Work Text:
“Have you ever been?”
Gavi sits back in the plush leather seat, watching as the lights of Madrid twinkle and fade beneath the cloud cover as the plane – passenger: one – climbs to cruising altitude. It is not a long flight, but he won’t arrive until nearly midnight. He closes his eyes and hears Pedri’s question again in his head.
Pedri was driving Gavi home that day, not long after they met, and they were talking about the places they were from. In Tenerife, Pedri said, everything was brilliant and saturated in the sun, the sky bluer, the trees greener.
“Once,” Gavi said, “for a football tournament with the Alevin team.”
“And how did little Gavi do?” Pedri shot him a slight smile, already fond.
“Little Gavi was amazing. He scored two goals against Real Madrid in the semifinal and gave an assist in the final.”
“I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”
They were quiet for a moment as Pedri slowed at a traffic light, then he asked in a funny tone, “What year was this?”
“I was 12, so it would have been 2016, I guess. December, right after Christmas. I remember because I couldn’t go home for Christmas and had to spend it in the dorms. There were only four of us who couldn’t go home.” As he spoke, Gavi’s voice grew quieter, before he cleared his throat and the tangled, bittersweet memories of La Masia from his mind. “Why?”
Pedri shrugged, not looking at Gavi, but Gavi could see his eyes sweep from left to right, right to left, a slight tell that his mind was churning behind his perfectly placid face.
“Why, did you go? Oh my god, did you watch me win my first trophy?” Gavi teased, his voice again light.
“No, no, I don’t think so.” Pedri shrugged again. “I’m older than you, remember? Like I didn’t have anything better to do than watch twelve-year-olds play football?” He snuck a glance at Gavi, a little contrite at the spikiness of his response. Gavi rolled his eyes.
“Forget it.”
But the topic of Tenerife would come up again between them, and every time, Pedri would say, you should come visit sometime, and Gavi would say he’s already been, and sometimes Ansu or Eric would ask if they were invited too, and Pedri always said that everyone was invited, that his father will roast a pig and have a party, and everyone would laugh and it was all in jest.
It was all in jest, right, Gavi asks himself as the plane hurtles through the air, the purple mood lighting casting strange shadows on his face as he takes out his phone and waffles about taking a selfie. Something to post on Instagram? He looks around at the empty plane, the dark interior, his own exhausted expression. This wouldn’t exactly make for the jetsetting footballer on holiday snapshot he is aiming for.
It wasn’t all in jest is the thing. He can ask himself a million times, but he can’t shake the increasing insistence of Pedri’s suggestion, or miss Pedri’s palpable relief when he said that sure, he could go spend a few days in Tenerife after the international break. Something about him seeing Tenerife is important to Pedri, that much he can tell, and he is grooved in the habit of not disappointing Pedri if he could possibly help it.
But a certain amount of care and planning was necessary, he knew without even discussing with Pedri, so one day after training, he asked Ferran about private jets. Ferran almost laughed him out of the locker room. “Little Gavi on a private jet? I guess they did register your new contract after all, huh?”
“Where are you going? Who’s the lucky lady?” Eric, surgically attached to Ferran, chimed in, waggling his eyebrows.
Gavi could feel his cheeks burning, his eyes widening and his lips pouting against his will. He looked around helplessly. Ansu, Balde, Lewan – who could help him hire a private jet and wouldn’t ask too many questions?
In the end, it was Dembouz who came through, a discreet nod of his head at Gavi’s question, a Whatsapp number that came with his recommendation and zero questions. Even his “Enjoy, hermanito” was serious, without a hint of irony.
That plane is now making its way westward, smooth and quiet.
At the edge of sleep, Gavi concedes that there is still a tiny flick of disappointment inside him when he recalls the way Pedri had dismissed his question about watching him play back then. It doesn’t matter, they did meet after all. They’re friends, best friends, maybe even more than that if they were honest with themselves, both of them tiptoeing towards an edge that they know they can’t come back from.
But what a story that would have been.
It is nearly midnight when Gavi lands in Tenerife, the private side of the airport deserted, a black car waiting to take him to the house he rented, a comfortable bungalow with private beach access. Hood up, all black outfit, sunglasses on even though it is dark out, head tilted down, backpack slung on over his shoulder and a hand gripping his suitcase – if he had felt like a fugitive escaping the scene of the crime earlier when he dashed out of the celebration put on by the Federation as soon as they were off stage to duck into a car for the airport, now he feels like he is almost a free man.
He texts Pedri from the car, sends him the address again just in case. Pedri writes back with a thumbs up a moment later, and when Gavi’s car pulls up to the house, another car is already waiting in the driveway. “I’ll just get out here, it’s ok,” he says awkwardly to the driver, knowing Pedri won’t leave his car until they are alone.
He stands uncertainly as the driver gets out his suitcase, then watches as the car does a U-turn and slowly drives back down the street. He waits until it turns, its taillights flashing then fading. The sound of the car windows being rolled down snaps him back to Pedri.
