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Fic: Transcendence (Becksillas)
Title: Transcendence
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no proof that this ever happened. I'm not suggesting it's true. And I certainly don’t get any money from writing this.
Wordcount: 1826
Summary: David Beckham and Iker Casillas meet for the filming of a Pepsi ad in Spain in 2002.
A/N: I could say I’m on a Becksillas roll. Or that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bassino gave me a prompt (the filming of the Western Pepsi ad) and I couldn’t refuse. Both would probably be true. And, hey, this is nowhere near as angsty as my stuff tends to be! I deserve a cookie!
A/N 2: if you don't remember the ad, you can watch it for example here, to get in context.
Transcendence
Transcend (verb):
1. go beyond limit: to go beyond a limit or range, e.g. of thought or belief
2. surpass something: to go beyond something in quality or achievement
3. be independent of world: to exist above and apart from the material world
(Microsoft Encarta 2007. (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)
David doesn’t like Iker at first. He arrives into the hotel tired and cranky, alone because all his ManU teammates will be flying out a day later, and all the welcome he gets is a little supercilious nod and a quick glance of dark, glittering eyes.
David doesn’t like Iker because his English is so basic as to be almost non-existent, which, compounded with an accent so thick as to be almost a language of its own, prevents any kind of communication. He doesn’t like the Spaniard’s judgemental eyes on him, eyes that weigh him and find him wanting even though David has been, for years, working tirelessly at being much more than ‘good enough’.
David doesn’t like Iker because he’s permanently surrounded by his Madrilenian teammates, who are all equally wary and suspicious of him. He doesn’t like the quirky looks of contempt whenever he makes any kind of request or complaint to the staff of the filming crew; David is not a super-star, he has never acted like one, and if a boyish Spaniard wants to feel all superior even when both of them have gotten to where they are based on talent alone, well, he will not let it bother him.
But that doesn’t mean he has to like it either.
Iker very pointedly not looks at him, even though they are filming a scene by themselves all day. The assistants, the light-crew, the make-up artists, the director, the extras, the prop master and tens of other people all flutter around the scene, but the two footballers remain distant, silent, almost as confrontational as they are supposed to look in the finished spot.
By lunch-time, David has had enough and makes an abortive attempt at conversation. Iker retreats into monosyllables and then, almost as if magically summoned, two of his dark-haired, dark-eyed, poorly-shaven compatriots appear to take him away into the security of their little group. A minute later, Iker is laughing with them, the stern glare he has been wearing all day melting into a puppyish smile that almost makes David smile too before he remembers he’s sitting on his own on the other corner of the fake Western bar, sipping at a bottle of cold water and wanting to know whose bright idea had been to fit him with a genuine leather overcoat in the Spanish summer.
He’s childishly glad that in the end, he (or his horse) will be able to put one over the Spaniard. The Spaniards, all of them.
A few months later, he’s being greeted by those same dark-eyed Spaniards as their new teammate.
He still doesn’t like Iker. He doesn’t like the things he tells the press, about David being more of a marketing star than a true footballer. He feels the injustice of those words when he curls another perfect free-kick into the back of the net, when he lobs another perfect pass across the pitch.
He tries to pass it all off as the jealousy that a boy too shy to look at a camera without stammering can feel towards a man who has learned (the same way he learned to play football, and with almost the same effort) to play a room, a street, a stadium full of journalists like he plays a midfield full of Italians. He tries to ignore the spark in those dark eyes that challenge him to prove himself; he’s not going to make an effort for a wary Spaniard, one more of the whole changing-room’s worth of them he has to deal with.
He can’t, and he doesn’t like this either.
Because Iker’s watchfulness is as perfect and constant and reliable as his goalkeeping. And because when David has executed another great run, when he has set up another goal for Raúl, when he has complimented Guti’s skills or fashion choices in his broken Spanish, there is a spark of approval in those elusive dark eyes that make David feel more accomplishment than all of Queiroz’s compliments.
And then, one day, out of the blue, without even the excuse of a superb victory, of a crushing defeat, of a goal or a pass or anything at all, Iker grins at him and cracks a joke in an English considerably more understandable than it had been at Almería.
David is understandably thrown by this. He’s been reluctantly accepted by some of his teammates, enthusiastically embraced by others, regally ignored by a few. He’s come to accept this as the way things are. And now Iker is breaking off the duel they had been holding since that hot summer’s day in the old fake-Western town and suddenly and unreasonably pretending to be David’s friend.
