Coming Home [1/1]
This is 7000 words of love letter to the England football team, and specifically their manager, thinly disguised as CS fic. Gorgeous aesthetic by the incredible @katie-dub who joins me as an inaugural member of the Inappropriate Gareth Southgate Crush fan club.
No matter what happens tomorrow, lads. No matter what.
They’d all laughed when they’d given him the job.
Years of the finest tacticians the continent could offer - though admittedly there’d been a few turkeys along the way - and the British press had torn each of them to shreds. Failure after failure dropped at their feet, their careers blighted by the inevitable English Curse while their players sold razor blades and fucked pop stars and pocketed their millions and all the time being watched by a nation of children who grew into adults, grew into old men and women who’d never seen an English success story.
No one wanted to sip from that poisoned chalice. No one dared face the fury of a nation denied again and again and again.
Luckily, Killian Jones was used to it.
The Sun, The Mirror, the broadsheets. They’d all sneered at his appointment in their own indomitable ways.
England Expects… Second Time Lucky For Jones?
FA Appoint Jones: England’s Sacrificial Lamb
The Curse Continues for England’s Lost Boys
Need a Hand There Mate?
This last accompanied by a pap’s photo of him struggling into training one morning, hair askew, prosthetic unattached.
(It had been Milah’s birthday the night before, his dreams full of fire and fuelled by rum, and Will had sent him up to the boardroom twenty minutes in when he’d threatened to have the bickering midfield strung up by their ankles and used for penalty practice.)
He knows there’s no point complaining, nonetheless. It’s not the worst headline they’ve run about England’s manager.
It’s certainly not the worst headline they’ve run about him.
There is one difference in his appointment to this supposedly sainted position:
They all agree. Left wing, right wing. Man in the street and professional pundit.
He’s doomed.
“You’re doomed, little brother,,” Liam tells him cheerfully as he eats his breakfast propped up against the quartz worktop that Killian knows the Navy didn’t pay for. “Sorry.”
“Your confidence astounds me.”
“Your idiocy astounds me! What was the matter with punditry? I thought you enjoyed it! It paid the bills -“
“I don’t care about the bills.”
“Spoken like a man who doesn’t worry about next months nursery fees - Killian listen -“ Liam puts down his bowl and leans forward, pleading. “they’ll tear you apart. Don’t - I don’t want to watch that again.”
“I won’t do any more pizza adverts if that’s what you’re worried about,” Killian grumbles, snatching the bowl and rinsing it immediately.
“Have you forgotten what it was like?” Liam asks, aghast. “They crucified you, little brother, the shame -“
“You don’t need to tell me about shame,” Killian snaps. “As for forgetting - I’ve spent twenty years -“
“Pretending! Pretending that you’re a drunk and a womaniser and that you didn’t - don’t - care but Killian -“
“Get out.” The words are ice, the warm kitchen physically cooling in their wake. Liam looks briefly shocked.
“Pardon?”
“You heard me,” Killian grits out. “I’ve enough to deal with from the press I don’t need my own brother -“
“I’m trying to protect you!”
Oh, he knows. He’s always known.
Six years old, newly motherless and utterly rudderless, ferried to practice on the cross bar of Liam’s bike.
Eighteen and capped for his country, hyperventilating in a public toilet while Liam guarded the door.
Twenty and certain, oh so certain, standing at the spot and Liam watching from the touchline.
Oh so certain and oh so wrong.
And he knows, but he has to because this - this is his chance. His last, only chance.
He has to lay the ghosts to rest. He has to.
And he can’t let anything, not even Liam, not even his own inability to believe - to dream - stop him.
“I don’t need your protection!” Killian spits. “I’m done, Liam! I’m not that little kid you scolded for risky tackling anymore! I’ve lived under this shadow half my life! I need to move on. I need -“
I need to believe. I need you to believe in me.
“You need a better team,” Liam says, “tell me you’ve that, at least.”
“Oh aye.” Killian calms, smug satisfaction slipping into his voice. “That, I can promise you.”
—-
Qualifying, and judging by Liam’s expletive strewn text when the teamsheet is announced he’s starting as the tabloids expect.
Badly.
I know several promising four year olds, brother, should I send them over?
Mills?! He’s a fetus, Killian.
A fetus who can play.
You’d better hope so, brother. The whole bloody country hopes so.
Mills might be the youngest player on the pitch - 18 and a pale but determined figure in the goal mouth - but the whole team is Killian’s own creation.
