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It hit David like a dislocated joint popping back into its socket. He suddenly knew, clear as day, where Messi was going to pass the ball, how to time his run, and the goal was a beauty, a fucking work of art. And then he turned around, because a goal like that deserved congratulations even if it was just practice, only to realize he was alone, because his strike partner was a good twenty yards behind him, collapsed in a limp heap on the ground.
"What the--" David said as he jogged over, and then, when Pique shoved past him, "Hey!"
"Leo," Pique said, patting at Messi's face, "Leo, are you--"
"Geri?" Messi said hazily. "Can you--can you get Cesc for me?"
"Cesc's in London, Leo," Pique said. David couldn't figure out what the expression on his face meant; he didn't think he'd ever seen it before.
"Oh… I thought I felt--" Messi started to sit up. His eyes met David's, and suddenly David had the most blinding headache he'd ever experienced and Messi had fainted dead away.
"Get Emili," Pique said. "Get Emili now."
By that point David had worked out that the look on Pique's face was fear.
*
"I don't get it," David said flatly. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He was only barely managing to keep from clutching at his temples. Obviously whatever the fuck was wrong with Messi had to take precedence but he was this close to going on a rampage through the infirmary to look for painkillers. He could barely even focus his eyes.
"Guaje, I'll explain later," Xavi said, and then he went back to ignoring David in favor of the completely nonsensical interrogation Emili Ricart was enacting on Pique. It was taking a lot longer than it should have because Pique was only half paying attention to Ricart's questions; he kept smoothing Messi's sweaty hair back from his forehead with the same bizarre, anxious tenderness, like that was somehow going to make him wake up. His hair just kept flopping back down again.
"Geri," Messi mumbled, apparently conscious again, right on cue. "Geri, what--oh, oh god, fuck--" He curled in on himself on the infirmary cot, and David's headache somehow got infinitely worse.
Pique settled down beside him with absurdly exaggerated care and put one hand on his back, rubbing in slow circles. "Leo, it's going to be okay. You're going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine, I promise. Don't be scared, baby, I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
Even through the stabbing pain in his temples, Villa couldn't help snorting. "'Baby'? Seriously? Does Shakira know about this?"
"Villa, shut the fuck up," Pique snarled. Messi made a tiny, pained noise; for a moment David's ears rang and his stomach turned and he felt so dizzy he thought he was about to pass out, but the moment passed, and he could hear Pique saying over and over, like some freakish mantra, "Nothing's going to happen to you. I won't let anything happen to you."
"It hurts," Messi choked, which made David feel a lot worse than all of Pique's ridiculous posturing. "Geri, it hurts, please--"
"I know, baby, I know, let me--" Pique bit his lip and put his hand on the back of Messi's neck. A moment later, Messi relaxed, and Villa's headache disappeared.
"What the fuck did you just do?" he asked. It felt--it felt like getting a cortisone shot to his brain, was what it felt like. Like there was something else in there that had been hurting, and if he sort of prodded where it had been--
"Stop it!" Pique snapped.
"Stop what? What the fuck is going on?"
"Later, Guaje," Xavi said firmly. "Geri, what did you do?"
"I'm shielding him," Pique said. "I'm--he's my bondmate. He's my bondmate and you're hurting him," he added angrily in David's direction.
"I wasn't aware you were able do that," Ricart said. David glanced over at him and blinked--was he taking notes? Although at least he didn't sound completely overwrought like everyone else in the room. "It's not in your records."
"Well, I didn't need to before," Pique said, almost defiantly. "Leo's my bondmate. And he's hurting him."
Messi tried to push himself upright, and could only get halfway before Pique had to help him. "I want to go home," he whispered. "I want my--I want Rodrigo. I want to go home."
"Okay," Pique said. He still had his hand resting on Messi's neck. It looked huge and weirdly threatening, David thought, and then wondered why he would have noticed something like that. "Okay. Did Rodrigo bring you to practice today?"
