Chapter Text
The sun is out in a glaring, almost mocking way that leaves you too hot in its direct gaze and too cold the moment you have shelter from it. It’s mostly comfortable, but not so much so that either decision to wear or not wear a jacket feels quite right. Though it may be the perfect weather for today, ironically, Sebas thinks as he shrugs off another fleece jacket. He hooks it back onto the rack so it can rejoin the disordered rainbow of its brethren, varied textures and colors almost blurring into messy cohesion. It would probably make a nice photo, if he was inclined to think like that.
It was never a habit of him or his family to go to street markets, and certainly not ones like this. He remembers Elena and his mother discussing different antique sellers when she got her first apartment, but he can’t imagine them venturing to a place as chaotic as this. 'Or as colorful' his mind teeters on adding, because it’s truly both in equal measure.
“Gaudy” was the word his mother used to describe El Rastro on more than one occasion. They’d lived close by but he’d steered clear of it, mostly at her insistence, so he could never attest to its quality himself. He finds he regrets it now.
The hiss of metal on metal rings behind him as Roque peruses the nearby line of used shirts, his confidence and ease at the task somehow shining through the sound alone. When Sebas turns around he’s scanning the row like he’s looking for something specific, eyes moving on a flat track across the fabric with a furrowed brow. His focus only shifts when Sebas has starred long enough for him to have noticed.
“What?” His eyes are wide in that earnest, almost helpless way that makes Sebas want to kiss him. If they weren’t in public, he thinks he would. Instead, he smiles softly at him.
“You look so serious. Are you on a mission? Some secret clothing assignment I don’t know about?” He asks gently, weary of the line marking playful ribbing from genuine interrogation.
Roque’s gaze flits from his to the line of clothes and back again.
“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m going to start dressing like a punk. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?” He feels himself snort before the image of Roque in all black with a spiked mohawk even fully forms in his head. Then he snorts again, the imagined sneer over heavy mascara only serving to amuse instead of threaten him. Roque’s eyebrows toss up in mock offense.
“What, you don’t think I could pull it off? You wouldn’t wanna be seen with me?” He pouts and pulls up a jacket beset with small spikes and webs of grey streaking where the leather has torn and faded with age. Sebas shakes his head.
“I think your mom would mind more than me. She dresses you, doesn’t she?” And now the offense is genuine, if mild as Roque lowers the jacket.
“What do you mean?”
“Your dad dresses the same.” He jerks his chin to where Enrique and Laura are browsing nearby. Laura is in a white coat over a floral, long-sleeved dress and Enrique is in a white undershirt and grey sweater that looks nearly identical to the navy one Roque is wearing. Roque’s eyes widen, mouth falling in soft agape as he looks to his father and then to his chest. Sebas snickers as he shakes his head despondently.
“I don’t believe this. I have to go home and change.”
“Into what, other clothes that your dad owns a copy of?” He can’t help the urge to tease. Even when Roque scowls and shoves at him it only makes Sebas want to kiss him more and smudge the frown away with his lips. Something tugs at the edges of his own mouth at not being able to, but it’s chased into the sunlight of Roque’s eventual smile once it creeps back onto his face. When Roque looks back down at the shirts, Sebas’ gaze follows.
“I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to shop for myself.” Roque mutters with bittersweet amusement. Sebas frowns, the truth of the statement landing with dry finality in his chest. That Roque, so handsome and clearly possessing a sense of style despite the limited wardrobe Sebas had seen, had been so bereft of free time and free choice to find his own clothes makes him ache in a way that feels foreign, upsetting. Of course he hadn’t had time, none of them did. Of course what clothes he had were conservative, ostentatiousness generally wasn’t a good look to sponsors, especially for someone who already stood out like Roque did. He frowns.
‘Like Roque did.’
The urge to glut himself on the unfairness of the situation threatens to derail the sweetness, the calm of the morning. He looks up and towards the sights and sounds of the market.
