A/N: Thank you as always! The comments always make me really happy you're enjoying it!
Part Four - Brendan
Danny had the newspapers spread out over his desk. He batted the words risky and pay off around but Brendan hadn't looked up once. Now that he'd met Steven Hay in the flesh, all bronzed lithe and flexible, he hadn't thought of much else. At the match he'd practically flaunted his sex appeal like a direct attack. And so Brendan had been forced to retaliate, harsher than he had planned, because he wouldn't be made to feel like that – not ever.
It had spiralled from the moment they met in the entrance hall. Steven's tracksuit slung low across his hips and Brendan stood watching that mouthful slither of skin like he could already taste him. He imagined salty Demerara. Ste stung brittle with attitude but something made Brendan pause: his first unconscious glance of appreciation before their eyes met. It was bitter flash of the past. The shutters came down without his permission and the resolve to not let history repeat itself grew stronger; Brendan would show him, show everyone, who the weakling was.
On the pitch and despite himself, Brendan admired Steven's game. His fiery temper stood him well as he sprinted as if on hot coals. He played almost independently – not like he didn't need City but that he knew how to succeed without them. The crowd bayed for a Brady/Hay showdown and Brendan could already picture their bodies tangled together in the mud in very different circumstances. All that aggression surged through his legs to the ball and the team around him seemed obsolete. He couldn't lose to the pretty boy. Steven would ruin him.
At half time Brendan saw him smile – schemes and plans and Danny's publicity machine melted and he wanted nothing more than to end the manufactured war and grow close to him. He didn't have the robotic blandness of the other players like he was born from a conveyor belt of rising stars. He had the spirit and the rebellion of a novice, like a guy caught up in a world that he wasn't perfectly moulded for, but the natural skill in his bones. Brendan wanted to bury himself in his spirit.
And then on the walk to the changing rooms he saw it. Just out of the corner of his eye and only brief enough to register once he'd walked past. A championship photo and face that blew the grenade he'd kept locked up for years. The guy played for Madrid now and Brendan had been left to reassemble a life.
They'd been a few months short of seventeen. On the same team, in both regards, but nursing girlfriends on the side. He'd look back on it now and see it as nothing more than teenage infatuation with Eoghan but it felt real then because it was wrong and unsaid and disgusting. They trained and played and spent every waking hour in each other's company; Eoghan showed him a kindness he never got at home. It was never uttered, but Brendan knew – could feel it from the way Eoghan looked at him and teased with him. And then the City scouts came and it was their moment. Brendan was the one they wanted, everyone knew it. But he fucked it up the night before the manager arrived by trying to kiss Eoghan Nolan and giving in to what this had all been leading to.
Eoghan wasn't stupid, he knew what Brendan's biggest fear was and it would have taken one word to Seamus Brady for the world to come crashing down. With his eye on the prize, Eoghan chose football and threatened to expose the truth about Brendan to his dad. Brendan's fear crippled him, stopping him from breaking Eoghan's fingers like he wanted, and listened to the boy's terms and conditions. Brendan had to forfeit his chance to play in front of the City manager tomorrow; call in sick, run away – whatever it took – and Eoghan would take his place as the star player.
Brendan made himself sick that night and quit the team, telling Seamus there were too many poofs in the changing room and listening to his taunts that he thought Brenda would like that. He watched Eoghan pack for Manchester and Brendan slipped into a Dublin team that barely had a goal to their name. He vowed never to mix the two worlds together again.
When the whistle blew to signal the start of the second half, all he could see was Steven rain-ravaged and dripping like those RAW adverts and the need to stop him from looking like the stronger one. Breaking his wrist was the easy part.
::: :::
Conveying remorse and guilt in the interviews following the accident came naturally, so much so he started to wonder if the reality of his emotions seeped through his tales. Ste started to look like the brave fall guy in the press and soon Brendan's retelling became more about Steven slipping back into aggressive styles of play. Brendan had his own history of violence on the pitch but he put it down to a rougher game back home. The press seemed eager to pick up on any seeds of Ste slipping back into old habits.
"What were you playing at with that young lad on the pitch?" Eileen said picking over her fad diet lunch.
Brendan felt his heart stop. "What're you on about?" His fingers were white against the glass of water. A waiter hovered and he got rid of him with a glare.
Eileen leant over the table, checking from side to side first. They were all DJs and TV presenters too self-involved to worry about her gossip. The way she dressed – dripped in money looking like a drag queen's vomit – they were bound to think she was a nobody.
"Tell me now, did you hurt him on purpose or what?" Eileen had a way of getting under his skin. Sometimes he panicked that she knew, but she'd never be one to keep quiet if she even so much as suspected.
"Of course not!"
"Something in you's not right," she said waving her fork at him. She'd be the type of woman to stab him with one of those. He thought back to the night of the match against City, climbing into the shower after endless press interviews and jerking himself dry of cum, picturing Steven Hay on the floor of the shower taking it. And then yawning himself out of the bathroom making excuses to Eileen as to why he wasn't feeling up for it. If Steven had been in his bed; he would have been up all night.
