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Sonny wasn’t expecting joining LAFC to be easy, but he always assumed the only issues would be moving to a different country to play a different type of football. He wasn’t worried about making friends, that came easy to him—years and years of playing for the same team did that to him, especially when he was universally appointed the unofficial welcomer of new players. Even the concept of joining as a new arrival didn’t scare him; he knew English enough now to bridge the kind of gap that made things difficult when he first joined Tottenham.
The problem was something else entirely.
This time, he was joining a new club not as a fresh-faced youngster with an unproven record, but instead as a Golden Boot winner, a Europa League winner, the ex-captain of a Premier League team. His name carried weight now, too much weight as far as Sonny was concerned, because his new teammates idolised him to a nearly suffocating extent.
They had placed him on a golden pedestal, like he was already a legend of the club and not a player that had instead only joined midway through the MLS season. It was as unnecessary as it was embarrassing.
Being given the captain’s armband at Spurs was pressure enough, but it at least had a reason behind it—he had been there long enough to deserve it and had embraced the role easily, even if the concept of the title scared him to death. Sonny never wanted to have everyone’s eyes and attention on him; he was content being a fixture of the team and little more, maybe his extroversion had painted a different picture for others, but it was the truth.
So suddenly having this unwavering spotlight on him was stifling. It meant his teammates were almost scared to talk to him. They stuttered when they spoke, and every conversation seemed solely to revolve around asking him for advice and tactical guidance instead of their actual captain. He felt disconnected to them all, he barely knew anything about them but they somehow knew everything about him. It was like two one-sided relationships that could never quite join in the middle.
Sonny would’ve felt impossibly lonely if it wasn’t for Denis, who managed to ignore the actions of the rest of their teammates and talk to Sonny like he was a normal person. Their friendship didn’t quite make sense. They weren’t exactly polar opposites, but weren’t altogether similar either. Something just unknowingly clicked.
It reminded Sonny of his relationship with someone he was very much trying to get over.
It was always going to be impossible to forget Cuti. Sonny missed his old teammates, sure, but he missed Cuti perhaps more than anyone. Maybe it was the fact they clicked in a similar way to him and Denis, but also maybe it was because the feelings Sonny had been harbouring for the better part of five years never once wavered in either their presence or their intensity. He still felt them like the stinging remnants of an old scar that never seemed to entirely heal. They buzzed quietly, but audibly all the same, in the back of his mind every day, and only intensified when he watched Spurs games.
The sight of Cuti never failed to make Sonny’s heart beat out of his chest, but when the captain’s armband was now pulled high on Cuti’s bicep and his necessity to win had seemingly multiplied to unprecedented levels, Sonny felt everything so much more. He watched as Cuti somehow scored goal after goal, rescuing games from the brink of a crushing loss. It was like he was trying to fill a void left by something.
Sonny, of course, knew what that something was, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to acknowledge it properly.
Cuti fought and fought, screamed and berated, attacked and defended in unrelentingly equal measure, and Sonny missed him so much it felt like a part of him was missing. As if when Sonny left, the part of his heart that Cuti had somehow settled himself into had been ripped out and never replaced. He had tried to fill it, but nothing seemed to work. Deep down he knew it never would.
So, Sonny tried to keep moving, acting like nothing was amiss because if he focused too much on the man he had left behind, the hole would only grow bigger and bigger until it encompassed the entirety of his heart altogether.
Denis was nice; loud, confident, funny, and he stuck to Sonny in a way not too dissimilar from how his old teammates used to. But he wasn’t Cuti.
And, crucially, he never would be.
-:-
In what felt like a blink of an eye, the MLS season started again, and with it came renewed pressure and more of the ever-present disconnect between Sonny and his teammates. It was growing exhausting, really, so much so that when June rolled around and the World Cup began, Sonny caught the first flight he could to get away from it all. He almost felt bad about his glaring urgency.
Almost.
He beat the rest of his international teammates to the hotel, despite being the only one who actually lived and played in the host country. It was quicker for him to get there, he reasoned, but his teammates had further to travel. They needed more time to settle in and beat the kind of jet-lag that Sonny avoided altogether. Everyone looked surprised to see him there, but most put it down to eagerness more than anything else.
It was laughable how different the reality was. Sonny was excited for the tournament, of course he was, but it was really only a minute part of his reasoning to escape.
Perhaps escape was too strong of a word, fabricated in its intensity and far too dramatic, but Sonny truly felt like he was breaking out of somewhere that was choking him hard enough to stop him from breathing. It was a desperately needed break, regardless of how long it would end up lasting.
“You look tired,” Heechan said, bumping his shoulder against Sonny’s as he sat down beside him.
Sonny let out a long, drawn out breath that loosened the string that pulled his shoulders up towards his ears. Another breath dispelled some of the residual stress from his bones, and one more was enough to bring a smile back to his face.
“It’s been busy,” Sonny said, “not in a bad way, just… busy.”
Heechan hummed in agreement, undeterred by Sonny’s lacklustre excuse. Someone back in LA would’ve prodded him further, trying desperately to act as a strange kind of therapist that Sonny didn’t really need. He was tired, he was busy, there was nothing else to it.
Nothing he could tell his teammates anyway.
“I don’t envy you, most of us have had a break before this,” Heechan mumbled through a mouthful of food, “the Premier League ended a month ago.”
Sonny knew that. He had woken up despicably early the day after one of their longest away game trips just to watch Tottenham’s last game of the season. Just like he did for every other match. If he was able to watch them, he always would, regardless of the time or the day or where he was. His teammates had grown accustomed to it, conceding the remote to him in the training centre even if they were already absorbed in another game—whatever Sonny wanted, he got.
In any other circumstance it would’ve annoyed him, but Sonny would happily pull rank if it meant he could watch his old team.
That, and he was desperate to catch even the smallest glimpses of Cuti. If he didn’t know any better Sonny would say he was scared that he’d forget what Cuti looked like. But that was something so impossible the idea couldn’t even form in his head.
