Work Text:
They walk shoulder-to-shoulder in the November rain.
Antoine skips over a puddle. His hood flies off and his hair whips harshly across his face. The toes of his shoes suffer scuffings as he makes one wobbly, slippery pirouette after another to the music banging around in his head, to the rhythm of the raindrops. The footsteps beside him are as constant as the pitter-patter of the rain.
Paul cheers and claps for him. Antoine makes another spin. Everyone else makes sure to steer clear of them. How they must look, the two of them. Drunk on petrichor, waltzing through the streets of Saint-Denis.
They bump into Hugo in the lobby, in his glossy yellow raincoat and with that ever-persistent disgruntled look on his face. Antoine has to bite back a delirious laugh by burying his face in Paul's puffer coat, the water still pearling on the fabric getting smeared across his skin.
"You're a horrible dancer," Paul tells him when Antoine is perched on the edge of the bathtub. He swipes his thumbs across Antoine's dewy eyelashes in a mildly exasperated manner. His eyes are fond.
The bathroom tiles under Antoine's bare feet are smooth and warm. His sodden socks are discarded with his shoes at the entrance of Paul's hotel room. He roughly towels his hair dry. It hangs across his forehead, limp and sad.
"I think I'm alright."
"You would think that. Always way in over your head. It's a good thing you chose something you're actually good at."
"Yeah?" Antoine grins. He doesn't need the reassurance, but it's always nice to hear. "Either way, I would have never become a dancer. Maybe like a writer or something. Do you think I could do it?"
"A writer?" Paul looks half-amused, half-contemplative in the way he does when he's not entirely certain if Antoine is pulling his tail or not.
Paul continues to peel off the wet clothing from his skin. He looks like he was carved from marble, each curve and outline painstakingly crafted through years and years of labour.
This time, Antoine is only half-joking because Paul also takes the vague shape of the people he attempted to configure on looseleaf sheets of paper, those he hid in a shoebox underneath the twin sleeper that wasn't really his — welcome, welcome, Antoine! Please make yourself at home; what's ours is yours. There are a few rules, but… — when he was thirteen, homesick and lonely. Unsure of all the yesterdays, tomorrows, and todays.
These people were never fully human, just shards of Antoine's mind and heart and soul, but they were beautiful and perfect and his.
Maybe Paul was right; perhaps Antoine has always been in over his head a little too much. Paul sits down next to him on the edge of the bathtub, a stark-white towel with the hotel's logo embroidered in gold thread slung over his shoulders.
Motionless for a rare, precious moment. All for Antoine to take in. Paul's elbows make divots in his knees, hunched in on himself to be on eye level. Antoine has his sole, undivided attention.
"Tell me a story, then."
Antoine scratches his nape. The bathroom feels humid as if Paul had taken a too-hot shower, and Antoine was an actor in the wrong scene, at the wrong set, strangely out of place.
"A story! About what?"
Paul raises his eyebrows in a clear challenge. "About me and you."
"The story of me and you, as it continues, as it goes…" Antoine blinks up at the ceiling, pointer finger placed thoughtfully on his bottom lip. "First and most important, we will win. We will win the group. We will win it all. The cup will be ours."
"Yes, sir," Paul nods faux-gravely. Antoine accepts the firm handshake he offers.
"... and one day, we will finally play together. You'll try to persuade me to join you in England, but I'll convince you to come to Spain. Do you want to know why? It's simple, actually. You don't look good in jumpers. Ah, ah– Stop! Let me finish. We can live together and have feasts with all our friends and soak up the sun, and everyone will adore us," Antoine finishes with a grand gesture, spreading his arms wide, wiggling his fingers. Ta-da.
"Everyone will adore us! I love this story," Paul laughs. It's as bright as the sun at noon, echoing against the bathroom's four walls and bouncing off the ceiling onto the pale blue tiles.
