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The locker room was tense. David was tense. Aaron would have been able to sense it even if he hadn't been shooting glances at the older man the whole time they'd been there. It radiated off him in waves, while also sinking into every crevice of his body. He refused to make eye contact no matter how hard Aaron tried. Aaron would be far more hurt by it had he not realized that David was doing it, not simply to him, but to the entire team." Had locked himself away, jaw clenched, eyes glued to the floor. Unmoving to a point of eeriness.
It was his main flaw. He put all the blame on himself, always. Bad playing by the defense? No, it couldn't be that. Sloppily put together planning? No way, Mikel was too good for those types of mistakes. The other team was simply too good for them to beat? It couldn't be, they had worked so hard. So, in the end, if the team lost, and they conceded a goal, it was always David's fault. It wasn't that the team believed this as fact, it was that David himself did. Aaron hated it. In both his love and simmering resentment for the man, he hated it. Hated it because he loved him, respected him, admired him too much to let him talk down to himself the way he did. Knew how talented he was and how hard he worked. Hated it because if David thought himself bad, and he was supposedly the better option, how awful must Aaron be?
He loved David. Loved him so much it hurt sometimes. Had he told a version of himself only a few months ago, when he was first told some Spaniard was showing up out of nowhere to take his role in the team, that that would be his life, he might've strangled himself. But it was the truth.
He only vaguely remembers the first time he met David. It was a quick meeting, no more than five minutes, but it had burned. Everywhere. He was angry. So angry. He hurt everywhere and he wanted to punch the man, to break his spirit until he gave up, gave Aaron his job back. He had never felt that much fury, that much rage directed at a person he had never met before. And then David was nice. Slightly bashful, ashamed maybe. He had hoped he was ashamed at the time. It had crumbled the vision he had of David. David was kind, and quiet, and awkward, and unbelievably handsome. His touch scorched him.
He couldn't imagine it being like that anymore. The two of them. They were built on a faulty foundation, true. But the bricks laid down were interwoven by vines, vines that held them together, kept them attached at the hip.
It happened quickly. Or slowly, depending on how you looked at it. It took them no more than a month to give in to their… less appropriate needs. Hands twisted in kits, fisted in hair, hot mouth meets hot mouth. No more than two months to be familiar with every inch of the other’s body. Nothing less, nothing more. If they hadn't been forced to, they wouldn't have even known each other’s names. They never stayed, never talked. Only three months to be so hyper aware of each other’s presence that they could tell their footsteps apart from everybody else on the team. Four to stay, not for long, but it was enough. Five to talk, murmured affirmations to introspective conversations in the dead of night. Six to love, whole, and overwhelming.
Mikel’s speech was quicker than usual, the manager just as dejected as the rest of the team, only better at hiding it. No one made any mention when the captain slipped out the door behind him. They all had their own ways of grieving.
David's was avoidance. Isolation. Aaron's was the opposite. He couldn't be alone, had done it in the past and knew what he could do, how deep and dark the shell he crept into could be. So he stopped. He forced himself to be around others no matter how much he wished to leave, to crawl back into that hole, until it became second nature. Aaron clung. Aaron grasped. Aaron clawed. Aaron begged and begged and begged for attention even when no one would spare him a glance.
And then David came into his life and he was perfect and he understood and he held him like he mattered, but he wouldn't cling back. Didn't think himself deserving. To David, to cling was to be weak. To cling was an admission of fault and along with that, an admission that he was too pathetic to stand back up and improve. To cling was to fail.
As the team slowly shuffled out of the locker room one by one, Aaron didn’t move. Nodded curtly at his friends as they exited the room, but nothing more. When just the two of them remained, it was silent. Aaron didn’t attempt anything, David still hadn't moved since he first sat down. He wasn’t sure quite how long they sat there, but it was long enough for the skipper to walk disheveled back to his locker to grab his stuff, patting David on the shoulder on his way out, nodding at Aaron. David didn't flinch, not physically, but Aaron saw it in his eyes. Martin didn’t know, wouldn’t have done anything had he known- he was good like that. No one knew. No one knew David. Not like Aaron did. They were nice enough, welcoming as they always were. But in the way Aaron envied David's job, David envied Aaron’s connection, the bond he had with the other guys. It wasn’t that they hated the Spaniard. No, this team wasn’t capable of hate, they were a family. Mikel adored him. Martin adored everyone, that wasn’t special. Kai, Dec, and Leo made their attempts, gave him the time of day because they knew the feeling. None of them had reached him like Aaron. David had once told Aaron that it sometimes felt that Aaron had ripped into him, buried himself within his heart, made David question everything about himself.
It was another ten minutes before Mikel did a final walk through of the locker room, ruffling Aaron's hair, speaking to David in their language, before leaving the two alone. Aaron heard his and Carlos’ voices muffled behind the door, getting more and more distant.
A wretched sound rang throughout the room, and his head whipped back to the man left on the bench. With everyone but Aaron gone, his tenseness had faded, his hard eyes now teary behind the palms of his hands. Aaron walked over, still slow- like he was approaching a wild animal. He sat down on the bench an arms length away from David. He wasn’t tactile like some of the other guys on the team, most casual touches reserved for a good game, moments alone with Aaron, family. Even then it was always better to let him initiate it, no matter the situation. That was at his best. And this wasn't his best. David didn’t cry, not around others at least. Aaron had seen it once, before they ever started dating, back when the only interactions they had were forced or for relief. It was only a few games into the season, and the team had conceded. A dumb mistake from David, one Aaron had almost scoffed at at the time. The crowd wasn’t happy–had yelled insults and cruel words. Aaron had gotten all the way to his car before realizing he had left his phone in the locker room. When he circled back, he had walked in on David on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest, head buried in his arms. He hadn’t taken off his kit, or his cleats, his gloves lay unruly on the bench. His phone lay on the ground a few feet away from him, open on the Arsenal instagram. Quiet sobs erupted from the goalkeeper, his body shaking with them. It had made Aaron pause, if only for a moment. He didn't think David had noticed him–had grabbed his phone and walked out silently. He had never bothered to ask about it.
David didn’t move any closer, showed no sign of noticing Aaron. And he cried. For what seemed like hours, he cried. And Aaron didn’t push. This was David's sign of trust. This was him opening himself up to Aaron in a way he hadn’t before and so Aaron did not push. And when they finally left, not a word was spoken. As they sat down in the car to head home, they took each other's hands, and that was enough.