Given a pen and paper, he could probably draw a picture of Cuti that was scarily detailed—down to every tattoo and mark and mole on his skin, every stroke of the pen meticulous and precise until it looked as though the drawing were a tracing of a photograph rather than something drawn from memory.
Heechan didn’t need to know that, though. None of them did, not even Cuti himself.
“And we’re only just halfway through our season,” Sonny settled on, “it’s… weird.”
He had intended to deflect the conversation away from the Premier League, but it felt instead like he had invited a host of questions he didn’t want to answer.
“Do you miss it?” Heechan said, predictably latching onto the offer.
“I miss a lot of it, but the football here is easier, I guess. Less intense,” Sonny said.
He didn’t even believe the words himself.
Heechan frowned, “that’s what you like about it? Not, I don’t know, a new team? New people to meet?”
“That too, I’m just not used to being the new guy.”
“They don’t like you?”
They like me too much.
Sonny bit back that sentiment even as it danced daringly on the tip of his tongue, practically begging to be let out.
“Of course they do,” he said instead, “it’s just different. Not in a bad way, though. Just… very different.”
Heechan nodded slowly, looking equally as eager as Sonny to say something he perhaps shouldn’t. Sonny barrelled on before he had a chance.
“Have you seen any of the other teams?” He asked.
“I wanted to go see José, but their hotel is so far away,” Heechan said, “I mean I knew this country was big, but you don’t realise until you’re actually in it how big it actually is. If I went to see him it’d take me longer than any away trip I’ve ever been on, I don’t know how you do it.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Sonny hummed lowly in response.
“I want to try see Messi though, so maybe if I hang around the hotel enough I might get a chance. You’ve probably met him so many times now, I’m getting jealous.”
It was a light-hearted comment, probably a joke meant to make Sonny laugh, but Sonny’s focus was suddenly zeroed in.
“Why would you see him at the hotel?” Sonny asked, “why would he be here?”
“The Argentina team are staying in the hotel that’s like five minutes away, didn’t you know?”
No. Sonny did not know.
He’d feel affronted at the fact no one had told him, until he remembered that he didn’t really have a reason to be told. Maybe if it was the last World Cup someone would’ve mentioned it to him so he could go and check in on his Spurs teammates, but it wasn’t four years ago anymore. He had been gone for nearly a year—most people would’ve assumed he’d have fallen out of contact with them one way or another. He’d already had his farewell game, after all. No matter how much he tried to frame it as nothing more than a ‘see you soon’, it felt, ultimately, like the indefinite closing of a chapter.
The longest and most fulfilled chapter of his life, but just a chapter all the same.
So no, he didn’t have a particularly legitimate reason to be told, at least according to others anyway. But if anyone knew how much Sonny still carried the burden of his affection towards Cuti on his shoulders like an ever-present weight, they’d have told him before anyone else.
They didn’t know, obviously. But Sonny couldn’t help the way his heart twisted as if it were the most vicious of betrayals.
“Oh,” Sonny bit out, “I had no idea.”
“Did you want to go see him?” Heechan said.
“No it’s fine. Like you said I see him all the time.”
“I wasn’t talking about Messi.”
Ah.
Sonny felt his face burn an incriminating red. So he wasn’t good at hiding things. He cycled back through their conversation desperately, trying to find out where he must’ve slipped up enough to warrant Heechan’s blatant implication. He came up frustratingly blank.
“’Hermanito,’” Heechan said, almost wistfully, “aren’t you older than him?”
Later, Sonny would have to ask why Heechan had memorised part of Cuti’s caption from their impromptu reunion back in December. But it wasn’t the time for that now.
“I am, it’s just… a joke, probably,” Sonny scrambled to say.
“Am I missing the punchline or something?”
Sonny grumbled and busied himself with staring into the plate of untouched food in front of him like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
“You should go see him, I’ll send you the address,” Heechan said, pulling his phone from his pocket at breakneck speed.
Sonny was halfway to protesting, but his own phone had already buzzed on the table, a pinned location staring him in the face.
It felt like looking at his own gravestone.
-:-
Sonny didn’t know if he was meant to knock at the door of an obscenely priced hotel or just waltz in like nothing was amiss. He was a footballer too, it wasn’t strange for him to be there, but it felt wrong.
In reality, it probably looked weirder for him to be lingering outside the doors, but he was still undecided whether he wanted to see Cuti at all. One part of his brain was telling him to just bite the bullet and the other was telling him to run back to his own hotel and never look back.
Sonny couldn’t decide which one was worse.
He wasn’t scared of Cuti, per se, he was more just scared of the situation as a whole. What was he meant to say? Small-talk seemed like an unnecessary and frankly unthinkable concept; they had never had to resort to such a thing before, so why start now?
But Sonny couldn’t just jump into a conversation like nothing had changed—because it had. So many things had changed, in fact, that it was nearly vertiginous to think about. He didn’t think Cuti himself would’ve changed all that much, if anything, the parts of him that Sonny loved had only seemed to amplify in the time he was gone. It was more so the situation that had changed: they still played the same sport, sure, they still competed at their respective highest-levels, fine, but Sonny was tired, whilst Cuti never seemed to tire in the slightest.
Put simply, they were at different stages in their lives and their careers, so there was less to talk about. Such an excuse was so laughably untrue, but Sonny clung to it all the same as he took a stuttering step back from the hotel doors.
It wasn’t the right time. Maybe it eventually would be, or maybe the right time would never come at all, but Sonny was willing to take the risk.
Another step back should’ve been the end of it all had he not instead stumbled into the weight of someone behind him.
He was halfway to apologising before he even turned around, but the words died on his tongue immediately.
“Sonny?”
The weight of Cuti’s hands on his waist were as familiar as they were alien. They grabbed with the same force as they always had, but Sonny had filed the memory of that force far away in the back of his mind long ago, for the sake of thinking too much about something he would never get back.
Turns out ‘never’ was a strong word.
“You’re here,” Cuti said, halfway between a question and a statement.
Sonny shuffled back out of Cuti’s space, but the hands around him didn’t move. If anything they pressed harder.
