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Gavi hadn’t said anything about it for the first two days.
Not that Pedri expected him to. If anything, that is the one thing he saw coming after getting that phone call, roused out of bed by the persistent buzzing of his phone and a sense of unease that he couldn’t shake.
No, he’d expected this much. When things get bad, Gavi shuts down. Jaw clenched tight and hearing far-off, like his body wants to block out everything around him. He retreats inward on himself, muscles tense and sinewy as he tries to make himself smaller than he is, like a crumpled piece of paper that Pedri wants to carefully unfold and smooth all the creases out of.
On the third day, he asks Pedri for a glass of water and his painkillers. On the fourth, his crutches. He never asks Pedri to stay, but he also doesn’t protest when Pedri keeps the other side of his bed warm.
Things settled back into normalcy almost too quickly, but the violent distraught buried in the tense of Gavi’s jaw has lived in Pedri’s mind ever since.
Four weeks of at-home rest. Then surgery at the start of next month. Gavi’s father and Inigo have been around a lot, dropping off groceries, talking about anything to pass the time, even though Gavi only seems to respond in short, clipped responses. A part of Pedri wants to duck his head and look away when they notice him lingering around Gavi’s apartment, well aware that he’s too permanent of a fixture, like a piece of furniture that’s been around so long that it indents the floorboards.
His dad flies back to Sevilla two weeks later. Inigo stops visiting as often, too. Pedri starts doing the groceries himself.
His hamstring twinges twice when walking off the pitch. Pedri frowns.
It’s a quick, flighty thing, an involuntary tremor of muscle that surprises him. He flexes and shakes it out a few times, resolves to keep his weight off of it for the rest of training. Ferran calls him over to help him stretch and he pushes it to the back of his mind.
The sun hangs heavy on the horizon, casting a faint warmth across the field. Back home, the grass would be turning a hint of yellow by now.
A fluttering breeze skitters over his shoulder, and it's the kind that cools him from the outside in, tempering the flush that always burns under his cheeks. Satisfaction followed by a shiver, but still not cold enough for layers just yet. The ball rolls smoothly across the field, maybe more than usual with the grass a bit damp from the leftover morning dew. They’d have to be careful not to slip.
“What are you daydreaming about?” Ferran groans when Pedri pushes his leg closer to his chest, stretching out his quads. He yelps when Pedri pinches his calf in retaliation and scowls. “You know, I really feel for Gavi sometimes. He’s got the world’s l—east considerate nurse taking care of him.”
His voice comes out slightly strained and he yelps again when Pedri pinches him harder, before switching to stretch the other leg. “I’m not daydreaming. And I make a great nurse.”
“Sure,” Ferran snorts. “Do you get all dressed up for him too? Tiny skirt and everythin- stop fucking— ow.”
Pedri rolls his eyes but he’s grinning even while Ferran hisses through his teeth and rolls away to massage his abused leg. He grumbles a little, but he lets the younger boy pull him to his feet.
“You’re a real brat sometimes, you know?” He pauses, stealing a sip from Pedri’s water. “How is he though?”
He’d been expecting the question, which is why he barely reacts to it. It usually makes its way into conversation at some point and it’s not surprising. Gavi is well-loved, not just by the team but by the staff too, and everyone’s wondering. They’re just not willing to cross that line, the guarded shoulders and clipped sentences— so they defer to Pedri for everything palatable. Weeks of strained conversations and slow, slow progress, hushed down into a handful of sentences. Simple.
Pedri doesn’t mind it. He’s used to being the collected one, used to having Gavi fixed to his life in one way or another. Even before everything, he used to catch the way his eyes stumbled after Gavi’s shadow, trying to find him in rooms he wasn’t in. Except that’s not true, not really. There isn’t a room he could find himself in that wouldn’t have traces of Gavi in it.
The rumble of a worn radiator, low and consistent. Someone’s cologne that leaves his senses dusted with warmth. Uneven stitching along the seams of his pillowcase that he likes to mindlessly trace until sleep pulls him under, imagining the bumps of his spine beneath his fingertips instead of thread.
“He’s doing alright.” It even sounds rehearsed, coming from his lips. “Taking it one day at a time, but I was like that at the start too.”
Ferran hums in acknowledgment, squinting off into the distance. Warmth seeps through the breeze, draping over their shoulders. Simple.