There’s the temptation, right there, of returning the Spaniard’s earlier snub and give him the cold shoulder, but David is not the kind of guy who can hold a grudge without feeling guilty and ridiculous and childish; his mother has taught him too well in that respect, so after a moment of stupefaction, he manages a smile and tries to return the jibe in his stumbling Spanish.
They end up staying after training, practicing free kicks until the groundskeepers shout them off the pitch.
Now David can say he likes Iker, and all should be well by this point. Their silent, invisible confrontation had been a niggling pain in the back of his mind, and now it has been put to rest.
Only to be replaced with a different, more pressing sensation.
David toys with the idea of calling Mike, of hearing his voice over the phone and reassuring himself that this he feels for the young Spaniard isn’t the same thing he used to feel (he doesn’t like to think of it in the past, but it is) for his former teammate. He toys with the idea of talking to Vicky, because when he has doubts, a chat with her always clears them out, but he can’t bear the thought of hurting her in the slightest. He toys with the idea of bringing Gary over for a couple of days, a few meals, a talk, but he has to acknowledge that his mate is not the right person to give him any advice, being sure to be both grossed out and embarrassed by the topic of conversation.
He realises then how lonely someone like him can be, with no-one to turn for advice when it really matters.
But advice comes in the most unexpected of ways.
One of the dark-haired, dark-eyed Spaniards of the Almería shoot (David can tell them apart now, and is embarrassed when he remembers how alike they all seemed to him then) arrives for a quick visit to the Bernabeú.
David has been in enough changing-rooms to know when it’s time for the newcomers to keep their heads down, their eyes to themselves and not ask any questions. So when it’s Morientes who seeks him out, he is surprised (and a little amused, and intrigued, by the smouldering jealously in Raúl’s eyes), but tries to appear as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
“Iker likes you,” the Monaco striker tells him bluntly, once they are apart from the others; he seems to be trying to keep the equilibrium between a need for privacy and not wanting to get out of Raúl’s line of sight. “You like him?”
To say David is appalled would be an understatement. He gapes at the younger man for a minute before realising the Spaniard is actually expecting an answer; he laughs awkwardly, looks away, rubs at the latest of his tattoos and feels that he has given himself away.
“OK, then,” continues Morientes, acting as if David had actually answered with a detailed relation of his feelings for the goalkeeper. “Do something.”
“What? I mean...”
“Do something,” Morientes insists, impatient but determined.
“But...”
“*I* don’t know. You come up with something good.” Morientes turns to leave, poised to the direction Raúl is in as if drawn by a magnet; before he walks away, he seems to remember a last piece of advice. “Oh, and don’t mess this up. We’ll kill you if your hurt Iker.”
David tries weakly to come up with an appropriate response, but he is still stuck on ‘What!?’ by the time Morientes and Raúl have left the pitch and a grinning Roberto Carlos is jogging by and warning him to avoid the smaller bathroom.
So, David does something. He’s not exactly sure what. He thinks it has a lot to do with smiles and looks and playful shoving, but he tries to pretend it doesn’t, because it sounds awfully childish when he puts it like that.
In any case, Iker seems to get the message.
Either that, or the goalkeeper has run out of patience.
Whatever the reason, whatever the method that led them there, it ends (it starts) in tangled sheets, in tangled bodies, in tangled thoughts.
David is happier than he remembers being. When he was the star of Manchester United and Ferguson had only good things to say about him and England was heaping all its hopes on his shoulders, he had felt at top of the world. Now, he sees that feeling for what it was, a transient bubble of satisfaction, ready to pop after a defeat, a hurtful tabloid headline, an off day.
This happiness is more solid, more real. It has substance, it looks as if it could outlast football and fame and fortune. It is still precarious and secret, and David is well aware that it is threatened from all sides, but he has the feeling that it will withstand anything the world can throw at it.
And, in a way, it does. It withstands separation and distance and fights. It withstands a wife and three children’s worth of marriage, it withstands a girlfriend with doe eyes and an explosive temper. It withstands what perhaps it shouldn’t, and remains whole even after David has tried making it disappear.
But perhaps ‘withstand’ is the wrong word.
It transcends everything, really. It exists above and beyond the real world where David and Iker are separated by different ambitions, different loyalties, different lifestyles.
So, when they meet again, whether it’s at a formal function, an international friendly or an awards ceremony, they stand apart and not look at each other, in the same way they did when they were cowboys brewing a fight down the polished length of a Western bar.
But inside (above and beyond, according to the dictionary) there is still that precious web of feelings they have been building for so long. A smile, a word, a look is all they need now to reassure themselves it’s still there, showing no signs of receding. And it doesn’t matter where they go, what they do, what they say: it’ll always be there, waiting until they are again ready to reclaim it.