Paul swiftly pulls both of them up onto their feet. The towel slides right off his shoulders into the bathtub. He's now in just his underwear and socks, Antoine's hands cradled in his, swinging their arms. Antoine loves him a stupid amount.
"Let's do it. All of it."
It sails smoothly from there. Until they lose two to one in Strawberry Arena to Sweden, that is. It's a minor setback. Diminutive, really. They have nothing to worry about.
Antoine rests his head against the foggy window of the bus. It feels a little funny; the light tremors from the whirring engine make the inside of his mouth tickle. There's none of the usual ruckus, only hushed conversations, whispering like nervous schoolchildren who have just been scolded. Generic Swedish pop on the crackling radio provides the soundtrack for their melodrama.
He sits in the third row on the left side. No one ever really goes for the first couple of rows. They're reserved for personnel, as the unspoken rule goes. Either way, most of them would rather hide in the back, nestled away in a desperate search for a semblance of peace. Antoine doesn't expect anyone to accompany him, but then, inevitably, there he is.
Antoine tries to school his face but fails terribly. Paul folds into the chair next to him, his limbs too long and body too big, shoulder pressing into Antoine. It's nothing like their own flashy bus back in France; it's all tight spaces and bright moquette-covered seats. There are many free rows. Paul would be more comfortable taking up one of his own.
Paul twists his torso sideways towards Antoine. His warm palm covers Antoine's cheek, thumb stroking along to where skin pulls taut over bone.
"Ah, my Grizou," Paul murmurs in a low voice. "You're always smiling. Always. Isn't it tiring?"
A rotating cast of actors passes behind Paul in a blur of blue-blue-blue. No one pays them any mind; they are too busy clinging to their frustration.
Paul's own mouth is arched apologetically. There is no joy in it. All misguided pity, saying, I'm sorry you are the way that you are.
Antoine isn't mean. If he was, he would combat, say, Hey, Paul, I see you. The way you stretch your personality beyond your skin. The way you're horrible and terrible and horribly, terribly desperate for love, but you don't even know what it looks like. You aren't hidden from me.
Instead, Antoine touches the hand on his face, curls his fingers around Paul's wrist, feeling the tendons, and asks, "Hey, Paul, remember the story. The one I told you?"
"About us," Paul answers affirmingly, eyes widening by a fraction, hand stilling on Antoine's face. Antoine leans into it for a split-second, then lowers it and places it on his leg.
"Well, then," he retorts with a distinct tone of finality, and Paul gets that odd expression on his face. The one.
Antoine pulls a face of his own, feigning annoyance. He jostles his leg to throw Paul off, then pokes his pointer finger repeatedly into Paul's cheek.
"Stop looking at me like that."
"I'm not looking at you like anything," Paul says, mildly affronted, excessively innocent. He makes his eyes go all big.
Antoine shakes his head. The cross on his earring swings back-and-forth, back-and-forth, cool silver brushing his jaw. Paul doesn't look, really; he stares, and stares, and stares. His eyes roam over Antoine's face like he's on the very verge of discovering something unknown.
"You are, you are! You look at me like that all the time, and I never know what you're thinking. You're still doing it."
"You don't have to know what I'm thinking," Paul says with a very obnoxious grin. He rests his temple against the chair's headrest in front of him. Antoine, incorrigible as he is, is trying not to smile. Again. Paul is watching him, knowing this.
Once more, Antoine shakes his head fervently, tilts it towards the window and hides his face in his shoulder with all of his childish indignance.
Paul gives a wheezy little laugh. Antoine can picture its shape in his mind: crescent-shaped eyes, lips stretched over teeth, head thrown back.
He blindly hooks his ankle around Paul's in retaliation, tugging it towards him, getting caught in their own weird little tangle. Not enough space. Too much space.
Paul starts a conversation with Presnel a few rows behind, his voice ringing loudly. Evidently trying to cut through the tense air, ever the mood-maker despite his own frustrations.
In the fuzzy reflection on the window, Antoine can see Paul's long fingers curl around the back of his knee before he feels it.
