carraville as a concept really is brought to us by the power of friendship, second chances, finding a soulmate in unlikely places, and, men not knowing about bisexuality
sometimes i lie wide awake at night knowing Jamie Carragher is canon in the Ted Lasso universe and remembers Roy Kent's favorite flowers were white orchids and sent them to Roy the moment Roy joins Sky despite being bitter rivals. As per here on this post.
watching footage from the 2002 world cup where gary did some guest punditry because he was out injured with a broken foot. the foot he broke was his left and they put him at the end of the semi-circle of pundits. so when you look at him its like
An untimely blizzard forces Jamie’s hand to do the one thing he never thought he would again: spend the night at Gary’s place.
He can still barely feel his toes, and when he steps out of his shoes his wet socks leave marks on Gary’s floor. “Right,” Gary says, polite and business like, as he carefully hangs the keys on their hook by the door. “I can take your coat and I imagine you fancy a shower.” He takes Jamie’s coat and disappears upstairs with a speed that would have made Sir Alex proud in their playing days.
Hehe I would love a director commentary on The Ghost of You and Me :))) my carraville fic of all time
Director's commentary: come into my ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. Or, send in a ⭐star⭐ to have me select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!
Aaaaa thank you so much kakey! I posted the ghosts of you and me in August 2020 and even though I am aware of some of its technical flaws and even though it's been 4.5 years since then in which time I have written many other stories I am fond of, it remains still the favourite thing I have written. To the point that if someone was only going to read one story by me, or my fics were going to get destroyed and I could only save one, it would be that one. So it means a whole lot to me that it's a fave of yours too :') This got long so under the rest under the cut-
To offer actual commentary, a little known fact is that to me ghosts is a part of a duo, with my willypasta fic, between your love and mine, its spiritual companion. While they are for two very different ships in two different fandoms, they both explore the damage wrought by not only homophobia but being forced to choose between two warring parts of your identity and being told they must always be at odds, that one negates the other.
In between your love and mine, that pressure and danger is acute: you have two young men who are told they must choose between hockey and one another, whose wings are clipped before they can learn how to fly. Ghosts then is the flip side of that coin: Carra and Gary are both retired. Gary has been quasi-out within his own circles for years, and there is very little actual risk from them pursuing a relationship now. And yet part of the reason why they crash and burn so spectacularly the first time around is because they too have been mangled by the same pressure and forced choice in all the time they were playing, and just because the actual danger goes away does not mean its effects do too.
I have personally always felt this same tension and choice between on one hand being queer and on the other Turkish, where both sides seem to say: choose. And ultimately that's what both stories are - an exploration of that, refracted through a prism of hockey and football, and probably why they are so dear to me.
In that way the Leonard Cohen lyrics I used for between your love and mine apply equally to both stories: I wish there was a treaty we could sign. It’s over now, the water and the wine. We were broken then, but now we are borderline. And I wish there was a treaty; I wish there was a treaty, between your love and mine.
Finally, re ghosts, I do think about your point that making gnev the Gay One TM is not the most sensible trend fandom follows, and what the story may have looked like, were their roles switched - because I think you are onto something.
ok first of all love your stuff second of all gary getting all flustered about freddie flintoff in 'it's just not what's done' is one of my favourite things in any fic and i would adore it if you wrote anything more involving gary getting flustered about the big handsome cricket man if you ever got the chance
I! LOVE! GARY GETTING FLUSTERED OVER BIG HANDOME CRICKET MAN FREDDIE FLINTOFF!!!! his poor gay nerves can't handle it........ can you IMAGINE if beautiful twink (~96-99) Gary had met him I think he would probably have died.
ANYWAY this lil drabble is set in the same fic universe as 'it's just not what's done' just bc I like writing openly gay but still hopeless with men Gary... and him and Carra still fighting the inevitable friendship that is coming for them...
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The first planning session each Monday is more of a ‘sit in a conference room eating breakfast and chatting about the weekend’s games’ than it is a serious broadcasting meeting. It’s an almost nice start to a long day of meetings and rehearsals and shooting.
When they call time the producers all scuttle off to go spin their idle chit-chat into an hour’s worth of television, and the ‘talent’ (or whatever Carragher’s classed as) have a couple of hours to kill before the next meeting.
Gary, of course, usually spends it working. He’s no idea what Carragher does, only that he leaves their dressing room blissfully undisturbed for the full two hours, which is all he really needs to know.
Except, today Carragher pauses on his way out and says “thought I might try out one of them classes they have at the gym, fancy joining?”
Gary looks around the (now empty) room for who he could possibly be talking to, because there’s no way it’s him. He scoffs. “Do I look like I go to the gym, Carragher?”
“You look like you should,” Carragher replies, and so now Gary has no choice but to go just to prove him wrong.
