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Gavi’s hand is raised, about to ring the doorbell for the sixth time, when Pedri opens the door. He makes to casually stuff his hand in the oversized pocket of his cargo pants, but a nervous fidget rolls through him, his elbows vibrating against his body and his heels bouncing off the ground.
“What’s going on?” Pedri’s voice is soft as he leans forward and catches Gavi in a hug, his hands smoothing out against Gavi’s back. The electric current that always pulses through Gavi’s muscles spikes then calms with the hello kiss Pedri lays on his temple.
“Nothing,” Gavi mumbles into Pedri’s shoulder, his lips pursing into a mirror-image kiss. “I just…”
“Come in and tell me.” Pedri pivots on his foot and redirects Gavi into the hallway as if he’s a confused Roomba needing a gentle nudge to go on its merry way again. “How was your meeting with Nike?”
At the mention of his sponsor, Gavi’s shoulders shoot up and his back tenses, giving him a suddenly hunched appearance that Pedri would find comical if he weren’t so familiar with the scrunched look of worry that was sure to be plastered on Gavi’s face. Gavi shuffles to the couch and sits down, tucking one socked foot under his leg and looking small.
“Today was the big day, right?” Pedri follows him to the couch with a pitcher of water and two glasses from the kitchen and sits down next to him, their thighs pressing together and their shoulders bumping. Where they touch, the heat of Gavi’s body, always running hot, transfers to Pedri, and Pedri smiles despite himself. He looks at Gavi’s face expectantly, waiting for a response, but his eyes catch on Gavi’s slight pout and the small scar beneath his lower lip. He could just lean in, he’s allowed to now –
Gavi scooches forward and pours himself a glass of water, his motion flicking away Pedri’s reverie, and a light blush creeps up Pedri’s face as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Gavi gulps his water in one chug but still doesn’t say anything.
“Well, how’d it go?” Pedri tries again. After another beat of silence, Gavi’s stare glued to the subtle woven pattern of his pants and his leg bouncing wildly, Pedri presses in even closer and puts his arm around Gavi’s shoulder. “Your text said you wanted to tell me something. Did you come to talk about something else?” He squeezed Gavi gently against his body and tucks his head against Gavi’s.
Three seconds of the squeeze later, Gavi lets out a small laugh and looks up, his eyes pleading and wide, darting away when Pedri tries to hold the eye contact. “Kiss?” he says, and Pedri chuckles before pressing their lips together. A quick and comforting kiss, lips caressing lips in greeting; there’s time for more later. When he pulls back, Gavi shifts in his arms and sighs, then says with one breath, “It went ok but you have to promise you won’t be mad.”
“Gavi.”
“It wasn’t anything bad, I swear. Or not too bad. I just got kind of excited, and it just – ”
“What do you mean? I thought it was just a meeting to approve your next ad?”
“Well, kind of…” Gavi trails off uncertainly.
He’s never had a meeting like this one before. Usually, he showed up to what they called the “concept approval” and listened while people with long titles walked him through what they called a storyboard, which was like a comic book page with himself as the hero. But the meeting today was different. They called it a “development meeting,” and Gavi was made to answer question after question. They wanted the ad to be like a mini-documentary, showing a normal day in Gavi’s anything-but-normal life. They’d set it to cool music, add some special effects to make it look like a movie, show Gavi doing different things while wearing Nike all day.
Walk us through your day, Gavi, they’d said, six pairs of grown-up eyes staring at him, and when he did, answering with a jumble of words, a sudden sweat coming over his body – I got up and went to training, I scored a rabona in one of our practice games, we played a silly game with balloons, one of the coaches told a funny joke in the gym and I laughed so hard I almost fell off the bike, and we all had lunch together and afterwards I came here – they cut him off and said, is there another day where something a little more exciting happened? Maybe a favorite day besides game days?
“And that was when I said something I probably shouldn’t have.” Gavi looks up at Pedri from under his lashes, a look that Pedri loves and can’t resist, but Pedri manages to arch an eyebrow, silently telling Gavi to go on.
Whatever seductive bravado Gavi just summoned escapes him, and his pitiful look, which he averts in a hurry, draws another chuckle out of Pedri. He cups Gavi’s knee and kneads gently, and when he gets no response, he pulls his fingers into a point at the center the kneecap and slowly radiates them outwards, a little trick he’d learned from one of their physios to help calm Gavi down when he is overrun with adrenaline.
“Go on, babe, you can tell me.” Pedri draws Gavi towards him and blows a little kiss against his hair, then presses his lips against the corner of Gavi’s, their cheeks tickling each other’s. “What did you tell them?”
“I told them about the day of my renewal presentation,” Gavi rushes out in half a breath.
Pedri freezes. The sand upon which they’ve built this new part of their lives seems to shift imperceptibly.
**
His mind turns back to that day, glorious, sunny, warm but breezy; everything about that day has engraved itself so deeply and vividly into Pedri’s memories that whenever he thinks about it, he feels as if he is reliving that day again, and his heart swells unaccountably with an excitement he has to gently quell each time.