The Netherlands is unbearably humid, caught between late summer and early fall. The sky is an endless, cloudy white. It refuses to rain.
Antoine runs alongside Paul, leading the horde. Panting like an old, stubborn dog trying to catch up. Running in circles, and circles. Winding himself around Paul's legs, begging to be noticed. Expressing his terrible feelings in his own terrible way.
His bleach-blonde hair falls into his eyes with every next step. Bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down. Long pieces of it stick to his temples and cheeks.
Paul isn't that fast. He's got nothing on fresh-faced, gutsy little Kylian who defies many Earthly laws, but his legs are ridiculously long, and his strides almost impossible for Antoine to keep up.
The coach and his entourage oversee the team from the sidelines, silently, except for the occasional, desperate call toward the two of them to slow their pace.
Antoine looks up. At the same time, Paul looks down, forever attuned. The beginning of a smile is threatening Paul's cheeks. He's having fun. He's enjoying this.
"Slow down?"
"No," Antoine says firmly. An expression appears on Paul's face that he can't name but recognises all the same. It's what thunderbolts through his own body. Sharp and electric on his tongue and humming behind his teeth. Soon enough, Paul startles into a crazy, delighted laugh.
They brush past the rest of the team, who are still a whole lap or two behind them, whooping and hollering, egging them on loudly. It's an excellent team-building exercise. The coach should be proud, really.
Sweat films over Antoine's eyes, turning the world a little trancelike, hazy at its edges. It pearls at his hairline, his upper lip. He swipes the back of his hand across his flushed face.
It must be the last lap because Paul staggers towards the sideline.
Antoine starfishes stomach-down onto the grass, muffling a breathless cheer. His undershirt is sticking to him like a second skin.
Coach applauds them, sarcastically clapping in his hands. Antoine will be useless for the remainder of the training. He half-heartedly sticks up a hand in apology. Beside him, there's the sound of a plastic bottle getting cracked open, Paul snickering lightly.
A hand splays on the back of Antoine's neck. He inhales sharply, surprised, and tilts his face sideways on the grass. Paul is crouched down next to him, offering a bottle of water.
"Come on. Drink up."
Antoine stays very still and then sits up. Paul excruciatingly watches every single movement. His hand remains on Antoine's neck, solid and heavy and almost forceful. With his other hand, he fixes Antoine's hair for him.
All the while, he looks at Antoine as if he's seeing him entirely anew. A sort of wondering disbelief that says: I can't believe you. Or maybe, I can't believe you love me so terribly.
There's an odd kind of suspense unfurling around them. All potential, thrumming energy. Stifling and staticky like an incoming summer storm. Air is hard to come by, even when they have long stopped running.
"Hello," Paul barges past Antoine into his room, later that night, loose-limbed and beaming. "Hello, everyone!"
Antoine sputters out a laugh. He hurries to shut the door and tails Paul, who is already far, far ahead.
Paul has come to a standstill. He's intently looking at the television mounted to the wall, in front of the bed, broadcasting the Dutch news. The sound is off, but very little is necessary to understand the newsreader's rueful look. Melancholy blue bathes Paul, flickering against the white walls.
Pointing the remote at the screen, Antoine makes the screen fade to black.
"What's up?"
His reaction is immediate. Paul throws a coy smile over his shoulder and then lowers himself down to the edge of the bed. "Coming to see my favourite guy, of course."
Antoine joins him. He slumps backwards on the bed, arms spread out freely above his head. A defenceless form. Paul's hand curves over his abdomen. Feeling Antoine breathe. Always helplessly gravitating towards each other.
"You must be tired from today, huh? It takes a lot to keep up with me," Paul says haughtily, nodding like he's in agreement with himself.
"I have gotten quite good at it. It's kind of my job to keep up with nuisances like you."
Antoine grins toothily in the way he knows, without a fault, makes Paul crack.
