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She leans against the door, all blonde hair and long eyelashes and you’re flooded with this sudden urge to say something. . Anything. Some pathetic version of ‘It’s not you it’s me’ you once heard on Corrie, all the goals Liverpool has scored in the past 20 years, a poem you had to learn by heart in 8th grade, Phil Collins’s complete discography, Carra’s tell-tale at poker, the name of the boy Lily likes, the number of times you’ve accidently drove past this boy’s house, the standings in Czech’s third league..
Anything.
And she just keeps standing there, thoroughly enjoying your internal struggle and sporting that infamous smile that made you bribe some very scary looking bouncers into giving you her name about a lifetime ago.
And it’s not even as if you’re searching for the right words. No. At this point you would definitely settle for something that is only vaguely inappropriate. Should be easy enough, what with all the talking you had to do. Maybe if you thought about it as your usual, run of the mill, football interview... The problem is you didn’t have a youth team; it’s just always been Liverpool. And she has been your Liverpool for a while but then there was this hurricane of lingering red and you thought she was still your Liverpool; you thought that was just a kickabout after practice, a game of amateurs for which it was nothing unusual to end up tangled on the field, hearts hoarse from running.
In retrospect, it took you quite a while to realize you were playing for another team.
She finally takes pity on you (which seems to be the recurring motif of your relationship) and comes closer, her fingers starting to trace the lines on your forehead with the usual vehemence.
‘Please don’t fuck it up, Stevie. In my mind, I’ve already redecorated your game room three times.’
You take a moment to look at her and run over all the proper things you could say.
And then you kiss her.
You kiss her goodbye and take care and I loved you and I love you and please remember to set up the alarm and thank you and I’m sorry and do check up on that kid Lily likes.
After all, a hug would have completely crushed her bones.
You hold her close as she buries her face in the crook of your neck, and in that moment it would only take a word. One word and you’d walk back in the house, carrying the luggage she packed for you as a parting gift (or in exchange for the house in Portugal, you’re not quite sure) and never mention any of this again. You’re already resigned to aching all over, to pangs of longing so strong you feel like drinking a liquor store, to the ever burning ‘maybe in another life’, to the restlessness and the desperate want, to a craving so powerful it knocks you on your ass faster than any Manc ever could.
You’re used to all that. It’s no problem. Really.
It’s not like you’ve ever imagined anything else.
And every time he tried to, every time he started describing this alternate universe in which you were fighting over whose turn it was to do the dishes, you sidetracked him so violently you would kiss the bruises on his body for days afterwards.
Your story’s just always been part unaltered doom, part messy handjobs in the backseat of sponsor owned cars and laughing yourselves silly afterwards. There was no place for a happy end (though there were plenty of happy endings, come to think of it) in between family, the vague notion of duty and the all-encompassing one of football.
You’d never think to scar his naked, sleeping body with the vicious species of pain that springs from hope.
And doom was much more manageable anyway.
Alex interrupts your musings by shoving you with surprising force in the direction of the car.
‘Seriously, though, don’t fuck it up!’
She’s smirking, hugging her jacket close to her body and you nod dumbly a couple of times before getting into the car where you proceed to keep on nodding for a good five minutes.
‘Drive, you moron!’
‘You sure you’re not related to Carra?’
‘I honestly don’t know but it’s too late to invoke that as grounds for divorce so get over it and fucking drive, Stevie!’
You nod one more time just to piss her off and then turn on the ignition, with only the image of Xabi complaining about the sloppy way you did the dishes serving as map.
&
By the time you reach the John Lennon International Airport your entire being is buzzing and you can barely string together any words that don’t involve you getting a one way ticket to San Sebastian. Please.
After the third time you repeated that with no success the lady at the counter looks ready to throttle you. She goes instead for articulating every word she says as if she were talking to some pathetic half-wit, which you can’t really hold against her.
‘Sir, there is no flight to San Sebastian today. You would have to wait until Friday or take a plane to Bilbao or Biarritz and then take the train or a car.’
You look at her with the dim epiphany that this is why you need an agent. Thankfully, she shows enough mercy to continue.
