I'll look at you nervously - I've never done this before - and you'll understand instantly; dial down that confidence and replace it with something smaller, something that thrums lightly. The people around us will smile - some knowingly because they've been caught up like this before, the others confusedly because they've never seen anything of the like - and push us the tiniest bit closer. And then maybe I'll do something a little brave, and it won't be embarrassing because it makes your breath hitch and that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing and it will ring like a song I've never heard through my skin because this here? Is more than just a good thing, it's a good everything.

I know I haven't written in ages, and I could probably blame that on a million things. (Half of those million would be myself.) Resurrecting the old Five Things meme seemed the safest way to go.

For Aria: ( 5 times Roque complimented Micho Demichelis. )

Written for a friend, on her birthday.

( Two very short pieces: Raul and Morientes. )

It isn't writer's block so much as writer's steeplechase. This was written five months ago, following the retirement from football of Sebastian Deisler, at the age of 27. I wish I'd gotten to watch more of this man than grainy youtube videos and matches from a time when I watched football a bit too stiffly.

Sebastian Deisler: Best talked about in numbers. 62 matches in four and a half seasons for Bayern Munich. Six operations and sixteen significant injuries in eight years in the top flight. (One bout of mental illness, one public recovery.) One partner, one son, one troubled right knee.

Basti: 19 years old, six TSV 1860 Munich defenders, 60 metres, and not a single successful tackle. Some say it was 5.01 in the afternoon, some say it was 4.59, and that the stadium clock was set forward for no reason at all.

You burst onto the scene holding the future of German football aloft. They broke bottles of champagne over your bow. 1998 had been a bad year. One of the most disappointing. You showed up at the perfect time: when even safe rugged defending wasn't working you brought the country something to be proud of. (La Deislerita, some called you. Continental European style in a German body.) Only 19 years old, this one. Only 19.

But in eight years, you never performed for your country as well as you did for yourself that afternoon. Confederations Cup runner-up says your report card, ending there clinically.

Yesterday you looked disappointed. The reporters asked, without ever saying so, whether it was the body, the footballer or the man who had had enough. You end with a helpless shrug.

You always had perfect timing.

I owe rondaview something.

We swapped AU prompts. She said: Four or more scenes from Jason Mraz's Dream Life of Mr. Rand McNally. ( I choked. )

And now I need to go cleanse my brain, thx.

Just one for now. And also because I need to get my mind off the other thing I'm supposed to be writing. And whoa, it's been more than two weeks since I last posted something :O

For gullwatch, as always: ( 5 phone conversations that Stevie and Xabi have had. )

For my lovely, precious gullwatch:

( 5 times Philipp suspected that there might be more to Bastian and Lukas' relationship than everyone thinks. )

These were all written for gullwatch:

( 5 things Deni and Annie did after they thought everyone else was asleep. )
( 5 times Roque was hit on by a Bayern teammate, and how he responded. )
( 5 times Philipp was secretly glad he was short. )
( 5 times John Arne Riise thought Luis was, well, a bit girly. )
( 5 things Stevie wouldn't change about Xabi. )