The separate stalls are marked by large, colorful sheets of fabric that yawn with the push and pull of the wind, bright reds and greens and oranges stretching into taut bellows under the sun. There was a lone guitar player strumming near the entrance when they first arrived, and he can now just make out the quivering cadence of a copla song wafting through the streets. They’d passed a group of women selling fresh ensaïmadas to raise funds for a local hospital before they found the clothing section. He sniffs the air in search of the sugary aroma before giving up with a sigh and turning back to the clothes.
What was he even looking for? He’d mocked Roque for letting Laura dress him, but what claim did he have to any sense of fashion? He’d acquiesced when his own mother dragged him through luxury stores, dejectedly tried on blazer after blazer until she was content, or at least approaching it. When he was allowed free rein in the more casual departments he’d poured over every aisle to find the least suspect option. He’d study the models and mannequins to try and understand what ineffable qualities made them so free of misgiving, so unquestionably masculine. Was it the cut of the fabric, enough to show strength but never tantalizing? Was it the color, sometimes bold but never flashy, never too patterned? Or was it something more imbued in their physicality? Was it the line of their jaws, the angle of their eyes, the way their muscles sat so firm and symmetrical beneath the clothes themselves? Was it the way their faces could hold the emotion of men; the joy of camaraderie, the sharp focus of competition, the pride and relief of triumph? When he thought of their bodies, their faces, it felt like something he’d simply been born without, something he could spend his life trying to emulate and never truly reach. He would waste away attempting a pathetic simulacrum of something that came so naturally, so unthinkingly, to everyone else.
He’d often find he’d spent too long looking to maintain the illusion, even to himself - guys don’t care about clothes, they don’t care about looking nice, what are you, a - and he would quickly grab what he could carry in his size before rushing to a cashier, card in shaking hand. He’d have time to inspect himself to his brittle heart’s content in the safety of his own room later, he reasoned, far from any suspicious eyes. But then he could never stomach the sight of himself alone anyways. He’d stare at the way the clothes hung on him, fell to the shape of his body, and grow sick with upset within seconds. Torn between the urge to inspect and burn out any chance of suspicion and the need to never think of himself existing physically at all, never see himself in the world that could break him so very badly if the truth revealed itself by even a sliver. He’d either rush out the door of his sanctuary hoping his body spray masked the scent of his cold sweat, or turn the light off just for a second’s pathetic illusion that he had no form to hide.
Had that been the point of it all, then? Making his body, his face more like the ones he saw in magazines, bigger and sharper and so opaque in its conformity no one would think to question it? He started playing in secondary school and never stopped, never really thought about stopping. When was it that he thought about starting in the first place?
His body will change now that he isn’t playing anymore. Now that he’ll never play again. What will it morph into without the constant strain of play, the push and pull of too much to never enough, of giving everything to a version of himself he would never be?
He’ll shrink, surely. His muscles will shrivel and starve and he’ll be as weak as he was as a child, clutching and gnawing at any nutrients he can hope to get a grip on. Suddenly, he’s hungry. What did he eat as a child before he started limiting his diet? Before the dictated compression of calories, the banishing of all unnecessary carbs and sugar for the purpose of carving him into something so very different from the boy he didn’t want to be. The one who was liable to sneak candies from out of the cupboard late at night, to swipe a finger full of frosting from a birthday cake that wasn’t his when no one was looking. At some point he’d gone from hiding to abstaining entirely, tried to starve the literal appetite along with all the others in pursuit of the standard, then the excellent, until he was bone and sinew and nothing in between. Until that was all anyone saw.
“Sebas?”
He jolts and looks over from the corner of the market he hadn’t realized he’d been staring at. Roque’s looking at him with those wide, concerned eyes that always have him torn between running away and burrowing in his chest for protection. Sebas can see his good hand twitch on the rack in a halted move towards him when he doesn’t respond immediately.