‘Bilbao is closer but the flight to Biarritz leaves in 45 minutes so you might still catch that; the one to Bilbao leaves in four hours.’ She searches your face for a sign you understood at least half of what she said and arches her eyebrows, apparently satisfied. ‘So, where to?’
You almost say San Sebastian again but you fear she will bitch slap you with your passport.
Another five minutes of her nagging you about Frequent Fly Miles and if you could sign here, here and here, asking whether you’re sure you don’t want a return ticket, just in case, as if it’s her bloody damned business and then, finally, you’re running through the airport, knocking into people and smiling like a deranged man who’s never been to Norway in his life.
The flight is quite empty; you sign a couple of autographs, shake a few hands and then you are left to your own devices which is not that great since you are so wired you can’t even imagine the torture of staying still for one hour and 23 minutes. You’re buzzing and tingling and shaking and shivering and falling from 8000 miles high above Bedfordshire and fuck him to hell he better be there to catch you.
The glass of champagne the flight attended offers you does little to calm your nerves. The next three, along with a generous helping of whiskey, do the trick just fine.
&
A voice with a heavy French accent announces you’ve just landed at the Biarritz- Anglet- Bayonne Airport, local time 8:36. The weather is formidable, 21 degrees Celsius and only a slight chance of rain.
You wonder briefly what the hell you are doing in France.
Your brain is still drowsy with all the alcohol consumed during a flight deemed too short to serve food and your French is still just a level above non-existent so renting a car proves to be a great exercise in pointing and grunting. You somehow end up with a Peugeot 301 and with too much information on the clerk’s political views. Unless he had another reason for screaming ‘Left! Go with the left! Keep la gauche!’ until he was blue in the face.
You find the car, acknowledge the fact that Xabi will piss himself laughing if he sees it, try to set up the GPS, give up and buy a regular map, follow the A60 to San Sebastian with your index finger, search for a decent radio station, close your eyes for a moment, slumped against the driving wheel and wake up 3 hours later with a stiff neck, droll all over your face and your clothes rumpled like hell.
You start driving, with Tom Waits reminding you to keep on the wrong side of the road and with the GPS spurting random French words at you. It started raining at some point (slight chance, my ass) but the effect if quite calming. You finally work past that maddening buzz and try to think of what the hell you are doing. You never talked about this; he may not even want whatever it is that you want. Hell, you don’t even know his phone number because you lost your cell in some dingy pub the night you found out he had gotten divorced. You don’t know where he lives or even if he lives alone.. It’s been, what, three months since he broke up with Nagore? That’s enough time to meet someone in some crowded bookstore that has just one copy of this fascinating book on astrological influences in Roman architecture and no, I can’t possibly, I insist you take it, please, I couldn’t, maybe if you gave me your number we can work something out..
You drive on the wrong lane for a good two minutes and damn him! Damn him and his coffee table books he never reads anyway. And while you’re at it, damn all the people in Spain who would be ready to eat out of his palm in three seconds flat and would fit perfectly into his idea of bourgeois intellectualism or whatever.
You are vaguely aware you can’t really object to his tortured soul crap when what goes through your head is that essentially this was not supposed to happen. It’s almost blasphemous to have this possibility when the most you ever considered was an extended weekend and the inevitable meeting in thirty years’ time at some common friend’s funeral (sorry Carra). He’ll say ‘I wish..’ and stop, searching for words and staring at your hands, wishing he’d at least have the guts to take them into his shaking ones (he’ll blame arthritis). You’ll look at the sky and nod a couple of times, chocking on tears you never shed. You’ll say ‘I know’ and you won’t be completely lying. You’ll fondly remember the time you put a goat in Jerzy’s room and shiver with dull regret.
The end.
Turning left in 400m just never came up.
You arrive in San Sebastian at about half past one in the morning. By then, the slight chance of rain had become the mother of all storms. You don’t know exactly why, but you park the car close to the promenade and decide to go for a walk along the coast during what may as well be a hurricane. It’s probably this stupid hope that you might bump into him exactly like in all those films Alex made you sit through. You’ll see each other and start running frenetically, hugging and kissing, breathing in that smell of grass, tangerines, fine cognac and ocean. Or maybe you’ll act all English, all fancy meeting you here, not the best time for a walk, is it? and do come by my place so we can have scorching hot sex, with the sole purpose of you not getting hypothermia, of course.
