Chapter 150: [150] "Rough morning after 2"
Outside the window, traffic moved slowly on the street below.
"Dijon was ugly," Cillian said, after a respectful pause. "I watched the replay last night. That red card for Leo was genuinely bad luck. The pitch made it look worse than it was."
"It was bad luck," Luc agreed. "But we held onto the lead though."
"Two-nil away with ten men," Cillian said, leaning forward on the chair back. "Do you know what the media is calling it this morning?"
"I turned my phone off."
Cillian pulled his own phone out and held up the screen. A French sports headline read: BEAUMONT DRAGS VALOIS THROUGH DIJON HELL. LONE WARRIOR SEALS CRUCIAL AWAY POINTS IN MONSOON CONDITIONS.
Luc looked at the headline for a second. He looked back at his oatmeal.
"They always use lone warrior when they can’t explain what actually happened," he said.
"What did actually happen?" Cillian asked.
"Leo was unlucky. The team defended well. I held up the ball and scored when I had a chance." He ate a spoonful. "That’s the whole thing."
Hugo was watching him from across the table. The kid had his tablet open but wasn’t looking at it. He was doing what he always did. Observing.
"Your back is bad," Hugo said.
"It’ll recover in no time, man."
"Belleville is Sunday," Hugo said. "MD25. Six days."
"I know the schedule, Hugo."
"They have a completely different backline from when we played them in the first half of the season," Hugo continued, pulling the tablet toward him. "Khalil is still there. But Tariq is not. Their new center-back partner is a twenty-two-year-old from Ligue Beta. He hasn’t played against a striker of your calibre, though he was the best Beta defender."
"Don’t."
Hugo blinked. "Don’t what?"
"Don’t start the tactical breakdown stuff today," Luc said. "I mean it. Not today."
Hugo looked at him.
Luc put his spoon down. "I need one day. Just one. Where the next match doesn’t exist yet."
The kitchen was quiet.
Cillian, who had been about to open his own container of eggs, very carefully set his fork down and said nothing.
Hugo dropped the tablet.
He pushed it to the side of the table. He reached forward and took the bowl of fruit, pulling it toward himself and eating a piece of melon.
"Fine," Hugo said.
That was it. No pushback. Just fine.
Luc picked his spoon back up.
---
An hour later, the three of them were on the sofa.
Cillian had found the television remote within forty seconds of being allowed into the living room, which was some kind of record. He had put on a football match. Not Ligue Alpha. An old Champions League final from five years ago, the kind of game that existed in the middle of the day on a sports channel because it had nowhere else to be.
Luc was on the left end of the sofa. He had a cushion behind his lower back, precisely positioned by Hugo like someone who had watched Juliette do it a dozen times in the physio room.
Hugo was on the right end, his tablet back out, though the footage was clearly not Belleville-related. He was watching something else. Something Luc couldn’t see from the angle.
Cillian was in the middle with his legs over the coffee table, eating the leftover toast.
"That goalkeeper is catastrophic," Cillian said, pointing at the screen. "Look at his positioning. He’s standing on the wrong side of the post on every set piece."
"He won the trophy," Luc said.
"He almost lost it for them three times."
"Almost doesn’t really matter, does it."
Cillian considered this. "Fair. Almost doesn’t matter." He took a bite of toast. "Is that your whole philosophy in life or just football?"
"Both."
Cillian laughed.
Luc’s phone lit up on the coffee table. Screen face-up this time because he had stopped hiding from it.
Valérie Laurent:
Good. You’re resting. Henri told me. Don’t fight it. Belleville on Sunday, Luc. I need you vertical and operational. The Cup QF draw comes out this week too. We need to be ready for anything.
Luc read it and put the phone back down.
He didn’t reply. She would understand.
---
Sometime after noon, Luc fell asleep on the sofa.
Not deliberately. One moment the Champions League final was playing and Cillian was arguing with himself about a penalty decision, and the next the room was quiet and the television was off and he was horizontal with someone’s jacket draped over him.
He woke up forty minutes later.
Hugo was at the kitchen table, doing exactly what Luc had asked him not to do, but doing it quietly, in the kitchen, where Luc couldn’t see it.
That was Hugo’s version of compliance.
Cillian was gone, gone to gym to be back later or not.
Luc sat up. The cushion had stayed in position behind his back. The jacket over him was Cillian’s hoodie.
The lower back had softened from acute to a manageable ache that would yield to a proper stretch.
He stood up and walked to the kitchen doorway.
Hugo looked up, his expression was entirely neutral.
"How long was I asleep," Luc said.
"Forty-three minutes."
"You timed it."
"I noticed when you went quiet and I noticed when you started moving again. You needed it, the rest."
Luc leaned against the doorframe. "Belleville," Luc said.
Hugo looked at him.
"Their new center-back. Ligue Beta promotion."
The corner of Hugo’s mouth moved slightly. Hugo had already mapped three separate runs that would pull the man out of his comfort zone. Simple diagonal movements. The kind that required precise timing and spatial discipline.
"He steps across too eagerly. He wants to block the cut-inside shot before it happens. Which means if you fake the inside run early, he commits, and the channel to the near post opens automatically."
"You drew this during the match we were watching," Luc said.
"After you fell asleep," Hugo corrected.
Luc looked at the seventeen-year-old across the table. "Khalil is still going to try to put me through the advertising boards in the first ten minutes," Luc said.
"Yes," Hugo agreed. "So? He always overcommits when he thinks he’s dominating physically. He comes for you, you drop your weight and he goes past you. The space behind him is yours."
Luc nodded slowly.