Paul scoffs lightly, like, can you believe this guy? He accelerates the pressure, his touch burning hot through Antoine's shirt, searing through skin, muscle and bone.
Antoine's breath jerks a little. He watches Paul through half-lidded eyes and waits until the pressure releases. It takes a dizzy couple of seconds.
There's a curse on the tip of his tongue, then Paul tugs at the hem of his shirt. Antoine rights himself like a puppet on taut strings, Paul's hand strong across his back. Always the helper. Sitting down, they're almost the same height.
"You're my favourite, too, you know," Antoine blurts instead.
It's meant to be light-hearted, but it comes out all horribly sincere. The late summer sun, ever reluctant to leave, bathes the room in a gentle golden mist.
Paul looks so much less daunting, right here. His features are soft and warm. Dust particles float around him. Antoine wonders if anyone else knows him like this.
"I know," Paul mutters in his hair, above him. His nose brushes Antoine's temple, pressing his mouth there, devastatingly soft.
Antoine shifts his face upward, allowing Paul to touch the hollow of his cheek and the blunt of his jaw, as well. His breath ghosts briefly over Antoine's, intermingling, becoming one.
Paul stops there. He draws back. His arms fall tautly to his sides, hands folded in his lap like a repentant little boy, his mouth sulky with the sugar he wasn't supposed to have.
A furrow of frustration forms between Paul's eyebrows. It is unbearable.
Antoine carefully places a palm on each side of Paul's face and squeezes until his expression morphs into a caricature of itself.
"Stop it," Antoine mutters. "You look all wrong."
Paul bats him away. He laughs a little through his nose, a quick, sharp exhale. Just as quickly, he gets up. His hands are on his sides. Sharp, pointy elbows turned outwards. His back is turned towards Antoine. All bristly and defensive.
"Grizou," Paul groans, a tormented sound coming all the way from his toes, his head craned skywards. "You mess with my head."
Antoine's heart rattles against his ribs. A faulty cage, because it feels like it could burst through at any moment.
He gets to his feet, stepping around Paul, avoiding all parts sharp and dangerous.
It could be Paul's usual wide-eyed casual handsomeness, but his dark eyes are so terribly guileless. Antoine knows him too well. He can see it. He can feel it. Paul is afraid. How can you hide something like that?
"Is that a bad thing?" Antoine asks delicately as if he were addressing a spooked animal about to flee. A little bird shaking like a branch in the wind.
Move slowly. Do not frighten the animal. Stay calm.
"I don't know. I don't know. How am I supposed to know?" Paul may be afraid, but he faces a challenge head-on when it comes down to it. He stares, and stares, and stares. He makes sure Antoine never leaves his line of sight.
They're taught one crucial thing when they first arrive at the academy. Be decisive. Do not hesitate. It's hard-wired in Antoine's brain. Right or wrong, do not hesitate.
He places his palms flat on Paul's shoulders, stands on his tippy toes, and presses a single, feather-light kiss to Paul's bottom lip.
Paul allows him to do all of this. He never once makes a move to push him away. His hands hover around Antoine, a little uncertain. Funnily enough, his breathing softens. It steadies underneath Antoine.
Antoine drops back onto his heels, attempting to take a step back. It seems to ignite something in Paul, as rapid as the relentless heat of spreading fire. He moves to angle Antoine's face up, fingers underneath his chin, lining them up properly.
It's a lot different than anything Antoine is used to. Paul's mouth is full, firm, and warm, his hands large around his frame. It takes a little trying, some exploring. More clumsy and sweet than he had imagined.
Paul is bowed forward, meeting him halfway. Another immaculate display of teamwork.
Antoine can feel the first few knobs of Paul's spine underneath his fingertips. He can feel Paul move against him with utmost determination, with defeat, his very own war to wage, and Antoine might be nothing more than a casualty for the cause. And he knows he will sacrifice himself over and over if it means this. If it means being closer than ever.