He changes into baggy shorts and a t-shirt that’s tighter than he remembers it being when he bought it, and follows Carragher into the fitness studio part of the on campus gym.
And immediately walks back out when he sees which of his other esteemed colleagues have decided to spend their Monday mornings doing fucking yoga, of all things.
“Carra!” he hears a cockney accent greet as he starts to speed walk away, “and was that Gary I saw with you a second ago – oi, Nev! D’you forget something, I think we’re meant to be starting soon.”
Gary reluctantly turns back around and pastes on a smile, tugging self-consciously at the hem of his shirt. “Alright, Jamie?” he says with a nod, then turns to look at the man beside him and manages to get out a single-syllable greeting of “Fred” without incident.
Carragher looks at him curiously, and he feels his stupid face heat up under the scrutiny.
“Just going to – just gonna head to my mat, then,” he says to a point on the wall behind Jamie and Freddie, and he hurries over to the furthest corner of the room possible.
Annoyingly, Carragher follows him.
“That was weird,” he says, voice hushed while the teacher walks up to the front and starts the introductions. “You’re weird, d’you know that?”
Gary tries to pay attention to what’s being said up front, but can’t help but frown and reply “dunno what you’re talkin’ about.”
Carragher leaves it, but a few minutes into the class the other Jamie and Freddie drag their mats closer and start up a continual stream of chatter that’s hard to ignore.
At one point, the teacher looks over to their corner and shushes them so harshly that Gary loses his concentration and stumbles a bit. He braces himself for a fall that doesn’t come, because there’s suddenly a warm hand on his elbow and – and, actually, maybe the fall would’ve been better. Less embarrassing, surely, than having to look up at Freddie fucking Flintoff and mumble a thanks, and then turning away just a fraction too quickly and stumbling again, this time right into the poor man’s bare chest, because of fucking course he has taken his fucking shirt off for a fucking yoga class, why the fuck wouldn’t he?
He's just about ready to melt into the floor in a puddle of shame when the teacher points at them and says “you four, out!”, and he and Carragher are ushered out of the room by a giggling Jamie and Freddie.
“Didn’t yous say in your autobiography, Neville, that you got kicked out of yoga in playing days?” Carragher asks blithely.
Freddie is still stood close enough to Gary that he can feel his body heat, so with effort he manages to quite admirably reply with a hum and a shrug.
“Christ, if I’d known yoga w’you two idiots was all it took to get ‘im to shut up I’d’ve done it a year ago,” teases Carragher
Jamie reaches an arm out to ruffle Gary’s hair. “Aw, poor Nev’s got a little crush on me, don’t he? Can’t ever keep his head on around all this perfection.”
If he hadn’t played for Liverpool, Gary would be tempted to call Jamie Redknapp a good friend. Carragher and Freddie both scoff and start teasing Jamie and his vanity, and Gary’s able to regain enough composure to take a step away from Freddie and join in.
“Not if you were the last man on earth, Redknapp,” he says, then internally cringes at how his voice comes out just a little too loud.
Freddie laughs, elbows Jamie in the side. “Think you’re the one wit’ crush, Jamie,” he says, glancing over to Gary and Carragher with a wink. “Every time we see ‘im it’s ‘ooh, Gary, tell me I’m pretty’, ‘Gary, look, my biceps are bigger’n Fred’s’ – which is bullshit, just by the way – ‘Gary, stop starin’ at Fred and come pay attention to me’.”
Carragher looks between Freddie and Jamie, then turns to Gary with a squint. Gary prays to whatever god might be listening for him not to open that big ugly Scouse mouth of his.
No such luck.
“The two a’yous do realise who you’re squabblin’ over, right? Gary Neville, Christ, ‘ave some self-respect. He’s not even the best lookin’ footballer in his own family.”
#i'm dyin#GARY ALEXANDER NEVILLE#carra is always so obvious in his affections 'love interest' etc#gary does shit like this like if he masks it in football talk it's just shop talk#you know carra was the smuggest asshole ever after he saw this#they're exactly the kind of people to be like 'you like me? haha how embarrassing' 'we're shagging. right this second.' 'but still'#MY EMBARRASSING ENGLISH DADS AND THEIR RIDICULOUS SOCIAL MEDIA FLIRTING#cw: rpf#carraville#*facepalm* (@kaci3po)
Director's commentary for "A little foolishness and a lot of curiosity" and/or "watching water make love to the land" please? Sorry for being greedy but I'm still hyper from lfc becoming champions and I LOVE your writing!
Oohh first of all, this isn’t greed! You’re spoiling me here!!
It’s interesting that you pick these two fics because they’re so very different from each other!
A little bit of a foolishness and a lot of curiosity (link here) is about being young and reckless and not quite figuring out your feelings or your body quite yet, and the romance comes after. We see the stages of Stevie thinking oh, is Carra having a wank??? to oh, my body actually likes that?? to oh wow, I’m in love with him.
