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There are good ways to wake up, there are great ways to wake up, and then there’s waking up naked, half on top of Cristiano.
Leo isn’t sure what woke him at first, until he realises Cristiano is making some sort of effort to move away without waking him up.
Leo absolutely won’t allow it. He wraps his arms around Cris’s waist and hopes that’ll be enough to keep Cristiano from trying to go on his morning run or swim or weights programme.
Cris, however, seems determined to get up, especially now that Leo’s awake anyway, and gently pushes Leo aside.
Leo groans in frustration that apparently it’s going to take verbal communication this early just to keep Cristiano in bed. “No,” he whines, not letting go of Cris’s waist.
“I was going to bring you some mate.”
Leo hesitates, and half-opens his eyes to peer at Cristiano. “Okay,” he says, reluctantly letting to, his need for caffeine winning out for the moment.
He presses his face back into the pillow, and he can’t stop himself from smiling when Cris drops a kiss into his hair before getting up. Then he can hear Cris moving around the room, pulling on clothes by the sound of it – Leo doesn’t love that but he can remedy it later – and finally softly closing the door behind him.
Leo doesn’t move at all for a good few minutes. The last few days have been stressful and amazing and draining and glorious, and he’s tired, though not quite as tired as he had been in Qatar or in Buenos Aires or on the plane to Madeira.
He’s almost drifted back to sleep by the time Cris comes back, handing Leo his mate and sliding back under the covers.
Leo takes a few grateful sips. “This is perfect,” he says.
Cris beams at him. “Told you I wanted to work on the boyfriend skills.”
Leo smiles. “Well, you’re doing great.” After a moment, he asks what he wanted to ask the night before but hadn’t known how. “Did I do okay yesterday?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, meeting your mother. I don’t want her to hate me.”
“Leo, you were amazing, seriously.”
“It wasn’t obvious I was freaking out?”
“Oh no, it was super obvious. But she loves you. She already asked me when you’ll be around again.”
“I was trying not to say the wrong thing. Kun had been sending me all these suggestions for conversation -”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Why were you even worried?”
“Well,” Leo says. “I just – I was worried she’d hate me or something. I saw a video once of you explaining you would never keep seeing someone who didn’t get on with your mother.”
Cris frowns. “What video?”
“Some interview ages ago.”
“Ages ago,” Cris says, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
“Shut up,” Leo mutters.
“So how long ago were you obsessively watching my videos?”
“I was not obsessively – as if you weren’t doing the same thing.”
“Yeah, but I was doing it in a know-your-enemy kind of way.”
“Uh-huh, okay,” Leo says.
“Well. Ninety percent of the time, anyway.”
Leo smiles and decides to let Cris get away with it for now.
They spend the day at home. They spend every day together at home because they can’t exactly go anywhere. Leo is so grateful for a whole day where he can lie on the sofa and watch Cris play stupid games on his phone that he could cry. He can’t remember the last time he had a day without demands on his time.
Cris has just made him another cup of mate – he’s really, really taking the boyfriend thing seriously if he enables Leo to have caffeine – when Cris’s phone buzzes on the armrest of the couch.
He glances at the screen and groans. “I have to take that,” he mutters. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Leo says, happily clutching his mate. “It’s just a call.”
Cris heads into the next room, and Leo can hear him talk quietly but rapidly in English. He doesn’t pay attention and ends up checking his phone, replying to a bunch of messages so people don’t think he’s dead (I know you’re having like a sex reunion ew!! can’t believe I just put that in writing but pls let me know you’re still alive it’s been like a day I haven’t heard from you, Kun’s written). Eventually, though, Leo realises that it’s been a long time since he’s heard Cristiano’s voice in the next room. He gets up and peers through the doorway. Cris is nowhere to be seen.
Leo checks room by room. He finally finds Cris upstairs in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, hands clutching his phone in his lap, clearly done with the call. He looks up when Leo enters, and something definitely happened.
“What’s wrong?” Leo asks.
“What?” Cris says. “I – there’s nothing…” He trails off.
Leo sits down next to him on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on Cris’s thigh. “Sure you don’t want to tell me?”
Cris sighs. “I – it was about. Clubs.”
“Okay,” Leo says.
“I’m talking with – that was an update about – I’m going to go to Al-Nassr.”
Leo swallows hard. “Right,” he says. “Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia.”
“Yes,” Cris says. He’s not looking Leo in the eyes.
“When – when did you start considering that?” Leo asks.