Gone are the men who’d bickered and sneered at each other. Gone are those who saw playing for their country as a chore - one they’d rather avoid when the off season is full of better financial offers - and those too exhausted by failure to dare to dream of success.
Killian has been one of them, once. Late at night, the back pages spread out around him in his empty house and the rum bottle far too close by, he thinks he still might be. But then he sees the gleam in the eyes of a player like Mills and he thinks enough.
Enough.
It’s time.
Shame no one told the opposition. Or the ref.
It’s another high tackle, studs up as England make a break for goal, and once again the ref waves it off with an indirect free kick.
The crowd bellow their displeasure but they’ve nothing on Will, whose furious gesticulating at the touchline makes him look like some sort of tracksuit clad dervish.
“That’s a red!” he bellows. “A RED!”
Except it isn’t. It’s a free kick that the opposition defence clear from danger a little too easily. Again.
A nasty, creeping sense of foreboding tickles at the back of Killian’s neck as the cameras focus on his face and the hacks start writing.
He doesn’t believe in curses.
He doesn’t.
“Sit down, Will. You’ll rupture and the Sun will have your innards. Literally.”
“You’re not serious, gaffer? Didn’t you see -“
Killian grits his teeth.
“Sit down. They’re watching.”
Will stamps back to his seat, face creased in fury.
“They’re always bloody watching, gaffer. That’s their bloody job. Ref need to do his.”
“Don’t you worry about the ref’s job,” Killian says grimly, eyes on the way midfield can’t quite connect their passes, mind already on the talk he’ll have to give at half time.
Calm. Collected. Everything he hasn’t been for longer than he likes to think.
(Once he had been. Before the penalty spot. Before Milah and the drink and the accident. Once. He’s sure he was.)
“Worry about ours.”
—-
They’d all laughed when they’d given her the job.
Laughed and crowed and cat called their way through her first press conference that absolutely had to be held because she’s the first and she’s important.
She’d always imagined it would feel better than this.
David sits on the end of her futon, half a pizza balanced precariously on his knee as he bounces his leg. A nervous tick he’s had since childhood, and he’s never more nervous than when he risks Emma’s wrath.
“I’m just not sure this is a good idea, Emma.”
“Really? Money is a bad idea now?” Emma chews on her own piece of pizza and shrugs. “Could have fooled me.”
“It’s not about the money. You know what soccer fans are like!”
“Well I should,” Emma agrees, “I’ve been one all my life.”
“Yeah, and look at the grief you got even then! And Russia. It’s a different world, Emma.”
“I’m pretty sure it isn't. And I can handle myself. I’ve done it long enough.”
David’s face falls and she regrets the sharpness almost immediately, but she can’t quite bring herself to apologise, or to admit the truth.
Frankly, she’s terrified.
Emma is used to being on her own, abandoned at birth and bounced around the foster system until she’d finally ended up with David and his mother and had to learn how to function as part of a family.
It’d been hard, even now she’s sure she isn’t as good a sister - as good a person - as she ought to be, but soccer had helped.
Soccer had always helped. Soccer was all she’d had.
Playing, supporting, being a part of something, no matter how small and shitty the team or how little time she spent there it had taught her how to work with others, relate to them, when the temptation had been to run away and rely on her own wits.
Not that there hadn’t been moments, bad homes and tempting offers from worse boys, but soccer had kept her feet on the ground.
Now her playing days are over - the disadvantage of her permanent home had been that the women’s game was not wildly popular in Podunk Storybrooke, Maine - and yet.
And yet.
She’d taken her refereeing qualifications to keep her eye in, starting with the kids matches and then moving up, up to college level, up to the leagues.
Up to the World Cup.
The first woman referee in the history of the competition.
The American papers hadn’t taken too much notice, the USA had failed to qualify and the country as a whole preferred their football to contain more brute force than finesse, but Europe -
She wishes David hadn’t read the comments.
She wishes she hadn’t read the comments.
But he did and she has and still. She’s going. She has to.
“I have to,” she tells him, trying for reassuring and catching his pizza slice as it makes a bid for freedom. “You know I have to.”
David smiles.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know. But don’t let them mess you about. You’re the best. Don’t forget that.”
Emma smiles. Small and a little sly.
“Oh I promise. They won’t know what hit them.”
—-
They’re through by the skin of their teeth, paparazzi nipping at their heels as they arrive in Russia in neatly tailored suits that don’t show the sweat stains. Mills’ suit trousers are two inches too short and the team surround him as they scurry through the airport to the waiting team bus like so many elephants protecting the baby of the herd from the gathering hyenas.