An hour later you’re checking in at Hotel de Londres y de Ingleterra drenched as fuck, alone and terribly disappointed in romantic comedies.
&
You wake up at the break of dawn and walk on the balcony, barefooted and shivering from the wind, but too mesmerized by the waves to give a damn. You stare and stare and they eventually drag you under. You can’t breathe, your limbs weightless and your being under the control of this angry power that surrounds you completely, throwing you away and catching you in its mist, spinning you around in a whirl of blue.
You float. You drown. You fall.
You go back to bed.
When you wake up again, you know exactly what you have to do to find him. Sure, you could just ask Alex, but there are only so many things you could ask of your ex-wife before she runs you over with a Range Rover LR4. So you’ll just have to resort to his biggest weakness, his deepest love, his reason for living and his imminent cause of death.
Food.
A few google searches later and some tips from the valets who felt bad about laughing at your rental and you’ve narrowed it down to three restaurants. Thankfully, one of them is 7 miles outside the city and you doubt Xabi goes there too often (if there’s something he likes more than a swordfish drowned in butter and lemon, it’s drowning himself in Txakoli, so driving there seems counterproductive).
There’s Arzak, with its Michelin stars, loyalty to local ingredients and the family business charm. Not to mention its lobster in a crisp potato shell with a cobaiba sauce and red pepper sphere. And then there’s Rekondo with its incredible wine cellar, its Iberian ham and its grilled turbot you enjoy so much you feel you should change your nationality.
After three days of eating two dinners per evening and losing yourself on the streets with their sunburnt cobble stones, their indescribable magic and their strange history, Xabi can very well go and fuck himself.
It’s no Liverpool, of course, but you find yourself falling in love with its rough and charming edges, its salty wind and its morning sun. You’ve been here before, approximately two lifetimes ago, but back then you were more interested in the beers some of the older boys snuck up along with a sticky edition of Hustler, than in the old town’s architecture.
You find you like it better this time around. At least you have yet to puck your brains out.
&
Twelve days letter you’ve gained what feels like seven stones, proposed to Elena more times than you can recall and almost bought a car so the valets would stop making fun of the old Peugeot. The thought of fish and chips makes you gag, you can recognize the age of wine by its color, you have a newly found respect for caramel and there’s still no sign of Xabi. That’s quite alright, though, because he’s everywhere, like an omnipresent spirit that can’t be arsed to leave his secluded tower. He’s at every corner you missed and ended up lost on the other side of the town, he’s at La Concha in the morning when children are playing football, he’s in every jazz bar past midnight, in every black coffee you drank and in every double whiskey you downed, he’s in the 1970 Mouton you’re just finishing, he’s right in front of you, and in the sound of champagne corks flying all over the place. In the cheap pintxo bars and in the Kursaal Casino, putting it all on red and right. in. fucking. front. of. you.
He makes a sign to one of the waiters to bring him a menu, sits down opposite you, reaches for your glass, finishes your wine in one big gulp and then leans back in his chair sighing contentedly.
You have half a mind to hit him with the bottle.
And fuck, he looks good!
The waiter brings him the menu and he starts reading it with something like religious fervor. And while you knew he liked food, this is over the top, even for him.
You suppose that your foot rubbing insistently at his ankle is not really helping him either.
He finally puts down the menu and looks and you. The twinkle in his eyes makes you want to do an assortment of things to him that would surely conclude in the restaurant losing its Michelin stars.
‘Í heard you were harassing Elena.’
You shrug and try not to stare too pointedly at his beard. ‘Well, with the way she cooks… I am a free man after all.’
‘I’ve heard. News really does travel fast in between our wives. Hell, I think Alex was the first to find out me and Nagore were getting divorced; she sent me Kafka’s The Trial and I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.’