He readies himself to assess the damage when he pulls away — only just enough – but Paul merely looks at him. His head is tilted slightly to the side, that same furrow forming between his eyebrows, trying to make sense of what he's seeing. Trying to make sense of Antoine, maybe.
"Is it?" Antoine prompts, sounding breathy and small to his own ears. He attempts a crooked smile to balance it out. "A bad thing?"
It takes Paul a long time to answer. Antoine counts ten breaths. He whispers Paul's name as shadows are forming, ready to knock on the window.
"Bad?" Paul croaks. He shakes his head, looking a little dazed. "But it's you."
Antoine doesn't know what that means. Paul manages to sound both struck with genuine awe and a little wretched. He laughs at himself, or Antoine, or both of them. One of his knuckles softly caresses Antoine's cheek, and then he dips down to share Antoine's shattered exhale.
When they break apart, at last, Antoine ducks his head, his face pressed to Paul's throat. The dust envelops them, forms a chrysalis around them. Bound together for as long as they stay put.
A day later, they win four to zero. Four to zero!
Antoine receives congratulations on his goal in the form of countless high-fives and back-pats. Olivier ruffles his hair, rattles him around, and hits his cheeks with all his brute-force love.
He kind of prefers it when Paul's palms neatly curve around his face.
He prefers it when Paul pulls him deep inside the arena and presses him up against the vile door of a bathroom stall. The automatic light flickers on in a starburst of acrid yellow, and Antoine tries not to laugh, but it's hard, and it comes out a little funny because his heart is in his throat. He can feel it rick-a-tick like a bomb running out of time.
Before it explodes in smoke and ashes, Antoine tilts his face up. Paul presses into him, fatally close, telling him good job, good job in everything but words, shaping himself into something small in all of his devotion.
He is entirely devoted to Antoine, entirely devoted to this moment as each second dilates endlessly.
Paul tastes like sweat. He tastes like the buzz of adrenaline still tangible on his tongue.
The light has long flickered out when Paul has said everything he wanted to. Antoine's mouth throbs, hot and raw.
Paul thumbs at it a little, attempting to make him look presentable as they step outside. He has no such troubles himself, still looking deceivingly put-together. Their boots click noisily against the linoleum.
They're two separate people, again. Two separate souls. Sometimes, the distinction gets difficult.
The next time the team gathers again in Toulouse, Paul has a trucker cap pulled low over his face as he enters the building. His eyes are hidden, cheeks angular, and his expression largely covered by shadows. Perfectly stoic and unattainable.
Antoine greets a few teammates before he approaches Paul from behind, tugging down the big headphones pulled over his ears.
Paul twists around, a protest all ready on his lips, and then he blinks once, twice.
His arms immediately open up. He curls himself around Antoine, just like always, making himself smaller and smaller. Antoine breathes in leather and sharp, expensive perfume.
"My friend," Antoine murmurs cheerily into Paul's shoulder, and Paul holds him just a little tighter, a little more purposeful.
"My friend," Paul guffaws when Antoine shows up at his door late at night with a tinfoil container filled with anything and everything greasy. The chef gave him a twice-over when he requested it, and Antoine made his face a sort of gentle pleading. It nearly always works.
They watch hours worth of NBA highlights on Paul's small laptop screen, eating with their hands, sitting cross-legged on the bedcovers.
Antoine gets a little distracted by watching Paul run a steady stream of commentary. He mocks loudly and gestures wildly. Antoine tries to calm him down, but his attempts are hollow. He leans into Paul, laughing. Up close, the larger-than-lifeness of Paul's personality becomes something more tactile, more intimate.
It mostly goes like this,
In Paul's hotel room, they play silly board games and watch past matches on his laptop.
In Antoine's room, their clothes lie limp on the floor. Sometimes, on worn, raggedy carpet. Sometimes, on shiny floorboards, with different watercolour paintings of splotched landmarks on the walls each time.