Which, Killian supposed, they more or less were.
Qualifying hadn’t made the press back off. Qualifying had made the press hungry.
“Jones! Jones! How are you feeling?”
“Any regrets?”
“Is this England’s year?”
“Are you worried about penalties?”
“What about the curse?”
Killian lifts his chin, marching onward to the bus without giving the press anything but the small, polite wave that he knows is obligatory and keeping his glare for the moment their out of sight.
“Bunch of tossers,” says Will cheerfully, his arm slung over Mills’ shoulder. “Better keep ‘em sweet eh lads?”
The lads cheer, and Will guffaws in approval, but Killian is miles away. Decades away.
Wearing his own suit and the weight of expectation hanging round his neck and -
It’s coming home, it’s coming…
“Gaffer?”
They’re at the bus and Will is looking at him through too shrewd eyes. There’s a reason Killian picked him as his number two, after all. Liam worries and the papers speculate, but Will? Will knows.
“All right?”
“Ask me in a month,” Killian mutters grimly, then boards the bus with a studied grin and a bellow of “Here we go, lads! Here we go!”
—-
Here we go, Emma thinks, handing in her credentials to an incredulous Russian official. Here we goddamn go.
The official calls over a couple of his pals who all mutter uncertainly amongst themselves, before finally stamping card and handing over her ID with a suspicious glare and minimal manners.
That the officials are confused by her presence is surprising in that they invited her - and it isn’t like Emma Swan is a particularly gender neutral name - but the teams, well.
Confusion would be a blessing.
Her language skills are pretty basic - she barely scraped her GED and most of her high school Spanish lessons were spent searching the dictionaries for words to keep an amorous temporary sibling at bay - but she doesn’t need google translate to get the jist of their opinions.
And they do seem to have a lot of them. And none of them are good.
“I just don’t see what you being a woman has to do with…” Mary Margaret gesticulates weakly to the pocket of Emma’s uniform when she returns to the hotel room “that.”
“When I pull a card, it’s touched my boob,” Emma says, eyes already scanning the fixture list she’s been given. “Apparently that excites them.”
“But they have to respect you, surely?” Mary Margaret is wide eyed on the bed, and Emma feels a rush of affection for her sweet natured sister in law. Affection, and a touch of pity. “You’re the referee!”
“Because soccer players are so famous for their respect for the laws of the game? Didn’t you see Neymar in qualifying? He spent so much of the match on the floor Gaston went to make a cup of coffee before resuming play.”
“You know I don’t understand anything you just said, right?” Mary Margaret leans forward and squeezes Emma’s leg. “But I have faith. You’re brilliant, Emma. I believe in you.”
“Thanks.” Emma smiles at her. “But it’s fine. They’ll get used to me I guess.”
Mary Margaret raises her eyebrows.
“You’re a trailblazer Emma, you know that? I’m so proud of you.”
Emma shrugs, picking at the edge of her shirt. It’s too big, but that’s not unusual. At least she hasn’t had to fashion a belt from her whistle strap this time.
“It’s just a job, Mary Margaret.”
“Is it?”
Emma bites her lip.
“All right,” she admits. “It’s a big deal. The biggest. What if I fuck up? Make the wrong call? I could fuck the whole thing over - the cup, myself, fucking feminism, the lot - I-“
“Who’s fucking what up now?”
David sticks his head around the door, eyes narrowed and full cop-face on display. Emma licks her suddenly dry lips and shrugs again. Mary Margaret sighs.
“Emma’s having a crisis of confidence.”
“Am not.”
“Emma -“
“Hey.” He pulls her into his arms, cradling her head in his hand and she burrows her chin into his shoulder without even meaning to. “It’s ok to be nervous. If you weren’t nervous you wouldn’t care. And you care so much Emma. You love this game. You were made for this.”
“Tell the papers that.”
“Oh screw the papers!” David snaps, “what the fuck do they know!”
Mary Margaret gasps. “David!”
David pulls back from the hug and grips Emma’s shoulders.
“They’ll write whatever they want,” he says fiercely. “You should see the shit they write about their own countries! Forget them. You can do this. You’re good - no, you’re the best. They’ll be clammering to have you in charge of their games you’ll see.”
“That’s not really how it works.”
“That’s not really my point.”
Emma laughs, a little softly but genuinely enough, and shakes her head.
“Do you give these pep talks to everyone or?”
David grins.
“Just my favourites.”
—-
Watching the competition might be necessary, but Killian’s never found it very relaxing.
