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0.
His first Klopp Hug takes place in the changing room, and it’s startlingly firm, but comforting, even if it does last one second too long. Ale was in the middle of unpacking his wash bag when the manager approached him, and there’s a stick of deodorant in his hand that he hopes isn't digging into the other man’s back too painfully. But when they pull away, there’s just his ice-blue gaze beneath the brim of his hat, and the famous grin, larger than life, splitting his face.
“We are very happy to have you here, Alexis, you know. I hope you are also excited, happy.”
“Of course I am.” Ale places the deodorant in his locker, and feels the unstoppable stretch of his cheeks. “This is a dream, really, for me, for my family. I am excited to start working.”
“Good, good.” Jurgen puts his hands on his hips, and the smile dims one kilowatt, just enough for the serious, gaffer voice to sneak through. “You will be great for us on the pitch obviously, with your experience, your creativity. But off the pitch too, I think. We lost a lot of guys this summer, you know, and I think you will be really good for the boys. They need someone like you.”
It hasn’t been long, but his reputation precedes him a large enough distance for Ale to know the man in front of him isn’t superfluous with words. Still, and perhaps because of that, he itches to ask him to explain what exactly he means. But his new boss has checked his Swiss watch twice already in their brief conversation and he has his own treatment session that will begin soon. So he settles for gratitude, which, in the past few days, he doesn’t seem to have enough of.
“Thank you, boss. I hope I can be a big help to the squad, and get along well with the boys, too.”
Jurgen asks after his family next, about his moving and settling in, and then prepares to run off– but not without a final embrace, whose warmth persists after the touch is gone. And though he already has a loving father in a comfortable home in Santa Rosa, “paternal” is the only way Ale can describe the hand on his shoulder, the pat on the back before he sends him on his way to treatment, like a benevolent guardian releasing a much-loved child on his first day of school.
1.
He doesn’t get lost this time on his way to the physio suite, and finds the trainer waiting for him, who he already thinks he’ll grow to like. The older man, Roy, has an easy smile and practiced hands, and it soothes his tender muscles and the jitters that bounce beneath his skin. He’s getting to the middle of a story about his son who just got married, and Ale is politely nodding along, when the door across from them swings open and a loud voice sounds. It’s accompanied by a big body, 6 and-a-half feet of it, wrapped in green and black, approaching the therapy bed and sending something like an electric current pulsing through the room.
“Roy!”
The trainer looks over, but keeps his hands, kneading the tendons of Ale’s foot, in motion.
“Big Virg, it’s great to see ya, lad! How was your holiday?”
“Not long enough, you know. Alright, Alexis?”
Virgil slaps their hands together and then places his giant palm at the top of his arm, squeezing. Ale is lying on his back, but even if he wasn’t, he’d have to look up to meet Virgil’s eyes, which are a paradox– dark but bright, with something piercing about them even when he’s cheerful.
“Fresh meat, eh?”
Alexis can only laugh, feeling fortunate that the arm wrapped around his bicep is friendly and not otherwise.
“He is taking good care of you, Alexis? Don’t need to keep my eye on him, do I?”
“No, no, there’s nothing to worry about, amigo. Roy is top.”
“Nah, but he is a strong boy, anyway, aren’t you. Meat is a big thing in Argentina, no?”
Virgil’s eye contact is unflinching, and he is only vice captain, but Ale isn’t sure how anyone could stand beneath his gaze and not do what he says. What’s more, his new teammate still hasn’t let go of his arm. In fact, the hand that was around him has slid up to cup his neck, the thumb drawing an invisible circle.
“Em,” Alexis doesn’t know what to say. His mouth is slightly open, and he feels the fingers around him squeeze tighter for an instant, but before he can wince, the pressure is gone and Virgil is laughing.
“Lots of protein, I mean. You got to have that to be a world cup winner.”
Ale swallows.
“Yes, of course. It helps.”
Roy takes the pause that follows to ask Virgil more about his holiday, and though he might be imagining it, and the trainer is being as gentle as his vocation allows, Ale swears a bead of sweat rolls off his brow.