The sound of a jingling lock pushes any sense of drowsiness out of his body. A soft click, followed by a moment’s pause and the sound of shifting limbs before Gavi hobbles through the door. The rhythmic tap of crutches against hardwood.
A part of Pedri is ready to push off the couch and help him inside, ready to untie his laces without Gavi needing to ask. But he’s learned quickly what he is and isn’t supposed to do. Instead, he just watches as Gavi nudges them off indiscriminately, eyelashes still dense with sleep.
“Dinner’s in the fridge,” Pedri offers through a cut-off yawn, “How was physio?”
“‘Was fine,” Gavi murmurs. He skips the kitchen and goes straight to his bedroom.
One of those days, then.
Sometimes Gavi’s mood can be hard to pick apart. The surgery went about as well as can be hoped for an injury like this. Pedri wasn’t allowed to wait outside the operating room, but he’d been fidgeting with his phone, waiting for a text from Gavi’s father with confirmation.
But sometimes it still feels like he’s gone back to that first night. All it takes is a particularly frustrating day of physical therapy and a handful of headlines involving his name and Gavi would spiral— too rooted in his feelings for his own good. Not that Pedri can talk. If anything, Gavi’s probably picked up on a few of his bad habits over the months.
He pushes off of the couch while rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Gavi’s back is turned to him, rifling somewhere in his closet while his crutches lean precariously against the doorframe. Pedri leans them upright without saying a word, before shuffling onto the bed, waiting patiently for Gavi to peel the gray shirt from his body and step out of his sweats. Socked feet patter in an quiet, uneven rhythm when the younger boy finally joins him.
“Not hungry?” Pedri hums, eyeing the stretch of fabric that seems to swathe Gavi’s shoulders whole. Gavi just shakes his head. He’s not allowed to sleep on his stomach anymore, but it still feels like he’s turned away from him, chin tucked under the collar of his hoodie.
“Ate after training with Aleix.” Gavi mumbles, the words muffled through the fabric. Sleep tugs at his lower lashes and he blinks once, twice.
Traces of grapefruit linger around the hidden expanse of his collarbones, and there’s probably more curling behind his ears, mapping a trail to the fine hairs by his nape, but Pedri is tentative to explore it. It’s not even that late, but it's obvious enough that he couldn’t wash away the day clinging to his skin like a sticky, unpleasant film.
“Okay,” Pedri echoes softly. He takes the gamble of raising a thumb to Gavi’s eyebrow and tracing the slight furrow of tension there, until it smoothes out. The younger boy blinks a few times, looking up at him.
For a second they just look at each other.
Gavi holds onto his wrist when he moves to pull back, pulling it close again. Takes a second to curl Pedri’s fingers into his palm before sighing and leaning into it, the ridges of his knuckles pressing into soft, unmarred skin, just above his upper lip. Tilts his head to leave a firm kiss there, before unfolding it again, and leaning into the contact of his open palm.
Pedri just watches with a half-conscious gaze and allows Gavi to flex and guide his fingers where he wants them. The ridge of his nose. The cusp of his ear with its small, engraved scar from months ago, carved lines extending out like tributaries.
He wonders if Gavi can feel his pulse beating through his fingertips. His hands aren’t especially large, but the way his fingers skate over Gavi’s lips before settling over the lower half of his cheek makes them look so much bigger, thumb nestled in the sallow creases under his eye. Gavi’s breathing hits the curve of his palm in a rhythm of its own
“’M sorry about being a dick.”
“You’re not being a dick.”
“I am.” Gavi doesn’t let him finish. “And I’m sorry,”
Pedri exhales softly, careful not to disturb the quiet lull between them. “I know.”
“I just, I don’t know how you do this every few months.” He sounds impossibly young, voice cracked open and vulnerable. “Fuck– Pedri, I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
If it was anyone else, he’d know what to say; if he hadn’t been privy to everything this whole time. Pedri leaving first in the morning and trying not to tousle the sheets too much when he slips out of bed. Catching each other at odd hours of the day. Surgery and recovery and recovery and recovery. The relentless tapping against hardwood. If he hadn’t been in the same position just a few months ago.
“I know,” He echoes again, wondering how it’s possible for pain to travel so easily between them. Back and forth. Like static across fingertips.
“They’re playing a high line. All the space you need is there, it’s just about the timing of the pass.”
Fermin makes an affirmative noise behind the water bottle pressed to his lips. Sweat collects the unsatisfied lines around his face. The white on his kit is marred with torn-out grass and dirt.
