Not good enough (pt.1/teaser)
Pairing: Désiré Doué x Reader
Genre: Angst.
Summary: France have lost the 2026 World Cup semi-final against Spain.
Author's Note: This whole fic was inspired by that one video of him crying. I believe how f***** fine he is. WTF?!?! This is a teaser.
The stadium had emptied itself by the time you returned to the pitch. The supporters were gone. The interviews had ended. The cameras and sponsor boards had been packed away. Beneath the stands, you could still hear equipment cases rolled over concrete, their wheels catching every few seconds with a dull, uneven knock.
Most of the floodlights had been switched off.
Whole sections of seating had disappeared into darkness, leaving only the outlines of the upper tiers against the night. One light still burned above the penalty area. It hummed. The sound was low and constant, almost too quiet to notice, until there was nothing else left to hear.
Désiré stood beneath it.
He had changed out of his shirt and but still wore his shorts and socks. His boots were unlaced. Grass clung to one knee, and a dark streak of soil ran along his shin. His arms hung stiffly at his sides. His shoulders were raised, the muscles across his back held so tightly that even from a distance you could see the strain in them.
You stopped at the touchline. You had expected to find him in the dressing room. You had not expected him to still be standing on the pitch where France had just lost the semi-final.
Spain would play for the World Cup trophy.
France would not.
“Désiré?” He did not turn.
You crossed the grass slowly. The gold-dusted ends of his hair caught beneath the floodlight. Every time he shifted his head, they flashed against the darkness. He looked almost unreal standing there, illuminated alone after everything else had been put away. Beautiful, you thought. Then immediately felt guilty for thinking it.
When you reached him, you placed your hand between his shoulder blades. He recoiled so violently that your hand remained suspended in the air. It was not the startled flinch of someone who had not heard you approaching. His whole body tightened away from you, as though your touch was spirit that had found exposed flesh.
Neither of you spoke. The light continued to hum above you.
“Hey.” You stepped around him.
His face stopped you. His eyes were wet. The skin around them had turned red, the colour spread down towards the bridge of his nose. His nostrils were pink too, as though he had been rubbing at them. His light-brown eyes looked brass beneath the stadium light, bright with fresh tears. His lips glistened. He must have kept running his tongue over them because they were wet despite the dry skin around them. And his jaw was locked so hard that a small muscle jumped beside his cheek.
He looked beautiful. And wrong.
You lifted your hand towards his face but he turned away before you could touch him.
“I should’ve been better.”
His voice was low and scraped raw.
“You don’t have to talk about it now.”
“I should’ve been fucking better.” The sound of it seemed too large for the empty stadium.
“You did everything you could.”
“No.”
His head snapped towards you. His eyes had changed. They were still wet, but there was a hardness in them, something that had not been there just a moment before.
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m only trying to—”
“Don’t tell me I tried. Don’t tell me I gave everything. Don’t give me that, y/n.”
He turned and drove the toe of his boot into the grass. A piece of turf came loose.
“It means nothing.”
He kicked at the same spot again.
“It means absolutely nothing to me that I tried. Do you understand that? Trying is what you say about somebody when they weren’t good enough to do the thing.”
“Désiré—”
“Everybody tries, y/n.”
He paced several steps away, then turned back.
“Everybody fucking tries. Every player who has ever stepped onto this pitch wanted to win. Every player who has ever gone home after losing can say they tried. So what? What is that supposed to give me?”
His voice rose, then dropped without warning.
“Do I put that in a cabinet? Do I show my children one day? Look. Here is the night I tried.”
He gave a short laugh but there was nothing amused in it.
“You think Spain tried? You think my country cares about that? You think anyone is going to remember how badly I wanted it?”
“No one is blam—.”
“They will only remember that I failed.”
His answer came immediately.
“It was not your fault alone.”
“I was there.” He struck his chest with the heel of his hand. The sound was flat and hard.
“I was there, wasn’t I? On the pitch. In the shirt. In the semi-final of the fucking World Cup.”
Again.
“Was I not there?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I was responsible.”
His voice had become strangely controlled. Each word landed separately, as though he were reading charges against himself.