“I was- I went on a walk,” Sonny said, “just around our hotel. It’s only a couple minutes away from here, did you know that? I had no idea, Heechan told me, you know Heechan, right?”
He was blabbering. Practically nonsensically. Starting a sentence before he had even properly finished the last.
“He plays for Wolves,” Cuti replied with a nod, “I know him.”
“Right, of course, you’re still- you play in the same league.”
“You talked about him a lot too.”
It wasn’t quite awkward, but it was a damn near thing.
Sonny wasn’t a complete idiot. He knew the idea of Cuti sharing the same feelings that still swirled around Sonny’s body even after he left was impossible.
But a foolish, love-sick part of him believed the idea anyway.
There were a few too many instances of Cuti staring longer than he should’ve and trailing hands over parts of Sonny’s body that he shouldn’t have been touching. They lingered, too; never just an insignificant swipe of a finger or a fleeting palm against clothed skin. It was always with unwarranted confidence and the kind of air of possession reserved for—well.
For two people in love. Or at the very least two people who were close enough to claim an ownership of sorts over each other’s bodies.
Sometimes, Cuti acted like he was both of those things.
Whether it was intentional or not, Sonny had no idea, but perhaps he wanted it to be so badly he had convinced himself of something that was entirely unfeasible.
As such, the stiltedness of their conversation was like coming crashing back down to earth. Sonny now saw everything from before as what it was—overzealous affection borne from proximity and an unwavering dependence on each other. It wasn’t reverence, nor was it adoration, it was just Cuti’s way of treating someone he cared about, as a friend and nothing more.
“How is LA?” Cuti asked to fill the silence that had at some point apparently stretched too long to bear.
“Good. Yeah, good. Fun,” Sonny said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
Predictably, there wasn’t enough of it to convince even himself.
“You made a new friend.”
The absence of plurality was strikingly obvious. Sonny frowned.
“Friends?” He prompted.
Cuti didn’t miss a beat, “friend.”
Denis.
Sonny could fill in the gaps, but what the resulting sentence amounted to made no sense. Maybe it was little more than just a genuine observation. Maybe he had seen Sonny’s posts, which only ever really included Denis, if anyone at all. Or, maybe Cuti could read him so well he knew how Sonny was feeling deep down, sensing his underlying insecurity at having so much attention on him from his new teammates.
“They’re a bit… full-on,” Sonny said slowly, like he was testing the opinions he had never once intended to admit to anyone, “Denis is full-on.”
Cuti’s head cocked slightly to the side, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Sonny winced, “I don’t know another word for it, sorry. It’s like he’s always there, always loud and… yeah. Full-on. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
“’Full-on,’” Cuti echoed, “I thought you liked that.”
It took a beat for Sonny to process Cuti’s words. When he did, he blinked—once, twice; eyelids stuttering like what Sonny imagined his voice would’ve done had he spoken in that moment.
He only realised Cuti’s hands had still been on him when they fell away, leaving behind the kind of chill that made no sense in the sweltering heat of a mid-summer day in America.
Cuti sounded… bitter, for lack of a better word. Sonny had heard that tone many times before, but it was the first time it had been directed at him. It was always aimed at someone else, or just a situation in general, never at Sonny.
There was a special voice he seemed to reserve only for Sonny, he spoke softer, more measured, loud still but never to an uncomfortably overwhelming extent. Almost attention-seeking in a way, like he was forcing Sonny to focus on him and him only.
Sometimes it felt like Cuti was trying to furtively occupy all of Sonny’s senses at once; Sonny heard him across crowded dressing rooms and busy pitches, voice somehow always clear and intelligible regardless of where they were. He was always close enough to touch, so close Sonny couldn’t see anything past Cuti’s body, and closer still that all he could smell was the lingering scent of Cuti’s cologne.
That left one last sense—taste. But Sonny couldn’t let himself think about that.
All he could think about anyway was why Cuti was speaking to him with such detachedness and looking at him with an indifference that didn’t at all suit his face.
Maybe it was bitterness then. Bitterness that Sonny left when he did; not quite on a whim, but with such short notice that it probably appeared that way. Cuti hadn’t said anything bad back then, he had hugged Sonny with enough strength to hurt and whispered encouragements and well-wishes into Sonny’s ears whilst he did. It was the sort of goodbye that Sonny expected from the person who he had spent years and years with.
Even their reunion back in January was at least somewhat normal, rushed perhaps by the circumstances but nothing like now.
Sonny couldn’t blame Cuti for being cold, but it made every drop of foolish hope he still had left that Cuti felt the same evaporate into the now thin and frosty air between them.
“It’s a different kind of full-on to how you were,” Sonny said, before scrambling to correct himself, “to how the rest of the team were. It was okay when it was you guys.”
Cuti hummed absently, “you look tired.”
“Heechan said the same thing.”
“Then we must be right, no?”
“Yeah, you are.”
Cuti tested a hand against the ball of Sonny’s wrist, touch so soft Sonny wondered if it was even there at all. It was too soft—nothing like how Cuti used to pull and grab with a nearly white-knuckled grip. Anyone else would’ve perceived Cuti’s touch as deliberately gentle, like he was touching something sacred he was too scared to break, but Sonny wasn’t anyone else, he knew Cuti too well. It was the nail in the proverbial coffin: Cuti was angry. Or at least near enough to it.
“You should…” Cuti began, trailing off with a dissatisfied sigh. Sonny didn’t need to hear the end of it.
“I should go, yeah,” he said.
Cuti’s grip strengthened belatedly.
“I’ll see you again at some point,” Sonny said whilst wiggling his hand free.
It was cowardly to turn his back, and even more so when he sped into a walk quick enough to deter anyone from following him. Maybe Cuti had shouted something at his back, or chased him the first few feet until he realised it was a lost cause.
Or maybe he just stood there and watched as Sonny left, unmoving and stoic, disinterested in the entire situation and in Sonny as well.
Whichever it was, Sonny would probably never find out anyway.
-:-
It was a week or so before Sonny could bring himself to think about Cuti again. He had been trying to practice restraint; busying himself with anything and everything so his mind didn’t wander to other, much more dangerous things.