The two of them chat, Ale having returned to his polite nodding, and eventually Virgil excuses himself, headed upstairs for a leadership meeting on the second floor. On his way out, he stops by the small table near the door and picks up the black iPhone sitting on it. A flare of anxiety whips through Ale’s body as he realizes it’s his phone, even though the device is actually fairly new, and there shouldn’t be anything incriminating in it. He makes a questioning noise as best he can from his back on the table, but Virgil has already pressed the power button.
The lockscreen photo, of Ale, eyes closed and lips pressed to the metallic gold of the World Cup trophy, lights the screen, and it’s been months already but the sight of it still ignites the same fireworks. He feels a smile spreading across his face before he remembers, and tries in vain to smother it.
But the big Dutchman is smiling, too.
“Still stuck on this, are you? It’s been what, 6 months?”
Ale thinks his teammate is joking, but even if he isn’t, the fuzzy feeling in his chest remains. He’s spent the past half-year trying to be mature about it, but being champion of the world is a boomerang straight back to his earliest childhood dreams. “I never got the chance to change it.”
“Don’t. I wouldn’t. And plus, you look nice here, with the trophy.”
Ale’s mind goes blank for a beat, Roy begins massaging his upper thigh, and his words and manners return.
“Oh, em. Thank you, very much.”
“You have more pictures?”
It’s a silly question– of course he has more pictures of what has been the best day of his life thus far– but still he hesitates to answer. In his place, Ale isn’t sure he would enjoy even the digitized image of his opponents caught in moments of euphoric joy he’d wished for himself, in fact he thinks he would actively avoid it, but he can see how it might work as a strange source of motivation, and anyways, he isn’t prepared to defy him. He starts to nod his head, but someone shouts the vice captain’s name from the hallway and diverts his rapt attention.
He looks back with the phone still in his hand, and Ale worries for a moment that Virgil’s going to keep it with him, carry it into the team leadership meeting and show everyone —he doesn’t know what. But he sits the device back down, pulling his own out from his pocket to confirm the time.
“I have to go, but later, you will show me. The pictures. Yeah?”
It’s phrased like a question, but Virgil’s tone and everything else about him suggests it isn’t one. Before Ale can collect himself enough to respond or do anything else, the big man turns on his heel quicker than his knees and stature should allow, and is out of the door. And it’s just him and Roy, and the persisting electric current, which feels as if it’s entered Ale’s body somehow, and still hasn’t fizzled out.
2.
In the hall on the way to breakfast, an arm finds its way around Ale’s shoulders, and it’s not careful or hesitant, like the rest of his interactions at the club this first week, but warm, close, and comfortable, like they’re mates from childhood, and have strolled down this hallway a hundred times. Except that’s not possible. He looks down at the hand dangling just under his chin, the peachy, tan skin, the spray of bluish ink along the forearm, and relaxes, thinking he’s figured it out. But a flurry of strangely accented Spanish hits his ears, and confuses him again.
“Estás perdido? Porque al cielo hay un largo camino desde aquí.”
It’s Kostas. Kostas Tsimikas. Greek, convincingly Scouse but above all, and to all, aggressively disarming. Ale has known him for all of three days but feels like he could talk with, or go out for a drink, just the two of them, without any risk of a quiet moment. There’s a melody to his speech that’s familiar to Ale’s ears, too, and it sets fire to another burning question.
“You speak Spanish, amigo?”
“No, hermano, just Greek, English, a little bit Dutch. Pero here, inside,” Kostas taps at his chest, looking sincere. “I do.”
“Mmm, you want to learn?”
“Of course– it’s the language of love, bro. I ask Thiago before, to help me, but he only give me things from Spain, no quiero. Now I have you.”
Ale huffs, pleased by any opportunity to be mentioned in the same context as the magician. “It takes much time to learn a language, no? But sí, I will help. What do you want to say?”
“You see, there is someone I like, a little bit -” Kostas bumps their hips together to emphasize his point. “And this person, they speak Spanish. I want to know what to say to them, you know. Something smooth.”
