s fine,” Marc blurts out. “It’s a public beach. Are you from around here?”
“Not really. I’m pretty far away from home.”
“Me too.”
Marc wants to kick himself. Of all the times to have a heart-to-heart, if has to be with this stranger?
“We’re a pair then,” the man grins. In the glare of the sun, now risen above the horizon, Marc can see a trail of salt crystals on his cheek. “I’m Rafael, but call me Rafinha. Everyone does.”
“Marc,” he answers, leaning over to shake hands without a second thought. Rafinha looks confused for a moment, before he reaches out to take it. His hand is rough and cold, and when Marc pulls away, there’s salt on his palm.
“What do you do for a living, Marc?”
“I play football,” he says, somewhat taken aback. He’s not someone prone to delusions of grandeur, but he’s gotten used to getting recognized on the streets of Barcelona.
“Football...is that what they play on the beach when they kick the ball around?” Rafinha’s face lights up. “That always looks fun!”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Marc says slowly. Rafinha doesn’t look like he’s kidding. “ Sorry, I don’t meet a lot of people who don’t know what football is.”
Rafinha’s face falls and he turns his head to watch the ocean.Marc bites his tongue. It was a legitimate comment to make, but Rafinha looks so sad, he wants to take it all back.
“There’s all sorts of people in the world,” Rafinha says eventually and when he turns back to look at Marc, he’s smiling again. “I should go. The city’s finally finished waking up. It was nice meeting you, Marc.”
Marc barely manages a “You too,” before Rafinha turns and swims away.
The sun is high on the horizon and the noise of the road behind him has grown louder with commuting cars.
The waves fall around Rafinha’s broad shoulders as he swims, faster than anyone Marc has ever seen. Instead of turning towards the coast, Rafinha heads for the open sea. Marc stands up, opens his mouth to call out after him, but the words die out on his lips.
Rafinha dives, and for one long moment, the sun reflects off a long forked fishtail, silhouetted against the sky, the scales shining like spun gold.
Then he’s gone, leaving the world somewhat muted, less bright. Marc squeezes his eyes shut and calmly counts to ten. Then he plunges his hand into the cold water, hoping it’ll wake him from what’s obviously a dream.
It doesn’t. It just makes the cut sting.
*
He returns to the beach when he can, but never sees the merman again. He finds himself obsessing, devoting more and more time to training so he doesn’t have to think. He keeps seeing it, the long powerful tail against the blue-grey of the early morning sky, the golden scales, Rafinha’s smile, the sharp points of his teeth.
He kept wondering about the German, if Rafinha ever really spoke it, or if it was some sort of mermaid magic that made Marc think he was listening to a perfect Gladbach accent.
When he wasn’t training, Marc read obsessively, fairy tales and urban legends, of bloodthirsty sirens leading men astray, of tails turning into legs and into pain. But none of the books and articles mentioned anything about mermen who were clueless about football and had the most incredible smile.
He’d almost convinced himself that it was a hoax, that Rafinha was some sort of performer and the scaly tail a prop, but he kept seeing it in his mind, how fast he’d been, how agile in the water.
So instead, he came to the rock outcropping over and over again, as early and as often as his schedule permitted it, hoping for an answer.
*
The day after they’d won the Champions league, Marc decides that rather than driving home and faceplanting into the mattress, it’d be smarter to drive down to the beach instead. The alcohol has mostly worn off on the plane, and now he just feels the kind of keyed up exhaustion that always makes it impossible to sleep.
He arrives at the beach when it’s still dark, and marvels at how warm it is already, so different than when he came here first in autumn. He settles on the sand and smiles when the warm breeze hits his cheeks. Everything feels so peaceful, the gentle sound of the waves, the rough texture of the pale sand under his fingertips and the warmth. He feels as if he could just fall asleep right here, lulled by his surroundings.
“Hey, Marc! Marc!” he wakes up to the sound of his name and to sand in almost every crevice of his body. “You fell asleep on the beach and the tide is coming in.”
He sits up, blinking at Rafinha’s concerned face above him, before it sets in that he’s really there and he instinctively looks down.