It worked well enough, for a while at least. Sonny knew he wouldn’t be able to run away from the problem forever, but he was forced to acknowledge it sooner than he would’ve liked.
“You look tired,” Kangin said.
Sonny was beginning to grow sick of hearing that sentence.
“I’m not,” he deflected instead. He didn’t want to give another person the satisfaction of recognising the obvious exhaustion he was sure was showing on his face.
Kangin narrowed his eyes, frustratingly knowingly.
“I’m not, I promise,” Sonny said again, “just busy, you know? Preparing for the tournament and everything.”
“What’s bothering you?” Kangin pressed.
“Preparing for the tournament, I just told you.”
“You’re forgetting I’ve seen you in so many tournaments before this, you’ve never looked this… sad?”
Kangin’s look was questioning and concerned in equal measure. For someone so much younger than Sonny, Kangin suddenly seemed about ten times more emotionally mature.
It wasn’t stifling in the same way as his LAFC teammates, though. Sonny wasn’t really sure why—Kangin was prying more than he probably should, making assumptions purely based on the look on Sonny’s face and his lacklustre responses, but it didn’t feel as imposing.
Kangin knew him so much better, he guessed, so it felt more like a general inquisition than an incessant attempt to prod and pry to pick apart every little part of Sonny’s emotions. His new teammates felt more like tenderfeet psychologists than friends offering a shoulder to cry on.
“I’m not sad. It’s something else, I just don’t know what,” Sonny said, an admission left purposefully unelaborated.
It wasn’t a lie, he didn’t know what he was feeling, he only knew the reason why he was feeling it.
“Heechan told me you went to see Cuti,” Kangin said.
Of course he did. Sonny wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
“We barely talked, it’s nothing.”
“Even if Heechan hadn’t mentioned it I could’ve guessed anyway, you only ever look like this because of something to do with Cuti.”
Sonny frowned, “I’ve hardly even mentioned him to you before, how could you possibly know?”
“You’re not as hard to read as you think you are, Sonny.”
It was becoming increasingly apparent that that was the case, but it made little sense that Kangin could read him this well.
Sonny didn’t make a habit of talking too much about Cuti to anyone, in fear of spilling the secret he always fought so hard to hide. Sure, it was impossible not to mention him in some way; it wasn’t a secret they had been close, even before they were pushed together as captain and vice-captain, but that closeness should never have been interpreted as anything more. Especially not by people who he didn’t see nearly as much as he saw his Spurs teammates.
How Heechan and Kangin had realised there was something up between the two of them made no sense. He could only hope they hadn’t picked up on anything else.
“It’s nothing serious,” Sonny said, defeatedly, “I just think he’s mad at me for leaving. He was being weird with me.”
“It didn’t look that way back when you last saw him, though. You both looked normal in that picture,” Kangin said.
Once again, Sonny wondered why someone else knew so much about that damnable post back in December.
“It was normal, I don’t know what changed,” Sonny sighed, “maybe I’ve been gone so long now it’s awkward for him. We’re different now, I guess.”
Kangin’s eyebrows furrowed, like he was trying to figure out something that didn’t quite make sense.
“You aren’t, though. You’re the same, and so is he,” he said.
“How do you know so much about him?”
“You don’t realise how much you talk about him, do you?”
Sonny’s mouth opened and closed around every word under the sun, but he still couldn’t figure out what to say.
“Every time I see you it’s Cuti this, Cuti that,” Kangin barrelled on, “just like it was when you were still at Spurs.”
“I don’t— I talk about the other guys just as much.”
“Sonny.”
It felt embarrassing to be admonished by Kangin of all people. His tone was so knowing it was unbearable.
“I didn’t notice,” Sonny acquiesced.
It was the truth.
He truly thought he talked about Cuti to a normal extent, nothing out of the ordinary—sure, it could be that he spoke about Cuti in a slightly different manner, more of an air of familiarity perhaps, but he had always imagined it to be at the same frequency as he talked about the rest of his old teammates.
Clearly not.
“I can tell. But you really do, Sonny. Honestly I was getting sick of it, watching you pine over him,” Kangin said.
Sonny spluttered out an inhuman noise, “I do not pine over him.”
“Sonny.”
It was spoken in exactly the same tone as before. Sonny hated it.
“He’s just… different to the others,” Sonny said, “not in any particular way, he just treats me differently for some reason. Like Denis does, you know?”
Kangin’s eyes lit up like he had just won the lottery.
“Oh my God, that’s what it is!” He nearly screamed, “it’s Denis, of course it’s Denis.”
Sonny frowned, “what about Denis?”
“Cuti is mad that you’re so close with Denis!”
Sonny couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Kangin, what the hell are you talking about?” He hissed, looking around the hotel restaurant, scandalised. No one was paying them much mind, but it didn’t stop Sonny from offering a silent prayer that no one had heard them.
“He’s jealous of Denis. Denis is clingy in the same way Cuti was with you, he posts about you all the time, talks about you all the time, you always repost his stuff too, so Cuti definitely sees it,” Kangin rushed out, like he had finally found enough evidence to prove a lifechanging theory.
Sonny, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous. Even if the confidence in Kangin’s tone stupidly made him doubt his fatalistic attitude for a mere second.
“He has no reason to be jealous though,” Sonny said.
“Are you being stupid on purpose or are you actually this dense?” Kangin asked, without a single ounce of sarcasm in his voice. It was a genuine question.
Sonny felt like dying. Whether it was from embarrassment or the implications of what Kangin was saying he had no idea.
“You’re being stupid,” Sonny mumbled weakly, unable to offer anything more.
“Go ask him then.”
Sonny damn near slapped him.
“What, just walk up to Cuti and ask him directly if he’s jealous over someone he’s never even met?”
“Yeah,” Kangin said like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Absolutely not.”
“Guess he’ll never know you’re hopelessly in love with him then.”
This time, Sonny did slap him.
He whacked an open palm on Kangin’s arm, hard enough to hurt but not as hard as he probably should’ve. Kangin’s voice was louder than it should be at the best of times, but the content of such a sentence made it feel louder than usual.