Ale thinks for a moment and then repeats the only pick-up line he has memorized, because his friend used it in a bar in Buenos Aires once and is now married with a ranch house and two and a half pibes. He delivers the phrase in what to him is a slow, clear Spanish, and Kostas takes it in like a dedicated student, his eyes dark and alert, and focused on Ale’s mouth.
“Do you understand it, amigo?”
Kostas nods, then smiles as they continue down the hallway, animated chatter from the cafe reaching them already, and echoing against the high walls. Ale hadn’t realized they stopped walking.
“Gracias, hermano. I’m starving, and Ale-”
Kostas stops their walk again to look at him, and Ale notices how he’s still tucked beneath his arm. They are so near the same height that when he turns his head their noses scarcely avoid colliding.
“Yes, amigo?”
“Quisiera ser caramelo, para pegarme en tus labios y deshacerme en tu boca.”
There’s a moment of silence, of Kostas eyes fixed to his, wide and deep, lip caught in his teeth, and then Alexis chuckles. His teammate’s pronunciation really is quite good.
“Perfecto, hermano. You are sure you don’t know español?”
Kostas shakes his head slowly, and it makes Ale laugh more, patting a hand on his teammate’s stomach, and sliding the other around his back. He feels Kostas’s breath hitch, fluttering along his nose, and is sure his own, hopefully still fresh, is doing the same.
It would be unusual, Ale thinks, as he follows Kostas to the fruit line, to be so at ease with someone so new, but hyper-familiarity seems to be the norm around AXA where the little Greek man is concerned. It reminds Ale of how he is with the people he loves back home, hugs and kisses on the face so routine that he thinks far less than twice about them. It’s only here on this rainy, overcast island that he started to think it might be something strange.
3.
Before afternoon training, before he came to Liverpool, before moving to England, even, Ale considered himself comfortably bilingual. He was a far better angloparlante than his Juniors teammates, and at Brighton his command of the language helped him make fast friends, becoming a translator of sorts between his South American coworkers and monolingual British ones, and never once did he panic when lip-reading the gaffer’s screeches from the sidelines or even two inches from his face. He’s not truly doubted his linguistic skills since he acquired them – and then he met Trent Alexander-Arnold. And only a few minutes later, Andrew Robertson.
At the moment, he’s sat between them, on the hardwood bench of the bootroom, lacing up their shoes for the second training session of the day.
“I’ll tell ya Alexis, the only restaurant in Merseyside ya need to know is Maggie May’s. Best spot in the city, by far.”
“Come off it, lad, ya only know that place ‘cause I took ya there.”
“But ya never even tried the scouse until I suggested it. Chicken strips and chips lad, is this one.”
Ale laughs, because he finally caught a word, “chips”, and the scowl on Trent’s lips lets him know Robbo must have said something funny or rude, or likely both.
“Y’ever had scouse Ale?”
The Scotsman adds several emphatic details to his question, and Ale feels weakly like he’s failed his ancestors.
“I am sorry, I did not understand everything. What did you say? Something about “scouse”?”
Robbo looks over at him, and his eyes shine like a cartoon character’s, like Ale’s confusion is the best possible response to his question.
“I’ve said scouse.” Robbo puts italics around the word, but with his voice. “It’s the traditional meal round ‘ere, real big with the locals.”
“Mmm, okay, no, I have not heard of it. What’s it like?”
“Why don’t ya let me tell ‘im about it? I’m the local, aren’t I?”
Ale returns to only listening, sliding his second shin pad in, a tiny smile tingling around his mouth. Their back and forth reminds him of quarreling brothers or bickering old people, or two bickering old people who are also brothers. And each time the person speaking changes, he feels a little bump to his shoulder, involuntary, from the left or the right.
“Yeah but he’s not asked you, has he? Anyways, Alexis lad– we’ll get you a bowl of the stuff. I’ll take ya there one night, to Maggie’s, on me.”
