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(i.) Cristiano smiles and welcomes him like a good teammate would, and he’s nice and friendly, and yes, there’s a camera on them, but Gareth doesn’t think that has to do with anything.
He’s wrong.
It’s not that Cristiano turns into the devil once no one’s watching them, but his smile slips into something tight-lipped and cordial, and he replies when Gareth addresses him but otherwise he never initiates conversation.
He doesn’t ask Gareth any questions about settling in or anything. He doesn’t give Gareth any pointers on tactics the way he does without prompting for Fábio or Álvaro or any of the other new players. He doesn’t joke around or give smiles that reach his eyes around Gareth.
And it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, because really, Gareth doesn’t even know Cristiano, but it still hurts.
(ii.) Gareth tries to bridge the gap between them, if you can call it a gap. He asks Cristiano about his day. He muses about how different Madrid is about London. He admits that although this is his dream, has been his dream for so many years he doesn’t remember ever not wanting it, he still catches himself missing Tottenham and wondering if he made the right decision.
Cristiano listens to him talk. There’s that. He doesn’t excuse himself, or ignore Gareth, but he doesn’t say much in reply either. But when he does, he’s serious and helpful, and Gareth listens.
“Everybody thinks that when they leave. It doesn’t make you any more or less of a player to have regrets.”
“Yeah,” Gareth mutters, idly tugging on a loose thread in the hem of his shirt. It doesn’t feel as comfortable as Tottenham’s training shirts, and he knows it’s not about the fabric.
“It’s good to have questions,” Cristiano adds. “It means you care, and that’s good.”
“Maybe I care too much.”
He doesn’t mean to say it, really, but the words slip out of their own volition. He knows that he’s not just talking about football, about his transfer, and he’s sure that Cristiano knows as well.
The corner of Cristiano’s mouth tilts up. “What’s worse? Caring too much or caring too little?”
Before Gareth can even think about the question properly, Cristiano is off, back to Fábio and Marcelo and Pepe. His friends. Away from Gareth.
And Gareth watches him walk away, realizing that when he pictures Cristiano now, the only images he has are him smiling from a distance and him walking away.
(iii.) The game vs. Villarreal is tough and gritty and reminds Gareth immensely of football back in the Premier League, and even more so when they don’t win.
He scores, which is nice, although it’s not exactly one of his finest goals, but at the end of the day, what matters is that they don’t win.
It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, but that doesn’t mean he’s become deadened to it. He realizes that he’s had fairy tale thoughts of Madrid, of coming and just winning, conquering, and instead he’s finding himself with fitness problems that have him regretting missing those training sessions at Tottenham, with a manager who’s still trying out systems, with opponents that they simply can’t break down, and it’s…
It’s a wake-up call. One he didn’t realize he needed until now.
“Get it into your head that success isn’t guaranteed here,” he mutters to himself, clutching two fistfuls of his hair. “It’s fought for with everything in you.”
“Nice saying.”
Gareth looks up, and it’s Cristiano, standing over him in nothing but a pair of unzipped jeans, hair wet and starting to curl. He swallows, fights the urge to look away (and to never stop staring).
“I had…unrealistic expectations,” Gareth admits. “I thought things were going to be smooth. Easy. I didn’t even know I had these expectations until now.”
Cristiano shrugs. “We realize our expectations when they get crushed.”
Gareth says nothing. He loosens his white-knuckled grip in his hair, rests his hands in his lap and looks at them instead of at Cristiano.
“You scored, at least,” Cristiano says. “A debut goal too. That’s not bad.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Gareth stands up. “I should—go take a shower.”
“Okay.” Cristiano doesn’t look inclined to say anymore. Gareth doesn’t even know why he came to talk to him in the first place. He doesn’t understand Cristiano, and he doesn’t think he’s ever likely to.
“You scored too,” Gareth says. “That’s something, right?”