Pedri’s kit is spotless. He hasn’t touched the pitch tonight. Xavi decided to bench him after he mentioned the twinge in his leg to him a few days back, keeping him fit for the group stages in Italy.
He blinks a few times past the harsh stadium lighting. He’s still not used to watching matches like this; too aware of everything around him when he isn’t on the pitch, small bits of conversation drifting in and out of earshot.
Swallowing back the feeling of nausea creeping in, he continues. “Their number four, his gait is really wide, especially near goal– he likes to lunge. You might be able to take advantage of the gaps to find Joao or Lamine at the far post.”
Fermin swears under his breath, eyes shut tight for a second before he looks back over at him, “This isn’t helping, Pedri. You aren’t helping.”
“Their center backs are frustrating, I get it–”
“You don’t,” Fermin snaps, “I don’t need to be you, we don’t need another you. Fuck, we need G— Someone who can break down space and win physical duels and it's not your job to do that.”
“Fermin,” Frenkie’s tired voice calls out in warning, an uncomfortably knowing look in his eyes when he glances over at them. Fermin just whirls around to face him instead.
“I don’t need him to teach me how he plays– he can take his own advice when he’s not too damaged to play a full match again.”
Suddenly it feels much quieter in the stadium, even with the trickles of conversation floating around the stands and along the sidelines. Fermin looks like he regrets the second it slips from his mouth, a little stunned that he even said it in the first place.
“Sorry,” Pedri exhales without even realizing he’d been holding his breath.
“No, I didn’t–” Fermin’s voice falters, guilt quickly creeping in. He rubs his temples.“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know,” He tries to make it sound reassuring but it still sounds a little airy coming out, punched straight out of his chest. “It’s okay.”
The younger boy opens his mouth like he wants to say more, remorse burning over his cheeks, but the referee's whistle interrupts him. He shoots Pedri a quick conflicted, apologetic look before he tosses his water bottle back onto the ground and jogs back onto the pitch.
He glances over his shoulders once or twice before he settles back into position in the midfield.
The stadium lights feel more dizzyingly bright than normal.
Fermin’s shot meets the netting so hard that Pedri can almost feel the flutter of wind brush back against his face.
They don’t say anything on the pitch. He plants a firm kiss on Fermin’s shoulder while the stadium erupts in violent cheers, spurred by a second goal after forty-something minutes of dangerously lackluster football. He’d broken through the back line with a sharp pass through a defender’s legs.
Later on, after the match, Fermin corners him with an apology. There’s genuine regret set in the furrow of his brow, and his words come out clunky, but well-intentioned. Distantly familiar to another too-expressive face and eyes that give everything away.
Pedri just pulls him into another hug, ruffles his hair and tells him not to worry about it. A laugh muffled somewhere in the broadness of his shoulders, before he urgers the younger boy to go back into the locker room to celebrate with the others. Defeats and disappointments have been collecting on their shoulders for uncomfortably long now. He'll only get to celebrate your first Champions League goal once, and a golazo at that.
And if Fermin is distracted enough to miss the way his hand drops to gingerly work the rolling pain out of his right thigh, it’s probably for the best anyway.
“And have you spoken to Gavi at all?”
“I send him a lot of encouragement. I know these are very difficult times for him. I’ve had several injuries and I know it’s not easy coming back. We’re all looking out for him.”
“Well, his presence was certainly missed tonight. You came off the pitch around the sixtieth minute today, just before the score had leveled. Was there any discomfort that caused that?”
“Not discomfort, no. The medical staff and Xavi are being careful with my minutes to avoid another relapse.”
“Do you feel as though you should be playing full games at this point?”
“I trust Xavi’s judgment on whether or not I should play. But of course, I want to be playing and helping the team, more than anything.”
“Alright, well thank you, Pedri. A disappointing result at the Vallecas tonight, but we wish you luck moving forward. And to those watching at home, coverage on Sevilla's match against Real Betis will begin after the break.”
Xavi doesn’t even sound angry when he speaks during training anymore, and maybe that’s when he should’ve realized it was the beginning of the end.
Pedri used to duck his head after a bad match, each spat word like a burn on freshly flayed skin. He’d stare at his boots against the tile, counting the pieces of ripped-out grass sticking to his shins with sweat while the words seemed to bounce off the walls. He’d lean back behind bigger bodies like the frantic wave of Xavi’s arms would somehow reach him. They wouldn’t. He knew that. All he had were phantom bruises.
