Chapter Text
July
John watches the CFA materialise through rain-streaked glass, manicured pitches stretching out like something from a recruitment video. Which he’s watched. Eleven times. On his phone, under the duvet the night he signed his contract.
The driver glances at him in the rearview. “First day, is it?”
“Yeah,” John swallows. His voice comes out thinner, younger than he’d like. He clears his throat. “Yeah. It is.”
“Good luck, mate. My grandson’s already got your City shirt.”
John laughs awkwardly, the sound filling the back seat like a nervous cough instead. “Tell him I’ll make him proud.”
The car pulls up and John gets down, and then suddenly he’s standing in the July drizzle with his bag on one hand and his hair already damp. Buzz cuts don’t keep rain out the way people think. He runs a hand over the short fuzz and exhales through his teeth.
85 million pounds. That’s what the back pages keep printing, big block numbers next to his face. 85 million for a centre half from a town no one’s heard of before, who’s only played one full Premier League season. THE NEXT BECKENBAUER? Someone at Sky wrote, and John’s sister had screenshot it and sent it to the family group chat with 17 cry-laughing emojis.
He’s not the next Beckenbauer. Or the next Kompany, or Ramos, or Maldini. He’s just John. He’s 6’2, 154 pounds soaking wet, and his boots are in his bag because he couldn’t figure out which bag the kitman was supposed to collect and which one he was supposed to carry himself, and he was too embarrassed to ring and ask.
The glass doors slide open, the lobby greeting him. There’s a massive sky-blue crest with the club’s logo on the wall. The woman at the reception smiles to him, greets him and points him towards the changing rooms before he even opens his mouth, which means his face has been circulated, which means everyone already knows who he is.
He follows the corridor. Framed shirts on the walls – Silva, Kompany, Agüero, Touré. His trainers squeak on the polished floor and the sound echoes.
The locker room’s already open. Voices spill out, laughter, someone swearing, a ball bouncing off the wall. John stops just outside, one hand on the doorframe, and listens.
“–absolute state of you, Bernard, look at your calves. Have you been doing anything this summer or just–”
“Fuck off, I was in Mykonos.”
“Mykonos isn’t a workout–”
“It is when you have to carry bags and my daughter through an airport for six hours–”
John pushes through.
The room goes quiet for exactly one and a half seconds. Every pair of eyes in the locker room lands on him, and John can almost feel his heart physically beating out of his chest.
Then Kyle Walker, shaved head, forearms like bridge cables, grins with every single one of his teeth. “There he is! John, good to see you’ve arrived all safe. Come ‘ere.”
Oh God.
“Alright,” John says, and his accent thickens the way it always does when he’s nervous, vowels rounding out. “Alright, yeah. Hi.”
Kyle is on his feet and crossing the room before John can even set his bag down. He grabs John by the shoulders, looks him up and down, then turns to the room. “Lads, he’s a baby. Look at him. We’ve signed a baby.”
“I’m – I’m nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” Kyle clutches his chest. “My nephew is nearly nineteen. I could be your uncle.”
“Please don’t.”
The room cracks open. That’s the thing with John. He doesn’t have to try. Something about the way he stands there, shoulders slightly hunched, mouth twitching up to a smile, blue eyes too wide and honest makes people want to keep him. The kind of lad making everyone laugh without even doing anything.
Jack Grealish materialises next to him then, still in his shorts and sliders.
I know this man from the telly, John thinks, which is a bizarre thought considering he’s standing close enough now that John can see the stubble along his jaw.
“Johnny,” Jack says, like they’ve known each other for years. “Come on. Your peg’s over here, next to mine. I requested it.”
“He did,” Kyle calls.
“Absoutely. He’s my new best friend. Look at him.”
John lets himself be steered. His locker has his name above it – STONES 5 – in the same typeface he’s seen on television since he was old enough to understand what football was.
He touches the letters with his fingertips when he thinks no one’s looking.
His name. His number. His place, amongst these stars.
Erling Haaland’s already dressed for training, sat on the physio bench at the far end eating a banana. He’s massive up close. He looks up when John walks past and his face splits into a grin that’s weirdly childish for someone that physically enormous.
“Stones!” he says, mouth full. “I watched your goal against Chelsea. The one where you dribbled from the box. How did a centre-back learn to do that?”
“You watched that?”
“Three times,” Haaland holds up three fingers, still chewing. “Crazy. You are crazy. I told Pep, this one is crazy.”
John feels a flush crawl up his neck. “Cheers, mate.”
He’s settling. He can feel it, the knot in his chest loosening one loop at a time. John sits back by his locker, unpaacks his boots and lines them up neatly on the shelf. He lets himself breathe.
And then the door opens again.
He knows before he looks. He knows because he’s been waiting for this moment since he was 11 years old lying on his bedroom floor in Barnsley with his laptop open to a YouTube compilation titled Rúben Dias - The Art of Defending | Best Tackles, watching the same clips over and over again until his eyes burned.
Rúben Dias walks in. Rúben. Rúben Dias, the one from his telly, from the posters in his bedroom wall.
He’s – fuck.
He’s taller than John expected, or maybe it’s the way he carries himself. 33 now and wearing every year of it well. Dark eyes, almost black in the fluorescent light of the locker room. His skin is olive, darkened by the sun even through an English summer, and there’s a thin scar above his left eyebrow – John doesn’t know from what, has never known, has spent literal hours on Google trying to find out.
