A ficlet posted at my journal - omgorgasm.
Pairing is Michael Ballack / Arne Friedrich, from Team Deutschland.


Pity
I own nothing and this never happened.




There are times in the regular day when you feel like just giving up. When you want to sit down, cross-legged on the ground and put your head in your hands and just give up. But you can’t. You know you can’t.

Because he would be disappointed in you. He would help you, you know he would. But then he would just go back to Bastian, back to his best friend, and he’ll be worried, you know he’ll be worried. He’ll give you little looks, pity looks, (which you loathe, and they are the worst types of looks to get, especially from him) and he’ll ask you how you are.

So you pick up your chin and get in your car. You drive to the nearest bar and proceed to get as pissed as you possibly can without passing out, looking at your life in the reflection in the beer glass, praising the fine German lager, wanting to kiss the merciful bartender for filling up your glass yet again – but you don’t.

You are a quiet person, very quiet, and only the occasional surge of adrenaline which earns you a goal during a match makes you louder. You are even quieter when you’re piss drunk, and to anyone else, it would seem like you are about to fall into your glass.

You’ve had an uncountable number of glasses of lager, and you’ve grown tired of it. So you ask for Russian vodka instead, and you have just squeezed a lime into your mouth when a voice behind you calls your name, and you jump and inhale the rest of the lime; you cough, and water is put in front of you by a familiar hand, a tan, powerful hand, and you take the water, drinking from the bottle, observing the hand now resting on the bar in front of you.

You are better now, the lime down in your stomach with the alcohol, and you look up slowly to meet hazel eyes. You stare into their jade beauty, not registering the face accompanying them (even though in some parts of your brain you know you recognize them, and they must know you well enough to know that there is something wrong, but at the time, being pissed and olive eyes were taking over your brain, or what was left of it).

You are vaguely aware of the Hazel Eyes moving, looking to your left, putting something on the bar – then you couldn’t look into their golden-green depths as you were suddenly moving, rocking as if on a boat, out of the bar and into the blinding sunlight of an afternoon in Munich, and you were confused at first, because you thought it was nighttime because of the dark and dank atmosphere of the bar (again, somewhere you knew that you were getting pissed on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when you could be, should be out practicing for the Euro Cups, and that you were getting pissed instead just proves that something is very wrong, and that you might love Lukas enough to do this to yourself).

It is only after a hand sticks itself into your pocket to take out your keys that you stop and protest. You place your hands on whatever part of him you can find – his chest, as you feel his pectoral muscles underneath your palms and his shirt (a light cotton, and it feels nice under your fingertips) – and you push with all your strength (which is very little, it seems, because he hardly moves more than a centimetre or two) and mumble out something that sounds a lot like “no”, but also holds a resemblance to “night.”

What you weren’t expecting to hear was an authoritative, booming tenor voice (that you hear every day during practice and every match) was telling you:

“Yes, Arne. I am taking you home.” And at this, you look up at him, at Michael Ballack, as if you are seeing him for the first time, looking past the golden-olive eyes and seeing the face. And it is as you look at him that you feel all your will to fight (him, Lukas, everything) slip away. Suddenly, you feel very young, and very sober, as if that past hour in the bar didn’t count, didn’t matter at all.

And it is then that you begin to grow angry.

(Not with Micha, no, never with Micha, your captain, your beloved captain, your friend, because he understands, he is helping you, and you see that there is no pity, no pity in his beautiful golden-green eyes, and that is what you desire, because that is what you will see in his eyes, in Lukas’s eyes, but not in Micha’s… You are angry at yourself, for being this affected by him, even if you know that he will never love you as you him, and no matter how hard you wish that he would, he never will, and it is now that you realize this; and it is now that you get angry about all the time spent pining for him, and this past hour wasted in a bar.)

“No,” you say to him, to the pitiless Micha, “I do not need to go with you. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to help me.” And you turn to go back, back into the bar, back into the denial.

But he doesn’t let you; he grabs your wrist with his large hand and pulls you to him, turning you around and pushing your face to his neck (it was perfect, because your body fit flawlessly to his, molding, comfortably, comfortingly), his hand rubbed down your back gently, soothingly, and you felt yourself sink to him, felt you give up control.

He took you back to your apartment, close by, and the drive was only a few minutes (and all the while you wondered how he knew where you lived, but didn’t say anything, as you were fighting tears the whole way and were afraid that if you tried to say anything to him, this man with the pitiless golden-green eyes, that you would just blurt out the whole story and disgrace yourself in front of him, in front of your captain, and you couldn’t bear to do that any more than you already have). He parks the car and you sit in the seat, waiting as he gets out of the drivers seat and circles around, as if this were a date of some kind, and opens your door. Leaning in, his hands encase your waist and he pulls you out of the car, supporting you with his arms, his chest, his body…

He leads you up the stairs to your apartment very slowly, careful to make sure that you don’t slip. He is gentle with you, and his face shows naught but kindness and a frown of worry. You know that he is going to ask you questions later, after you are safe in your apartment with the doors locked and the windows closed. Questions, so many questions, and you can see them now, floating in his beautiful eyes (that you have never noticed before now).