Right now there’s nowhere else to look but up at the man in the center of the room, the lines around his eyes deeper than they’ve ever been.
He’s looking but he doesn’t think he’s listening. Xavi’s lips are moving but for some reason he can’t quite make out the words, everything sounding muffled– like he’s underwater. If he had to guess, it’s probably that the team is underperforming again, like they aren’t well aware of the fact. As if every passing match doesn’t deepen the lurch of discomfort in the pit of his stomach, as if they don’t know they’re scrabbling just to stay above water, clinging to the hopes that next season will be better, as if there isn’t still more than half of this one left.
It doesn’t help that every other day there seems to be a new, younger player joining them in their training session for the afternoon. Until one session becomes two, and three, and four, and they’re seated on the edge of the bench right next to Pedri just a few weeks later. Eagerness still too fresh on their faces for a handful of defeats to do much more than prickle.
Pedri feels bad, but he doesn’t always remember their names. He wishes Gavi was around to kick him on the back of the shins and remind him.
It still worries him, though. Makes him wonder just how many defeats it’ll take before that starts to change.
Pedri tries to pay attention. He really does. But he hasn’t been sleeping and it shows. Something heavy settles over his eyelids with every slow blink and he isn’t sure what to call it. The pressure creeps up on him like water threatening to spill down the sides of an overfilled glass. He shakes away the thought before it can bloom into something ugly.
He looks over at Lamine instead, leaning backward until the lockers catch his slumped shoulders. They don’t do anything to soften the tightness in his jaw and the confusing mix of emotions that keep his skin pulled taut; the ugly feeling of responsibility, the impatience and the resentment. He’s only sixteen and Pedri forgets that sometimes, forgets that there’s five years between them.
When he was sixteen he was still in Gran Canaria, with a shitty cropped haircut that he only got because Fer told him it would help him play better. When the only thing that mattered to him was the pitch beneath his feet and the roll of sunlight hitting his back.
Five years. A lot can happen in five years. A lot can change in just a handful of months.
Pedri doesn’t break his gaze, even when Lamine catches him looking, mouths a soft, you good?, that Pedri doesn’t dignify with a response. Just the other day they were sitting like this.
Everyone else had gone home already, eager to escape the acrid taste of defeat, knowing full well it would follow them home like a thin film over their teeth. Pedri stayed longer to shower, to see if he could drown himself under the spray of warm water because there was more he could’ve done. It wasn’t even self-loathing this time, just a hard truth.
Besides, he wanted to try to settle the shame threatening to crawl out of his skin before he went home.
Water droplets shook from his hair on the cool tile, the soft patter drowned out by his footsteps before they came to a halt. It was obvious the kid hadn’t been expecting him, from the quick rub of his sleeve over his angry, teary eyes and the way he wouldn’t meet Pedri’s gaze.
He ended up staying long enough for his hair to dry to make sure the kid had gotten home alright. Stayed long enough for the lights in the halls to already be turned off, just to drag his aching, bruise-stippled legs to his car to drive back to Gavi's, the twenty-something minutes slipping by in a daze he can barely remember. Something that scares him when he really thinks about it.
“Training tomorrow, same as usual.” Xavi finishes, voice full of resignation that would be hard not to pick up on, even through Pedri’s bleariness.
Nobody says anything and that alone says enough. They’ve all gotten used to that, too. Blame hovering between bits of sunlight and breath.
It feels like he’s in a daze again. His feet carrying him out of the locker room, knees knocking against the bins on his way out, and the quick flare of pain is the only thing that reminds him where he is, and where he’s going after this.
He doesn’t remember putting his keys in the ignition.
But he still ends up outside Gavi’s door, so he wonders if it even matters.
He’s barely moved in ten minutes but it still feels like he can hear his skin ruffling the white fabric, soft movements saturating the quiet air.
The bedsheets in the guest bedroom are stiff. He had to tug a few times just to loosen them enough to crawl inside. Gavi snipped at him last night, complaining that he kept shuffling in his sleep, restless. Pedri didn’t argue with him. Mumbled a quiet apology and tried to force his fidgeting limbs to still.
The guest bedroom made more sense, anyway.
They didn’t have to cramp together just to fit into Gavi’s mattress. Gavi could stretch out his leg and shift however he liked. The sheets wouldn’t get sticky with body heat, warm and radiating in the way Pedri likes because he always runs cold, a hand thrust up the hem of Gavi’s shirt and the pads of his fingers digging into the thin layer of puppy fat around his middle, made softer by the weeks of rest.