“No, I’ll take him.” Trent has both his ombré boots on now, and can focus all his energy on arguing.
“No, I will. Can show him around a few other places, too, help him get settled an that, like an adult.”
“Nah, nah, Alexis, I’ll show you. Lived in Liverpool me whole life, surely I know it better than him.”
“That’s exactly the problem. You’ve never been new to the place so ya dunno what it’s like adjustin’ to the city for the first time. See, I can relate to him on that - yous don’t have nothin in common.”
“We ‘ave loads of things in common!”
Trent almost shouts it, and slices his eyes to the left toward his long-term teammate. The big brown irises meet with Ale’s on the way, and he keeps a look on his face that he hopes is encouraging. Robbo only laughs, though it’s more like the howl of a wolf.
“I mean, I’m sure we do. Have stuff in common.” Trent coughs. His skin is a nice, caramel brown, but his cheeks verge on red, though they haven’t yet braved the summer heat. “With footy an that, and other things, too. I could help.”
Ale can’t tell anymore if Trent is talking to him or Robbo; both their heads are bent, lifting socks and adjusting laces that were pitch-ready only a moment ago. But in the short, noisy pause he decides on neutrality, because of the holes in his understanding and because he’d like to make good friends with them both, and doesn’t want to offend either one.
He turns to the not-so-young right-back, and then to the not-so-old left-back. “Thank you, Trent, I am sure we do share things in common, we should have dinner, and find out. And thank you, too, Andrew. I will try this, “scouse” sometime with you, too.”
His treaty seems to quietly satisfy them both, and when they’re all laced up they walk out to the training ground in their same formation– Trent, Robbo, and Ale in between. Again there’s the nudging, from one side, then the other, and before he can stumble, Ale has dinner plans for the next two weekends. They don’t say too much more than that, and it’s almost pavlovian, how the sun, the sight of orange cones, and smell of turf switches on the focus that characterizes their job as professionals. There’s no way their strides can be all the same length, but they all reach the pitch at the same time.
4.
The canteen after the day’s third training session looks and feels, to Ale, like what finding the hidden city of Atlantis must be like, or a desert oasis to someone, like himself, on the brink of dehydration. His thighs, shins, and balls of his feet feel like maybe they don’t belong to him anymore, and his mind is dead-locked on the fastest method of getting fluids, protein, and carbohydrates into his hands and then to his mouth. It takes a few apologetic smiles and “yes”s to the kitchen staff before he’s sat at a square table with only half idea of what’s on his plate.
His mouth is full of chicken and something he thinks is mashed potatoes when a mass of air and body heat, faint cologne, stops on his right side. He looks up, for his mama’s sake, hoping there’s no food on his mouth.
“Con permiso?”
Darwin motions toward the open seat across from him, and Ale assents with little hesitation. Despite the bone-curdling exhaustion, he welcomes the company, especially with his almost-paisano who, except for a brief Instagram exchange, his packed schedule hasn’t left him much time to speak to. His new teammate’s plate is full and his ponytail, Ale notices, is holding on by a sheer hope, and it’s comforting to him that six hours of training under a vindictive northern sun is no match for even the most superhuman of them all.
“Perdon por no haberte hablado antes, pero este de pre-season siempre anda muy ocupado. Pero vos, cómo estás?”
“No pasa nada, hermano.” Ale waves off the apology and shifts in his chair. “Gracias por el bienvenido. Estoy … mmm pues, no sé decirlo.”
“Lo sé, hermano.” Darwin sighs, and nods, like he understands. He looks to Ale, inviting him to say more, but suggesting it’s fine if he doesn’t. But Ale does.
And it feels nice to speak his language, to hear it spoken back to him at regular intervals, in the same rhythm and tone, with all the voseos and “sh”s in all the right spots. He tries to put to words the combination of emotions he’s felt since the ink dried on the transfer papers, since leaving Brighton, and entering Merseyside, and he isn’t sure if what he formulates is coherent, but from the attempt alone, he feels a release of tension. Their conversation, he realizes, sitting talking to Darwin, feels just the same as taking his boots off after a day as brutal as this one, like his work is done, and he doesn’t have to try.