Nothing much was supposed to happen that day. They didn’t have training, and Gavi’s renewal presentation wasn’t until 6 p.m., so Pedri had the whole day free. He had gotten up at his usual time, showered, had a breakfast of oats and yogurt with a protein shake, allowed himself half a cup of orange juice. Some light recovery work in his home gym, followed by another shower, a black t-shirt he pulled on without too much thought – he wasn’t the star of the day after all, it was easier to fade into the background wearing something dark and simple – a glide of his fingers through some hair clay, and he was driving over to Gavi’s.
Gavi was a bundle of nerves tied tighter than a bowline knot when Pedri arrived, and it was only by Pedri throwing three FIFA games in a row, badly and on purpose just to get a smile out of him even though Pedri hated losing, that he started to look a little more relaxed. He went to his closet and came back with the navy suit and white button-down shirt his mother had bought for him.
“What do you think? Am I going to look stupid in this?”
Pedri looked at the outfit, then at Gavi, appraising and serious, before rolling his eyes fondly. “You’re going to look great. Better than the oversized stuff you usually pick out.”
“Yeah, well, 2017 called me on the day of your renewal presentation and said it wanted its uggo skinny jeans back,” Gavi shot back, and when Pedri reached out his arm to try to grab him, he took off running with a peal of laughter. “Actually, it still calls me all the fucking time,” he shouts over his shoulder as he darts into the hallway off the kitchen, with Pedri giving chase behind him, yelling at him to be careful not to fall. Gavi stops abruptly in front of his room and turns, and Pedri couldn’t stop himself from colliding into Gavi with a slight yelp.
Without them noticing how it happened, they were pressed against each other, bodies flush and faces an inch apart, each panting a little, Gavi still laughing, Pedri muttering an apology. It wasn’t the first time they had played tag in one of their houses, or the first time they had teased each other about their clothes, or the first time they had somehow ended up with no space between their bodies, unsure just where one ended and the other began.
Somewhere in the back of Pedri’s head, he kept a list of all the things he couldn’t have and so shouldn’t waste time thinking about. At the top of the list was Gavi, and under that singular name were all the things Pedri didn’t want to think about:
- the sparks that had been flickering between them for months now, an alive but mute thing that animated all their touches and looks and laughs;
- why he never seemed to end up pressed like this against Ferran or Eric or anyone else when they played tag;
- his traitorous fingertips always tingling with the itchy desire to run down Gavi’s back over and over without needing to find a flimsy excuse for it;
- how his eyes betrayed him and traced Gavi’s lips over and over without his brain’s permission, his lips longing to swap places with his gaze;
- and so on and so on.
(When he did think of these things and more, it was only ever in the dark, alone in his bed, his hand moving slowly down his body and a heat – arousal, longing, guilt – rising in his cheeks.)
“Hm,” Gavi cleared his throat uncertainly, and Pedri resurfaced from the undertow of the back of his mind. “Hm?” he answered.
“Yeah, it calls me all the fucking time,” Gavi was saying, “because you can’t even feel your phone vibrate in jeans that tight.” A mischievous glint shone in Gavi’s eyes, and before Pedri could respond, before he could laugh or step away or smack Gavi for the burn, Gavi was tipping his chin up and pressing his lips against Pedri’s.
“Gav –” was the half-swallowed syllable Pedri got out before he forgot about words altogether and also shock and surprise and relief and delight and ache and excitement and – so much, so much, all the mishmash of feelings he had always felt around Gavi and never wanted or knew how to name. Gavi grasped his t-shirt with one hand and his shoulder with another, and Pedri moved to hold onto Gavi’s waist, clutching him where he is softest.
His mind was suddenly empty and clear, and his swiped his lips against Gavi’s, with a sudden confidence and freedom he couldn’t have imagined he’d feel when this longed-for kiss finally materialized like a mirage, once, twice, caressing Gavi’s bottom lip with both of his lips as if receiving something precious.
Gavi kissed him back with a ferocity that rumbled Pedri’s stomach, but his limbs relaxed in the knowledge that Gavi wanted this also, maybe for as long as he had. They opened their mouths in unison and their tongues licked each other like a deftly choregraphed dance, over and under and around.
They break apart after a few seconds, and a surge of cold fear suddenly ran through Pedri. His heart was beating wildly, he felt lightheaded and claustrophobic, he thought that maybe he was on the edge of a panic attack, but then Gavi, with an easiness and exuberance that Pedri will always be grateful for, leaned in again and brushed their noses together, wrapping his arms around Pedri.
“I’m going to get dressed. My parents and Aurora are going to be here soon,” he said, then plopped a small kiss on Pedri’s nose, and something about the normalness of Gavi’s affection pulled Pedri back into his body, where exhilaration was battling fear and winning.