There’s always been something buried in the cavity of his chest, something temperamental that just wants to shove his ribs aside and tug at the hem of Gavi’s sleeve with the strained neediness of a child’s fist. He was learning to quiet it down.
No, this was better. Pedri should’ve thought of it sooner, really.
A gnawing worry persists at the back of his head. He can pinpoint the spot if he concentrates. Just behind where his neck meets his ear, a small, whispering thing. The cloying darkness of the room makes it easier to find, his insides pushing against the cage of his body until all he can feel is himself.
It’d be so much easier if the devastatingly soft planes of Gavi’s skin were harder, colder. Closer to metal than anything human. Pedri wouldn’t have to worry about him falling apart then. Metal dents but it rarely breaks.
It’s easier to want, too. Easier to let himself want. Pedri knows how to win trophies, has seen his own troubled reflection in polished gold more than most have by his age. He’s well acquainted with the sweep of desire along the back of his teeth. Ambition hurts, but not as much as love, or any other word he might try to shove in its place.
In the morning, the sheets will be tangled and disheveled and he’ll have to wrestle them back over the mattress before he leaves, smoothing down the imprint of his blistering body from the pale white, knowing he’ll only deepen the mark the next day when he slinks back into them.
This is what he signed up for. No matter how much he wants to wriggle out of these starched white sheets and back next to Gavi's side and just sleep. To have the comfort of Gavi's body next to him without some fluttering worry that he might splinter into smaller pieces in the night if Pedri isn't there to watch him. That the younger boy will end up just like him; something scrappy and unreliable, a child's toy that's been loved so viciously that there's no repairing it anymore. Loved so fervently that his seams rip apart and he’s nothing but loose thread between fingertips.
So he stays awake, staring at the ceiling, and wishes that the lull of sleep would come sooner than it always does.
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All time does is pass. Sometimes in short bursts, when matches blur into one another and he’s dragged from pitch to pitch, and every patch of grass under his feet feels like the Ciudad. Sometimes it moves like a slow treacle, dripping down his shoulders and pooling at his feet.
Pedri keeps moving. One heavy foot after the other.
Three weeks ago Gavi was cleared for more strenuous activity. Which meant no more crutches. No need for Pedri to haunt his apartment anymore. When he came back with the news he kissed Pedri so hard it felt like his lips would bruise, all crashing and bright. It caught him off-guard, the spark of pain and something he hadn’t recognized in Gavi for a while now.
The first night he spent sleepless in his own bed. The second, wondering what was wrong with him.
People at the club are getting restless with anticipation– just the thought of Gavi coming back. Laporte had never looked so relieved the last time Pedri saw him, with a firm hand on his shoulder and a nod. The players, too. Nobody’s satisfied anymore.
Pedri stares down the tunnel, leading out to the pitch. There’s a quarter-final waiting for them out there, along with a boy too eager to join them. Gavi’s started coming to matches again recently, a slow transition back into the limelight. Pedri wouldn’t blame him if he decided to stop coming.
He’s still staring down the tunnel, at all the things and people he can’t see, when Lewandowski slaps him on the back without a word as he passes by. Pedri trails after a moment later.
Ninety minutes and some change. 4-2 full-time.
He played up until the very last second this time.
Pedri’s not even sure if he’s allowed to look for him in the sea of disappointed faces, but he can’t help himself. He flexes his hands and tries to remember if they’re cold. Breathes in and tries to feel his lungs ache. Is he even alive? It doesn’t feel like it.
His mother always used to say he was a sensitive child, would cry over everything, and he doesn't think he ever really grew out of that. He still wants to cry; frustrated tears when his hamstring trembles in that same terribly familiar way, when he does everything he can just to barely influence the game. When he sees Gavi's bitter curling frown at the other end of his pitch he just wants to peel all of his feelings right out of his body, to lay them on the ground by Gavi's feet for him to decide what he wants to do with them. To toss them to the side. To force them back into Pedri's unworthy body, back into the lining of his bones. To feel all the horrible things he feels, if that's what he thinks he deserves.
He wants to cry but he doesn't. He doesn’t need Gavi to know he doesn’t deserve that much.
Because some people are loved unapologetically, with their bright eyes and loud personalities, all the unsaid things that seem to draw praise from everyone. Crown jewels; gleaming and coveted.
