#carrard

If Stevie stays, it has to be because he wants to be here, because he sees a future here, because he’s happy here. Not because Jamie dragged him into a corner and emotionally blackmailed him into it. Not because Jamie looked into his eyes and said stay for me, the way he’s been tempted to do since the start of last season, and Stevie listened.

Because he would listen. Jamie is sure of very little in his life these days, but he’s sure of this. If he asked, really, truly, all-defenses-bared asked, Stevie would stay.

So he doesn’t ask.

-

They make it further than they have any right to. No one expects them to beat Juve, the Italian champions, in the Quarters, and when they get to the semis, Jamie only has time to think please anyone but Chelsea before the results come in and they’re playing fucking Chelsea.

Of course they are.

Stevie never brings it up himself, far too much of a professional for that, but the media circus is unbearable. The Steven Gerrard playoff, they brand it, as if he’s some piece of meat they’re haggling over, as if Stevie has so little agency that he’ll just hand himself over to whoever wins the tie at the full-time whistle. It’s the biggest load of bollocks Jamie’s ever read—if all Stevie needed to decide his future was the outcome of a head-to-head game, he’d have left to London or Manchester or even fucking Birmingham by now.

And yet. And yet. Jamie barely sleeps the night before, tossing and turning to increasingly nightmarish scenarios of scoring the own goal that knocks Liverpool out of the Champions League and Stevie out of his life for good. Breaks out in a cold sweat on the team bus when he sits down next to Stevie, as always, and realizes there might be a different face in that seat next season depending on how the next ninety minutes goes.

Perhaps predictably, the first leg ends in a draw. Stalemate. Something about that feels very fitting, given the context of the game—neither club gaining anything, both standing to lose everything, all eyes on what Stevie will do. Still, Jamie is proud of the clean sheet at Stamford Bridge, even more so when Stevie gives him a massive hug after the game and says halfway there low in his ear like a promise.

(He reads a comment in one particularly nasty paper the next morning that Stevie wasn’t trying his hardest because his heart was already blue, and strongly considers driving over to burn the whole establishment to the ground)

The second leg is—it’s fire in his lungs, full-pelt defending for ninety minutes, heart crawling into his throat every time a blue shirt gets within ten yards of the box, a flash of fear after every tackle because one more booking means he misses the final, one eye always on the clock as it crawls forward molasses-slow. It feels like playing for the fate of his whole world.

What’s really on the line is Stevie, which might as well be the same thing.

Finally, finally, finally, the whistle blows. Jamie can barely hear the fans cheering over the ringing in his ears, the rush of blood to his head as he collapses bodily onto the pitch. They’re going to a Champions League final.

And Stevie is—not leaving just yet, at the very least.

They’ve made it further than anyone expected, but almost isn’t good enough. Not for Stevie, who deserves to lift trophies above his head every single season, not when he’s nearly accepted he might need to wear a different color to do it.

“Jamie!” Stevie shouts, grabbing onto his shoulders and shaking him like he’s trying to make sure it’s not all a dream. “J, we did it!” A sound of pure pleasure bubbles out of Stevie’s throat, somewhere between a giggle and a laugh and a cheer all in one, and Jamie grins so wide his face hurts.

Just one more game, and maybe he gets to keep this a little longer.

-

Before the final, as ever with these things, there’s an interview. Sky somehow get him and Stevie and two cameras into a room with four European Cups gleaming proudly behind their chairs, and the sight of the trophies makes his heart skip a beat.

“Don’t touch the cups,” Jamie says to Stevie as soon as they walk in. It’s superstition, but they need every advantage. “Not unless you wanna lose.” Not unless you wanna leave, he doesn’t say, but maybe Stevie hears him anyway.

The interview touches on a lot of different topics, but eventually, the question comes. Does winning the Champions League have any bearing on your decision to stay or go?

And Jamie knows the answer, has always known the answer even though they’ve never actually talked about it in as many words, yet something in him still cracks when Stevie says, immediately, flatly, “Yeah.”