“And stop thinking about it! Your overthinking is so goddamn loud my ears hurt!” Gavi shouted from his room.
At the sushi restaurant near Camp Nou that Gavi picked for his special treat on his special day with his favorite favorite people in the world – a small group, just his parents, Aurora, his cousin, and Pedri – Pedri set in the corner of the booth with Gavi by his side, their knees occasionally knocking together. He was quiet, a little in his own head, still dazed by what happened earlier, turning the kiss over and over.
On the one hand, wow, and when can they do it again, and why had they waited so long? On the other hand, holy fucking shit, what the fuck do they do now?
He snuck a peek at Gavi, trying to parse if he, too, was beset by a seesaw of emotions. Instead, Gavi was incandescent with joy, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, the frown in his forehead smoothing and making him looking even younger than his eighteen years.
When the food arrived, Gavi insisted on teaching Pedri how to use chopsticks correctly, despite Pedri’s protests that he knew perfectly well how to use chopsticks, probably could use them better than Gavi, who after all still held pens like a novice farmer might hold a shovel. Gavi’s riotous laughter, Aurora’s knowing smile, the warm chatter of Gavi’s family around them, Pedri’s own fake indignation, everything was muted by a feeling flowing through Pedri that he reluctantly admitted to himself was overwhelming happiness. There would be so much time for anxiety in the days and weeks and months ahead; for the moment, he wanted just to enjoy the small miracle that was visited upon them in Gavi’s hallway.
He told himself he’d let Gavi do anything he wanted on his special day, and when Gavi ordered him eel roe, when Gavi asked for his phone and snapped some photos of him, face glowing with love, and then asked to post it to Pedri’s Instagram, when Gavi asked him to help with his speech later and to stay for the whole thing, Pedri just nodded and nodded and said, Si, si.
Of course. No problem. Anything for you, love, he added silently.
**
“But I didn’t tell them that you came with us to lunch, or watched my presentation from one of the boxes,” Gavi is saying now, drawing Pedri back to this moment. “Or what happened outside my room, or after.”
Nothing much was supposed to happen that day, and yet.
“I wanted to so bad,” Gavi continues when Pedri doesn’t say anything. “Having you there made it so much better, but I know you wouldn’t want them to know about, you know, our anniversary.” An endearing blush rises in Gavi’s cheeks, and Pedri’s chest swells. “I don’t want to pretend that you’re not the most important person in my life, but I know what we’ve said about being careful. I know that we can’t.”
A shiver zips down Pedri’s spine, heart-stopping in its cold familiarity. But that is not all; it is twinned with something like determination. He remembers a story from church in childhood, thinks that if he were ever made to choose between turning his back on all he’d loved or be turned into a pillar of salt for one last look, he would hope he doesn’t hesitate for one second. It could be a snapshot of this exact moment, Gavi blinking up at him, a little bashful, hair mussed by his anxious fingers and Pedri’s soothing nuzzles.
“You know how I am sometimes, I shouldn’t have even said it, but they asked about my favorite day, and are they like this with you too, they just kept asking the question in different ways, and they wouldn’t stop until you say something they like, and the sooner you say it the sooner you can leave, and I just, I said it without really thinking.”
Pedri sighs heavily, half in relief and half in disappointment. Their anniversary, not the start of everything but the start of everything they could finally acknowledge to each other, it is a day he wants to shout about from the tallest rooftop in Barcelona, but each small, private moment – Gavi lacing their fingers together and squeezing for a quick second as they got into the car after lunch, Pedri rubbing Gavi’s back just the way he knew Gavi needed ten minutes before the presentation started, the two of them going to Pedri’s house that night without discussing it and tumbling onto Pedri’s bed in breathless abandon and – these moments are just for them, for reasons both sweet and bitter.
They certainly aren’t for Nike to make an ad out of, and Pedri is inordinately grateful that Gavi understands this too.
“The lesser of two evils, right?” Pedri’s heart breaks a little as it always did every time they had to make a decision to be careful, be discreet, hide. “It’s ok, Gavi, don’t worry. They can make an ad about your presentation day, and even if I’m not in it, we’ll know I was there.”
The look on Gavi’s face lets Pedri know that Gavi’s heart is also breaking a little, torn between a false definition of safety and the true pain of erasure.
“I remember looking up at the boxes when Laporta started talking – I swear I was going to be sick – and I saw just the shape of your head, and even that was enough to make me feel better. Just knowing you were there.”
Pedri’s hand on Gavi’s knee stops its circular ministrations. He slides it under Gavi’s thigh and pulls him half into his lap, his lips pressing against Gavi’s jaw.
“I’m always there, you know that. If I weren’t, who would fix your collar on your big day?”
Gavi dives his head against Pedri’s shoulder and snuggles into him. “So you’re not mad, right?”
At Pedri’s shrug, Gavi lets out a warm breath and his signature giggle. “Because one more thing? 2017 still hasn’t stopped calling me about wanting your uggo jeans back.”