‘There was a time when I thought your atrocious sense of humor would put me into an early grave.’
‘What happened since?’
‘Lily started dating.’
His heartfelt laughter fills the entire restaurant and jolts your ribcage.
‘Thank God Ane and Kat are still too young for that and Jon is just nagging me about subscribing him to Playboy.’
‘Why don’t you? That could win you serious points in the divorce.’
‘What? And face Nagore? Do you want me dead?’
You smirk a bit and watch as he nervously licks his lips.
‘On the contrary. I want you.. very much alive.’
You stare at each other, less in challenge and more in mutual immobilization.
The waiter comes over and asks what he can bring him. Xabi cuts him off before he starts listing the specialties, still looking at you.
‘Whatever he’s having.’ He returns your smirk and catches your foot in between his. ‘To go.’
You feel strangely calm as you exit the restaurant.
You expected a savage hunger uncurling within you, blocking any rational thought. A desperate search for skin against skin, a ferocious desire to lick and bite and kiss, with nothing but the dull sound of your beating hearts and his wrecked moans between you. One ‘Joder, Steven’ whispered into your mouth and then everything would go down in flames.
Instead, you’re walking together, all very grown up, carrying take-away bags and feeling as if this is less of a fireworks-in-the-sky-I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening kind of moment and more of an inevitable conclusion. There’s no rush. Just walking together, matching idiotic smiles on your faces, hands touching in passing, his voice ratting on about museum to eat and fish cakes you simply must visit or something.
And it’s enough.
But then he gives you one look of naked want and suddenly humping his leg in the middle of the street seems like a brilliant idea.
You manage to wait until you’re safely inside his apartment before you almost tackle him to the ground, scraping his collarbone with your teeth and working on his zipper as he scratches the small of your back, gasping so beautifully you fear it will all be over too soon. You lick behind his ear and rut against him, your fingers intertwined and the delicious burn of his beard against your naked skin making you completely sure it really will be over way too soon. He arches into you and fucking hell, you need a moment to look at him. One moment to just look at him.
His fingers come to rest on your temples and then move to the nape of your neck, pressing just right and fuck..
‘Fuck, Xabi, where the fuck were you?’ You’re panting into his mouth, desperate to make sure that this is not some whiskey induced dream, but the breathing and moaning reality.
He rolls you over and hides his face in the crook of your neck where he starts biting kisses with the same amount of need you feel.
‘There’s a sports bar.. a couple of streets down from Arzak.. Absolutely shitty food.. Quite frightening company, too..’
From then on, it’s a blur.
&
You fell asleep next to each other and you woke up more or less on top of each other enough times to recognize the crinkle in his eyes as he comes into consciousness, the voice in which he mumbles five more minutes like a petulant child, the way he buries his face in your chest, fucking purring as he scratches your nipples with his beard and then turning around, leaving you hard and homicidal and going back to sleep.
You are quite familiar with the style in which he kisses up and down the notches in your spine, fingers kneading the muscles in your shoulders with silent reverence, but there’s also something new in it.
No pressure to come up with a plausible lie, no need to hide the level of want (or the hickeys the said want leaves all over your bodies), no actual reason to get out of bed and fight over who gets the first shower.
Xabi has enough time to wonder what to make for breakfast, decide in which forsaken part of the town to drag you in, what restaurant you absolutely have to try and muse over what bar you will eventually end up in as there is little chance you will leave the house any time soon.
And you still can’t believe it. You can’t believe that you can kiss him and push him against the fridge or crowd him against the oven and drag your fingernails across his abdomen, toying with the edge of his boxers, with the only repercussion being slightly burnt churros that you wolf down anyway.
You accuse him of getting you fat and he grins like a Cheshire cat, saying you should find a way to work out and then taking the chocolate sauce and almost fucking strutting to the bedroom.
Definitely no museums today.
He asks where you’re staying so you’d go and take your stuff.
‘Hotel de Londres.’
His laughter vibrates through your ribcage.
‘Working class hero my ass.’