“I said that as a joke, actually,” Kangin laughed, “but your reaction tells me I was right.”
Sonny’s head fell into his hands in a futile attempt to hide from the fact he had been tricked embarrassingly easily.
The world didn’t feel like it was ending, though, which was nice. Sonny always thought that when someone found out, it’d be enough to kill him off entirely.
“I’m not in love with him. It’s just a stupid… thing,” Sonny said, muffled by his palms.
“A crush? That’s adorable.”
“Do you want another slap?”
Kangin laughed again despite Sonny’s words, finding far too much hilarity in the situation.
“You should at least test if he feels the same,” he said, “otherwise you’ll never know.”
Sonny sighed, “and what if he doesn’t?”
“You can move on, simple as that.”
It was frustratingly logical.
Sonny had been clinging onto some kind of misplaced hope for years, to the point where he had essentially permanently prevented himself from moving on. It was the most minute of possibilities, but a possibility all the same. Sonny could never quite let it go.
“And how in the world would I do that?” He asked.
Kangin spoke without missing a beat, “see if he’s jealous, if he is then I’m right. And trust me, I’m always right.”
Sonny rolled his eyes. Kangin was hardly ever right, but he couldn’t deny it wasn’t the worst idea he had ever had.
There was a chance that Cuti’s reaction, or lack thereof, would break Sonny’s heart into a million pieces, but at least he’d finally be able to let go. It was a cruel method, but one that’d cause him the least amount of pain in the long run.
Or at least that’s what he hoped anyway.
-:-
Sonny couldn’t think of a single other trio of people who were worse suited to devising such a plan as he, Heechan and Kangin were.
Heechan had latched onto Kangin’s theory with predictably little convincing. He nodded frantically through the entirety of Kangin’s presentation of the suggested plan of action before bursting into rapturous applause and launching into a speech about how Kangin was some kind of genius. Which, although Sonny already knew was a horrifically untrue likening, only became an even more applicable antonym for what Kangin actually was.
It seemed as though Heechan and Kangin had the combined intelligence of a six year old when faced with such an idea, something that, in conjunction with Sonny’s underlying adversity to the idea altogether, resulted in a disastrous mix of idiocy and apprehension.
Heechan’s suggestions of how to make Cuti jealous were like something straight out of a soap opera, whilst Kangin’s were decidedly more inappropriate, in a way that made Sonny’s face flame at the implications. Sonny didn’t want anything to do with the plan, really, but he at least reserved himself the right to shoot down ideas stupid enough to ruin any sort of connection that remained between him and Cuti.
In the end, Sonny wasn’t granted much of a choice. The suggestion he showed the least amount of disapproval for was pounced upon and put into motion before he could get a word in edgeways.
Kangin somehow managed to coordinate a joint kick-about session between the two camps at a football pitch Sonny hadn’t even noticed was so close to their respective hotels. How Kangin had managed to convince the Argentina team to go along with it, Sonny had no idea. Frankly, he didn’t even realise Kangin knew any of them well enough to persuade them to break at least a dozen different protocols that must’ve been put in place by the tournament organisers. When Sonny questioned such a thing, Kangin waved him off with a demeanour that was far too blasé for his liking.
Sonny absently considered pulling rank and calling the whole thing off, but he didn’t feel like dealing with the fallout from the two most irritatingly persistent players on his team.
So, there he stood. On a nondescript astroturf pitch in the middle of nowhere.
There was an ache in his chest that was as likely to be from nervousness as it was an early indication of a devastating heart condition. It hadn’t shifted the entire day—if anything it had just snowballed further and further until it felt like it was swallowing him whole.
Sonny had done a damned good job at pretending Cuti wasn’t there; not quite ignoring him but not quite acknowledging him either. They had nodded some kind of quiet greeting to each other when the Argentinian team had first made it to the pitch, but that was all.
The players that knew each other had inevitably gravitated together in such a way that it made Sonny and Cuti’s lack of interaction painfully obvious. They were perhaps the two who pretty much everyone there was expecting to stick together the most—desperate to catch up after so many months apart. Sonny now knew he talked about Cuti perhaps too much to his teammates, and if Cuti even did half of the same with his own, then the sight of them so far away from each other would’ve been surprising to say the least.
As it was, Cuti stuck to the side of Lisandro practically the entire time, and Sonny was more than happy to do the same with his own teammates.
Unfortunately, such a thing wasn’t at all part of Kangin and Heechan’s godforsaken plan.
“If you don’t go over there and talk to him I will,” Kangin hissed, pointing a painfully unsubtle finger over to where Cuti was standing on the other side of the pitch.
Sonny tugged Kangin’s hand down with a scowl, which he belatedly realised probably looked even more unsubtle.
“I will at some point, stop rushing me,” he said.
Kangin scoffed, “no you won’t, it’s been hours now and you haven’t said a single word to him.”
“I don’t know what to say, okay?”
“We went through it this morning! Just follow the plan.”
The plan. The stupid, stupid plan.
Maybe it was best for the next plan to involve Kangin’s murder.
“Yes, got it,” Sonny said between an overexaggerated sigh, “I’ll go, just… give me a second.”
Kangin had clearly decided enough was enough, for he began unceremoniously pushing Sonny in Cuti’s direction.
“I’ve given you at least a million seconds already, now go,” Kangin said, before giving Sonny a final shove and sprinting off. There went his final lifeline.
Their squabbling had clearly caught Cuti’s attention—when Sonny lifted his gaze from where he had ardently locked it to the floor, Cuti was staring straight back at him.
Suddenly, the ache in Sonny’s chest increased tenfold.
Lisandro had at some point left Cuti’s side, so there wasn’t a single buffer between them. Cuti watched him all the way as Sonny shuffled across the pitch, dragging his feet hard enough to feel the pieces of rubber from the astroturf collecting in his boots.
It felt like a walk of shame.
Cuti didn’t meet him in the middle, in fact he didn’t move at all. He stood, stoic and statue-like, expressionless aside from a cocked eyebrow and an imperceptible clench of his jaw.