Their breaths quickening under the distant wailing of sirens through the cracked-open window, the tired hum of traffic, a playlist of old-school songs turned up to just the right volume to drone everything else out.
Hands on his stomach, thighs, and hips, nimble fingers tracing around the kaleidoscopic bruising on his skin from being thrown around the pitch.
"Like a cheetah," Paul suggests one time, mildly fascinated.
"A leopard," Antoine counters. "They're stronger."
Paul is always gentle. He leaves no marks, no traces, leaves him unscathed. A ghostly, temporary touch. Antoine tries the same.
Antoine rests his cheek on Paul's bare stomach. He lets his weary-worn body be carried by its steady rise and fall, kind and pliant underneath him. In moments like these, Antoine believes he was born to love Paul because it's real and effortless, and also kind of really, really hard.
He knows what he deserves. He doesn't chase things which do not serve him. Except,
Except that, within these moments — Paul's hand absentmindedly carding through his sweat-damp hair when they're still coming down, touch quivering almost imperceptibly. How frighteningly vulnerable — sometimes Antoine believes Paul must love him, too.
What should we do about it? What should we do?
He never outright asks Paul because then he will get that caged-in look on his face, his eyes get all wide and terrible, and Antoine thinks it's a little cruel of him to prey on a lost little bird like that.
In his dreams, he asks, Haven't I been good? Haven't I been perfect? Paul's cheeks caved in underneath his palms, and he just keeps looking at Antoine with these terrible eyes.
Haven't I earned it? he begs.
At least, the real-life version of Paul is a little more merciful.
Antoine nestles into his heat with a soft hum.
Paul's fingers map out his face, trailing down his temple, tracing the curve of his ear, faltering a little at the hook of his jaw. He must have taken a wrong turn. It's getting darker by the minute, after all. The moon is nearly veiled by the clouds. Any bird would lose its way.
Antoine tilts his face to gaze at Paul, chin digging in flesh.
Paul is already looking at him. This is no surprise. Antoine has started getting used to it. He's found himself getting used to a lot of things lately.
The only light in the room when they're together being the moon and the stars, Paul's features turning statuesque in the silver moonlight.
The quiet aftermath that's never truly quiet because Paul doesn't quite seem to realise the extent of how loud he is. A silence where his face speaks, and his hands talk tirelessly.
His love is as messy as it is tender, and he doesn't hide it. He never hides it. If anything, if anything at all, Antoine can have this.
What? Paul mouths to him. Antoine recognises its shape more than anything else.
What? Antoine mouths back. Paul traces the beginning of a grin stretching his lips, pressing the pad of his thumb tentatively to the corner of Antoine's mouth. Probing, poking. Will it bite?
"Always smiling," Paul breathes into the silence. This time, it is far from pitying. Admiring, maybe. He has the face of someone who has fallen for the very first time.
"Of course," Antoine replies, his voice soft and waning. Paul seems to like that answer, so Antoine repeats it, glad to indulge, "Of course. Always."
The clouds succeed like they always do. It's very dark inside the room. Antoine rests his forehead against Paul's side for one solitary moment and tries to make it last forever. He doesn't succeed.
In the shower, Paul kisses the teardrop-shaped water from his cheeks, tilts Antoine's chin up, and matches their breaths. Slow and steady, just like that first time. Saying, This is how I feel, and, I'm sorry I can't talk about it.
He encases Antoine's face between his hands — darkening his peripheral before Antoine ultimately closes his eyes and surrenders — trying to make him remember or forget.
Antoine swallows it. Again, and again. A love as messy as this is better than none at all.
When Antoine wakes late the following morning, missing out on breakfast, he knows that the other half of the bed will be cold and desolate.
He will find a plastic bag with two oranges hanging from the doorjamb outside, taken from the dining room.
Yes, it's better than none at all, Antoine tells himself, slicing through the orange rinds with his fingernails, leaving a stack of ribboned peels on the nightstand.
Better than none at all, Antoine knows, as the sickly-sweet sours in his mouth.