Cause and Effect

Twenty seven

A/N: welcome to probably the longest chapter you will ever get from me ever.

"You two are awfully quiet," said Thierry, as we were working on our penalties with Alexis and Mesut, an hour later.

"What do you mean?" I asked, looking at him blankly.

"Normally, I can't shut you up," he smiled, gesturing to Neymar and I. "What happened?"

"What didn't happen would be a shorter story to tell," Said Neymar, grimly.

Thierry looked at him, surprised.

"Is this something I should know about, or..."

"Yeah, can we explain later? It's kinda long and complicated," I sighed.

"If you want to," he nodded.

We returned to our spot kicks, but not without Mesut and Alexis looking at us curiously. They asked us no questions, however, not even once training was over, and we headed back to the locker room. I felt relieved. It wasn't that I didn't trust the two of them, but it seemed to me that the fewer of our teammates that had this playing on their minds, the better. If everyone was suspecting everyone else, there was no way we could function as a unit on the pitch.

Thierry was analysing our Juventus home leg footage, when Neymar and I pushed open the door to his office, and went in. He stopped what he was doing immediately, and gave us his whole attention.

"Alright, lets hear it," he said, looking at us seriously.

And so, the whole story came out, from how my breakup with Alexis went public, to my meeting up with Ronaldo, and everything in between, although we did leave out the contents of my discussion with said Portuguese baller. Thierry listened on, without interrupting, although he shook his head when we got to the bit about Ronaldo and Neymar squaring up to each other.

"Okay," he nodded, once we'd finished. "Now I've got something to add. A couple of months ago we had some information leaked about some of the first team's contracts. No one could possibly have gotten the information unless they were part of the club here."

"It has to be a player," I said.

"Why a player? It could be a staff member," he frowned.

"They had to have been at that party," Said Neymar.

"Oh, of course," Thierry nodded, in realisation. "Wow."

The three of us were silent for a long moment.

"Okay," said Thierry, at last. "You're right, it must be a player. What do you think, are they targeting anyone in particular?"

"Seems to be kinda random," Said Neymar, glancing at me, and shrugging his shoulders.

"It's been you and Ronaldo quite a bit," I reminded him.

"It's not just us," he shook his head. "You and Alexis have nothing to do with us fighting, so it's not just whatever they want to say about how we don't get along. They seem to be after whatever drama they can get."

"I still can't comprehend why someone would do this anyway," I sighed. "It's just vicious, and as players we're all in the same boat as far as dealing with the media attention goes."

"I'm not so surprised," said Thierry, shaking his head at me. "There's a lot of money in football gossip, something I learnt when I was a pundit. Perhaps I always knew, but it's undisguised once you're being paid by the media themselves. They're not above paying someone for details on anything to make a good story. It's common in Spain, other countries not so much, but it's definitely there. But I guess the colour of my skin never helped anything either."