The Chelsea game may not have been a Steven Gerrard playoff, but this one feels a lot like it is. They win, he stays. They lose, and Jamie’ll lose everything too.

-

He dreams, the night before.

“Madrid want me,” Mickey says, unable to hide his excitement. The words echo over and over. Madrid want me Madrid want me Madrid want me Madrid want me Madrid want me—

“You’re not going though? You wouldn’t—” You wouldn’t leave me, would you?

“Carra, it’s Madrid.” There’s something sad and very, very soft about his voice that hits Jamie harder than any insult he’s ever heard, any beating he’s ever taken. “I’m sorry.”

He wakes with his cheeks wet, and it’s only Stevie’s regular breaths from the other bed that lull him back to sleep.

-

The first half goes by mostly in flashes, snapshots and fragmented emotions.

Kickoff. He feels good, ready. The crowd are so up for it, he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that half the population of Merseyside is somehow packed into the stadium.

His first touch, first pass. Calms some of the jitters, ignites a few new ones. He’s just kicked a ball in a Champions League final—no one will ever take that away.

The first time the net bulges, the way it sends his heart sinking into his stomach.

The second time, how it silences the crowd, a sea of red that bellowed You’ll Never Walk Alone to spine-tingling effect just forty minutes prior. Shell-shock in the stands, shell-shock on the pitch.

The third goal. Time seems to stand still. There’s a tightness in his chest, suffocating, and he can barely draw breath. All he can think is that Stevie’s going to be wearing blue as early as tomorrow morning, and then he’ll be gone, lost to London, another in the long list of people who started out in Liverpool and never managed to stay.

He thinks of Michael and nearly falls to his knees right there on the grass. This is how it ends.

The whistle blows for halftime, and he’s never been happier to get off a football pitch in his life.

-

The dressing room is quiet. Not silent, the ever-present clatter of players adjusting shin pads and tightening bootlaces and guzzling down water humming away in the background (Jamie wants to tell them all to shut up and sit still, knows they aren’t 3-0 down because a shoelace was a little too loose), but quiet. Nobody speaks. Nobody know what to say.

The gaffer comes in and starts his tactical adjustments, but Jamie has eyes only for Stevie, sat four seats down from him with his hands covering his face and the captain’s armband tossed on the bench beside him. Jamie’s fully aware this disaster might be the last game they ever play together, and it makes his stomach roil.

He takes once glance at the updated lineup written on the board, just to be sure he isn’t coming off, and looks away as soon as he sees that Carragher is still there in fading red marker. That’s all the instruction he needs, really, because his role is quite simple—just make sure three doesn’t turn into four or five or six.

He doesn’t remember which match currently stands as the worst Champions League final defeat in history, all he knows is that it can’t become this one.

Faintly, the sound of the fans singing filters into the dressing room. There’s a somber, haunting quality to it, nothing like the jubilant, roaring You’ll Never Walk Alone from before the match, and somehow, that’s what makes the tears burn in the back of his throat. He hasn’t cried since leg was broken and every heartbeat was accompanied by a stab of white-hot pain, but this feels even worse than that.

Bones can heal, after all. Broken hearts, he has learned, never quite grow back whole.

All too soon, it’s time to head out again. Around the dressing room every face is grim, and on instinct he looks back at Stevie, a last grasp at comforting familiarity.

His heart lurches. Stevie looks—lost isn’t the right word, but it’s close to that, eyes hooded, mouth pressed into a frown, running the captain’s armband between his fingers like it’s some unknown object he’s trying to puzzle out.

The thought that he will never see this again, Stevie beside him in the dressing room wearing the Liverpool red, hits like a punch straight to the gut, and Jamie finds his feet moving toward Stevie, drawn like a magnet to its opposite pole. Before he’s really even conscious of what he’s doing, he takes the armband from Stevie’s fingers and twists it around in his own, heart pounding.

If it’s to be the last time, he wants to be the one to do it.

“Come on then, Stevie, lad.” He can’t look at Stevie. Won’t, because otherwise something very close to the s-word will slip out, and this would be the absolute worst time to give in to that particular temptation. “One more half.”

