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The house is finally quiet as the night beds in, the only sounds the distant crash of the waves against the steep black cliffs and the light breeze that rustles through the chaparral surrounding the holiday villa. In the living room, other than the bouncing flames of two candles Fer and Adrian had gotten at the mall on a whim – Sage and Orange Blossoms, perfect for your R&R, they joked to Pedri – all is still.
The remnants of their hours-long FIFA battle are scattered on the coffee table: leftover pizza crust in empty boxes, half-drunk cans of soda and beer, two empty protein shakes, ice cubes melting in glasses. Cushions and controllers litter the floor, a hoodie tossed here, a pair of sneakers kicked off in frustration there. Pedri’s sneakers. Gavi’s hoodie.
Pedri looks up from where he is slumped on the rug, phone in hand, and leans back against the cushions. He told everyone he wanted to sit by himself for a couple of minutes before bed, and everyone had cleared out with surprising speed. Even Gavi, who had fallen asleep with his head on Pedri’s shoulder, had shaken himself awake and dragged himself upstairs with a mumbled goodnight and a lingering look.
A gentle sigh; Pedri is caught in that dreaded space between too awake to just sleep on the rug and too sleepy to actually get ready for bed. He sweeps his gaze longingly towards the stairs on the other side of the room, before his eyes catch on something peeking out from under the cushions.
A phone.
One of them must have left it downstairs in their hurry to get to bed, and Pedri isn’t one to pass up such a perfect opportunity for a little prank. He reaches for it and sees that it’s Adrian’s. Pedri looks at the lockscreen for a second, before tapping out Adrian’s birthday.
He laughs to himself a little when the phone unlocks; too easy. He is thinking about what to post as Adrian that’ll embarrass him but not too badly when the screen loads a grid of tiny squares, dozens of snapshots of their night.
There is Fer jumping up, hands raised in victory. There is Gavi sulking, his eyebrows scrunched together. There is a photo of the TV screen where Adrian, as Barcelona, had demolished Pedri, normally the undisputed champ, as Las Palmas.
Maybe Pedri will say he won that game instead, and Adrian had been the one to lose 9-3?
Interspersed between these action shots is a series of photos that takes Pedri a second to recognize. He taps on one and swipes through them quickly, and his breath catches in his throat. He rewinds the night.
Fer and Adrian just drew in a Manchester Derby, and Fer went outside to make a call and Adrian went to the kitchen to get another beer. Pedri shifted himself from the floor to sit next to Gavi on the couch, and they were chatting about something inconsequential, the latest transfer gossip or the preseason schedule.
Gavi, having earlier chucked his hoodie, was complaining mildly that he was cold, but Pedri knew it was more of an excuse for Gavi to shuffle closer and get into his favorite position, curled up against Pedri’s side, face half hidden, the body contact with Pedri recharging him like a drained battery. Like Gavi often did after games, being pressed like this against Pedri calmed something sharp and ineffable in him, and even without talking about it, Pedri knew that all the excitement and difficulties of the last few weeks, all the kilometers he’d flown from Japan to the Netherlands to Madrid to Seville to Tenerife, all the minutes he’d run on the field from the friendly to trainings to the final, all the words he’d had to force out of himself, calm and gracious and smiling no matter what clawed inside of him, meant that Gavi needed to recharge in the worst way.
Here, the snapshots on Adrian’s phone pick up the story. Pedri’s heart pounds as he looks at each photo.
Click – their heads huddled together in quiet conversation, noses nearly touching. Click – Pedri’s body shaking with laughter, reaching out to jokingly smack Gavi. Click – their knees, angled towards each other in perfect symmetry. Click – their faces next to each other, both sets of eyes closed in a kind of peace that looks posed but he knows isn’t. Click – his head resting on top of Gavi’s, lips parted in contentment, Gavi’s trademark frown temporarily smoothing.
Click. Click.
He swipes faster, then doubles back to zoom in and examine each picture in detail. It is clear that they were so absorbed in each other that neither had clocked that they were being watched.
Click – their hands adjoining as if by right, their fingers interlaced in casual intimacy, his long and elegant, Gavi’s short and stubby. Click – his hand again, this time glancing Gavi’s cheek, his lips pressed into Gavi’s hair, its shape a mirror of Gavi’s lips pressed into his neck. Click –
A creak of the stairs makes him jump out of his skin. He fumbles the phone, tries to turn off the screen, slip it into his pocket, throw it onto the couch, anything, but after ten long seconds, no one appears. The house is just settling, Pedri tells himself, trying to swallow his heart back into his chest.
He looks down at Adrian’s phone again, the photos still on the screen like the glowing luminol of a crime scene. It is all here, evidence of what he and Gavi know is between them, light as a helium balloon and heavy as a wrecking ball, something they have only just started exploring but haven’t dared tell anyone.
He scrolls through and taps on all the photos of him and Gavi. Twelve photos selected, the phone tells him, right next to the little blue trashcan that can make it all disappear. His finger hovers over it, his breath hitches. One more tap and they can forget it happened. Then he will lock the phone, put it back down, and go upstairs, walking past Gavi’s room to his room, falling onto his bed like a starfish. In the morning, he’ll say something to Gavi, his chest clenching at the thought of the pleading, deflated look he is sure to receive.
Or he can send these to himself – these startling, gorgeous photos, if he is allowed to be completely, nakedly honest with himself for one goddamn second, capturing the first flush of something he knows the name for but doesn’t want to say yet – before going upstairs to Gavi’s room, where Gavi is maybe expecting him, warm and sleep-soft. In the morning, they will pull Fer and Adrian aside, have a quick word, and it won’t be a big deal, he is almost certain, and it will be at least one little pebble off the weight on his shoulders.
Your move, man, Pedri says to the part of him twisting in fear, his face lit blue by the glow of the phone.