He thinks, momentarily, about walking away without waiting for Cristiano’s response, because he’s sweaty and tired and he doesn’t want to look at Cristiano’s irritatingly handsome face, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t, because he’s better than that.
“It’s something,” Cristiano agrees, his face weary, pallid underneath his tan, “but it’s not enough. Nothing but winning is enough at this club.”
“I’m starting to get that.”
“It’s good to learn it sooner.” There’s something sad and tired about Cristiano’s eyes, a look that Gareth’s never seen before. “You shouldn’t be upset with your performance. You did well.” A small smile flickers along his face, his lips barely curving up, but it touches his eyes, and Gareth—he feels like he needs to leave. Now.
“It’s not enough,” he tells Cristiano, and he very determinedly doesn’t look at Cristiano when he walks away.
Even so, he can still feel the weight of Cristiano’s gaze, settling across his shoulders and back like a physical touch.
(iv.) Many people think that Gareth came to Madrid for the money. Or the prestige. And yeah, that definitely had to do with it – sue him, he’s human – but that’s not why he came.
It has to do with a childhood dream, and it has to do with the nine Champions League trophies gleaming in the cabinet, and it has to do with him wanting something bigger and better than Tottenham, because he loves Tottenham, he really does, but he can’t see himself there for the rest of his career, he can’t help wanting something more than what he already has.
Maybe it’s selfishness, but then again, he’s human and humans are selfish.
“Do you think you would have stayed in Málaga if you didn’t come here?” he asks Isco.
Isco looks thoughtful. “No, I probably would’ve gone to Manchester City. Actually, at first I had my sights set on City, but Nacho and Álvaro swayed me.” He laughs. “They’re very good at that, especially Nacho. I think he should consider studying law on the side.”
Gareth smiles. Isco is young but startlingly mature, and he fit in seamlessly and effortlessly in Madrid. He strikes Gareth as the kind of person who knows exactly what he wants in life and how to get it.
If only Gareth were so lucky.
“I don’t mean to be ungrateful or anything, but Málaga was always a stepping stone to me,” Isco continues. “I enjoyed my time there and I won’t forget it, but I wasn’t going to settle for that. I wanted something more. Better. That’s why I came here.” He smiles, shrugs. “And I’m glad I did. I like it here. More than I thought I would.”
“It’s a nice place,” Gareth agrees. ‘Nice’ hardly begins to cover it, but he thinks Isco should get it.
“Well, you always wanted to come here, right?” Isco points out. “I think you must have expected more than I did, thought about it more than I did. How does it compare to your fantasies?”
“It’s…different.”
Isco doesn’t ask if different means better or worse, but the knowing look he shoots Gareth says it all.
(v.) Madrid didn’t pay a hundred million for him. Gareth doesn’t know why people think that, and why Levy and Florentino haven’t corrected them.
Not that ninety-one million is an easy price tag to live up to either. He knows he certainly hasn’t proved anything yet, he knows that people are saying he’s a waste of money, and he can’t exactly disagree with them right now.
But he doesn’t plan on letting things stay this way. He came here with the full intention of giving it all, to work his butt off, to fight.
Madrid didn’t spend ninety-one million on a quitter.
“You know,” Luka says conversationally. “I was reading this thing about you the other day—”
“You read things about me now?”
“You’re all over the news,” Luka says with a dismissive wave of his hand, and Gareth wonders if it’s supposed to be flattering. “Anyway, they were comparing you to Cristiano.”
Gareth bites down on his inner cheek. “What else is new?” He can’t help how bitter his voice sounds.
“Hey.” Luka’s eyes soften. “Is something the matter?”
More like what isn’t the matter. He’s hovering somewhere in that borderland between lack of fitness and injury, he’s struggling incredibly with Spanish, and he’s trying not to care that Cristiano has gone from coolly passive to downright pretending he doesn’t exist, but he’s losing that battle horrifically.