Soon she'd be wanting to try again for a baby, he just hoped he could palm her off with a marriage before things got that bad.
"It's all this transfer bollocks about Park," Brendan said.
"I thought you were happy at United? I like being a United WAG."
He gripped the table to avoid rolling his eyes at her. The magazine column and her attempts at forging friendships with his teammates' girlfriends was making her a monster. In Dublin she was the lucky homely girl who had all her girlfriends claiming for attention but in Manchester she was just another WAG with a magazine column.
"It's Danny Houston's idea. He thinks I can try for a better deal. Park's a better club."
Eileen turned up her nose. "They're all snooty bitches there,"
"This ain't about you."
"Well it ain't about you either. You're like a lump of meat passed around to the highest bidder. You think anyone cares about the real Brendan Brady?"
Brendan banged the table enough to startle her and cause the tables around to hush. "Shut up and eat your food." Even she was blind to the real Brendan Brady.
::: :::
There was another meeting with Danny booked in. As he sat fidgeting in the leather backed chair, knee trampolining, he prayed the Park transfer business was just a way to scare Hay off. Facing him in direct competition at every turn wasn't the way he wanted his career to progress. Something would break and it couldn't be him.
"Brendan, come on in." Something about the way Danny welcomed him in reminded Brendan of a dark eyed spider, arms outstretched in his glass fronted office. Danny got all the niceties out the way first – joshing with him about setting a date for the wedding and Brendan did the right thing of fixing his face with a smile.
"Heart of the matter is this: your popularity has taken a dip since the – accident," Danny made air quotes; he had no problem with underhand as long as it benefitted him, "But hey, it's got the little poof off our backs – if you'll pardon the pun. But anyway, good news is: public still love ya. Still, it wouldn't hurt to do a little stroking of your image. I'm taking public relations – cosying up to the do-gooders that sort of thing. We've done the donations and the nice little lunches with your missus but we need to go bigger now. Put a bit more thought into it."
"What've you got in mind?"
Danny handed over a draft brochure. It had pictures of grinning kids taking part in sports and backed by equally beaming Olympic hopefuls. Well, in this mock-up they were models posing as sportsmen and women.
"RAW – the drinks brand – they're opening a foundation and they want faces: big names to be their inspirational leaders and all that bollocks." Danny sat back, hands folded waiting for a response.
RAW rang alarm bells and Brendan knew why. "Aren't they City's sponsor?"
Danny tilted his head to the side. "Yes. But they're opening this up to all the big guns. Looks good too, show you're all bigger and better than your on the pitch rivalries."
Danny talked him through the finer details: public speaking, smiling for the kiddies, cheering them on at some egg and spoon shit. The whole thing bored and repulsed him. Give him a cheque to sign or a generic remark to make and he'd do it no problem. Time and effort and care – he wasn't interested. And he told Danny as much, citing his training as an excuse.
Danny laughed with an emptiness of a man who left his conscience at the door. "Sorry Brendan, when I called you in for this meeting, it wasn't to get your okay. It was to tell you that you're doing it. This was just a formality."
Brendan sat cold in the chair opposite, another piece of him sold.
"Where do I sign?"
::: :::
The next he heard from the RAW foundation was a press release on his crucial role and an introductory lunch invitation. Their spiel gave enough for Eileen to wax lyrical about his involvement in her next column and express her dream for children that she too could inspire to be ambitious and healthy. Any day now he was expecting her to tell him to forgo the condoms.
Eileen was slightly put out it wasn't a wives and girlfriends event after she'd splashed out on complimentary outfits for the pair of them, but he put the tie in the drawer and left open collar, silver cross hanging low amongst his spread of chest hair.
The press took great interest in his arrival and he slipped his gum under his tongue and smiled for them. There was a low hum of tension and excitement between the paps and he wondered what could be the cause for such a buzz at the launch of a charity foundation.
The answer became clear as soon as he stepped into the reception of the hotel where it was held and saw Steven Hay crisply suited and angular cheekbones in cohorts with a woman in a name badge. On seeing him, Steven immediately excused himself from the conversation and tucked himself away into deep and meaningful with another RAW rep.
The woman with the name badge clasped his hands and he kissed her on the cheek, brain drifting away from her introduction and onto Steven's presence. Of course he'd be at the event! Of course! He felt like an idiot for not even considering that RAW's pouting model would be a part of the foundation. His arm in a cast was a very vivid reminder of the animosity between them and Brendan wondered if he should broach it. There was a hope that he'd have put it down to the macho banter on the pitch, that he'd have ignored Brendan's comments to the press. But already the boy was doing a great job of being the charity champion he could never be. And when they exchanged a glance across the lobby, Ste's smile flickered smugly.