“You okay?” He nods, trying to pull his brain back into his body before the moment evolves from uncomfortable to disturbing. His hand comes up to rub his face. The words tumble out before he can form them properly.
“Yeah, I got- um. I got lost in thought, sorry.” Even to his ears the words are insufficient, clashing with the reality of whatever just came over him like an embarrassing coat of paint. He’d left here, somehow, drifted somewhere his brain had never before allowed access into and promptly gotten lost. Distraction has always been something he’s prone to, the tendency untempered no matter how many slaps to the back of the head it had earned him over the years. This felt different, though. Like he’d lost control.
“Do you wanna sit down somewhere? Get a drink? Or- ” He shakes his head before Roque can finish, relieved to find that the motion doesn’t make him dizzy.
“I’m fine, I just… dozed off I think.” He says quickly before looking for the owner of the stall. She’s standing near a hung row of vibrant scarves, the light shining off her sun spotted cheeks as she peers at her phone from above a pair of reading glasses. After squinting, he can make out the dark line of a tattoo poking out from the edge of her collar.
It’s safe, most likely. He reaches forward and holds Roque’s hand, both of them jolting a little at the contact. The sudden warmth of Roque’s palm melds with the frisson he’s always gotten from touching him after they’ve been apart. He strokes his thumb over the ridges of his veins, squeezes to feel the pulse of blood. Has it really been that long since they last touched? This morning they had woken up practically welded to each other and happily stayed that way until Laura announced that it was time to get ready for the market.
Surely he’s simply been spoiled by the recent days’ unfettered access to his boyfriend. The freedom to touch and kiss and breathe the same air as him for hours at a time souring the very idea of restraint. He’s always been a needy child. It’s to be expected, he thinks, frowning. Far more likely for him to be pouting over what he can’t have than having been unsettled by the trajectory of his own thoughts in a moment as pleasant as this one. At least not so much that human touch would leave him gripping at his own composure. He swallows. Roque squeezes his hand back.
“What were you thinking about?” Laughter, bitter and bemused, crackles behind his tongue. Of course Roque would be steadfastly holding up his end of their agreement. He tries to tell himself he’d be disappointed if he didn’t, but he’s never captured the art of truly fooling himself, despite all the practice. His gaze flits to the owner of the stall and then back at Roque. Their hands stay joined.
“I guess, just…” The words mull between his clenched teeth, swirling and trying different orders, different phrasings on and off like so many outfits, so many personas. Nothing suffices. He swallows, starts again. “I don’t know who I’ll be now. What I’ll wear, any of it.” The words hang in the air for a moment, out of him and never to be pulled back again. He lets them.
“You didn’t get to wear what you wanted?” Roque asks but then it’s not really a question. It doesn’t feel like one, not from the inflection or what Sebas thinks he means by it. Something strange opens up after he says it, something vast and grey that he doesn’t think he’s ever walked into before. He’s seen it, felt it, but always turned away or been yanked away before he could figure the landscape. Even now he finds he has to look away from Roque when he answers, focusing on the other visitors walking the rows of the market instead.
“I don’t think I really knew what I wanted.” It’s acrid in his mouth, so much so that he can feel his face contort minutely at the texture of it. The shoppers continue strolling past. A woman in a vibrant, dangling scarf and thick brown coat talks on the phone. A bearded man carries a toddler on his shoulders. An elderly couple peer at an old painting hanging in one of the stalls. The guitarist is still playing, his gentle strumming fanning out across the lot. When Sebas finally turns back to Roque he’s looking out at the same crowd, expression something unreadable. It’s a long moment before he speaks.
“Do you think other people have to make the same choices we do? Just, in different ways?” He asks, not a shred of acrimony to it and Sebas is surprised to find his hackles don’t raise in the ever familiar sensation of frustration. The anger he should feel at Roque’s continued gentleness, his softness and simple weariness in a world that has broken him so unjustly, is absent.