He’s wearing a plain black tee and he smells – John catches it, a waft of something sweet – like warm woody amber.
I’m going to die.
I am going to die right here in this changing room next to Jack Grealish’s coconut shampoo.
“Rúben!” Kyle calls. “Come meet the new boy.”
Rúben’s gaze sweeps the room and lands on John for approximately a quarter of a second before moving on. He walks to his locker, which is on the opposite side of the room, and drops his bag without a word.
John’s stomach flips. He waits for – something. Anything. A nod, maybe. Or a handshake.
But Rúben just unzips his bags and pulls out his boots. Begins changing.
“Rúben,” Kyle says again, more pointed this time.
“I heard you,” Rúben doesn’t turn around. He pulls his shirt over his head and John, who has trained himself to be subtle about these things, who has survived changing rooms and the constant proximity of male bodies by learning to not look, to never look, can’t not look.
Rúben’s back is broad. The muscles shift under his skin like tectonic plates. A tattoo runs down his left rib cage. John can’t make out the words from here, though, only the black script curving along bone. His skin’s darker across his shoulders, lighter at his waist. He’s thicker than he looks on screen, built like something designed to absorb impact.
John looks away. His mouth is dry.
Then he feels an elbow on his side. “Don’t take it personally,” Jack says. “Rúben’s just… He takes a while. With new people.”
“Right,” John says. “Yeah. No, totally. That’s– yeah, I get it no worries.”
Training is called at ten. They file out onto the pitch. Pep’s already there, standing in the centre circle in his grey tracksuit, watching them approach with that expression he has.
John tries to focus. The drills are complex, harder than Everton’s, and Pep stops them every thirty seconds to yell something at someone. The precision expected with him is surgical, almost. John keeps up, though. His body knows what to do. His feet are quick, his reading of the space like a second language to him. He also starts to feel the rhythm of the team reveal themselves. Kevin running diagonally, Bernardo with the ball, Erling’s pull, Jack drifting inside.
And Rúben, beside him.
They’re paired. Of course they are. John had known this, he’d been signed to partner Dias and everyone knows it. But the reality is different. Rúben is right there, three feet away, and John can hear his breathing, the quick controlled exhales. He sees the way Rúben’s eyes track the ball with predatory focus, the small commands he barks.
At one point John steps too wide and Rúben snaps Tighter! Without even looking at him. John adjusts immediately, closing the gap between them, and Rúben says nothing else. Doesn’t acknowledge the correction, doesn’t even look at him.
During a water break, when the others cluster together and Kyle cracks a joke that makes Erling choke on his drink, John watches Rúben stand apart. He’s got his hands on his hips, squinting up at the grey sky. Rainwater sits on his brow bone and tracks down his temple and John watches the droplet travel the length of his jaw and drip off his chin.
13-year-old John would absolutely lose his mind right now.
He’d never told anyone about the crush. It lives in the private chamber where he kept all the things he wasn’t ready to say aloud – that he was gay, that he’d known since he was nine, that the first time he’d felt it was watching Rúben Dias in a Champions League semifinal with his shirt off at full time, all sweaty with that beautiful, untouchable look and his face, and something in John had cracked open like a geode.
He’d been careful. He’d dated girls at school, laughed at the right jokes, looked at the right posters, never held eye contact with another boy for longer than three seconds.
At City, it’ll be the same. He’ll be careful. He’ll be the cheeky lad from Barnsley who makes everyone laugh, and no one will look close enough to see the rest.
“Oi. Johnny.”
John turns. Kyle is beckoning from the group, his arm slung around Jack’s shoulders. “We’re doing dinner tonight. Thai place near Deansgate. You’re coming.”
“Am I?”
“You are. No arguments.”
“Jack’s paying.”
“I’m not paying.”
“You are because you lost the crossbar.”
“Nah, that challenge was rigged, didn’t make sense how–”
John grins. “Yeah, alright. I’ll come.”
He glances across the pitch and finds Rúben already walking toward the tunnel, alone, water bottle in his hand. He doesn’t look back even once.
John picks up his pace and jogs toward toward the tunnel. In the corridor he passes the physio room, the media suite, the analysis office with its wall of screens, the psychologists. He can hear Rúben’s footsteps ahead, but he doesn’t follow. He turns left toward the canteen instead.
He’ll earn it.
Whatever Rúben’s problem is, he’ll earn it. He’s got time.
John eats his breakfast, sat at a table where Jack is already FaceTiming someone and Erling’s nicking yoghurt off Bernardo. He laughs when Kyle shows him a meme. He listens when Kevin comes over quickly, without any fanfare, and explains the patterns Pep will want from his centre-backs. John absorbs every word.
And later, in the corridor outside the gym, he passes Rúben going the other direction. Their eyes meet, and John opens his mouth – to say hi or something – but Rúben just looks through him. Past him, like he’s part of the wallpaper.
He touches the back of his own neck. The skin’s hot there.
“Rúben, you coming to dinner tonight?” He hears someone say from inside the gym.
A pause. Then Rúben’s flat voice, “No.”
John lets out the breath he’s been keeping in, dropping his shoulders and walks on.
Maybe next time.