“Nothing in particular,” he says, which almost sounds truthful. “I guess I’m just settling in.”
“It’s hard.” Luka puts a hand on his shoulder. “Trust me, it’ll get better. It won’t always be like this.”
“Yeah.” Gareth sighs. “I know. It’s just—I’m trying really hard, you know.”
“I know.” Luka isn’t the type to feed anyone sympathetic bullshit. He’ll tell you the truth, whether you like it or not, and Gareth is grateful for that right now.
“I just wish that trying was enough,” Gareth says, softly. “I wish effort equaled results.”
Luka is silent for a long moment. “Don’t we all?” he finally says. “Gareth, Madrid chased after you for so long for a reason. You’re a special kind of player.”
“I’m sure having a special kind of luck right now.”
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” Luka says wryly. “I don’t recall you being this optimistic in Tottenham.”
“I didn’t feel like such a screw-up in Tottenham.” Gareth exhales raggedly. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t, just that there weren’t as many people who made me see it.”
“You were our star, you know? And now you’re just one of the stars. It’s a transition.”
“I’m hardly a star here,” Gareth snorts. “More like an asteroid.”
“In the article I read, they said you have ‘the speed of Ronaldo and the strength of an angry gorilla.’”
Gareth actually chokes out a laugh at that. “So I’m being compared to apes now. Wonderful.”
“You’re a little better-looking though.”
“Thank you. That means a lot, Luka.”
Luka grins. “Any time.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Gareth says evenly, after a while. “I’m glad I’m not alone here.”
“You’re not alone, Gareth,” Luka says gently.
“Right.”
Gareth looks around at his teammates: Sergio and Iker talking quietly by one of the goal posts, Álvaro and Isco and Nacho with their heads ducked together, Cristiano laughing and goofing around with Fábio.
He may not be alone, but he’s still lonely.
(vi.) They lose against Barcelona. He can’t say the result is entirely unexpected, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept the six-point gap or the referee’s completely incomprehensible decisions.
He sees Cristiano fuming across the locker room, and he doesn’t feel much better himself.
Guilt isn’t exactly a dark emotion, or a cold one, the way people make it sound. It’s a heavy one. It presses down on your lungs until breathing feels like choking, and it settles there in your chest, unremitting and inescapable. He takes two fistfuls of his shirt, feeling like the crest is a suffocating weight, one that he isn’t fit, isn’t worthy, to bear.
The water is icy cold when he gets in the shower, but he barely feels it. He doesn’t know how he can feel so numb and so pained at the same time, but that particular juxtaposition is nothing new to him in football.
Loss is nothing new to him, but there’s a certain degree of novelty about this loss, the way it keeps sinking into him like ink slowly settling across a sheet of paper, darkening and tainting as it spreads.
(vii.) He knows he shouldn’t read the newspapers, the online articles; he knows what they’ll say. But like an addict or a masochist, he can’t stop.
Bale flops in his first Clásico.
A Bale-ful loss for Real Madrid.
100 Million For A—
“You shouldn’t read those.” Cristiano puts his hand over the newspaper in Gareth’s hand. There’s a crease between his eyebrows, and Gareth stares blankly at him, feeling like he’s not really seeing him. “It’s not healthy, you know.”
“Yeah, because you’re the poster boy for healthy behaviour,” Gareth snorts, before he can hold it back.
Cristiano’s mouth tips up, and it actually looks halfway to a genuine smile. “You’re right,” he acknowledges with a shrug. “I know I’m not.”
Gareth sighs and rubs a hand over his face, feeling exhausted; not just tired, but the bone-deep kind of exhaustion that can’t be alleviated by mere rest.
“Cristiano.” The shape of Cristiano’s name feels foreign in his mouth, like it’s a sound he’s never spoken before. “What do you want from me?”
Cristiano steps closer to Gareth, and then even closer, until their faces are only inches apart. His eyes are so dark Gareth can barely tell his irises apart from his pupils, and Gareth can’t see anything in them except for his own reflection, pale and wan-looking.