Messi looked dazed, or possibly like he was about to cry. "I--I don't--"
"He came in with Masche, I saw them get out of the car," David said impatiently.
Pique nodded but otherwise didn't acknowledge that David had spoken. "Okay, Leo, I'm going to take you home soon, I promise. You have to let Emili do some tests, okay, baby? And then I'll take you home to your brother. It's going to be okay."
"Okay," Messi echoed vaguely. Pique looked like he was going to say something else, but instead he put his other arm around Messi and hauled him in close. David felt like an intruder, or some sort of weird voyeur, but he didn't look away when Pique pressed his mouth to Messi's hair.
"I won't let anything happen to you. I won't. I promise I won't."
"Guaje, come on, we're leaving," Xavi said quietly.
"Okay," David said, still watching Messi. A visible shudder ran through his body, and David felt something inside himself twinge in sympathy as Xavi dragged him out of the room. He saw Messi's hands come up to clutch at Pique's arms just before the door swung shut.
"What the fuck," he started to ask.
"Not now," Xavi said briefly. "Get your stuff from your locker, I'm taking you to my place."
"Why can't--"
"Not here." Xavi stopped dead and stared at him. "I mean it, Guaje. I can't talk about it here. Wait." Then he was off again down the hall, and David trailed along in his wake.
The locker room was unnervingly quiet. At first David thought it must have been empty, but they turned the corner and most of the team was there, sitting around in silence. He went to his locker and pulled out his bag; he wasn't going to waste time showering and changing.
"Xavi," Bojan said. He must have come up to them while David packed up; when he looked over, he saw the kid's face was splotched red, like he'd been crying. "Xavi, is Leo going to--is he going to die?"
"Emili is very good at what he does," Xavi said, and didn't add that it was a totally ridiculous question, what the fuck. "He's going to take care of Leo. No one is going to die."
"But if his bond is going bad--"
"Leo is bonded to Gerard," Xavi said. "You know that. His bond is fine. This is something else, and Emili will figure it out and Leo will be fine. Are you listening to me? Look at me, Krkic," he added sharply. Bojan's chin jerked up. "Leo is going to be fine."
"Okay," Bojan said meekly. Gaby Milito came up behind him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Can I--can we see him?"
"Not right now. Emili has to do some tests." Bojan looked back down at the floor, and the line of Xavi's mouth softened. "Go home, sweetheart," he said. "This isn't for you to worry about."
*
"But seriously," David said, unable to keep from breaking the silence in the car any longer. He was pretty sure Messi had been crying when he left the room and Bojan had asked if Leo was going to die and Xavi's hands were already white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "What the fuck is going on?"
"I'm going to explain, but I need you to promise me something first." Xavi didn't take his eyes off the road. "You're not going to believe me. You're going to try to argue. We don't have time for that right now, so you have to just stay quiet and listen to me. All right?"
"All right," David said slowly. If he hadn't been freaked out already, the grim, humorless look on Xavi's face would have done the job in a hurry. "Go ahead."
"I'm psychic--I mean it, Guaje, shut up. A lot of us are. You are too, a little. They checked for that when the physios did your medical."
"I can't fucking read minds!" David burst out.
"I can't either, asshole. It doesn't work that way. Stop interrupting me."
Most of Xavi's explanation went over David's head, despite his best efforts to concentrate. It all seemed too weird to be real, even if it did make an alarming amount of sense out of Xavi and Andres, and somewhere in the back of his mind he kept hearing Bojan's question, over and over.
"Look, I don't want anyone to get hurt," he said at last, when Xavi seemed to have finished. "For fucking sure I don't want Messi to die. But what if I don't want to get bonded?"
The car came to a stop, and when David looked out the window he realized they were at Xavi's house. Xavi took the keys out of the ignition and looked over at him with something approaching sympathy. "Guaje. It's not--you already are bonded. And it's not just Leo. If you don't stop rejecting it the bond could kill you too."