It’s a constant stream of analysis, of tactics, of how do we and what if they, and it’s exhausting. Especially scrappy, messy games like this where the players seem to spend more time arguing than concentrating on the play.
Both sides are particularly keen to share their sob stories with the ref, arms flailing and spittle flying, and that’s not usual, nor at all, but the ref -
The ref is.
He’d known she was here, of course. Even in avoiding the press as much as he tries to, things like the first woman to referee a World Cup game do tend to sneak through, and he can’t help but feel a frisson of pride when he sees her step up to call the coin toss. A sense that the game that he’s dedicated his life to might - just might - be beginning to move towards something better and brighter.
“At least we’re group favourites,” mumbles Will as Portugal create a chance from nothing (how do you defend nothing? Where do you even begin?) “Or second favourites.”
Killian rolls his eyes. He’s long since stopped relying on betting shops for his predictions.
“We went out last time to a dentist and a guy who runs a doggy day care, or did you forget?”
Will winces. “That was different.”
“That was the Euros. This is bigger.”
Will gives him a sideways look.
“All right, spill,” he asks. “What’s got your goat? You’re a miserable fuck right enough but you’re even worse than usual.”
Killian doesn’t even look at him. “And you’re charming as ever.”
“Jones.”
“Scarlet.”
“I've got a feeling,” Will says, and Killian closes his eyes briefly. Scarlet once he gets going is like a dog with a bone, and it’s useful in training certainly but rather less helpful when directed at Killian personally.
“Just the one?”
“Oi. Listen.” The sideways look becomes a full on glare. “Have you been on twitter again?”
Killian shakes his head.
“I don’t -“
“Because Liam says -“
Liam says a lot of things. Says them on phones calls and on WhatsApp and in Killian’s head at the side of the training pitch and in the dead of night.
None of which he wants to think about when he’s watching Ronaldo systematically destroy a defence.
“Oh you’ve been gossiping about me with my brother? Very loyal of you Scarlet. I’ll remember that next time I find you with your head in the toilet.”
“No we was just -“
There’s a roar from the crowd, a huddle of players surrounding the ref who’s barely even visible among the sea of waving arms gesturing in her direction.
“Christ! Look at that!”
It happens in less time than it takes Will to point, one moment the referee is standing in the centre of what’s become a mob, the next she’s on the ground, struggling to her feet.
A flash of red and there’s a man off and a spreading mark on the side of the ref’s face.
“He’s banned,” Will states grimly. “Won’t see him again this year. Stupid mistake.”
“Mistake?” Killian scowls. “Bringing the game into disrepute!”
“Yeah, well.” The ref blows her whistle. Play resumes with several players looking rather shamefaced. “Let’s see how that works out for them.”
—-
It doesn’t.
The final whistle sees the ten men traipse miserably from the field while their opponents celebrate with a lap of honour.
The ref follows them off. The mark on her face has faded but even from where Killian sits in the box he can see the set of her shoulders, the anger in her gait.
He’s walked off like that. Worse than that. He’d had Liam and Rob - poor long suffering Rob who’d held this job longer than any other man had managed - but the ref…
He hopes she has someone waiting for her in the tunnel.
He hopes.
He gets to his feet.
Hope isn’t enough. It never is.
“Where are you going?!” Will calls after him as he heads for the staircase. “You promised me a drink!”
“I need to go check on something.”
Will laughs, wagging his finger after Killian as though he’s a naughty schoolboy.
“Something. Sure. Have fun with something. Don’t get us disqualified, yeah?”
Killian doesn’t turn back.
“Don’t be crass, Scarlet.”
“Don’t be changing the habits of a lifetime, Jones,” Will trills. “Tell her she made the right call on that penalty, yeah?”
“Yeah yeah,” Killian mutters. No point in denial. “I will.”
—-
He means to.
But then he finds her at the end of the tunnel, leaning against the wall next to what appear to be a storage cupboard with a poorly scrawled female figure sellotaped to it. Her fists are clenched and her breathing laboured, and for the first time in his whole life he can’t quite bring himself to talk about football.
She’s beautiful. He really tries not to notice, but he’s not blind. Furious green eyes and a wild halo of blonde hair from where it’s escaped from it’s ponytail, a sharp chin that juts in his direction as she snaps, “What?”
His heart jumps in a way it hasn’t for decades - not since his playing days, not since Milah - and it’s stupid because he’s forty and he has a reputation but his tongue feels too big for his mouth, his legs unsteady in the face of her flushed cheeks and steely glare.