“I don’t know,” Cristiano whispers, looking at Gareth like he’s trying to find the answers in his face. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I, I—” Gareth’s heart is pounding embarrassingly loudly, and he’s sure that Cristiano can hear it, sure that the sound is echoing in the room. “How am I supposed to know what you want?”
Cristiano tilts his head to the side, a shadow of a smile quirking up his mouth. “Then what do you want?”
Gareth doesn’t know if it’s the leftover adrenaline in his veins, or the strange, intense look in Cristiano’s eyes, or maybe it’s just because he’s wanted to do this for a while, but he leans forward and kisses Cristiano.
Cristiano tenses up briefly against him, but then he relaxes and kisses Gareth back, surprisingly gentle, lips warm and soft, parting under the touch of Gareth’s tongue. When they part, Cristiano sucks his bottom lip into his mouth like he wants to savour the kiss, his eyes dark but illuminated with a light Gareth has seen only a handful of times.
“I want you to smile,” Gareth whispers, undone by Cristiano. “I want you to smile at me.”
For me. Because of me.
“You don’t ask for a lot, do you?” Cristiano says, and Gareth can’t tell whether he’s teasing or not, but then he grins, playful and boyish, and Gareth gets his wish.
Gareth shrugs. “I’m not a greedy person.”
“No,” Cristiano agrees, his gaze almost scorching in its intensity, “you’re not.”
Gareth has no idea what to say to that, but then Cristiano kisses him again, and he decides his mouth can be put to better uses than talking.
(viii.) For once, a game goes the way Gareth wants. He runs until his lungs feels like they’re going to burst, and he chases after stray balls like a predator out for blood, and it’s not like he didn’t do this in the previous games, but this time it actually pays off.
He gets not just one, but two goals (even though the second one took a wicked deflection, he’ll take it; a goal is still a goal, ugly or beautiful), and two assists.
Cristiano gets a hat trick, which could have been Gareth’s if he took that penalty. (At Tottenham, he would have.) He doesn’t dwell on it for long, but he can’t deny that he did feel bitter over it.
He knows that Cristiano is for Real Madrid what he was for Tottenham; he knows that Cristiano is the set piece taker, the goal-scoring machine, the hero; he knows that Cristiano deserves and has earned (fought for) everything that he has. He knows all this, and he’s genuinely happy for Cristiano when he does well (which is most of the time, given that he’s Cristiano Ronaldo), but—
“I was jealous of you,” Cristiano tells Gareth, the match ball tucked under his arm, one of dozens he must have. “That’s why I…didn’t treat you very well.”
“Jealous?” Gareth echoes. “Of what?”
Cristiano shrugs, looking uncomfortable for the first time Gareth’s seen him. “Madrid wanted you so badly. Spent so much on you. I was. I didn’t want to be replaced.”
Gareth just stares at him, in disbelief, in surprise, in—amusement. A laugh is torn from him, and once he starts laughing, he can’t stop. It’s Cristiano’s turn to stare as Gareth practically doubles over in laughter, clutching his sides.
“How could I ever replace you? How could anyone ever replace you?” Gareth shakes his head. “I’m not here to replace you or compete with you. I’m here to play with you.”
“Yeah, I got that now.” Cristiano’s smile is small and sheepish, but it’s genuine, and Gareth smiles back. Cristiano tosses the match ball into the air, lightly, and catches it. “Are you mad at me for taking the penalty?”
Gareth blinks. “No,” he says honestly. “I’m not mad.”
“Disappointed, then?”
“A little,” he admits, and Cristiano, unexpectedly, smiles.
“Here.” Cristiano holds out the ball. “This is for you. You deserve it.”
Gareth doesn’t take it. “I wasn’t the one who scored a hat trick—”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Cristiano looks at Gareth expectantly, and Gareth accepts the ball, holding it against his side. It’s lighter than he expected.
