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“Can’t believe he scored two you know, I’m absolutely buzzing for him.”
Declan certainly is, going on and on about Kai’s performance from the back. Martin hums encouragingly when he pauses to take a breath and Mikel throws him a smirk from the driver’s seat. Palm warm over Martin’s training shorts, fingers creeping teasingly under the hem. He tries to motion with his head to watch the road.
“And like, I know we had a rough week, but can you believe these pundits switching sides? One minute we’re champions the next we were never in the running, who are we supposed to believe now?”
Mikel drives one-handed with assured confidence. His steel watch glinting with every turn, the deft movements of his fingers, totally in control. The fuzz on his other arm dark over the pale rim of skin under Martin’s shorts, where he hasn’t gotten around to tanning properly yet.
Declan was oblivious until he wasn't. Really it didn't change much, him realizing the full weight of his responsibility, a meddling befitting of his position on the pitch. Now he's just fixing things on purpose instead of accidentally, and anyway it’s hard to keep secrets from him for very long, so aware and attentive in addition to his bubbliness. He makes it easy for everyone, invites himself in.
It’s easy. It’s good. It wasn’t enough anymore, just Mikel, to turn Martin’s brain off. They’re too similar, maybe, rolling things over and over and over in their heads until they’re too dizzy to stand. Mikel with his match stats and Martin with his…with everything.
***
Declan is at his back, panting and sweaty, nothing subtle about it. He draws Martin’s focus outside himself.
“It was such a good pass.” Martin doesn’t know which one he’s talking about. Gives up on remembering almost immediately as Declan plows on, moving almost mindlessly inside him as he talks. “We have to do that all the time, play like that all the time. That’s what City does you know, they find the things that work and program them into people. It’s, we have to do– that .”
Martin smiles to himself in satisfaction. Grinds back again until Declan catches his breath and draws him in by the hips, bottoming out. “Hey, I was getting to that.”
It’s, he realizes, a partnership that Mikel approves of. They work well together, support each other and that’s something Mikel can understand, things that come back on the pitch, bodies and love and the game all wrapped up for him always.
Martin comes downstairs at midnight barefoot and wrapped in a bathrobe. Mikel is sitting at the table covered in a grid of napkins, permutations of formations and lineups laid out neatly, scribbled in pink Sharpie. One hand to his forehead, the other reaching out to wrap around Martin’s waist. His thumb brushing over Martin’s hip in silence, for a while he is working and Martin is watching and the refrigerator runs in the kitchen. Abruptly he squeezes the muscle there between two fingers, the paper-thin cushion of fat, and his intensity swings towards Martin in full force. “How is this feeling?”
There isn’t anything to say other than fine. Mikel hums and returns to his own thoughts, resistant both to Martin’s coaxing lips on his neck and to letting him go back upstairs alone.
The end of the beginning is in some ways just as difficult as goodbye. Soon they will have had their first full season without Granit. Soon they won’t wonder what it is like to thank the home fans without him. It seems all the important firsts are going by.
Martin’s prepared to sleep on the couch tonight. Or at least fake it, if that’s what it takes, get Mikel to try and pick him up then stomp upstairs grumbling about his back with Martin scurrying behind. He figures he’ll try talking about football first.
“It didn’t go like that,” he may as well be arguing with a wall. Mikel is convinced he has a photographic memory, maybe he does. “He hadn’t even reached for the card yet. Only when you came over and Granit saw you all fired up.”
“No, no,” Mikel leans over the couch to kiss his forehead and holds out a hand expectantly for Martin to take. Declan’s waiting upstairs and he’s right. I’m right and you’re wrong, that’s Mikel. Martin finds everyone else increasingly confusing.
Sleeping between Declan and Mikel is sleeping between two real adult men, steady bodies and hairy legs and sometimes Martin just feels like a kid, small and unsure. And then a little dirty after that. At night it’s so quiet, even with their breathing and the fan in the summer that Martin can hear his own thoughts like someone is talking to him in the voice of his 15-year-old self. He’s somewhat annoyed he can’t bother that kid back.
***
Declan’s hanging off his arm, drunk and calling him cute. Martin flushes and looks around to see if any of the team is in earshot. Kai ducks his head two stools down to hide, a laugh? Martin shoves Declan off, watches him recover quickly to go hang off someone else’s arm. That’s another nice thing, having a social butterfly like him around. He just doesn’t care so much.
There’s a light touch on his elbow and Mikel is standing too close. His gaze is dark over Martin’s exposed neck, the top buttons of his shirt undone to celebrate the end of the season, and Martin’s not sure if he knew that Mikel could get drunk. They fumble out to Mikel’s car without an excuse; the windows are tinted but maybe the windshield isn’t, maybe people walking by can see Martin’s shirt start to slide down his shoulders, milky white skin showing. Mikel undoes the buttons methodically, carefully as if it’s the most important thing in the world. Can't, won't, let himself rip Martin's clothes off, Martin knows what he's thinking, this is already an indulgence and so he has to deny himself everything he can. The focus furrows his brow and makes Martin go kind of hot all over.
“Almost,” he breathes over Martin’s bare chest when he’s done, the graze of his beard burning across Martin’s sternum. “Almost.”
Martin’s not sure exactly how they get home. Just that halfway through the drive he realizes he’s sitting there, unbuckled and completely naked and instead of covering himself he doubles over in laughter. The lights twinkle in and out, red and white, “like stars,” he gasps and Mikel says something in Basque that sounds like “angel” and reaches over to hold him up against the seat in case they crash.
In the morning Martin has three missed calls from Declan and a hangover. The guilt doubles his headache into a migraine and it doesn’t take much convincing for Mikel to push his flight back a day.
“We could just stay here,” he murmurs half-asleep into the pillows. Mikel touches his hair and presses his fingertips to Martin’s cheekbone lightly, over the pinkish sunburn that the boys teased him about, that only his fair skin could burn in London sun. “Watch the Euros on tv.”
It would make Declan happy, he thinks. They could laugh at his free kick stance, that makes him look like a perfectly posed Barbie doll with his hands made molded to his hips. Something to call and tease him about, an opportunity to float the idea of sex over FaceTime, Declan in his hotel room with headphones in pretending to watch regular porn, and Martin in Mikel’s lap. Martin has this all planned out.
“No,” Mikel sighs and takes his hand away, pushing himself up to sit. The muscles in his back have started to uncoil and slump already. “That would be selfish.”
He might be talking to himself. Martin reaches out to the space on the bed where he was lying before, twisting his fingers into the still-warm sheets. Hopes idly that the transfer rumors and calls from Edu will hold off for a few hours. Mikel didn't need reassuring but simply confirmation about Martin, that much he remembers from last night. Feels the blistering force of Mikel's ambition still, in his bones.
“When we win the league, then I can stay?”
Mikel looks back over his shoulder. The light is still too low in the early morning to make out his expression, dark features blending easily into a mask of shadow. He moves slightly and the shadows recede like pulling blackout curtains and he just looks like Mikel for a moment.
“Yes.”