Never too late to apologise
For @dieemmice who asked for Steno, so here you go: Steno flooffy-attack! 😂😂 bwahahaha
Of all the things Marc-André expected to see when he walked in the door, Bernd nearly setting his kitchen on fire wasn’t one of them. Okay, so he arrived a couple of hours before he was meant to, but it’s still a surprise to see Bernd in a blue frilly apron, oven mitt in one hand and tongs holding up (what looks like) an overcooked turkey in the other.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how you deep fry a turkey,” Marc says loudly, trying to be heard over the fire alarm going BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Bernd blinks at him, then yells, “It’s a chicken actually, just, well, jumbo size.”
Marc is about to say something else, but then decides the beeping is way too annoying for this type of conversation; he goes up on tiptoe, fidgets with the alarm cover and pulls out the batteries. Much better. “I can see that. Question is, what are you trying to do with it?”
“Cook, obviously,” Bernd huffs. He turns his back on Marc so that he can drop the charred chicken into his bin, then opens the windows wide to let all the smoke out. “What are you doing here? You said you were coming for dinner.”
“Well it’s a good thing I came early,” Marc smirks, “at least we can order in instead. That is, if you want to eat tonight.”
Bernd huffs some more, mumbling “yeah, yeah, laugh all you want Mr. Masterchef” as he starts cleaning up his kitchen.
Marc just laughs, then opens the drawer that he knows has all the take-away menus in the area.
Two weeks later, Marc is heading out to the pool area of the hotel where all his international teammates are gathered, watching the volley ball game. Bernd is playing, and Marc scowls at his counterpart. Bernd had been acting weird this break, and Marc wasn’t happy about it. He’d never thought he would be annoyed at the fact that Bernd wasn’t insulting him every other day, but here they are, with the Leverkusen keeper acting all polite and shit and Marc didn’t like it. So he squints at Bernd as he spikes the ball over the net and thinks about a way to corner Bernd later so that they can talk.
Marc doesn’t realise anyone else has joined him until a towel slaps him lightly on the head. Marc looks up to see Julian Brandt scowling at him. “The hell?”
“Ugh, stop that!” the young midfielder says.
“I’m not staring,” Marc protests.
Julian gives him a look, then lays his towel out next to him. “Please, if you stared any harder, Bernd would melt. I’d say take a picture, but that’s just creepy.”
Marc tries hard not to blush, but he can feel his face heat up. “Not staring,” he mumbles again half-heartedly.
Julian gives him another look. “Honestly, I used to get ulcers during break worrying about one or both of you doing something stupid enough to get kicked off the team, now I get tooth decay from how disgustingly sweet you are. When did you turn into such saps? You’re nearly as bad as Marco and Mario.”
Wow, that was so not true; nobody even came close as those two. “You’re exaggerating,” Marc says.
“No I’m not. Dude, I was with Bernd when your text came a couple of weeks back - don’t pretend you weren’t meeting up for some romantic date or whatever the fuck he was rushing home for.”
Marc blinks at the memory. “It wasn’t like that.” He wouldn’t mind if that really was the reason why he was over, but it wasn’t. Marc did drop by for dinner, but he went back to his parents’ house pretty much as soon as the movie they’d put on was over.
“Whatever,” Julian says, rolling his eyes. “Bernd just had to leave straight away and get ingredients for this really complicated four hour dinner that he was going to cook just so you guys could, you know, hang out. That didn’t scream ‘important date plans’ at all.”
Marc is too busy remembering that night to come up with a response. He can see in his mind’s eye Bernd being frazzled about the burnt (giant) chicken, and how the other keeper had shoved everything in the fridge as soon as Marc had mentioned just getting take out, a hurt expression on his face. At the time Marc thought that Bernd was annoyed at him about all the teasing and thought that he was overreacting, but maybe there was something else. Oh. Oh.
Maybe Julian was right about the whole special dinner plans thing. That would explain a lot; both how distant Bernd had been that whole night and how the Leverkusen keeper seemed to be avoiding him this break. Well, shit. Marc was going to have to do some major damage control, and he honestly had no idea what to do in the last three days that they still had.