You make your way to the hotel, fuck in the shower because Xabi’s a sex addict, tell him you came by train because you fear the sight of the Peugeot will cure him and then throttle the valet who starts chasing you around the lobby yelling ‘Your car, sir! Shall I bring the car around?’
You fall asleep in his arms and wake up in something more than love.
&
He takes you everywhere and you come to love everything you see through his eyes. The savage beaches, the old buildings, his childhood house, the tapas bars with their ancient patrons, the dimly lit clubs, the dusty bookstores, the crowded chorizo shops, the woman who owns the patisserie from across the street and who pinches Xabi’s cheeks whenever he visits. (The first time you went there she started rummaging through the drawers for old photos of him when he was a child. He had to wrestle you out of the shop as the old lady kept muttering ‘such a good child, so chubby and sweet natured. A footballer! I’d have never thought..’ )
He takes you to Real Sociedad’s matches and they play with such wild abandon, such frightening joy, your feet yearn to make a run for the pitch. You don’t. You can almost see the headline in the Daily Mirror: ‘Liverpool legend disrupts football match in the Basque Country’. His hand resting lightly on the inside of your thigh as he’s leaning to show you some player or predict some saving goal that never comes also deters you from swift movements.
It’s still as intoxicating as ever.
You see him eating cold noodles straight from the box as he’s too caught up in a book to go out. You hear him singing random bits in the shower and you learn he usually sleeps on the left side of the bed. You discover that champagne and whiskey he can chug like it’s no one’s business but a glass of martini and he’s shaken and stirred and ready to run into the waves laughing like a maniac and have you peel off his wet clothes after.
You find out it takes him a ridiculous amount of time to get ready in the morning, which doesn’t exactly bother you, except he insists he’s extraordinarily fast.
‘That’s just because you shared a locker room with the likes of Ronaldo and Ramos.’
‘Or because you roomed with Carra for half of your life.’
He’s a member of at three cooking societies and you fear you’ve dislocated your kidneys because of how much you’ve laughed at him.
‘And least your obsession for Bacalao al Pil Pil saved us from any question on who’s topping in our relationship.’
‘Oh, fuck you!’
‘What, now? I thought you had to leave.’
You fight over who is the rightful king of Westeros. You claim he has an unfair advantage because he’s already seen the entire series. He claims your theory according to which the Starks are Liverpool and the Lannisters are Real Madrid is severely biased. You claim his mouth and declare it a truce.
He introduces you as ‘an old friend’ and it’s bugging you. For one, you’re not old.
You’re walking back from a late dinner with some of his friends (who keep calling him Bone for some reason) and it’s been great, really. Your brain is fuzzy with at least one and half bottles of Cava, two portions of seafood paella and with ‘this is my old friend, Steven Gerrard’.
By the time you realized you should probably talk about this, you already have him pinned against the wall of some dirty alley. You carelessly throw his scarf to the ground and ghost your lips over his pulse point, your fingers pulling at the small hairs on the nape of his neck.
‘Steven, come on, what the fuck? Let’s get home.’
He tries to twist but you push your leg in between his, effectively rubbing him through his jeans and he suddenly seems a lot less eager to get home, breaths uneven and fingers reaching blindly for your sweater. You open his coat, untuck his shirt and splay your cold hands all over his stomach and lower back. He squirms like mad but you still have him trapped, so he just throws his head against the stone in a silent cry as you keep grinding your leg, producing delirious friction and sucking a bruise into his neck.
‘Steven..Fuck.. What are you-? ’
You look him in the eyes and almost growl, accentuating every word.
‘I am not your friend, Xabi.’
You kiss the corner of his mouth, hard, then turn away, put your hands in your pockets and continue walking home.
The sex you have that night can easily pass as a religious experience.
&
Alex calls sometime in December asking how you are and how’s everything going. Of course, you blurt something stupid, like the fact that you are double dating and she laughs good naturedly.
‘Well, I hope that’s not all you got around to doing cause I was thinking of sending the girls over.’
‘…’
‘Steven? Stevie? You still there?’
‘Yes. God. Yes! Fuck, I love you!’
‘Perfect. How does the day after tomorrow work for you?’
