Chapter Text
A bar wasn't exactly an uncommon place to find a soulmate. There were the romantics and then there were the realists and he guessed then there were the Stevies of the world who just carelessly bumped into their destiny in the middle of a bar fight with a burly Scot and a middle-aged redhead with an eye-patch and freakish strength(seriously where was she hiding the muscle, was she superhuman?)
He knocked some heads together and some posh looking Spaniard looked back from taking care of his own goons. He probably had a little blood on his shirt and his hair was a mop on account of the beer mug thrown at his head, but there it was, the most eventful meeting in recent history.
That had been four years ago.
Now he was reduced to staking out a bloody library.
Stevie knew him by his gait. He walked through the library rows like he was in a chapel, in some old monastery, praying to the god of knowledge by stroking the spines of old dusty books no one had touched in decades.
He spoke with a lilt, not a laughable one, like his, but a serious one. Something that spoke of richness and world travel and Stevie felt his gut try to squirm out of his body as he contemplated the man reading aloud.
His cuff changed colors but not expense and he was sure there was some code to crack behind the changes but he wasn't going to ask because he couldn't face that level of focus without wanting to run.
Xabier Alonso Olano, it was the worst name to learn with his clumsy tongue but he had managed by pure determination.
They didn't run in the same circles and Stevie was glad of it. Alex pestered him about it constantly.
"Make a move, you chicken. How do you expect to live out the dream if you don't go talk to him?" He didn't.
He didn't want to live the dream with Xabi Alonso. He wanted to live his own life without the complication of being bound to a prime minister's son. He had known about the Alonso family through his discipline, international politics, and the Alonsos were in the thick of it in Spain. After the bombs in Seville, Periko had become the number one choice for the Senate. His sons were going to follow him into the political sphere and Stevie wasn't daft enough to follow Xabi into that.
He had worked hard to get into a good school to make a difference in his part of the world. He didn't belong anywhere else. His lofty dreams including being part of the Sheffield City Council.
His bond was an honest to God nightmare for him.
"I should've been yours, Alex. We could've had a kid by now." He slurred on her couch, not content with the spinning room.
She slapped his chest to keep him down as she threw a blanket on him.
"Oh come off it. This is why we're not," she tapped his uncovered wrist. "and you're too much of a sap for me, love." Alex tapped his nose and went into her bedroom to sleep off the pints they had consumed that night.
Alexandra Curran was his soulmate, at least she would be, if the world made any sense. They had been best friends since meeting through their exes who turned out to be bonded and that pretty much summed up his love life perfectly.
He had rotten luck and was always at the wrong place.
Why did God see it fit for him to be bonded a with rich boy from Barcelona who was only here for a lark? Stevie went to mass every Sunday. He said his prayers and confessed like a good Catholic, so why Xabi Alonso?
He woke up in a cold sweat with snatches of a dream that prominently featured the cuffs that usually adorned his bondmate's wrists.
Alex had left a note on the coffee table next to his keys and a glass of water and glorious drugs, which he immediate took. Checking his watch, he decided to hop in the shower before locking up and heading back to campus to tackle the mountain of paperwork he was determined to cut in half by the end of the day.
Fabio Capello had approached him with the TA position after he had finished his requirements and Stevie had gladly taken it. Theories of International Relations made Carra waggle his eyebrows suggestively whenever he heard it, but Stevie enjoyed teaching the history behind his work.
The paper-grading was a bit dull but he had been in those student's shoes not too long ago.
He had found an under-shirt in the back of Alex's closet that he had left behind in the summer and figured it would have to do until he got into the office where he had an extra tie and button-down. His pants were wrinkled beyond repair but he couldn't be arsed to go back to his flat when he was closer to the campus from Alex's place.
He got into his car and adjusted everything back to his preference after Alex had to haul him out of the bar.
Maybe he should stop drowning his problems in beer. Maybe he should give up on self-psychiatry.
As he snagged an ideal spot in the faculty park, he saw Mikel Arteta, one of the Spanish entourage that hung around Xabi smoking a cigarette. It sent his relatively good mood into the gutter. If Arteta was here, then Alonso must be around.
"Rough night?" the man wasn't trying to goad him but Stevie felt irrationally prickly around Arteta. He wasn't sure what kind of relationship he had with Alonso and it didn't matter because he had no business knowing.
"Yeah, somethin' like it." He gruffly responded as he tapped his badge against the scanner. The door unlocked and he walked up the stairs without a care for Mikel Arteta's smug face outside.
He unbuttoned his shirt from the night before as he approached the door, hoping to get the pub smell off of him before anyone came asking for extensions on papers or questions on the midterm. How do you figure there was already someone inside, and to Stevie's surprise it was the devil himself, Xabier Alonso Olano.
---
Xabi had come to Capello's office as a favor for Benitez. He would've steered clear of the entire wing if he could. Steven Gerrard was the one who had to come through the door half-undressed and looking fit to murder.
"What do you want?" He spat as he uncovered more of his skin, not bothering to have some decency.
Xabi had known he should've made Reina take the fool's errand, but he was made a fool instead by having to interact with the English man who wanted nothing to do with him. He turned away as the man had the audacity of taking his undershirt off also.