“Come on, get in,” Pedri says.
“Now?”
“Now, come on.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Come on, I want to show you something.”
“I’m so tired though.”
“Did you sleep on the plane at all?”
Gavi shrugs, trying to remember. He must have. “A little bit, not much.”
“You can sleep on the drive.” Still seeing Gavi’s reluctance, Pedri leans over and opens the car door. “Come on, princess.”
“Hey, don’t call me that!” Gavi is laughing at their little joke, pulled into Pedri’s orbit again by the gravity of all that hovers between them. “It’s not like you to go for a drive at one in the morning,” he says, throwing his suitcase in the backseat and getting in, angling his body for Pedri to hug. Pedri’s hand finds his hair, weaving his fingers through, and Gavi’s eyes flutter closed. The manic chaos of the last few weeks – mostly happy chaos, sure, but still chaos – peels off of him in layers as if he were an onion, his soft pale center exposed.
He sets his playlist to Coldplay and they are off, Pedri’s soft, slightly offkey singing floating into his sleepy trance. Maybe five minutes pass, maybe thirty, maybe every one of the six hundred days they’ve known each other. When Pedri eases the car to a stop, Gavi opens his eyes in confusion, blinking at the pitch-black surroundings as an unremarkable street lined with short palm trees comes into focus.
“Where are we? I thought we were going to the beach.”
“You don’t recognize it?”
“Recognize what?” Gavi asks as Pedri opens the door and gets out, then runs around and opens his door for him. “What is this place?”
Pedri doesn’t answer and keeps walking, taking a left at the end of the block. Gavi follows in silence, trying to orient himself. Does this place look familiar or is he still fogged by sleep? He isn’t sure.
A couple steps ahead, Pedri starts climbing a flight of stairs, and looking up, Gavi sees a small round folly with white columns and a dark domed roof. It recalls something in his mind. A warm December day, the sun low in the sky.
At the landing, Pedri stands still, looking down at something. Gavi stops next to him and sees what Pedri sees. A football field with blue and white bleachers. The football field where –
“Do you remember now?” Pedri asks without turning.
“This is where – ”
“Where you scored those two goals against Real Madrid in the semifinal. Where you ran around in midfield, this tiny little thing drawing gasps from the crowd.”
Pedri turns, a rueful smile on his face, to see Gavi’s wide-eyed astonishment. “But you said you weren’t – you didn’t go.”
Pedri lifts his arm, and without needing to speak, Gavi closes the gap between them and tucks himself against Pedri, resting his head on Pedri’s shoulder.
“Do you remember last summer, when we went to New York for preseason?” Pedri feels Gavi’s nod. “On that morning off we had, I wanted to go somewhere that the locals go, not Times Squares or whatever, so on a whim I got a cab and asked the driver for a place with good food. He spoke Spanish – thank god – and he took me to a small Mexican taco place. I can’t find that place again even if I tried, but the tacos were so good.”
Gavi looks at him with a slight frown. Pedri might be polished in interviews, but he has a habit of veering wildly off-topic onto some tangent in everyday conversation. Gavi should be used to it by now, really, but he always feels a bit spun-around when Pedri skips to some topic whose logic only he understands.
“Stop talking about food, or I’m going to get hungry again.”
Pedri’s laugh is soft, punctuated by a squeeze of his arm, mushing Gavi’s face into his shoulder.
“Anyway, at this taco place, they give you one of those table number holders when you order. You put it on your table and then they bring you your food, you know?” Gavi nods again, mumbles a soft “Yeah?”
“But instead of numbers, they had these loteria cards. I don’t know why; it was kind of random. Mine had a parrot on one side, and on the other side, it said something like,” Pedri pauses suddenly. Gavi lifts his head in confusion.
“Huh? What did the card say?”
Pedri swallows and turns to look at the football field below them again. Something complicated and unsure passes over his face. He purses his lips, scrunches them, relaxes them again. His eyelids flutter closed, then back open. His arm shifts Gavi towards him, so that they are looking at each other. The seriousness on his face startles Gavi.
“It said what?” he asks again.
“Something like, the first time I saw you, I honestly didn’t know you were going to be so important to me.” Pedri closes his eyes again, presses Gavi back into the side of his body. He lets out a small laugh.
“I didn’t remember when you first asked me, and then when you said the two goals against Real Madrid, I suddenly remembered. I did come watch, that game and the final, so, well, I did see you.”
“But you said –” Gavi stops himself. His eyes are wider than he thinks they are capable of opening, his mind clearer than it was even with the adrenaline of a final. Three words run through his mind. Only three words.
Meant to be.
And then three more as he leans forward into Pedri, closes his eyes and searches Pedri’s face with his lips. Three more words he’s felt and felt and felt and hasn’t said. Three more words he knows he won’t say tonight, or tomorrow, or even the next day, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because what Pedri says next against his lips is basically the same thing anyway.
“I don’t ever want to forget you again.”