“You did well,” Cristiano says, and it’s not the first time he’s told Gareth these words, but it feels like a first. The smile in Cristiano’s eyes – soft and luminous – is definitely a first.
“Thanks.” Gareth pauses. “You too.”
“I know,” Cristiano says with that easy arrogance of his, mouth tipping up in a half-smirk of a smile. It makes Gareth want to kiss him, but he doesn’t know if he should. If he can. What happened between them last time could have just been a fluke, a one-time thing catalyzed by loss and frustration—
“I can almost hear you thinking.” Cristiano puts his hand on Gareth’s face, thumb brushing against his cheek. Gareth swallows. “Sometimes you should stop thinking too much and just do what you want to do, you know?”
Gareth takes it as an invitation. He doesn’t need to be asked twice. The kiss is clumsy at first; he can’t find the right angle and he almost bites Cristiano, but then Cristiano tilts his jaw and presses closer to him, and it’s all better from there.
If there’s an award for being a good kisser, then Gareth is sure that’s another trophy for Cristiano to add to his collection.
(ix.) “What changed?” Gareth asks.
“Hmm?”
“You—” Gareth hesitates. “You said you were jealous of me. What changed?”
Cristiano looks thoughtful. “I was looking for all the wrong things in you.” His forehead is furrowed, and his eyebrows are drawn together. “I was looking for things to confirm what I was already thinking, but I just saw that you worked hard and you didn’t complain and you gritted your teeth and kept going no matter what life threw at you.” He shrugs. “I saw you. And—I liked you.”
Gareth’s face feels warm. Not just his face actually, but his neck all the way down to his chest, and there it isn’t so much a physical warmth as something intangible and increasingly familiar around Cristiano.
“I still do,” Cristiano adds, with one of those half-smile, half-smirks of his. It’s an unfairly attractive expression, and Gareth wonders if Cristiano knows the effect it has on him. “It’s kind of annoying how you’re hard not to like, you know?”
Gareth tries to hide his smile, but he knows he doesn’t do a very good job at it. “You would know.”
“I would,” Cristiano agrees, with a shrug and a smug-at-the-edges smile, and Gareth rolls his eyes but he can’t help but smile back.
(x.) Real Madrid isn’t what Gareth expected. It’s tougher, and it’s louder, and it’s bigger. He can’t say if it’s better than his dreams, but it’s more. He can’t say he doesn’t wonder what would have happened if he didn’t come here, but he can say that he doesn’t regret it.
Settling into a team isn’t an immediate process; it’s gradual, and it requires work, and it can be painful and tiring, but also it’s rewarding and fulfilling and—it makes him happy.
Falling in love is similar.
When Gareth scores his first hat trick, Cristiano is injured and he isn’t on the pitch to hug and congratulate Gareth like the rest of his teammates.
But he is there in the locker room, with his terrible jeans and megawatt smile, which softens when he looks at Gareth.
“Great job.” Cristiano looks at the match ball under Gareth’s arm. “I knew you’d get your own one of these days.”
“Did you now?”
“Well, I wouldn’t bet against someone with my speed and the strength of an angry gorilla.” Cristiano’s eyes crinkle when he smiles like that, and it’s hard to look away from.
Gareth groans. “Don’t tell me you read those articles.”
“Nah, I just talk to Luka, that’s all.” Cristiano puts his arm around Gareth and pulls him close for a quick but lingering moment. “You’re not alone, you know.”
Their teammates file in then, chatting and joking, some of them greeting Cristiano or congratulating Gareth again, and Gareth throws a smile at them, but his eyes are on Cristiano.
“Yeah,” he says, and thinks about how the Bernabéu grass is familiar underneath his boots now, and how the crest above his heart is no longer too heavy to bear, and how Cristiano smiles at, for, because of him more than he ever would have hoped for. “I know.”