He’s thinking hard about a way he can say “sorry for being an insensitive idiot” without actually saying the words “I’m sorry”, when Julian slaps him lightly on the back of his head. “Jule! The fuck?!”
Julian just rolls his eyes again. “What did I say about not staring and not being a sap? Honestly.”
Marc just scowls at the midfielder, then picks up his phone, typing in “how to apologise without apologising” into his search engine. He had some work to do.
It had taken Bernd a whole hour to finally convince Joshua that he wasn’t needed to make their spontaneous pool tournament competitive. It’s not that Bernd didn’t like playing, but he really was tired and wanted to get an early night. He’s thinking about whether he has enough energy to watch a couple of the new episodes of his favourite show, so he doesn’t notice straight away that his room isn’t empty. Marc-André is standing next to the study table, casually scrolling through his phone.
“How did you get in?” Bernd blurts out in surprise. He’d been avoiding the other keeper nearly all break, so he has no idea why Marc is here.
“Jo stole your spare key card for me,” Marc says, nodding at the door where the extra key card was already in place. The Bayern defender must have taken it this morning when he’d come to pick Bernd up for breakfast; and him knowing what Marc was up to was probably the reason why Joshua had kept Bernd downstairs all this time.
That still didn’t explain what Marc was doing here, though. “Why?” Bernd asks, confused.
Marc waves his hand over the table. “How else was I suppose to get all this stuff up here without you finding out?”
Bernd steps closer to see a selection of bite-sized gourmet deli foods and fruit set out on so many plates. “What’s this for? We’ve already had dinner.”
“I know,” Marc nods, handing him a bottle of light beer. “But we’ve all been working hard and I thought it would be a nice treat.”
Bernd stares at him. “I don’t believe you. What’s this really about?”
Marc has the grace to blush lightly. “So um, maybe I wanted to apologise….”
What? Really? There’s no way he heard that right. “You’re apologising? For?”
“Well. Um. Being a dick, I guess.”
“You’re always a dick,” Bernd points, because it was actually true. “So what was it that’s so bad that made you think you had to apologise for it?”
“I’m not always a dick,” Marc protests.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Surprisingly, Marc blushes some more. “For being um, insensitive, the other night.”
“When you cooked. Well, tried to. But nearly burnt your apartment down instead. I was being insensitive.”
O. Kay. Well, that definitely wasn’t what Bernd was expecting. “You’re apologising for making fun of my cooking?”
“To be fair, you didn’t actually cook, since you, you know, burnt the chicken.” Bernd glares. “But yes, I’m apologising for that.”
Bernd is speechless; he honestly can’t believe Marc is actually - rather belatedly, but hey, better late than never - sorry for that. Marc hadn’t known how much effort Bernd had gone into that dinner, but there must have been something in his face that made the Barcelona keeper notice just how hurt Bernd had been that Marc was making fun of his failed attempt. Bernd’s a little embarrassed that Marc noticed, but if he’s being honest, Bernd’s also relieved to know that Marc actually cared, even just a little.
He still doesn’t know how to react to this, though. Bernd doesn’t know how to say “apology accepted” without making things even more awkward than they already are, and he hopes Marc just gets it.
“You’re not going to food poison me are you?” Bernd asks, because they’d always been shit at talking about feelings and being caring and he’d rather they just move on to the familiarity of bickering.
Marc grins. “If I was going to do that, I wouldn’t have let Jo in on tonight’s plans - he would have run straight to Jogi if you got sick.”
“Damn straight,” Bernd mutters, finally moving enough so that their shoulders are brushing. Its the closest they’ve been this break when they’re not training and Bernd is surprised at how much of a relief it is to be near again. He’s not going to tell Marc that, though. “How the hell did you manage to get your hands on all this stuff? Did you bribe one of the puppies to go out and get the food?”
Marc smirks at him and hands him a plate so they can start eating. “I have my ways.”
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