But there are also the bends and rivulets of gold, pried and moved into position— forced stiffly into places where they are told they belong. They’re the support, the balance. They keep the jewels safe, nestled around them even if they have to bend over backward to do it. They don’t command attention but they redirect it where it belongs.
Maybe the gold could be beautiful, if you just looked at it for a moment, on its own. But gold tarnishes, and jewels don’t. And maybe that’s the worst part of it all.
He calls his parents on a whim.
Really, he hadn’t planned on it. They haven’t spoken properly since they lost to Madrid in the Supercopa. Nothing besides a handful of texts scattered across weeks and pictures that he forgets to respond to. But that night he left the pitch with four goals digging into his back and the frustratingly familiar taste of humiliation alongside it– and a voicemail waiting for him back in the locker room.
Keep your head up, Pedri. You’ll make your way back. You always do.
His mother hadn’t said much, but she’s never been a talkative woman. Always straight to the point, and he loves that about her, the simplicity of how she treats the world. Nothing else in his life feels simple. But he deleted the voicemail from his phone after listening to it once. It was stupid– it was nothing, really. He just couldn’t take another expectation while his wounds were still fresh.
Maybe the lingering dregs of guilt are part of the reason he calls. The thought muddles in his head with the drone of ringing. Xavi gave them the day off, and Gavi’s still at the Ciudad for physical therapy, and Pedri doesn’t really know what to do with himself. Maybe the rest of the reason is because the silence gives him too much room to think, to feel every invisible ache in his body. It feels like his ribs have been cracked and forced out of the way.
“Pedri?”
His lashes feel heavier and the only reason he doesn’t blink back the tears is because they can’t see him over the phone.
He swallows, “Hi Mama,”
It’s hardly dignified. The croak in his voice, the exhaustion laced underneath. She’s hardly said a word and there are already so many things he wants to say. Guilt and purpose and Gavi; the fact that they haven’t talked in days and Pedri can feel the words collecting under his pillow. Muffled whispers through the fabric, just barely reaching his ears. All of it clamoring over each other in a bid to reach his tongue first. Not that any of it makes it out.
“Pedri,” Her smile is imbued in her voice, crackling over the receiver. Small and coiled tight, the way Pedri does without thinking about it sometimes. “How are you, bebito?”
He doesn’t know why he hesitates. It would be so easy to admit everything. To roll up his sleeves and point out all the blots and bruises.
“I’m okay,” He takes a deep breath before whispering. “Just wanted to know how you were doing.”
They talk for maybe ten minutes. Pedri forgets to pay attention, his mind wandering to that place it always seems to go. Where things don’t hurt as much as they’re supposed to. Where words are just sounds and the aches in his body can fade away, even the bruises are still waiting for him when he comes back.
His mother’s voice is distant as she speaks, stories about dinners in Valencia with his father, the affectionate scolding of how he didn’t come down to Tenerife with Fer during the winter. Even the upbeat chime of his father calling out from across the room. It all sounds muted and far away.
Embarrassment burns through him, after the fact, when they’ve long said their goodbyes. He’s not that little boy his mother would rock in her lap until his sobs quieted and he was left softly hiccuping against her chest, wondering why he was even sad in the first place. It’s all Pedri can think about, now. He’s not sad, not happy either, not anything that matters like it used to.
The armband in Sergi’s hand stops him in his tracks.
Yellow and red shackles, the crest he’s branded into his flesh in hundreds of invisible ways, burned into every bruise and scratch and stolen breath. It’s fabric. It’s just fabric.
He used to always feel light before a match. When he takes the band he’s never felt heavier. He takes it and ignores the way it makes his kit stick uncomfortably to his skin, the Barcelona emblem flush against his neglected heart.
His heart beats faster, a sickly, rapid rhythm and he hates it. He hates the way it sits too high in his chest, threatening to make a bid to escape, to crawl right out of his throat and find a safer place to hide, where his ribs won’t dig in and slice right through it.
And they lose. No amount of strength, or reliance, or sheer fucking willpower could prevent that. Not tonight.
Pedri purses his lips together when he leaves the pitch, armband in hand, hiding the stagger in his steps when he walks. He squeezes his eyes shut. His hamstring has been acting up all night.