By the time he closes the door behind you, you are dreading the questions, and don’t want to answer them (because you don’t want to talk about him, about Lukas, and how you love him so but he doesn’t understand, and he won’t ever understand, not when you are here in your apartment with Micha, because Micha understands, and you know that you like being here with Micha and you don’t want him to take his hand away from your waist, because he feels so good) so you sit on the floor, quietly watching as Michael locks up the apartment, your apartment, and then turns around. He looks down at you, on the floor in front of him, and your gaze lowers to his feet, to the ground, because that is how low you think you feel.

So he sits in front of you, kneels, and rests his rear on his heels. He brings you close to him and rocks you back and forth, back and forth, so soothing, so natural it feels to be against him like this, you notice, and you never want it to stop. He is whispering words into your hair and you feel them, you feel his lips there but you cannot find them, and you don’t understand what he is trying to tell you, but you know that he is here; he is here when Lukas is not, and never will be.

(And it is here when you have a big epiphany, a telling moment where you finally understand why you’ve been put through all of this torture; torture about Lukas, about Bastian, about your life and your loves and why it all has to be such sweet, sweet torture, and why you have to have these contradicting feeling about other men, your teammates, your captain now too. It is here when you finally understand the meaning of your life, the meaning of these past few weeks of torture, and it is here when you understand just how much your captain means to you.)

You lift your head from his sweet caress and his hands have encased your face, your head. You bring your nose to his, and you stare into his stunning, beautiful golden-green eyes, entranced, and you kiss him, so lightly, so lightly it almost isn’t there.

But alas, you did touch lips, and he is now kissing you back, because maybe, maybe he loves you too, maybe he realizes that you are the only one that cares for him like you do.

And so you sit, with him, kissing in the foyer of your apartment. Piss drunk, but feeling sober, as if you had never drunk those six glasses of beer. Your hands are on his shirtfront, pulling at the soft fabric, and he is smiling into your lips, amused by your passion, perhaps, or maybe because of your lack of modesty as you moan against him.

His amusement fades when you tug at his shirt, and he obliges, stripping off the soft garment, and now he is bare-chested before you, and you blush now, suddenly meek, as you give up control to Michael, and he takes it willingly, lifting you into his arms, carrying you into your bedroom, kicking the door shut, laying you gently on the bed, then holding you close…

And, like a dream, you fall asleep (or pass out, at this point you know you are drunk, but you feel so sober, laying next to Michael, that you think that maybe you really do fall asleep and it’s all romance and flowers and hearts and not the hard liquor that had been flowing freely down your throat only minutes before he had come, your saviour, sent to help you see who you really love and that Lukas was just a mirage, in place of him, in place of Michael, and what were you thinking about again?) laying next to Michael, curled next to his warmth, his arm coiled around your waist, pulling you close to him.

You wake in a few hours to his breath at your neck and his hands splayed across your abdomen, and you look around your room in silent observation. You are sober now, and you take this time before he wakes to think of your decision.

(Though, in truth, you do not need to think of anything, because you know in your heart, in your very soul that Michael is right for you, that he will take care of you and love you when Lukas would only hurt you, and that there was no turning back now, now that you love Michael, now that you’ve shown him what truly ails you. And you know that you could never go back to waking up alone after being awakened to this blissful feeling of total warmth. And you would never give up this velvet feeling in your belly, not for the world.)

Your skin grows warm and you feel his lips on your neck, then in your hair as he wakes, and you find yourself turning in his powerful arms to meet his seeking lips.

And you admit (to yourself, and to him, later, over coffee in your boxer shorts) that you have never been more peaceful.

And you admit (to him, always to him, forever to him) that you love him.

And you probably always have.

You love the man with the pitiless eyes (because compassion and golden-green eyes have always been more appealing then pitying blue anyway, you tell yourself) and the golden (and green too, you think with amusement) smile.

And he loves you too.

(And you think maybe that’s why he’s so appealing, and you tell him so, and he only laughs.

He only ever laughs. A deep rumbling in his chest, and it feels so good when you are laying your head against it, as if there is an earthquake and you are at the very centre.

You tell him this, and he kisses you tenderly, as if to say what you already know, and will always be true.

“Arne, ich liebe sie. Ich liebe sie für immer,” he whispers in your ear.

I love you more than you could possibly know, you whisper back.

And you kiss again. (You find that you like kissing quite a lot, actually.) And again. And again. Always tender, always gentle, always full of the love that you both know is there, simmering softly under the surface. The kind that lasts.

The kind that lasts forever, you think happily.)

And you snuggle deeper into the bed, sighing deeply, and close your eyes.

So, feedback is loooovely. I loooove you guys. ♥