We see Carra having a related experience, albeit one we don’t fully see, since we’re limited to Stevie’s perspective. Jamie’s able to understand that Stevie’s young, that he might be someone who jumps the gun a little bit and says I love you too soon, and so he wants to push back, wants to encourage Stevie’s exploration of his own sexuality, but in a way that doesn’t lead to them overhyping the relationship as love when it might not be.
Part of that is also Jamie’s desire to protect himself--what if he likes Stevie, but Stevie realizes afterwards that he doesn’t like Jamie as an individual, but only as the man who helped him realize that he was attracted to men as well as women?
This desire to protect himself leads him to avoid things like kissing, maybe even provokes him into promiscuous behavior with other people (i.e. Michael in the fic), to remind himself that what he has with Stevie is just a ‘friends with benefits’ type of situation.
However, Carra also has a lot of genuine affection for Stevie, so when he suspects that maybe he’s in a relationship with an older, more experienced man (Redders) because of the same easy physicality that he himself had shared with Stevie earlier, that sets off alarm bells. He’s actually trying to help when he tells Stevie that Redders is too old for him, but there is an element of jealousy there, too.
When they’re each struggling, they realize how much they need each other just as friends, and being hurt and at odds because of their romantic relationship deteriorating has cost them the possibly more important platonic relationship that they both valued. This is why, when they are able to rekindle that friendship, it is a huge step, and Stevie tries to convince himself that it’s enough.
Take this lines, when they’re back to being friends and inching towards more.
“I just—if it was anybody else, I would have talked to you about it,” Stevie mutters miserably, “but I couldn’t tell anybody!”
“My brave boy,” Jamie whispers, “dealing with heartbreak all on your own. My poor boy, not even getting to cry when you were hurting. You wonderful, brave boy.”
“Just wanted you. Just wanted you there—“
At this point, we see a reversal from Stevie chasing the feeling of maturity by being maybe overly sexual in his desires--a lot of the initial framing of the story is about sex, and how feelings of sexual attraction helped Stevie clear up who he was attracted to. Now that that part is over with, and Stevie has largely accepted that he’s attracted to Jamie, they’re able to chase the more innocent aspects of a relationship--sleeping in a bed together, holding hands, hugging each other, going on dates to the cinema or out for dinner, kissing.
Where before there was a fervor to their relationship, a sense of urgency, sort of feverishness, it calms down from here. They hold hands. They kiss during the commercial breaks while watching television, and cuddle. The kisses are more mature in a sense, in that they’re not tentative, not chaste, exactly, but they’re not as hungry. There’s a sense of contentment there, as if they’re glad to savor each other, but are still secure enough not to feel like they’re going to be ripped apart any minute.
At the end, there are two sort of postscripts. In the first, a year later, Jamie admits that he loves Stevie. This is vital, because otherwise, we’d be left with the feeling that Stevie cares more, which is just not true. In the second, they move in together, and the fic ends with that, with a quiet domesticity, both characters more mature as individuals and in their relationship than at the beginning.
This was largely inspired by a Star Trek fic where Kirk and Bones share a room and hear each other touching themselves at night. However, the trajectory of the stories is quite different, as the Star Trek one involves coping with trauma and feelings of insecurity in two adults, whereas foolishness and curiosity deals with young men, just on the cusp of adulthood, trying to navigate their relationship as it shifts from platonic to sexual to platonic to romantic.
The Secret of Sopwell House - THE MAN AT THE WINDOW
Welcome to Winwick!
I adore this chapter title. Originally I had a bit more stuff about Gary being paranoid which I cut down. I really like that it's the man at the window, not the man on the street, the title puts us in the shoes of the person watching Gary. Gary is a the man at the window and we observe him. And I really liked writing a horror movie like moment at the beginning of the chapter!
In my endless goal to be super realistic, I stole the man outside the house situation from David Beckham:
David Beckham looked out of the window and spotted a man staring back at him. It was late at night, and Beckham was alone inside his home in Greater Manchester. He’d been fast asleep when a loud noise outside had roused him, sending his dogs into a barking frenzy.
The man stood outside his house: arms folded, motionless, expressionless. Beckham stared at him, and he stared back – for five minutes. “What do you want?” Beckham eventually shouted out of the window. But there was no reply, the man just kept staring. At that moment in 1998, Beckham was the most hated man in England. Even in his own home, he no longer felt safe. (x)
Winwick's beautiful historic church. You can search up documentaries about it on Youtube:
And the real mental hospital that I re-located into the woods:
All scores are real. Manchester lost against Fullham, Roy got a red card and Chelsea was leading the Premier League at that point of the season.
areudirty
snowghoul
2087
turnnoffyourmind
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