"Do you greet all your students in this way?" He studied the off-white wall intently but could see a reflection off the edge of a framed diploma so Xabi just decided to close his eyes and recite the conjugations of various verbs in German. Er rennt. Wir rennen. Ihr--
"You're not my student, Xabi." The ch-sound was too soft but he almost bit his tongue holding back all he wanted to say. Xabier turned back to face him with a packet of paper held in his hands. Stevie readjusted the cuff of his sleeve, feeling naked without his regular cover. Now, he remembered why he had put the long-sleeved white shirt in his reserve stash of clothes. The sleeves hadn't had enough room to close over his regular cuff.
The tiny buttons were vexing him and he cursed every men's fashion shop he knew of off the top of his head.
"May I?" Stevie was suddenly aware of the other man's proximity. He felt a kinship to Tantalus at that moment. What sort of cruel punishment was this, to have him so close yet know he would be gone before getting a taste of the water at his feet. He was parched, and he knew his resolve was breaking.
"No, you may not." Stevie held his wrist protectively and used his best prim Alex imitation to ward off all the haze that had clouded his mind.
Xabi stepped back gracefully, because he was always the picture of elegance and sodding royalty. Stevie rounded the desk to put more distance between them and at least feel semi-professional.
"Benitez sends these to your boss," the Spaniard put down the packet on his desk and Stevie caught the color of his cuff, a bruise purple that was an eyesore with anything Xabi wore. He didn't dare ask why it had changed from the dark green of the last week he had saw him through the library stacks.
Xabi gave him a nod and left without a sound, and Stevie only felt it was fitting he had to get up to close the door after him. What a bloody metaphor.
---
"Get a load of you, stripping in front of the boy." Alex was almost impressed but Stevie kept a stone-face as he tore through the fish and chips.
"He's your age and working on his doctorate unlike somebody I know." Alex snorted and took a sip of her cola as she flipped to a more appropriate channel.
"Oh please, tell me more." She simpered and batted her eyelashes. He threw a chip into her hair. "Now, now don't get jealous. or rather more green at the gills what with Arteta waiting in the wings like a lead in West Side Story." Stevie groaned.
"I never said that." "You thought it, you wanker." The doorbell rang and Alex looked at Stevie who just shrugged. They were in his flat and hadn't planned on having any guests.
"Open up, we're here to arrest Steven Gerrard for indecency." Alex burst into giggles and went to open the door.
"You're more of a stripper cop than Stevie is, lad." Jamie Carragher, Stevie's best mate swung Alex around in a hug and stole her spot on the couch.
"Heard some news around the water cooler, our boy Alonso was in a right strop when he got to Rafa's office." Alex stretched out on the couch with her legs on Carra's lap as she clapped in delight. "The plot thickens!" Stevie shoved the other man into Alex and gave into the gossip.
"What exactly did you hear, Carra?" Jamie shrugged but Alex tickled him into submission. The food was forgotten as both Alex and Stevie focused on Jamie.
"Alright, alright, you'd think the Spanish inquisition were at our door or something. I heard a ton of 'joder' and other not so nice words coming from ol' Beni's office and a crash that makes me think Benitez' prized collection of bobbles took a hit. After my well-deserved break, I heard from Alvaro who heard from one of the Madrid quartet that Alonso was jabbering about our Stevie giving him a show and his honor being insulted or some such nonsense. Honestly, I came up to get the facts straight."
"And spread it around the water cooler?" Stevie knew his idiot display of stubbornness was going to bite him in the arse.
"Not my fault the media office is so close to the language department, mate. It's been tame lately, this is as close to a soap opera those girls will get." Alex slapped his arm and had the common sense to get some beer to sooth Stevie's temper.
"I wasn't giving him a show. I had to change my shirt. He happened to be in the office. And he's the one mocking me, acting like he was so innocent, offering to bloody button my cuff." Carra choked on his drink.
"What's this about buttoning?" Alex yelled from the kitchen. "Get your ears checked, he said the lad tried feeling him up!"
"Woohooo atta boy." she cheered as she came back with another bottle.
"Can we please stop referring to him as a boy, he's two years younger than me."
"With a fuller beard than you've got, mate." Carra clinked his bottle with Alex's and laughed.
---
He had told himself he would stop loitering in the university library so much but here he was again. It wasn't like he didn't use the faculties as they were intended, but he still felt like a liar every time he went through the doors.
It hadn't even been his intention this morning, but something had sparked his memory and he walked into the double doors without a thought to his usual purpose. It was the code, he had overheard a student reciting some art history review and for some reason his brain had connected the dots.
The catalog yielded a result in the back of the archives and he remembered one of his intro classes had touched on the archaic color system in the Renaissance to signify different conditions. It fell out of practice as more people just customized their cuffs with different things. No one in their right mind would use the color system to convey a message in the modern world, except for of course, Xabier Alonso Olano.
He shook his head as he reached the shelf and found the book.
He saw red as he went down the color key to all the ones he remembered.
Not wanted, not a compatible match
A loveless match
Unrequited
Distance, over seas
Not fit to care for bondmate