One more half left in the game. One more half as a Liverpool player. One more half together. One more half to turn this around.

Jamie cuts himself off there, letting Stevie decide which of the million and seven interpretations he chooses to take away from that, and slides the armband onto Stevie’s left bicep where it belongs. Where it’ll stay, for at least one more half.

“Yeah,” Stevie says quietly. His voice doesn’t shake, but it’s thin in a way that Jamie knows he’d never allow it to be when speaking to one of the other lads, someone he has to motivate. Captains can never be weak. He watches the bob of Stevie’s Adam’s apple as he swallows, like he holding back just as much as Jamie is. “Yeah, J.”

The nickname knocks the air straight from his lungs, and it takes Jamie several seconds to remember how to breathe.

Stay, he wants to scream, but he just gives Stevie a pat on the shoulder—lets his hand linger for the briefest moment, hopes it says everything he can’t put into words—and turns toward the tunnel.

One more half.

-

Turns out they don’t need a half. Just six minutes.

The first goal is pure relief, the truest form of a consolation goal he’s ever experienced. Knowing the supporters who travelled all this way have at least one thing to cheer about means more than he imagined it would.

The second goal is shock woven through with the faintest thread of hope. Maybe they could—maybe—

Even in his own head, the idea is almost too ludicrous to voice. But he feels it in the noise of the crowd and the frantic beat of his heart, the way even the air is charged like something electric is brewing in the stadium. Maybe they could.

The third goal is fear. There’s joy, too, a blinding, bursting euphoria for a few seconds, but it’s gone as quick as it came. He knows, somewhere deep down, that three goals is all they’re getting, each one a veritable miracle in itself, and they’re playing for penalties. Which means the best case scenario is that the next thirty minutes, plus another thirty of extra time, are going to be nonstop defending, the second leg of the Chelsea game but dialed up to a hundred.

It’s going to hurt.

But he sees Gerrard up on the scoreboard in gleaming white letters, and it’s fuel when his legs burn with cramp every time he moves, when every breath feels like a knife cutting him open from the inside, when the medics look him in the eye and ask if he wants to be stretchered off.

They win, and Stevie stays. One more tackle, one more block, and Stevie stays. How could Stevie not, if they win it like this, the greatest Champions League story ever told? They win, and Stevie stays. The truth of it is a better painkiller than any pill they might give him.

“No, no, I can carry on,” he says to them, and it’s the easiest decision he’s ever made.

He plays, and it hurts, but less than it would’ve to sit on the sidelines and watch the fate of the European Cup decided without him.

He plays, and they make it to penalties.

And then they win.

-

In the post-match euphoria, after the medals and the trophy lift and the confetti, he finds Stevie.

He can’t contain the smile on his face, hasn’t been able to wipe it off for the better part of an hour, and Stevie seems much the same.

“J, can you believe it!” Stevie says, and in this moment the nickname just curls in Jamie’s chest, soft and warm like a blanket. “European Cup winners!”

“Can’t believe it.” He shakes his head, catching sight of somebody posing with the trophy behind Stevie. The cup looks pretty real, at least. “No. Can’t believe it. Just keep looking around thinking, fuck, am I dreaming?”

“Best dream ever,” Stevie replies almost absently, starting to pull away in the direction of the trophy. Probably to give it another kiss or seven or twenty, the thrill nowhere close to wearing off.

Jamie almost lets him go. If this, doing the unthinkable, isn’t enough to keep Stevie here, nothing will ever be. He just has to hope it’s enough.

But Stevie must see something in his face, because he stops, takes a step toward him. “Jamie?”

“You must be staying now,” he says, still unable to make it anything other than a joke. It’s the closest he can come to asking, knowing that the ensuing answer will make or break absolutely everything about his enjoyment of tonight.

He didn’t know it was possible, but Stevie’s smile gets even wider.

And Jamie laughs before he’s even had a chance to say anything, the relief crashing over him in waves, a joy so heady it leaves him weak and dizzy.