He could be angry for Roque, he thinks. He could pummel and shatter bone and rip limb from limb for him, for his injury and the rage he couldn’t let himself feel for it even now. Sebas could be his rage, could dig deep into the darkest pools of himself and deliver retribution for every crime ever visited on him, Charlie’s and otherwise. Do tenfold what Roque did to him in the weight room and whatever else Roque wanted. Rugby wouldn’t own his fury anymore, wouldn’t receive it and hold it for him when he couldn’t bear the scalding of it a moment longer, the blistering beneath his skin. It would be Roque’s, now. His to hold and shape into whatever he wished because that might be all Sebas thinks he could give to someone he loved like he loved Roque. To make himself something malleable, useful in a way that wasn’t up to him. He would be Roque’s rage. He’d live under the shelter of his ribs, make his heart a hearth, and be his rage.
And yet all that’s in the reservoir, the current that has ebbed and flowed and twisted into tempests beneath his skin all his life is something more like the grey he’d finally ventured into. A plane of still, clammy bereftness that’s too tired for promises of righteous destruction. Like the sour grief for someone who died of sickness, it’s veined with the finality of having nowhere to go because there is no one to blame. Or in their case, because the blame lies on too many to ever count. The result is the same, and all that’s left is the howling absence that fills and refills with sorrow like a glass with a hole in it. An unfair thing, like so many others. He strokes the back of Roque’s hand and looks out to the market.
“I think everyone does. But it’s not the same.” He answers simply, because he isn’t naive or selfish enough to say otherwise. The world is ultimately kind to no one even if it is crueler to people like them. He knows this and has seen and lived it far too many times to deny it even if that would make him feel better now. And Roque would fight him on it anyways, he’s certain.
“No, it’s not.” He says finally, still facing the other stalls. His voice is almost a murmur under the sounds of the modest crowd, the steady melody of the guitar. Sebas watches his face for something he’s not even sure of. Maybe it’s just to see the precious bow of his lips as they purse, the way his cheeks’ pale softness glimmers with sweat in the sun, to trace the ancient arc of his nose with his eyes. Maybe it’s just to appreciate how, for everything the world has taken from him, Roque’s beauty remains.
‘I should’ve broken your face.’
‘You didn’t.’ Sebas thinks, wants to scream at the spectre of Charlie that still lingers at the edges of his physical awareness, lives in his flinches and second glances. The one his body hasn’t learned is gone yet, gone for good. He exhales.
‘You didn’t. You didn’t get to have that.’
Roque is still looking at the crowd, impassive and untouched by the taint of memory that’s now slowly dripping off of Sebas. His face is almost tranquil. Any passerby would probably think he was just a handsome young man lost in thought. No one would suspect the pain he held, or the strength. Sebas doubts they could fathom the depth of it even if they knew. He stays watching and holding the private knowing of him like it’s a sacred truth he’s been sworn into keeping safe, keeping hidden.
He wants to kiss him, suddenly and with an urgency that almost frightens him. The memory of what happened on the field, what happened after, ghosts in and out of his mind’s periphery and he can feel his shoulders square at the first hint of it. Tension warps his musculature as the recollection passes again and again, becoming clearer each time despite his attempts to push it away. His vision hones in on the smooth, almost milky curve of Roque’s cheek beneath his tired eyes.
He kisses him. Just a peck to that inch of softness and he’s pulling away before he feels like he’s even made the decision to do it in the first place, let alone check for safety. Roque’s almost agape when he turns to him, eyes saucers. Blood trounces in his veins, sends his heart pushing against his ribs like it might break them and he has to look away as cool sweat breaks across his forehead. He can’t bring himself to check the crowd for signs of malicious onlookers, any eyes eagerly set on his lethal stupidity. There’s a tearing in his chest that warns of being ripped asunder between two opposing peaks, each half of him left to wave alone in the wind for the rest of his life.
Roque squeezes his hand.