The tail is definitely still there. It’s stretched out next to Marc’s feet, the scales shifting and shining and alien against the pale sand. It’s long, at least twice the length of Marc’s body and as he watches, the forked end comes up out of the seawater to give a little wave.
“The tail is real then?” he says, his voice coming out surprisingly calm.
“Yep,” Rafinha says, adjusting his position on the sand. It looks a little awkward, because he has no leverage from the tail, instead relying on his hands to scoot further upwards on the beach. The scales come up to his waist, where they slowly seem to fade into flawless dark skin.
Marc catches himself staring and looks away.
“So you’re, what? A mermaid? A merman?” he asks.
“We prefer siren, actually,” Rafinha says, flopping onto his back in the sand with a sigh. It strikes Marc as somewhat vulnerable. “It sounds the most menacing. I like to project an air of danger.”
He makes a face at Marc in the process that’s probably meant to be angry, but comes out looking more like a grimace. He’s got some sand on his cheek and his sharp little teeth make it look even more ridiculous. Marc can’t help it. He laughs.
“Hey! Stop laughing at me! I’m plenty scary!” Rafinha cries out, indignant, poking Marc in the stomach, which just makes him laugh harder. It might have an edge of hysteria to it, because it’s not every day you win the Champions League and then wake up with a siren by your side.
The aftermath of his laughter leaves them both in curiously comfortable silence, laying on their backs, watching the rapidly lightening sky (newly formed legend and fairy tale myth, side-by-side).
“I came looking for you a few times,” Marc says to break the silence, winces at how plaintive his voice sounds. “But you were never here. I almost gave up. I thought I’d never see you again.”
“And why did you come today?” Rafinha asks, quietly. Marc turns onto his side, propping his head on his hand to see him better. In turn, Rafinha turns his head to the side, smiling when their eyes meet.
“I won the Champions League with my team yesterday,” Marc shrugs, “I figured I’d have some leftover luck on my side.”
It’s not entirely true. He’d just been so happy, so full of emotion and feeling, that all he’d been able to think about was the peace of this little beach, the memory of the quiet invitation in the quirk of Rafinha’s smile. Was it normal, to get so attached to a stranger? Or was it just more siren magic?
“Champions League…” Rafinha rolls the words in his mouth like they’re unfamiliar. He looks suddenly very young. “That’s a big deal isn’t it?”
He listens fervently when Marc describes it, the saves he’d made, the joy of celebration and when Marc runs out of words, he asks questions. They talk for what feels like hours.
Marc never asks him any of the questions he’d thought about through the restless nights.
In turn, Rafinha tells him about his family, about his brother Thiago, swimming somewhere in the North Sea and how much he misses him, and his mother, raising his little sister and brother in some underwater caves near Vigo, and the long stretches of open sea near Brazil where his father has made his home. When Marc asks him where his home is, Rafinha shrugs a little.
“Everywhere a little bit,” he says, “but I like Barcelona.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s got nice scenery,” Rafinha says, reaches over to run the pads of his fingers gently over the slope of Marc’s cheekbone. “I think I’ll stay for a while.”
Marc smiles, presses back into the touch and tries to hide how pleased he is by that piece of information. He fails.
A bit later, he convinces Rafinha to go swimming. The scales have dried out in the sun, dulled with salt crystals. It looks painful, and Rafinha tries to shrug it off, but Marc doesn’t miss his sigh of relief when his whole body is immersed in water again. Marc strips down to his underwear and follows after him, hoping against hope that his blush isn’t visible from space.
Judging by the way Rafinha grins, then touches the flushed skin on his chest gently, Marc’s failed.
Objectively, Marc knows he’s a good swimmer, but Rafinha swims literal circles around him, the scales brushing against him every so often, a brief cold touch. They chase each other around for a while, until eventually Rafinha lets him win and they float in the middle of the open sea, Marc gripping Rafinha’s arms, while his tail keeps them both afloat effortlessly.
A ship moves across the horizon, causes the waves to grow bigger, more treacherous.