“Hi,” Sonny said when he was within earshot.
He was still probably far too quiet, but he didn’t trust his voice not to waver if he spoke any louder.
“Sonny,” Cuti said, just like he always did. Never a ‘hi’, never a ‘hello’, just a simple call of Sonny’s name.
Some things, at least, never changed. It was painful to think about.
Sonny felt all of the words in his head that he had planned to say dissipate into thin air.
“Cuti,” he settled on, if just to buy himself some time.
It landed strangely in the space between them, and Cuti’s raised eyebrow dropped to match the other in a furrow of confusion.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes! Fine, just— tired.”
Sonny just about fought back the urge to punch himself in the face.
“Tired,” Cuti echoed.
“Yeah, you were right the other day, clearly.”
Of course he was.
“Is something wrong?” Cuti said, “you’ve been tired a lot recently.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing I promise.”
It most definitely was not nothing. But he couldn’t tell Cuti that the tiredness in his bones was emotional, not physical. He wasn’t tired from lack of sleep or travelling, but instead from carrying the weight of his feelings around constantly like a packhorse. The weariness still showed on his face, sure, but it ran deeper in him than anything else he had ever felt—far worse than even the most excruciating post-match fatigue.
It was in that, very inopportune moment, that Heechan appeared over Cuti’s shoulder, mouthing incomprehensible words and gesturing frantically towards Cuti. Sonny tried not to make it obvious he was staring, but Cuti clearly noticed Sonny’s shift in attention for he turned to stare at what was now the sight of Heechan’s retreating form.
Sonny sent a silent prayer up to the heavens that Heechan had saved some of his very limited intelligence for that exact moment. Even the mere thought of Cuti catching sight of whatever that little spectacle had been was enough to send Sonny’s heart plummeting towards his stomach.
When Cuti turned back with an inevitable question on the tip of his tongue, Sonny butted in before he had the chance.
“I guess it’s just because I haven’t had much of a break before the tournament,” Sonny said, “it probably wouldn’t have been this exhausting a couple of years ago, so you must be surprised, right?”
Cuti opened his mouth to speak, but Sonny barrelled on. If he hesitated for even a second he wouldn’t be able to push out the words he desperately needed to.
“The LAFC guys all tease me about it now, especially Denis. He knows how tired I get after games these days. You know Denis, right?”
There was a beat too many of silence. Cuti’s jaw tightened and he swallowed hard enough for Sonny to hear it amongst the endless noise around them.
“Since when did he know so much about you,” Cuti said, dry and deadpanned.
It was meant to be a question, Sonny guessed, but the sentence didn’t lilt in any way that suggested it was one.
“We’ve been teammates for a while now. Two seasons pretty much. He’s a really nice guy.”
Cuti’s eyes remained impassive but there was rigid tension in every other part of his body. His shoulders damn near shook because of it, wavering under the effort of keeping them so high-strung.
He hummed tersely, barely a noise at all. Sonny latched onto it.
“Are you mad at me?” He asked.
“I’m mad at him.”
Sonny thought if Kangin and Heechan were there in that moment they would’ve screamed loud enough for the entire world to hear. Sonny only just managed to contain his own squeak of disbelief.
“Why?”
“I’m not—” Cuti said, huffing frustratedly before starting again, “I won’t tell you. You figure it out.”
Cuti turned on his heels and began to stalk away, body vibrating with the kind of anger that Sonny knew all too well. It was like he was back at Tottenham again, watching Cuti retreat down the tunnel after a tackle that stretched past the line of propriety enough for a red card to be brandished in his face. Cuti knew he was wrong, but he was too proud to admit it; always fighting his case until the last possible second even when it was already a foregone conclusion.
Sonny could sense it then, Cuti’s acknowledgement of his own petulance but the flat-out refusal to express it out loud. It made Sonny chase after him desperately.
“Cuti we need to talk about this, can you just—”
Before Sonny could catch up, Lisandro reappeared alongside Cuti and wound an arm around his shoulders.
“Sonny,” Lisandro said, a greeting, just like Cuti. This time Sonny felt his own jaw tighten.
The conversation he and Cuti needed to have wasn’t at all one suitable for an audience, so Sonny shifted backwards, accepting defeat.
Lisandro’s smile was annoyingly genuine, “long time no see, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sonny said shortly, “long time.”
Cuti hadn’t bothered to face Sonny again. His eyes were firmly locked towards the doors of the enclosed pitch.
“It’s nice to see you again, but I think your teammates are waiting for you,” Lisandro pointed behind Sonny towards the sight of Kangin and Heechan staring at the three of them so intently Sonny didn’t once see them blink.
At the scrutiny, Kangin and Heechan made a futile attempt to pretend they hadn’t been watching by furiously passing around a ball left abandoned next to Kangin’s feet.
“Right, yeah, they probably are. I’ll see you soon. Maybe.”
Lisandro wasn’t wavered by his obviously irritated tone, offering Sonny a small wave before gently shepherding Cuti away.
Sonny would’ve been impossibly annoyed if not for how loud Lisandro’s voice was when he spoke again.
“¿Qué pasó, te peleaste con tu novio?” Lisandro said with a disbelieving laugh.
It was a question meant for Cuti, but the words carried much further than their intended target. Lisandro wanted Sonny to hear it.
Sonny didn’t want to chase after them too obviously, but it was as obvious an invitation to eavesdrop as he was ever going to get. So, he shuffled forward with as much subtlety as he could muster with a body so lit alight by a single sentence.
“No es mi novio, ya está, boludo…” Cuti muttered.
“Todavía no es tu novio.”
Novio. Novio. Novio.
Sonny wasn’t fluent in Spanish by any means, but he had picked up enough throughout his career. Even if he didn’t understand every word he could still piece the sentences together.
Maybe it was just a joke between them, one that Lisandro wanted him to hear to diffuse the obvious tension.
But Sonny had seen the jealousy in every part of Cuti’s body; in the way he had talked and even more so in the way he ran away, lacking the confidence to say the same thing Sonny had been wanting to say for years because of that exact jealousy. Cuti didn’t think Sonny felt the same, jealousy clouding rationality, overthinking things that in reality were so simple. Sonny just had to convince him of that.