“Hey.” He tuts, angling downward to be closer to where Sebas’ gaze is glued to the floor. “Sebas, look at me.” He uses his captain voice and Sebas hates him for it in the thin, momentary way a child would. “It’s okay.” He whispers, so much like one would to a child but without a shred of the condescension that could be expected of it. Sebas lets it wash over him, cover him like a blanket like it did in Roque’s room the night before. Has so little time really passed since he shattered completely? It takes a couple seconds to kindle the nerve to look back at him, but when Sebas does Roque is just smiling in the sweet, sly way he does when he’s won something.
Sebas feels his heart fall back into timid relaxation, then sends his free hand out to swat at his boyfriend. Roque’s smile bubbles into laughter and Sebas shoves the shoulder of his good hand lightly. A grin has cracked through his scowl by the time he’s decided Roque’s had enough punishment, and when Roque holds the offending hand to his chest for a few seconds he lets him. There’s something almost twinkling in his eyes when Sebas pulls away, something mischievous that has him torn like he was earlier, but in a softer way. It’s a gentler kind of tugging that has anticipation nipping his skin into delight even when he turns to see that the crowd has grown. ‘No camera crews.’ He notes to himself dryly, satisfaction flat now that his nerves have been soothed into repose.
“Do you want to keep looking here?” Roque asks. Sebas looks down at the motley collection on the rack and shakes his head.
“No, I think it’s a little too early for a new wardrobe.” His imagination chews on the image of himself in the bright green baja he hadn’t realized he’d been gripping before letting it go to slot back in with its cohort. He rubs his hand on his jeans. “And I don’t need to be spending money right now.” He mutters tightly, hoping neither of them lingers on it. When Roque just nods he feels something in him shudder quietly.
He doesn’t need to be asked to follow Roque when he steps away from the rack. Instead Sebas trails after him wordlessly, tugged forward by the invisible line that had hooked into the tender, younger parts of him when Roque was named captain and had yet to come loose. There’s no urge in him to even ask where they’re going now. Roque knows this market, grew up in this city and has been here countless times. He’d told Sebas about the live music, the fresh baked goods and the dealers who would lower prices if you could prove some cursory knowledge about a given item. Not so much out of goodwill or flattery, but rather out of a desire to sell to someone who wouldn’t be overcharged and who might buy more if they were made to feel special.
It’s not a world Sebas knows, not the market or anything that surrounds it. This is a place he’d lose footing in immediately if left to himself, would drown if he didn’t have Roque and his family there to teach him how to kick his feet and keep his own terror away long enough to steal a single breath from the surface. His newfound ability to put words to his gratefulness does little to shave down its magnitude. If he looks at it too long he gets lost in it just as easily as he could in the crowd surrounding them now. The one Roque cuts a line through so effortlessly, so confidently, broad shoulders like a blade through thicket.
'My lover' Roque had called Diego in front of the camera, in front of everyone. Sebas thinks he might always hate him for how he had that title first, and for how little he did to deserve it. Maybe that was why he came for Roque in the showers, out of jealousy and selfish, stubborn bitterness that had him willing to burn everything he’d built to the ground just to sink his teeth into the treasure another man thought was trash. He imagines the words on Roque’s lips again, hearing them in that breathy, delicate as a soap bubble voice he has when they’re nose to nose beneath the covers. How they’d feel against his own mouth, his own skin. What it would be like to say them back and have the shape and weight of them in his own body, flowing in and out as they were passed back again and again until they were the air itself.
‘My lover.’ Sebas thinks to himself, watching Roque’s shoulders flex under the fabric of his sweater as he stretches to look around the market. When he finds what he’s looking for he gives only the slightest jerk of his head in its direction as indication before moving forward. The crowd thickens as they move, strangers now inches apart. He watches Roque pull his injured hand up to his chest before reaching the other behind and wiggling his fingers. Sebas touches them lightly and he turns, the precious, upturned edge of a smile showing just briefly before he faces forward.
‘My lover.’ Sebas thinks again. ‘My lover.’