He came to say something, didn’t he? He’s sure he was meant to say something.
“You ok pal?” She pushes back from the wall, hands on her hips. “You lost?”
Something like that, he thinks. Something very like that.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” he manages. “It was disrespectful.”
She scoffs. “What, cause I’m a woman?”
“No. Because you’re the ref.”
“Don’t condone dissent huh?” She narrows her eyes. “You’re Jones.”
“I see you’ve heard of me.” He grins, and it pulls a little at the corner of his mouth as though it’s wider than usual. “You can look up my discipline record if you like, I was a fairly good boy.”
She lifts one eyebrow and scoffs again, but there’s a smile threatening at the edge of her mouth.
“On the pitch maybe.”
“Maybe.” Mostly. But he knows what she’s referring to. There’d been a lot of rum, after. A lot of regrets. He’s never regretted them quite as much as he does now though. “Are you quite all right, though? Truly?”
“I’m fine.” She shrugs. “I mean - I’ve had worse.”
He bets she has. The thought doesn’t comfort him any more than he expects it comforts her.
“Not quite what I asked, Swan.”
“How do you know my name?”
Smooth, Jones. Very smooth. Follow a woman into a dark corridor and then act like a stalker.
“I read,” he says in an attempt at justification. “There aren’t many refs who go by “Emma””
“Not here there aren’t. I uh -“ she waves in the direction of the cupboard. “Ought to get to my locker room.”
It’s his turn to scoff now.
He loves this game, he does, but by god does it have a long way to go.
“A generous term, but as it’s yours I’ll allow it. See you around, Swan.”
“Belgium,” she says, and her expression turns surprised as though the word has escaped without her permission.
“Pardon?”
“I’m assisting. At the Belgium game. So I’ll see you there. At Belgium.”
Oh yes. Football. The most important thing in his life. The only thing.
She smiles, and something in his chest roars to life.
Belgium. He’ll see her at Belgium.
“I look forward to it.”
—-
The canteen is a riot of colour and languages, hundreds of people swarming through with plates of food Emma couldn’t name with a gun to her head and jostling for space at long tables.
The three of them pause in the doorway, all looking for a spot where they can sit together. Emma sees it first.
“Dibs!” she calls. “Mary Margaret?”
“On it!” She calls in return, heading for the snaking line at the food counters as Emma and David bolt for the free seats.
It’s only when she gets closer that Emma realises who’s sitting opposite, handsome profile partially obscured by a tactical notebook.
David’s eyes narrow then grow large and round as saucers.
“Isn’t that..?”
“Swan!” Killian Jones beams at her and her traitorous heart skips a beat. “Excellent job in the Croatia game last night!”
“Thanks,” she mumbles, and god if she’s blushing David will never let her live it down. “It was a good game.”
“The best,” Killian agrees, then his eyes flick from hers to David and the megawatt smile dims ever so slightly. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Oh!” Emma gestures between them. “This is my brother, David. This is -“
“Killian Jones,” David says, and Emma does a double take at the breathiness of his tone. “I know who you are.”
“My reputation precedes me,” says Killian. “I’d ask if it were all good but, alas -“
“You were the best left winger of your generation! Your pace! There was nothing you couldn’t outrun!”
Emma watches with interest as Killian’s cheeks flush pink.
“Nothing but time and bad choices, at least.”
David shuffles on the spot, “I guess, but -“
“Meatballs!” Mary Margaret drops the tray in the table with a cheerful smile. “Everyone loves meatballs, right?”
“Works for me,” says Emma. “Killian?”
“Metabolism isn’t up to it these days,” he says, patting the leather waistcoat that’s his calling card in the technical area.
Emma shrugs. “Suit yourself. Doesn’t look like there’s much wrong with you to me.”
The words are out before she can stop them, fucking so smooth, Emma, Jesus, but Killian Jones just looks a little bit sad.
She’d expected an innuendo.
She’d have preferred an innuendo.
“I assure you, there’s nothing at all wrong with me. Well.” He lifts his left hand and smiles wearily. “Apart from the obvious.”
“Oh dear!” Mary Margaret leans over the table and rests her hand over the metal contraption at the end of his wrist. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” says Killian, but there’s a furtive look in his eyes that Emma is familiar with. She gets the same look in hers when someone asks about her family. The look that means you’re preparing a lie. “An old wound.”
And doesn’t she know how they never quite heal.
“David,” she says, a little too sharply, “Have you sorted the flights to Sochi yet?”