You tell Xabi and he immediately starts cleaning the already spotless apartment, biting his nails compulsively.
‘Will you relax? They’ll love you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they have good taste.’
He rolls his eyes.
‘Because you look like a giant, cuddly, teddy bear.’
He half sends you to sleep in the guest room but then remembers he just changed the sheets for the girls.
He tosses and turns, twisting the duvet and kicking you in his sleep, which was quite alright when Alex did it, but this is a man who could score from 60 yards and there are parts of your body you really don’t want kicked with that kind of force.
At 5:37 you finally can’t stand it anymore and nudge him awake. He looks at you through weary eyes, too tired to even ask what the fuck has gotten into you.
‘Because I love you.’
He smiles his, secret, blink-and-you-missed-it, small smile and closes his eyes like a content cat.
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Oh, okay??’
‘Mhmm.’
‘Oh, okay!!!?’
‘I love you, too, Stevie. You must know that. Now let me sleep.’
He molds against your body and you barely stop from pointing out that according to his logic he must have known too. Not to mention that he was the one keeping you awake not the other way around.
Not much point in arguing though.
The next day, when the girls arrive through the gates, your heart swells and swells and breaks out of your chest, swallowing you whole.
As they come closer, you can see that Lily and Lexie are bickering, almost clawing their eyes out. Lou runs into your arms, scarred for her life and you hug her tightly before telling her to stay with Xabi as you’re trying to break up the other two before any permanent damage occurs. As you receive a sharp kick in the shin from Lexie, who was aiming for her sister, you have this epiphany that maybe, just maybe, Alex didn’t send you the girls just from the goodness of her heart.
A chorus of ‘she started it’, ‘no, she started it’ accompanies you to the car. Lou shyly takes the hand Xabi offers her and tells him how the flight attended gave her an extra cupcake because she had to put up with those two. When she produces the cupcake in question from her pink bag and offers it to him you choke back tears that have little to do with the fact that your shin is still throbbing.
In 3 minutes flat Xabi had already agreed to give both Lily and Lexie driving lessons, to somehow find them signed copies of an album by some obnoxious teenager and to consider a skiing holiday in the French Alps.
And to think that one of the things you loved most about him was his incapacity to say no.
&
The girls stay for three weeks and leave with a great appreciation for Spanish cuisine, half of Xabi’s music collection and most of your heart.
The fact that you’ll see them again in less than a month (for a skiing trip in the Alps) does help a little bit, but fuck it to hell you miss them.
You don’t get a lot of time to mope around because on the third day of what most people call January and what Xabi refers to as Mad Men month Jon appears at your door with the sole explanation that winter in Madrid is boring and Nagore’s new boyfriend is a dick with a God complex.
He doesn’t seem to like you either, which hurts considering he used to run into your arms on Anfield long before he could even walk properly.
To be fair though, he doesn’t seem to like a lot of things. As of now, you’ve counted banging doors and not knocking under his interests.
The first few days he just grunts some words in Basque to Xabi’s questions, completely bypassing English and Spanish and not even glancing at you.
You can’t help but understand him, though. You remember the state you were in when your parents got divorced. Fucking train wreck. And you were a twenty-something footballer with a family of his own, not a kid who only has calculus to distract him from the mess his family made of him.
Still, he’s not a grumpy child by nature so little by little he warms up to you, beating you at FIFA, calling you a dickhead because you play with yourself, putting too much spices in your food when you’re not paying attention, the usual.
One day he brings home this huge beast of a dog and you pray to God Xabi has enough sense to tell him no.
Surprisingly enough, he actually tries to, but then he somehow gets sidetracked and pulls this big speech on the responsibility a pet entails, at which Jon nods religiously, which then transforms into Xabi rolling around on the floor along with the dog. Jon smiles like the cat that ate the last canary from an extinct species of canaries.
Even better, the dog is just a few months old. You shudder to think of the dimensions the adult version will sport.
Two days later Jon asks for your help and you are too surprised by such a direct approach to say no. Which is how you end up ripping posters with ‘Lost Dog’ from walls and throwing them into bins.