Cris drums his fingers on the mattress. “Um, a – a little while ago.”
“Before I got here.”
Cris nods.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not all settled, and you still had World Cup matches ahead of you, and – I – yeah.”
“Right,” Leo says, instead of any of the things he’s thinking.
“The – the money’s insanely good,” Cris says. A grin flickers across his face, but it’s the kind of grin he uses at press conferences or in interviews. Not the kind that’s for Leo.
Leo can’t smile back. He has no idea why he’s upset, but he is. “That’s – yeah,” he says. “I mean. Good. Great.”
“You think so?”
“Sure.”
“You’re angry,” Cris says.
“No,” Leo says. It’s stupid to lie, but he can’t help it. He has no right to be angry.
“Okay, then,” Cris says. He gets up and paces the room. Leo hates seeing him so clearly upset and he hates himself for being angry instead of supportive. He knows what football can be like, how on the worst days it grinds your bones and your muscles and your mind down into nothing but numbers. He knows so fucking well how exhausting it can be, and he wishes he could just walk over to Cris and hug him and kiss him and not be angry at all.
After he’s crossed the room a few times, Cris turns back to him. “Can you just say something, please,” he says.
“I -” Leo sighs. “It’s fine.”
“You’re not happy for me?”
Leo hesitates way too long.
“Fine, I get it,” Cris says.
“It’s not that I’m not – I just don’t see why you have to give up.”
“I’m not – I’m not giving up,” Cris says.
“Can we be honest here?” Leo asks. “It’s not like anyone’s going there for the quality of play, and I just think you could get something here -”
“I don’t need something here,” Cris says.
“Right, you can say that in the interviews, but can’t you at least tell the truth when it’s just us?” He should shut up, he really should, but he’s still angry, and he still doesn’t understand why.
“What are you even talking about?” Cris says. “I don’t need – this is not what I need right now.”
“I’m just – I’m not sure it’s the best decision you could make.”
“Maybe – maybe you’re jealous – because of the money I’ll -”
“You,” Leo cuts him off, getting up, “Are being such a Madridista right now!”
Cris just stares at him for a moment. Then he says, “What?”
“You heard me.” He’s understanding his own anger better now, because he suddenly realises that this reminds him of when he heard that Cris was going to leave La Liga, and how even though they’d been nothing but professional rivals, he’d still felt betrayed back then. He remembers complaining to his teammates, He didn’t even tell me, and them looking at him weird and saying, Why would he, and Leo not having any answer, back then.
“I haven’t played for Madrid in years,” Cris says.
Leo crosses his arms petulantly. “Well, since it’s apparently all about the money, you know.”
“Oh, and you went to Paris for the integrity, did you?”
Leo laughs incredulously. He knows he started this, but throwing Paris into his face is not fair. “Fuck this,” he says, and pushes Cris towards the bed and down onto the mattress.
Cristiano is looking up at him and Leo is remembering all their best matches, how he used to feel with the grass under his feet and Cristiano in white on the other side, and how he used to feel after, going home and getting off and pretending it wasn’t about Cristiano.
Those memories aren’t really helping him keep a clear head right now, but then again, he doesn’t want to think clearly anyway. He pushes Cris onto his back and kisses him, and Cris clearly doesn’t mind at all. He just holds onto Leo’s waist and bucks up his hips and bites at Leo’s bottom lip, like he always does in Leo’s best memories and fantasies.
“Are we still fighting?” Cris asks when they break apart to breathe.
“I don’t know,” Leo says, a little wildly, pinning Cris’s wrists to the mattress on either side of his head. “Don’t make me think about things right now.”
“Okay, yeah, not thinking sounds great,” Cristiano says, so they don’t.
Leo wakes up feeling slightly disoriented. It’s dark by now, and windy, the curtains blowing away from the open floor-to-ceiling window. It’s not really cold, but after so long in the heat of Qatar, the coolness in the air is a relief. Cris is asleep next to him, an arm thrown over Leo’s chest. Leo watches him for a little while. Cristiano is almost always up before Leo, so Leo hardly ever gets to watch him sleep. In fact, Cristiano is frequently very intense about getting the most out of their time and waking Leo up early as well, which is something Leo has started accepting in the same grudging yet adoring way that he accepts Cristiano having won any ballons d’or.