“No I was going to -“
“The agent is holding a meeting this afternoon - if you get there early enough maybe they can get you priority seats?”
“But -“
Mary Margaret is looking between Emma and Killian with a look of gradually dawning comprehension.
“Good idea,” she says, “come on David.”
“But -“
“We can get a doggy bag, I don’t want to risk missing the flight -“
She grins at Emma over David’s shoulder as she leads him away, two plates of meatballs balanced in her arms, and wriggles her eyebrows.
Subtle, thinks Emma. But then Killian Jones is sitting opposite her at the canteen table, lips curled into a smile and eyes fixed on hers, and she thinks.
Maybe subtlety is overrated.
—-
He appreciates that Emma is not staring at his left hand, in fact she barely seems to have acknowledged it, but then it is common knowledge.
Greatest player of his generation fails spectacularly on the world stage. Goes utterly off the rails. Loses his form. Loses his hand.
It’s hardly a secret.
He doesn’t know why he has the urge to tell her about the few things that are.
“It was an accident.” He taps his prosthetic on the table. “I was -“
Emma lifts an eyebrow. “I know. Everyone knows. You don’t need to tell me.”
“Most people want the gory details.”
“You’re good.” Emma waves her fork over the meatballs. “Must have been hard, losing your career like that.”
“It wasn’t the worst thing I lost,” says Killian. “Not by far.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she sounds like she actually means it, a little furrow firming between her eyes. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry. About your wife.”
There had been a time not so very long ago when even the word had been enough to send him into a spiral of furious misery. Wife. Always said in that same odd tone of pity with a frisson of thrill, as though their genuine sympathy for his loss is merely a veneer to disguise their prying.
It doesn’t sound like that when Emma says it.
It sounds like she means it.
He isn’t sure quite what to make of that.
“You have done your research. There are laws against stalking you know.”
She smiles, and her whole face lights up and he’s screwed.
“Says you.”
“Fair point.”
So screwed.
“So,” she leans forward, eyes flicking left and right. “Tell me. Is it true?”
God. What a question. Which part? The drink? The drugs? The women and the days that he can’t remember.
The years he can’t remember.
“What?”
“You know.” Her smile turns conspiratorial. “About the team.”
“What?” he says again, dumbly.
“I heard a rumour. Something about blow up unicorns on the swimming pool roof?”
Killian releases a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning in himself until their noses are only inches apart. “What do you know about Will Scarlet?”
—-
They’re losing. Losing to the flies, to the heat, to a Belgian team that - deep in his heart of hearts - he knows have a much more substantial chance of carrying the trophy home than they do.
He ought to care, and he does, he does, but it’s difficult to give the pitch his full attention when Swan is four feet away, her own laser focus on the game putting him to shame.
They’re through anyway, he tells himself to assuage his guilt. They’re through anyway, and he’s only human after all.
He spends half time buoying up the boys as best he can. They, at least, are gutted by the scoreline. Young Mills is grey-faced in his neon green shirt, muttering apologies for a goal that Killian knows, knows, the Sun will lay the blame for at his inexperienced feet.
“There’s no need, lad,” he tells him after the fifth I’m so sorry. “You show me a keeper who says kept a clean sheet in every game and I’ll show you a liar. What’s done is done. It’s over. The next forty five minutes. The next game. That’s what I want you to concentrate on. That’s what matters. You can beat yourself up, or you can beat the rest, which is it?”
Mills nods, hands clenching and unclenching as he works out the nervous cramps, and the whole tea return to the field with a determination that hadn’t been there before the break.
“Nice speech,” mutters Will. “Taking your own advice?”
Kilian quirks an eyebrow and waits for the television cameras to sweep over them before he answers.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you don’t know what I mean, why’d you wait for the tv to bugger off?”
“I had to make sure they got my best side.”
“Sure you -”
The crowd roars, a chance for England, and Killian’s half to his feet before the whistle goes. Emma’s flag is up. Offside.
He hopes that’s not a metaphor.
“Least she’s being careful not to play favourites,” Will grumbles.
Killian glares at him. “She’s doing her job.”
“Aye, and I’m doing mine.”
Will and Killian lock eyes.
“I’m not sure I like what you’re insinuating, Scarlett.”
“And I ain’t sure I like this scoreline. But hey.” Will smiles, and shows a few too many teeth. “Could be worse. Let’s avoid Brazil, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Killian mutters.
There’s another English miss that they really should have buried and the crowd jeer and hoot their disapproval.
“Could be worse.”