There’s nothing he wants more than to drown himself under the shower stream before dragging his body into bed. For his head to hit the pillow and for this day– for all these weeks to end. But some dazed part of him brings out his phone and opens up his messages with Gavi. There are so many things he could say; I'm sorry that I'm failing this team you love. I know it's killing you to just watch. Please be okay. I need one of us to be okay.
But Gavi's already messaged him. A rare handful of texts that are longer than three words, because only Gavi manages to be equally non-talkative over text. Pedri has to stare blearily at the messages, reread them a few times before he even understands what they say. He blinks a few times and realizes the blurriness was just his own frustrated tears bubbling to the surface.
Suddenly it hurts to breathe, every inhale raw as it passes through his throat, ragged. Like a thread, sewing all the things he feels into the tender inside of his throat, keeping them embroidered into the skin there. The prick of a needle and the rush of blood; coppery and dark, coating the roof of his mouth.
The boy is waiting for him by the front door when he finally parks outside his house, crutches nowhere to be seen, but leaning against the doorframe. His hair lightly cowlicked to the side, like he'd been sleeping before.
Pedri steps into his embrace before they even make it back into the foyer. And neither of them even say anything.
Gavi guides him up the stairs, strips the jersey from his body, stained with blood that no one but them can see, and checks to see if the water is warm before leading them into the shower, hands broad and assured where they rest on Pedri's hips.
The older boy doesn't even know what to think, can't seem to remember how to think. It's too difficult to process anything past the way Gavi's hands map over his body and his lips graze over the cap of his shoulder. He can hear his pulse in his ears, slow and heavy, mixed with the light patter of water against tile. It feels like if Gavi takes his hands off of him, Pedri might slip right down the drain too, liquid and vulnerable the second someone stops holding him upright.
Gavi never stops holding him. He washes his hair, careful to keep the lathered soap from slipping into his eyes, he dries Pedri off and leads him by the wrist to his bed.
Clockwork motions. Slips a warm hand under Pedri's shirt and hikes a scarred knee over his hips.
An involuntary lurch in his chest already starts climbing up Pedri’s throat.
“Stop thinking.” Gavi murmurs, “I’m okay. You’re not gonna hurt me.”
It's the first thing either of them has properly said to each other in days, maybe months if they’re being honest, and Pedri can barely stomach it, a dry shudder in his throat and wetness along his bottom lashes that he can't control. He just shakes his head, not trusting him to speak— mouth and body and brain too tired to even sound out the words. But Gavi understands anyway, so he wonders if it even matters.
“You haven’t done anything wrong.” He murmurs. “We’re gonna be okay.”
He’s sick and he’d still refuse sutures in favor of this boy-shaped wound that’s been gnawing through him one day at a time.
“I know,” Pedri manages to whisper, eyes fluttering shut with how much he means it.
He has the dull knife he twists inside of himself and the needle to stitch himself back together cradled in his hands.
“Are you cold?” Gavi whispers, gaze trained on how Pedri’s hands tremble when he stops digging his fingertips into the softness of Gavi’s body.
Pedri shakes his head. For once he can’t feel the cold blushing over his skin, drowned out by the addictive warmth of having Gavi close to him again. Gavi lets out a noncommittal hum and brings his hand up to Pedri’s.
“Well, I am,” He says softly, resolved before he shifts ever so slightly.
Pedri just watches as his hands disappear, covered by Gavi’s palms, and wonders distantly, if maybe that had been the point.
Pedri’s eyes blink open to muted light and the slow rise and fall of a dimpled back. The circles under his eyes feel heavy, and a little puffy from crying, but he doesn’t lift his head.
Gavi is still sprawled out next to him, already awake and bathed in morning sunlight, skittering down the slopes of his body until it gets caught in all the little hollows. Cheeks soft and dewy like the blades of grass outside the window.
His leg is covered by the splay of white bedsheets, and Pedri can't help the way his gaze follows the trickle of light down to it.
"Doesn't hurt," Gavi offers gently, following his line of sight. There's sleep still clinging to the husky edges of his voice— but it's so achingly soft. Attuned to the way Pedri still trebled between solid and liquid in his palms. "I told you."
Pedri nods, listless. Because he trusts Gavi. Trusts him with every part of him, and learning to trust him with every part of himself.
Dappled light moves along the walls like a steady hum, casting shadows that sway to the rhythm of the low beat of their pulse. Alive and warm to the touch.
When Gavi burrows back into the rumpled sheets, beautiful and sun-licked and lazily pulling Pedri back into his chest, his hamstring doesn’t hurt at all.