And what better way to do it than to poke the bear again? Kangin and Heechan’s plan had worked a charm, after all.
-:-
Sonny: can you do me a favour?
Denis: not even a hello first?
Sonny: can you?
Denis: what is it
Sonny: post something about me
Sonny: i don’t care what it is
Sonny: as long as you caption it ‘i miss you’
Denis: …
Denis: why?
Sonny: i’ll tell you later, i promise
It felt wrong to drag Denis into the situation against his will, but Sonny couldn’t think of a better way to push Cuti’s buttons hard enough to force the kind of explosive reaction both of them needed. Sure, maybe it was smarter for them to talk about it like normal human beings, but Sonny already had enough evidence to convince himself Cuti felt the same that he was happy to push his luck.
He wanted Cuti’s anger, his possessiveness, his unapologetic need for all of Sonny’s attention, not the kind of cautious behaviour they had resorted to since Sonny left. He wanted to see the fuel of jealousy flame incriminatingly in Cuti’s eyes again. It was selfish and perhaps too childish as well, but Sonny, crucially, didn’t care.
He was entitled to some selfishness once in a while, especially after months and months of insisting on taking less than what he was offered—it always felt like everyone was constantly at his beck and call, waiting for an order that never came. He didn’t want to be selfish then, not like now. Now, he was prepared to take and take and take, to covet Cuti’s jealousy all to himself and parade it around like a badge of honour.
Not ten minutes later, Sonny was face to face with an Instagram story of a despondent looking Denis next to Sonny’s place in the dressing room.
“Missing my other half,” the caption read.
Jackpot.
Sonny reposted it with one heart emoji too many and waited.
Clearly news travelled fast, for Heechan was sprinting to his side almost immediately.
“You’re actually insane,” he said, “do you want Cuti to murder him?!”
Sonny thought about saying yes, but decided that was perhaps far too much honesty. He didn’t want to see murder, but one of the incensed shoves Cuti directed at anyone who spent even slightly too much time beside Sonny wouldn’t go amiss.
“He won’t murder him. Probably,” Sonny said with a scoff.
Heechan spluttered out a nonsensical response and stared at Sonny like he had just grown a second head.
“Me and Kangin were in the middle of coming up with another plan, but we never thought you’d agree to do something like this,” he said eventually, “I mean Kangin told me you could’ve been convinced to do it, but I thought he was—”
Whatever Heechan was going to say was drowned out by a cacophony of noise coming from the entrance to the hotel.
With so many raised voices it should’ve been impossible to single any of them out, but Sonny heard him despite it. He was used to hearing him across pitches anyway, the few metres between them then felt like a hairs breadth in comparison.
There was security on his heels when Cuti finally burst into the room. He shoved at every hand that tried to pull him back and took little more than a second to find Sonny before making a beeline straight towards him.
Heechan made a choked noise to Sonny’s left and ran off, finally making himself useful by choosing to placate the security guards by promising that Cuti wasn’t in fact an intruder and definitely had a good reason to be storming into their hotel unannounced.
Sonny was more inclined to label it an excellent reason.
Cuti’s eyebrows were drawn into a murderous straight line, face flushed and chest heaving like he had ran all the way to the hotel as soon as Sonny had reposted Denis’ story. Sonny knew he had. He would’ve done even if Cuti’s body hadn’t betrayed him.
“Sonny,” Cuti said. Because of course he did.
Sonny had to bite against a far too self-satisfied grin. Oh how perfectly it had all come together.
There was a hand around his wrist before Sonny even had a chance to speak, the grip so hard it stung. Nothing like it had been when they met outside Cuti’s hotel before. It wasn’t gentle, wasn’t testing, it was harsh and rough in all the best ways.
Cuti had already begun to drag him away, but Sonny wasn’t in the mood to wait any longer than he had to. He simply set off in the direction of the lifts up to their rooms, leaving Cuti to trail behind him instead. The grip on Sonny’s wrist never wavered, if anything it only held on tighter.
It wasn’t until the lift doors had shut behind them that either of them broke the silence.
Predictably, it was Cuti.
“Tell him to stop posting about you,” he said, not a single ounce of amusement in his tone. It was the furthest thing possible from a joke.
“He’s my friend, I can’t tell him not to,” Sonny reasoned.
The lift doors opened onto Sonny’s floor. He pulled them both out without a second of preamble. Cuti didn’t question where they were going, nor did he slow for even a moment. His hand fell away though, and when Sonny glanced over his shoulder he watched as Cuti rifled through his pockets.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” he said, typing away at the screen a mile a minute.
When Sonny stopped dead at the door of his hotel room, Cuti crashed into his back unceremoniously, phone tumbling to the floor screen-side up to reveal a half-typed message to Denis. Sonny burst into a flurry of laughter that echoed through the empty halls.
“You’re so stupid,” he pushed out between the cackles.
Cuti didn’t make a move to pick his phone up, he just crowded further into Sonny’s space.
“I’ll send it, I’m serious.”
“I know you will, but you don’t need to.”
Sonny reached back blindly to tap his keycard against the door. It fell open easily against their combined weight.
“Why?” Cuti said, corralling Sonny backwards.
“Cuti, your phone—”
“Why?” He implored again, somehow managing to trail his foot behind him and kick the phone into the room before the door closed, like it was little more than an afterthought.
Sonny didn’t think Cuti would’ve cared in the slightest had his phone broke in their haste. As it was, he didn’t react at all when it skidded across the floor and audibly smacked against the skirting board. Sonny would’ve winced at the noise had the breath not been knocked out of him as Cuti finally ground them to a halt against the wall of the hallway.
“Why what?” Sonny finally said when he managed to find his voice again.
“Why should I not message him?” Cuti replied, “I don’t like it. I don’t like him posting about you. I don’t like you posting about him. I hate it.”