By the time they finish speaking, their plates are mostly empty, and the canteen and Ale’s chest are mostly full.
The only way to make the moment better would be a mate. Fresh, bitter, and hot enough to burn his tongue.
He looks away, towards the soaring wall of windows, tasting the earthy liquid on his tongue, and like the ticking pieces of a set play, Darwin finishes the last bite of his chicken salad and groans.
“Qué ganas de un mate bien calientito. Siempre me antoja después de cenar.”
Ale laughs, deep from his belly though it makes his muscles throb. He sits his hand on Darwin’s forearm across the table.
“I was thinking the same exact thing.”
“Te gusta el mate?”
“It’s my favorite drink, hermano. Today I left it at home.”
“Uy, one day you have to come to mine! I will make you some, and we can talk some more, if you want. I haven’t been here for so long, but still. I understand a little bit, how you feel.”
“Lo hacemos, pues.”
They smile at each other for a moment, and Darwin’s eyes, which at first were reserved, are as open and readable as a child’s. Ale thinks it would be hard to hide anything behind them, and can confirm his speculation when Adrian comes loping into the adjacent seat, rattling the objects on their table.
“Qué tal mis niñitos? Mis pibes, mejor– así vosotros lo decís, no?”
The goalkeeper makes himself laugh, and Ale is almost annoyed that everyone is just as hungry as they are. Lucho is next to join them, followed by the other hispanohablantes, and soon Darwin is listening intently to a description of the museum Thiago visited last weekend, Stefan is defending himself and his entire generation against an unsolicited attack, and without breaking stride, Ale extends his leg to brush their knees together under the table. Darwin’s eyes flip to him, and Ale smiles, again, and it’s silent, but he’s saying something, something close to “thank you” maybe, in the newfangled language he’s finding they have in common.
+1
Ale has not yet started to think of his Liverpool apartment as “his”, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t fond of it. There’s a few, simple pieces of furniture he selected from a catalogue and some photos and trinkets of sentimental value, food in the refrigerator, but it’s not so comfortable, so “homey” that he hurts now, while he’s preparing to leave it. Thirty minutes ago, his new teammate’s text buzzed his phone, and now he’s dressed and ready, waiting for the follow-up to let him know he’s outside.
The invitation, for what it’s worth, wasn’t unexpected– their interactions earlier in the week made a solo hangout inevitable, and he doesn’t have to wait much longer for it; he’s fumbling with the settings on the fancy oven to heat the kettle for his mate later when the phone vibrates on the counter. He reads Im here, in the black jeep and his stomach does the tiniest of flips. It’s one of the first few times he’s heard his teammate’s “text message” voice, which is not so different from his real one, but he doesn’t dwell on the nuances long - not when he can trot down the two flights of stairs and let the sound fill his own two ears. And otherwise, he thinks it’d be rude to keep his night’s companion waiting.
The jeep windows are tinted, so from the sidewalk, he can’t see the silhouette in the driver’s seat, but he knows it’s there, and he feels an odd mix of eagerness and his usual easy tranquility: at having his first non-football related outing since moving to the city, and at the prospect of spending quality getting-to-know-you time with a teammate that he hopes to grow league-winning chemistry with. He reaches the passenger door and still can’t make out anything inside, and can’t enter either, as he tries once and finds the handle locked. He taps once on the window, thinking maybe he’s picked the wrong car, that there’s another black jeep parked somewhere nearby, but a mechanic whirring sound starts, and the dark glass slides down. Ale brings his hand back to his side, and his fingers start to tingle, when the still wet-looking hair, warm eyes, and fatigued but expectant face comes into view. He blames it- the tingling- on the long, hectic week, the rollercoaster emotions, on the sheer weight of starting over, of living out his dream, which is heavy and present even on the best of days. But it all seems that much easier, that much lighter to bear when he hears the soft, excited “Hey Ale” just as he pulls open the door.