David learns to like it, in the end.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have no proof that this ever happened. I'm not suggesting it's true. And I certainly don’t get any money from writing this.
Wordcount: 1826
Summary: David Beckham and Iker Casillas meet for the filming of a Pepsi ad in Spain in 2002.
A/N: I could say I’m on a Becksillas roll. Or that
bassino gave me a prompt (the filming of the Western Pepsi ad) and I couldn’t refuse. Both would probably be true. And, hey, this is nowhere near as angsty as my stuff tends to be! I deserve a cookie!A/N 2: if you don't remember the ad, you can watch it for example here, to get in context.
Transcendence
Transcend (verb):
1. go beyond limit: to go beyond a limit or range, e.g. of thought or belief
2. surpass something: to go beyond something in quality or achievement
3. be independent of world: to exist above and apart from the material world
(Microsoft Encarta 2007. (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.)
David doesn’t like Iker at first. He arrives into the hotel tired and cranky, alone because all his ManU teammates will be flying out a day later, and all the welcome he gets is a little supercilious nod and a quick glance of dark, glittering eyes.
David doesn’t like Iker because his English is so basic as to be almost non-existent, which, compounded with an accent so thick as to be almost a language of its own, prevents any kind of communication. He doesn’t like the Spaniard’s judgemental eyes on him, eyes that weigh him and find him wanting even though David has been, for years, working tirelessly at being much more than ‘good enough’.
David doesn’t like Iker because he’s permanently surrounded by his Madrilenian teammates, who are all equally wary and suspicious of him. He doesn’t like the quirky looks of contempt whenever he makes any kind of request or complaint to the staff of the filming crew; David is not a super-star, he has never acted like one, and if a boyish Spaniard wants to feel all superior even when both of them have gotten to where they are based on talent alone, well, he will not let it bother him.
But that doesn’t mean he has to like it either.
Iker very pointedly not looks at him, even though they are filming a scene by themselves all day. The assistants, the light-crew, the make-up artists, the director, the extras, the prop master and tens of other people all flutter around the scene, but the two footballers remain distant, silent, almost as confrontational as they are supposed to look in the finished spot.
By lunch-time, David has had enough and makes an abortive attempt at conversation. Iker retreats into monosyllables and then, almost as if magically summoned, two of his dark-haired, dark-eyed, poorly-shaven compatriots appear to take him away into the security of their little group. A minute later, Iker is laughing with them, the stern glare he has been wearing all day melting into a puppyish smile that almost makes David smile too before he remembers he’s sitting on his own on the other corner of the fake Western bar, sipping at a bottle of cold water and wanting to know whose bright idea had been to fit him with a genuine leather overcoat in the Spanish summer.
He’s childishly glad that in the end, he (or his horse) will be able to put one over the Spaniard. The Spaniards, all of them.
A few months later, he’s being greeted by those same dark-eyed Spaniards as their new teammate.
He still doesn’t like Iker. He doesn’t like the things he tells the press, about David being more of a marketing star than a true footballer. He feels the injustice of those words when he curls another perfect free-kick into the back of the net, when he lobs another perfect pass across the pitch.
He tries to pass it all off as the jealousy that a boy too shy to look at a camera without stammering can feel towards a man who has learned (the same way he learned to play football, and with almost the same effort) to play a room, a street, a stadium full of journalists like he plays a midfield full of Italians. He tries to ignore the spark in those dark eyes that challenge him to prove himself; he’s not going to make an effort for a wary Spaniard, one more of the whole changing-room’s worth of them he has to deal with.
He can’t, and he doesn’t like this either.
Because Iker’s watchfulness is as perfect and constant and reliable as his goalkeeping. And because when David has executed another great run, when he has set up another goal for Raúl, when he has complimented Guti’s skills or fashion choices in his broken Spanish, there is a spark of approval in those elusive dark eyes that make David feel more accomplishment than all of Queiroz’s compliments.
And then, one day, out of the blue, without even the excuse of a superb victory, of a crushing defeat, of a goal or a pass or anything at all, Iker grins at him and cracks a joke in an English considerably more understandable than it had been at Almería.
David is understandably thrown by this. He’s been reluctantly accepted by some of his teammates, enthusiastically embraced by others, regally ignored by a few. He’s come to accept this as the way things are. And now Iker is breaking off the duel they had been holding since that hot summer’s day in the old fake-Western town and suddenly and unreasonably pretending to be David’s friend.
There’s the temptation, right there, of returning the Spaniard’s earlier snub and give him the cold shoulder, but David is not the kind of guy who can hold a grudge without feeling guilty and ridiculous and childish; his mother has taught him too well in that respect, so after a moment of stupefaction, he manages a smile and tries to return the jibe in his stumbling Spanish.