—-
Emma leaves the pitch sweaty and with at least half a dozen midges having met their end on her face, but she doesn’t head straight to the showers. Killian Jones is on the pitch surrounded by tv cameras and well made-up journalists, and she can’t help but watch, fascinated, from the edge of the now empty stands as they round on him like a pack of smiling hyenas.
“Is this the end for England’s run, Killian?”
“Do you regret the choice to bring Mills?”
“What went wrong out there today, Killian?”
You’d think they’d gone out, such were the accusations, the sharp disapproval in their faces, but they haven’t. Emma has carefully filled in the wallchart David has hung up in their hotel room. She knows this is the better side of the draw. The luckier side.
She wants to tell Killian, even though it’s ridiculous because he knows, he knows, but he’s standing under the floodlights, dark brows furrowed as he tries to answer the questions that are barked at him, and somehow it seems very important that she makes sure.
It’s an age until he leaves. Her uniform is sticking to her, her hair is standing on end. She needs a shower, desperately.
But his expression is still dark and yeah. Yeah.
This is a guy who knows what desperation really looks like.
“You played well.”
She follows him into the tunnel, checking briefly over her shoulder for paps as she does so. He doesn’t look at her, but he slows his pace so that she can catch up.
It’s a start.
“I’m afraid you much have me confused with someone half my age, Swan. I sat on my arse.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighs. “Do I?”
“Hey!” She grabs his elbow, forcing him to turn and look at her. “You’re not angry at them, are you?”
Killian gapes at her. “Angry at them? Christ, no. I’m angry at myself.”
“Why? You’re not responsible for what the press - “
“Oh aren’t I? Aren’t I? If I’d scored -“
He’s moved closer, and it’s her turn to stare at him blankly. Her hand is still on his elbow, fingers wound tight into the fabric of his shirt, and it suddenly feels very important that she not let go.
“Wait, what?”
He closes his eyes.
“We were so close, Swan!”
It takes her a moment. Of course it does, she was just a kid back then, 15 and with a family for the first time in her life. A family and her beloved soccer, and hadn’t that been the best summer of her life? So yeah, it takes her a moment to remember it must have seemed like the worst of his.
“This is about that penalty?” She releases her death grip on his shirt and runs her hand up his arm. “Killian it’s been twenty years -“
He shrugs off her attempt at comfort, jabbing his finger bitterly towards where the press had gathered.
“And every year that passes they get worse. I know what they’ll be saying about Henry Mills tonight, and I’m sick of it. Sick of it.”
“Killian! Killian -“
There’s movement at the entrance to the tunnel and they shrink back into the shadows as one.
“Don’t let them get to you like this,” Emma hisses. “They can’t play. They can’t do what you do.”
“Any idiot can do what I do and several do. Ask the German press.”
“I don’t believe that.” Emma folds her arms and looks at him critically: “you’ve stood on this stage before. You know how it feels. The love. The fear. That matters you know. You know how to be part of something.”
He shakes his head.
“All I know is how to fail at the last hurdle.”
“If you say so, but I read, Jones. I know what you’ve overcome to get here.” She looks him up and down, gaze lingering for just a second on his prosthetic before flicking to his face. His mouth. She swallows. “Doesn’t look like failure to me.”
——
The lads are ready, or at least they think they are, but Killian has been here before (albeit only on the European stage), and he knows nothing - nothing - can prepare you for the moment you walk out into a pitch for a game like this.
The quarter finals. The knockout stages of a World Cup.
Not that there’s any pressure of course. The English are infamously restrained when it comes to sporting success, and if Killian is having to grit his teeth every time someone asks him if it’s coming home then at least it’s better than being asked when their flight is. He’s hidden himself away in the corridor between the boxes and the dressing room staircase,trying to take a moment to breath in between greeting passing dignitaries.
Amazingly he’s managed not to be sick, but the night is young yet.
“Hey.”
Her voice is so soft he first thinks he’s hallucinating from nervous exhaustion, but she’s there, scuffing the toe of her sneaker along the concrete floor and wringing her fingers together.
“I wanted to see if you were ok.”
Killian stares at her. No, he isn’t. He’s not at all okay and yet…
“Of course, Swan. All the better for seeing you.”
Emma rolls her eyes, but she smiles all the same.
“Yeah, well.” She looks him up and down. “Didn’t want you freaking out. Again.”
“I don’t freak out, Swan.”
“If you say so.”
She steps a little closer then hesitates, checking the corridor for eavesdroppers before admitting, “I shouldn’t really be here.”
