ficlet: I am you are me (football rpf)

[meretricula]

this is very short. I just want it out and over. I'm meant to be doing many other things right now but I needed some kind of reaction to the various forms of asshattery going on in football, so hopefully this is it and I can go back to actually writing my dissertation.

title: I am you are me
fandom: football rpf
characters: Mario Balotelli and David Silva
rating: PG-13
word count: 400
summary: A brief conversation about a difficult thing.
notes: a much better fic about Mario Balotelli than this one was recently posted to footballslash. if you haven't yet, you should read it. this was not written in reaction to any specific event, although the staggeringly constant racist abuse that Balotelli has faced all his life is very real. someday I want to write cracky fluff about Mario falling in love with Silva and traipsing around after him like a possessive, poorly trained puppy, but this is very much not that fic.


The mister patted him on the shoulder, like a pet dog. He said not to let it get to him, to just keep playing, that he'd played well. Nigel said, "They're fucking idiots." Patrick didn't say anything at all. And Silva sat down next to him when everyone else had gone into the showers and he was still unlacing his boots, which was the best part, if by best he meant pointless and ironic, since of course Silva couldn't say anything without Carlos there to translate.

Mario wanted his mom - his real mom, his mom who'd raised him and loved him even though she didn't look a goddamn thing like him - and she wasn't there and what the hell, right? "I used to really like bananas," he said. "Can't eat them anymore. They make me feel sick."

"I got some stick, when I was younger," Silva said.

Mario barely kept himself from jumping. He'd thought - yeah, he'd known Silva knew a little Italian, but not enough to understand him, he'd thought. Not enough for this conversation. "For what, being the cutest on the team?" he asked, putting a little sneer on the diminutive. He wasn't going to hear this from David fucking Silva. The fans loved him and the mister loved him and Carlos loved him and he didn't get to say this to Mario.

"For my eyes," Silva said calmly. He put his fingers up and pulled the corners of his eyes high and to the side. Mario wanted to grab his hands and yank them away. It looked grotesque. "And because I am very little, but mostly for my eyes." He finally lowered his hands and smiled humorlessly. "I am lucky they cannot see that I am a faggot on my face, no?"

The sound of that word on Silva's tongue was horrific, worse even than the ugly unnatural slant of his eyes had been. "What the fuck," Mario started to say.

"If I play this game with you, who hears this more, I am going to lose," Silva said. "So I do not play. It is not a game. Now you know, and you will hear this for me and I will hear this for you and we will know. And we will play the football, because they say what they see but they do not know. It was a good cross I gave you," he added as he got to his feet and started gathering his things for the shower. Mario stared at him, the white towel knotted around his waist, the soap he grabbed out of his locker, the sparse hair on his chest and calves. All the insignificant little details he had never noticed that made up David Silva suddenly seemed very real and very relevant. "Don't waste my crosses again."

Comments

[una-surrealista.livejournal.com]

man, thanks so much for writing this. and posting the link to that other fic. this a topic that just...I can't even. and right now with Busquets and everything...I don't know. when I'm upset about something I try to bear in mind cultural differences and context, but racism is racism. there is no context to that. apartheid was racism, but so is every racial insult made in the heat of a football game and every racial chant made from the crowds. so thanks.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

it's tough. the thing with Busquets, I just... if we're right, it's awful. if we're wrong, it's awful that he's being wrongly accused. but the most awful is that nobody seems genuinely motivated to get to the bottom of it for the sake of GETTING RID OF RACISM instead of as one more weapon to fling in a stupid media war over a football match. I'm so disappointed in both sides.

but anyway. thank you for reading the fic!

[una-surrealista.livejournal.com]

so true. I think what bothers me the most is that Marcelo hasn't come out and said anything, which I guess could mean he didn't say it, but which could also mean that it's so routine he doesn't see the need to speak out. which is just the worst thing. but yeah. not only for this incident, but I have never been happier to see the back of a football game, win or lose, than these past four clásicos.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

Marcelo's the victim here, if there was an incident, and he shouldn't be paraded out into press conferences to speak about it if he doesn't feel comfortable doing so - but it makes me edgy to see this conversation being held exclusively by a bunch of white men in suits. and that's all I've got to say about it, aside from thank god it's over.

[una-surrealista.livejournal.com]

oh, good point. I didn't even think of how he might feel having to do the whole press conference thing. but the white men in suits. yeah. I'm with you there.