Sonny could feel his chest lighting up like Cuti’s words were the spark he needed to ignite it. He had hoped for such a reaction, but to have one as explosive as this? Sonny couldn’t stop himself from taking Cuti’s waist in between his hands and grabbing. He didn’t tug, didn’t push, just pressed his fingers down in what probably looked punishingly to anyone else—but Sonny knew Cuti wouldn’t find the contact punishing in the slightest.
As if on cue, Cuti’s breath hitched audibly enough to echo into the space around them.
“You know,” Sonny said, “you should’ve just told me how you felt.”
This time, he did tug, careening Cuti closer even when the space between them was already paper thin. Cuti braced himself with his forearm beside Sonny’s head. The sound it made against the wall was far too quiet, almost as if he had been expecting Sonny to pull him forward.
“What are you saying?” Cuti whispered like he was scared someone else would hear.
“How you felt about me.”
Cuti froze, eyes widened but unmoving, a picture of the shock and disbelief that had stunned him into silence.
Sonny decided to speak for him.
“You’re jealous,” he said, “you don’t like Denis being around me because you’re jealous.”
It took a beat too many before Cuti even blinked, Sonny only really knew he was still alive from the way Cuti’s shoulders heaved with heavy and uncontrolled breaths.
“You don’t have to be, you know? Me and Denis, we’re just friends,” Sonny said, and meant it.
“Friends,” Cuti echoed finally, “but we’re friends.”
“Do you want to be friends?”
“Sonny what are you—"
“You don’t. I know you don’t, I can see it on your face. If I wasn’t an idiot I’d have seen it back when we were at Spurs. Look at me and tell me you want us to be friends, I dare you.”
Sonny was goading him, gratuitous and shamelessly. He knew he was right anyway, pushing and prodding the truth out of Cuti was just the easiest way to make him say it.
Turns out he didn’t need to, for the moment he finished his sentence Cuti was diving in to kiss the words clean off his lips. Sonny wanted to smile at his victory, but Cuti hardly gave him a second to breath, let alone move his mouth in any way other than to kiss.
“Of course I fucking don’t,” Cuti parted just enough to say, “is this a good enough answer?”
This time, Sonny did grin, “I don’t know. You might need to prove it to me a little more.”
Cuti didn’t need to be told twice. His hands moved to twist into Sonny’s hair and pulled him back in, this time kissing with teeth and tongue. Hard, fast, bordering on rough, Sonny fought to keep up so he grappled at the hem of Cuti’s shirt instead and slipped his fingers under the material. It bought him a moment of respite as Cuti’s breath stuttered shakily on the way out.
It was enough of an incentive for Sonny to slide his fingers higher up across feverish skin, smoothing goosebumps on his way and dragging his nails hard enough to envision the red lines they’d leave behind. They could do calm and patient later Sonny wanted it rushed and frantic—indicative of how desperate he had been for years to have the permission to place his hands on Cuti in a way that had fervent intent behind them.
Sonny knew that was what Cuti craved too, for he broke away from Sonny’s lips and bit along the column of his neck on the precarious edge of propriety. Cuti had the courtesy to soothe the stinging pain he left behind with softer presses of his lips, but never once ceased his obsessive mission to map out the entirety of Sonny’s neck with his teeth.
The restrictive constraint of Cuti’s shirt had become too much of an annoyance that Sonny hitched it up and over Cuti’s head, using the relative pause to pull his own off too, finally skin to skin in a dizzying press of warmth.
The energy in Sonny’s body was electrifying before, but it was scorching now.
It was pure heat, not just from the direct connection of their bodies, but from the all-encompassing way that Cuti filled every inch of his brain. His entire body, in fact. He felt it in every nerve, every sinew between muscle and bone, everywhere.
“Don’t talk to him again,” Cuti said. There was the same heat behind his words too.
Sonny huffed out a laugh, “he’s my teammate, Cuti, I can’t not talk to him.”
“Then only talk to him about football. Nothing else.”
“Only football, got it.”
Cuti hummed, satisfied, and returned his hands to Sonny’s hair, just like he always had, but now with the delirium of their situation. It was actually borderline too painful, enough to make Sonny hiss through his teeth and fight against the reflex to shrink away. So, in return, he let his nails scratch vigorously on every part of skin he could reach enough that he was sure the unmistakable red lines would be visible for days.
If the way Cuti stepped even closer was any indication, it was clear he didn’t mind in the slightest.
Sonny didn’t either, because, frankly, why would he?
-:-
It was less than twenty-four hours later that Cuti posted on his story.
“Amazing to see you as always, hermanito,” the caption read.
It was harmless enough in appearance, but the possessive arm wound around Sonny’s waist was anything but. Cuti’s hand was far too high and his fingers were tangled in the fabric of Sonny’s shirt. There was even an artfully placed hickey at the base of his throat that was easily explained away to anyone that asked. The picture would’ve looked inconspicuous to most, but obvious to anyone who knew even the slightest hint of context.
Heechan had screamed in a noise fit for a banshee, Kangin had pummelled Sonny’s arm in enthusiastic congratulations and Denis? Even without prior knowledge of Sonny’s plans, he blew up his phone to no end.
Denis: THIS was what you needed that photo for?!
Denis: you’re actually insane
Denis: matter of fact you’re both insane
Denis: is he going to kill me when I see him?
Denis: please tell him it was a joke
Denis: oh my god he’s actually going to kill me isn’t he
Denis: sonny PLEASE tell him
Denis: I’m too young to die
Sonny: relax, he won’t kill you
Sonny: well he won’t kill you himself anyway
Sonny: he might hire a hitman
Denis: jesus christ
Denis: he just messaged me—
Denis: sonny how does he have my number?
Denis: sonny HELP
Sonny: good luck~!
Cuti didn’t kill Denis, but Sonny had no doubt in his mind that he had wanted to.
So Denis posted less and Cuti posted more, and Sonny stood smugly in the middle.
Needless to say his LAFC teammates walked on eggshells around him after that, scared to incur Cuti’s wrath.
It was probably for the best, Sonny thought. It might’ve been a drastic attempt to get them to stop incessantly hovering, but it worked. Sonny got what he wanted, in more ways than one.
Finally.