He very gently extricates himself from Cris’s arms and quietly walks over to the window. He stands there for a moment, enjoying the wind. He is a bit cold by now, but he doesn’t close the window yet. There’s a rumbling in the distance that might be thunder or might just be planes passing overhead. He wonders which lies he’ll tell about where he is in case the weather is too bad for him to fly home as planned, and then shuts down that line of thinking. He often ends up wishfully thinking about things that might happen to prevent him leaving when he’s with Cristiano, and it’s stupid – of course he’s going to be back home on time, whether he wants to or not. He slides the window closed.
He wants to go back to bed, but they didn’t shower earlier, and he still feels slightly tense about earlier, so he heads into the bathroom and ducks into the shower. He feels more relaxed the second the spray hits him. He knows that they kind of made up, but they also kind of didn’t. He knows it’s fine, they’ve had far worse fights, though not many, but he still wishes they had talked about things properly.
After a few minutes, he hears the door open and reaches out and wipes his hand across the steamed-up glass of the shower to smile at Cris. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
Cristiano shakes his head. “Can I join you?”
“Please do,” Leo says, and Cris quickly steps into the shower, immediately pulling Leo in for a kiss.
When they break apart, Cris studies him for a moment, then asks, “Are you still mad at me?”
“No,” Leo says.
Cris nods. He looks good, his hair wet and drops from the spray getting caught in his eyelashes.
“I wasn’t really mad at you, anyway,” Leo admits. “I just wanted to start a fight. I just – I just don’t want to think that maybe we’ve already played against each other for the last time. But you have to play. I understand.”
Cristiano nods again, but doesn’t say anything. He just reaches out for some shampoo and starts to lather Leo’s hair. Leo closes his eyes and lets his head fall forward, leaning his forehead against Cris’s chest and enjoying the feeling of Cris’s fingers in his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says against Cris’s skin. He’s not sure it’s audible over the shower, but Cris is gently scratching his scalp and saying I love you so probably things are going to be okay.
Eventually, he realises that Cristiano has stopped lathering his hair properly and is just trying to make it stick up in spikes.
Leo pulls away slightly to say, “You’re ridiculous.”
“You look so great with your hair like this.”
Leo rolls his eyes and ducks his head back under the spray to rinse his hair. He reaches out to turn off the water but Cris stops him with a look in his eyes that Leo knows very well, and that makes his heartbeat speed up in anticipation.
“We have time,” Cris says, kissing Leo and backing him up against the tiled wall. Leo flinches at the cold and Cris starts apologising, but Leo cuts him off with a kiss. There is no part of this he’ll ever complain about.
There’s a voice in his head that reminds him that actually, they don’t have time, actually, in less than twenty-four hours he’ll be on a plane again with no idea when they can next find a couple of days together, that when they wake up in the morning it’ll only be half a day left -
“Leo,” Cris says, fingers pressing into Leo’s hips, but gently.
“Yeah,” Leo gasps. “It’s fine.”
Cris is watching him carefully. “Okay,” he says, pressing a brief kiss to Leo’s lips. When he pulls away, he adds, “I know it’s only until tomorrow, but for what it’s worth, I think the quality of our time more than makes up for the quantity.”
“Oh,” Leo says. “The quality of what are you talking about, exactly?”
“Let me remind you,” Cris says against Leo’s lips, his hands moving from Leo’s hips to his thighs.
Leo briefly calculates when Cristiano will next have to be anywhere public.
“What are you doing?” Cris mutters, lips now against Leo’s ear.
“Trying to remember your calendar,” Leo says. He figures Cristiano has no pressing appointments coming up, so he can basically leave any marks he likes.
“Why are you trying – fuck,” Cris says, cut off by Leo biting his neck. “Yeah, that’s – okay, Leo.”
Leo looks up at him. “Alright?”
“Of course it’s fucking alright – why are you so – God, you look, fuck,” Cris says incoherently.
“I love you,” Leo says, more or less carefully biting at Cris’s neck again.
Cristiano pulls away and Leo is about to apologise or protest or both, but then Cris drops to his knees, and Leo, blissfully, doesn’t have to worry about anything at all.
It takes them a while to get back to bed, but eventually they crawl back under the covers, exhausted, their hair still damp.
Leo feels Cristiano pulling him close and happily presses closer, tangling their legs.
“Wake me up for the sunrise,” he mutters in between yawns. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” Cristiano says, fingers playing with Leo’s hair. “You’re going to complain about it being too early, though.”
“Hm,” Leo makes in agreement. “But you’ll wake me anyway, right? Promise? I want to see it.”
Cristiano kisses him very softly. “Promise.”