“No I suppose not. I didn’t think you were allowed to play favourites?”
“Please. Who says I’m supporting you?”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Did I insinuate such a thing?”
“Hmm.” She tilts her head to one side and considers him. “You didn’t have to.”
“Dangerous ground that, Swan. Very dangerous.”
They stare at each other for a moment, and Killian feels himself swaying toward her unintentionally, captivated by the glint in her eye and the way she worries her lip between her teeth.
This is dangerous ground, all right.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” she says, “I can support you now. That is if I want to, which I’m not saying I do.”
“What?”
She gestures to her outfit and he realises belatedly she’s not in her kit. “My matches are done. I should be flying home today.”
“Forgive me but you’re a long way from the airport.”
“Yeah well,” she grins, then points into the crowd. “Somebody insisted on staying a little while longer.”
She holds out her phone to show him a picture.
David is standing, draped in red and white, his arms outstretched as he bellows along to a song. Beside him Mary Margaret is engrossed in a programme.
“I think he’s become quite the fan,” Emma says with a wink. “He’s started drinking lager.”
“Heaven forfend,”says Killian. “And what about you, can I count on you for a little flag waving? Since you’re free of your obligations?”
Emma snorts.
“That might be pushing it. David’s far more partisan than me.”
Speaking of pushing it. He can hear people approaching from the far end of the corridor and his ears are burning from the dressing down Will is bound to give him if he’s late to the dressing room and he shouldn’t and yet -
“Then how will I know you’re on my side?”
She looks at him. Wide, shrewd, knowing green eyes, and takes another step closer.
“Guess you won’t. But just in case -“
Will’s going to kill him, the press will have his guts, but Emma Swan’s lips are warm and a little bit chapped, and the whistle can wait.
—-
The equalise against the run of play with thirty seconds left on the clock.
He can’t believe it. No one can believe it. It’s been a hideous, scrappy game full of gamesmanship and frustrated revenge, and they don;t deserve to lose lie this, They don’t.
In football, as in life, you so rarely get what you deserve.
The team spend the first fifteen minutes of extra time in a fog of disbelief, the second in a haze of desperation, but it’s no good.
Penalties.
Bloody hell, penalties.
They’ve practiced, they’ve all practiced, hour after hour on the training pitch, their tactics and takers agreed weeks in advance, but nothing can prepare them for the reality.
Nothing could have prepared him for the reality.
(I’ll take it, Rob. I’ll do it.
Are you sure?
Certain.)
He’s never been less certain than he is now, but there’s no time for worrying about his nerves.
“Gaffer?”
Mills is pale but determined, water bottle clutched tight in his hand.
“You’ll be okay, lad,” Killian assures him. “Just as we’ve practiced, aye?”
“Yeah, of course,” Mills nods as though he’s never considered any other possibility. “I’m fine - are you okay?”
He almost brushes it off, but his spine is still tingling from Emma’s kiss, his knees still unsteady after twenty years of regret, and Mills is so sincere, so brave, so very, very young.
“Shitting myself, mate.” Will slaps them both on the shoulders, and the moment is gone. “Let’s do it.”
“Yeah,” Mills lets out a deep breath.
Killian may never breathe again. “Lets.”
---
The only sounds worse than the ball thudding off the crossbar are the squealing of tyres and the crunch of bone. He knows this, knows it intimately, but he winces all the same, his heart shrivelling in his chest.
We'll go on getting bad results… getting bad results….
That fucking song. That fucking song.
Mills is up again and Killian can see the pressure hanging over him, hanging over the rest of the team as they gather in a huddle at the halfway line, can feel it like a physical barrier as he toes at the edge of the area.
The ball is on the spot. In the air.
In Mill’s hands.
There’s a high pitched squealing sound as though someone is letting down an enormous balloon, and Killian just catches sight of Will falling to his knees as England step back up to the spot.
And win.
And win.
---
He eats grass while lying flat on his face beneath a mound of grown men who’ve suddenly become puppies. He mops up the tears of the devastated lad who missed because that sort of pain, that hurt, transcends all boundaries of time and language. He applauds and dances in front of a stand of sobbing fans who scrub their faces with their flags and sing that song, that fucking song, until his ears are ringing.
And then it’s dark, and quiet. And he’s alone in a stadium that reaches up to a cloudless, star-filled sky.
Well, almost alone.
Emma curls her fingers around his as she gazes up at the heavens and he in turn studies her profile, the curve of her cheek standing out against the distant chalk white of the goalposts.
And for the first time in twenty years, he dares to believe.