‘Jon, you do know that stealing is not alright?’
He glances at you as you try to rip one particularly stubborn flyer and he raises an eyebrow, the splitting image of Xabi.
‘How would you call what you did to my father then?’
You sigh.
From what you’ve gathered from the flyers, the dog didn’t belong to a family but to a farm; he was going to be sold anyway so at least there’s that.
The problem is, of course, that the dog starts barking at five in the morning and neither Jon nor Xabi are willing to move their arses and go down in the January cold. Hell, Xabi refers to the entire month by a TV series, which should have given you enough of an idea on the amount of physical activity he’s planning on putting himself through.
The beast has vast reserves of boundless energy and you think you’ve never run that much in your life. And that’s something. By the time you arrive back home all you can do is fall into bed, boneless. Obviously, at that time Xabi is just waking up and starts mouthing kisses on your neck.
‘No. Stop. Too tired. The damn dog is cockblocking us.’
Of course Xabi then croons into your ear: ‘How about if I do all the work, hmm?’ and by the time he’s done with you, you’d happily take care of a thousand hellhounds.
Some mornings Jon wakes up in time to help with the dog and you end up falling asleep next to each other on a bench while the beast is chasing seagulls.
Sometimes he even brings a football and it feels as if he’s letting you on a secret. He did inherent Xabi’s grace, but there’s also boundless enthusiasm and swelling pride (on both sides) when he gets a trick right.
One time, when you’re too exhausted to keep playing (and the dog has stolen the ball and thrown it in the ocean, anyway) he looks at you carefully and nudges your shoulder in what he probably wants to be a friendly gesture.
‘I don’t hate you or whatever. You know that, right?’
The eloquence he probably got from Nagore.
‘You make him happy and I want him to be happy.. but I’m still milking it for all it’s worth.’
You catch him in a one armed hug and he only half heartily tries to push you off before giving up and leaning on you.
‘You’re his son. Being a cunning little shit is to be expected.’
He smiles, staring ahead and looking older than his years.
‘I’m proud to be his son..’ He starts drawing shapes in the sand with his shoes, gathering his thoughts. ‘You’re better at taking free kicks, though.’
Your throat stops working.
He looks at you with mischievous eyes a couple of moments afterwards and your heart clenches with fear.
‘Whatever it is, no!’
‘Please, Steven, Stevie, Steve, pretty please. Just for three months.’
‘No. Absolutely not. I am not subscribing you to Playboy.’
‘Buuuuut, Steeeevieeee..’
‘Fuck’s sake, can’t you, like, I don’t know, find stuff off the internet like normal people?’
‘I want it for the articles.’
&
You watch Xabi cook and can’t help but press kisses down his neck, tracing his forearms with your fingers and making him add his spices 30 seconds late. You shell his body with yours and enjoy those two minutes of silence. Not long after, six children come and wolf down dinner, producing a cacophony of noise and dueling with butter knives. Xabi feeds the dogs under the table, thinking he’s being very conspicuous about it; you actually couldn’t be happier that he does that as it makes them too fat to run. Kat teases Jon about the girl he likes, Ane and Lou seems caught up in some secret conversation, Lily is texting under the table and Lexie throws crumbles of bread into the lines on your forehead with such vigor she probably intends to make them stick.
After they finish the meal they horde into the living room arguing about what movie to see and Xabi uses the opportunity to drag you outside, almost running in the direction of one of his favorite beaches.
‘Xabi, they’ll kill each other.’
He kisses you hard and needy, laughing into your mouth, wind blowing his hair.
‘Let them.’
‘Is that a new method of parenting?’
‘Yes. Lord of the Flies, courtesy of Alex.’
Once he reaches the secluded coast he starts stripping and you take a moment to enjoy the hard, sinuous lines of his body before you follow through and join him in the water. You fall into the cold blue and he catches you, taking you further and further, until nothing exists except for your intertwined bodies.
When you kiss him now there’s no regret or desperation, no clawing hunger, no apologies you’re swallowing.
There’s nothing but your hurried breaths and the vague possibility of being arrested for public indecency.
&
You bought a dishwasher.