They end up staying after training, practicing free kicks until the groundskeepers shout them off the pitch.
Now David can say he likes Iker, and all should be well by this point. Their silent, invisible confrontation had been a niggling pain in the back of his mind, and now it has been put to rest.
Only to be replaced with a different, more pressing sensation.
David toys with the idea of calling Mike, of hearing his voice over the phone and reassuring himself that this he feels for the young Spaniard isn’t the same thing he used to feel (he doesn’t like to think of it in the past, but it is) for his former teammate. He toys with the idea of talking to Vicky, because when he has doubts, a chat with her always clears them out, but he can’t bear the thought of hurting her in the slightest. He toys with the idea of bringing Gary over for a couple of days, a few meals, a talk, but he has to acknowledge that his mate is not the right person to give him any advice, being sure to be both grossed out and embarrassed by the topic of conversation.
He realises then how lonely someone like him can be, with no-one to turn for advice when it really matters.
But advice comes in the most unexpected of ways.
One of the dark-haired, dark-eyed Spaniards of the Almería shoot (David can tell them apart now, and is embarrassed when he remembers how alike they all seemed to him then) arrives for a quick visit to the Bernabeú.
David has been in enough changing-rooms to know when it’s time for the newcomers to keep their heads down, their eyes to themselves and not ask any questions. So when it’s Morientes who seeks him out, he is surprised (and a little amused, and intrigued, by the smouldering jealously in Raúl’s eyes), but tries to appear as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
“Iker likes you,” the Monaco striker tells him bluntly, once they are apart from the others; he seems to be trying to keep the equilibrium between a need for privacy and not wanting to get out of Raúl’s line of sight. “You like him?”
To say David is appalled would be an understatement. He gapes at the younger man for a minute before realising the Spaniard is actually expecting an answer; he laughs awkwardly, looks away, rubs at the latest of his tattoos and feels that he has given himself away.
“OK, then,” continues Morientes, acting as if David had actually answered with a detailed relation of his feelings for the goalkeeper. “Do something.”
“What? I mean...”
“Do something,” Morientes insists, impatient but determined.
“But...”
“*I* don’t know. You come up with something good.” Morientes turns to leave, poised to the direction Raúl is in as if drawn by a magnet; before he walks away, he seems to remember a last piece of advice. “Oh, and don’t mess this up. We’ll kill you if your hurt Iker.”
David tries weakly to come up with an appropriate response, but he is still stuck on ‘What!?’ by the time Morientes and Raúl have left the pitch and a grinning Roberto Carlos is jogging by and warning him to avoid the smaller bathroom.
So, David does something. He’s not exactly sure what. He thinks it has a lot to do with smiles and looks and playful shoving, but he tries to pretend it doesn’t, because it sounds awfully childish when he puts it like that.
In any case, Iker seems to get the message.
Either that, or the goalkeeper has run out of patience.
Whatever the reason, whatever the method that led them there, it ends (it starts) in tangled sheets, in tangled bodies, in tangled thoughts.
David is happier than he remembers being. When he was the star of Manchester United and Ferguson had only good things to say about him and England was heaping all its hopes on his shoulders, he had felt at top of the world. Now, he sees that feeling for what it was, a transient bubble of satisfaction, ready to pop after a defeat, a hurtful tabloid headline, an off day.
This happiness is more solid, more real. It has substance, it looks as if it could outlast football and fame and fortune. It is still precarious and secret, and David is well aware that it is threatened from all sides, but he has the feeling that it will withstand anything the world can throw at it.
And, in a way, it does. It withstands separation and distance and fights. It withstands a wife and three children’s worth of marriage, it withstands a girlfriend with doe eyes and an explosive temper. It withstands what perhaps it shouldn’t, and remains whole even after David has tried making it disappear.
But perhaps ‘withstand’ is the wrong word.
It transcends everything, really. It exists above and beyond the real world where David and Iker are separated by different ambitions, different loyalties, different lifestyles.
So, when they meet again, whether it’s at a formal function, an international friendly or an awards ceremony, they stand apart and not look at each other, in the same way they did when they were cowboys brewing a fight down the polished length of a Western bar.
But inside (above and beyond, according to the dictionary) there is still that precious web of feelings they have been building for so long. A smile, a word, a look is all they need now to reassure themselves it’s still there, showing no signs of receding. And it doesn’t matter where they go, what they do, what they say: it’ll always be there, waiting until they are again ready to reclaim it.
David learns to like it, in the end.