Rafinha’s face grows curiously still. He reaches out to wrap his arms around Marc, pulling him closer to his body. His body is cold, but the skin of his chest is smooth against Marc’s. He closes his eyes and buries his face in Rafinha’s neck. He’s never felt safer.
“Wrap your legs around me,” Rafinha says into his ear, and something in his tone has Marc obeying immediately. The waves grow stronger, almost too much to just be caused by a passing ship. Almost supernatural. “Keep your eyes closed. Now take a deep breath and trust me.”
Marc breathes in deep, right before Rafinha pulls them both underwater. They dive deep, or so it feels, deeper than Marc could ever go on his own. The water is colder down here and Rafinha’s body feels warmer against him. Almost human.
They swim for what feels like ages and Marc’s lungs are burning, the need for air resulting in instinctive panic. He opens his eyes, sees only darkness and Rafinha’s face above him, carved from marble.
The surface is so far away.
The air expels from his lungs in a flurry of bubbles and right as he opens his mouth to shout, Rafinha’s mouth covers his, breathing the oxygen back into his lungs.
They break the surface soon after.
Marc pulls away from the kiss to breathe unfiltered air and Rafinha swims them to shore to disembark them gently on the sand, laying Marc’s head on his lap.
“That was scary,” Marc says after he’s caught his breath, after the the visions of a terrible death by drowning have cleared from his mind.
“You trusted me,” Rafinha says, softly combing his fingers through Marc’s hair, seperating the wet strands. “I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”
“I’m glad.”
Marc cranes his neck to look at Rafinha, who smiles at him reassuringly. The sun is bright in the sky, warm and insistent, and Marc feels drowsy. He turns his head to hide from the sun in Rafinha’s scales, reaches out to trace where they fade into skin. Rafinha shivers, his hands stilling.
“Ah, is this okay?” Marc asks, freezing with his fingers still pressed to Rafinha’s torso.
“It’s, um, a sensitive spot,” Rafinha says in a strangled voice. Marc flushes and removes his hand. “Maybe...maybe later.”
“Yeah?” Marc asks, somewhat breathless. There’s a weird tension in the air around them that’s been there since the beginning, but it’s the first time either has acknowledged it openly.
Rafinha smiles again, quiet, then leans forward to carefully press his lips against Marc’s forehead.
Marc closes his eyes, warmed by the sun and soothed by the fingers in his hair, and falls asleep.
*
Rafinha’s kisses are cold and taste a little bit of saltwater, and there are little salt crystals where their skin touches, rubbing a little into Marc’s skin. His hands are rough, much like the wet sand against his back, but Marc doesn’t mind, shivers when they touch him reverently.
The scales, in contrast, are smooth and cool, and Marc traces where they shift into smoother skin, listening to Rafinha moan and gasp under the gentle touch.
They kiss and he traces the spikes of Rafinha’s teeth with his tongue, carefully, aware that pressing to hard might leave him with an injury that’ll be hard to explain, but heady with the danger of it anyway.
They kiss until their lips are tender with it, their bodies mapped with curiosity, and then they sleep, on the soft sand, curled around each other, Rafinha’s tail half submerged in the water, keeping the waves at bay.
*
Marc Ter Stegen buys a house on the beach. His teammates and his friends are a little surprised. It’s hardly a luxury home despite its prime location; it’s small and the windows are old, and there’s no convenient fence to keep the fans at bay. Even when he has those installed, they keep wondering.
“I always knew you liked the sea!” his mom says, in the same breath as “When are you getting a nice girl and settling down, Marc?”, while his dad watches them from behind his newspaper.
The house has a private beach. It’s why he bought it in the first place. Only a few people know he’s also had another house built, more like a shack, raised and half open to the sea, and built to withstand the strongest waves and highest tides,and fully furnished.
And maybe there’s a photo out there, a panorama taken by an enthusiastic tourist off his high-line cruiser and in it you’d maybe be able to see two people sitting on a pier, enjoying each other’s company. If you’d looked really closely, you’d see something in the water, a bright spot overlapping over the legs of one of them.
Making it look like a long golden tail is spilling into the surrounding water.
But it’s probably just a trick of the light.