Chapter Text
It isn't very cold in Madrid, but it was raining very hard that particular autumn night; therefore, it was cold, or so Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro thought.
He was just returning home from a long day of work in the marketing department. Another long day of dealing with Spaniards. While his Spanish had become pretty fluent, he knew some of his colleagues still had difficulty with understanding his accent from time to time.
He had stopped by the library by the outskirts of the city to return a couple books and would have borrowed a few more if it hadn't unexpectedly started to rain; it had been mostly sunny all day. Heading into the rain, he cursed his morning choice to not check the weather forecast. Now his expensive suit was bound to be damaged.
His car was parked by a sidewalk that bordered a steep, muddy ditch. Across the street was a bus stop where a very short man shivered in the rain. Cristiano could only assume that he wasn't a local because the last line had long since departed, and no bus was going to come until morning. He clearly had been standing there for awhile now, soaked to the skin.
He was muttering something under his breath, a phrase, over and over again. Now Cristiano had encountered all sort of people on the streets, and from past experience, this was the sort of person that he should avoid.
Walking right past the shivering man, he crossed the street. He was halfway across when blinding lights illuminated the street. When he turned, he realised that a large van was speeding straight at him, with no intent of stopping. The driver honked thrice as if it were perfectly legal to run red lights as long as you warned pedestrians. Well, fuck him.
"Foda-se!" Cris yelled as he dove onto the sidewalk, just in time. To make matters worse, the concrete was slippery with rain and he slid forward into the ditch. With his fancy new suit now covered in mud, Cristiano cursed loudly at the raining sky.
He got back up and tried to climb out of the ditch, but the muddy ground gave way under his weight, and he slid to the bottom again. Cris tried a few more times with increasing desperation, but he ended up just displacing a large pile of mud.
This was going nowhere. If he called out loud enough, would the man across the street at the bus stop hear him?
"Help! I'm stuck! Someone, anyone, please help!"
He waited for a few moments, and sure enough, he heard splashing as someone walked across the street. The man peered over the ditch, looking down at Cristiano curiously.
"Er, I'm a bit stuck. Can you help me get out of here?" he asked.
To his relief, the man nodded. Saying nothing, he crouched down on the sidewalk and extended a pale hand downward.
Cris grasped on to the outstretched hand; he was shocked by how icy it was to the touch. The other man braced himself, and with a heave, he pulled. Cristiano scrambled up the slope as fast as he could in the sticky mud.
His feet sunk into the wet ground, but with the other man's support, he did not slide back in with every step. With a final heave, Cristiano launched himself forward over the steep slope and they both tumbled onto the wet cement. They lay on the sidewalk for a moment, panting. Cris turned to look at the stranger. "Thanks," he said.
The stranger only nodded. He was no longer shivering, but his lips and his fingertips were turning a shade of blue.
Cris felt guilty. Would he just leave this man to die of hypothermia in the rain, after he had just saved him from a muddy ditch?
"You look like you're freezing. Do you need a ride home? There aren't going to be any busses until morning," he offered, getting up off the sidewalk. He pulled the stranger onto his feet.
The man glanced around. "Home?" he whispered, almost too softly for Cris to hear.
"Do you not have a home?" asked Cristiano. Perhaps he was homeless after all.
"I...I don't remember..."
"You don't remember if you have a home?"
The man only frowned, and stepped away from Cristiano.
He sighed. The questions could wait. Right now, the stranger clearly needed to get out of the rain. "Come to my house. You look like you're going to freeze to death."
The shorter man said nothing, but nodded gratefully. Cris led him to his car, mentally groaning about the mud. Not only did he possibly ruin his thousand euro suit for good, but now he was going to have to give his car a good scrubbing. He started up the engine and turned the heat on to maximum.
"Thank you...for everything," the man said from the seat next to him.
"You're the one who helped me first. I'm Cristiano, by the way, but you can call me Cris. What's your name?"
He did not reply immediately, pausing for a moment, thinking very hard. "I'm...my name is..."
"So you don't remember your name either?" He was definitely taking this man to hospital in the morning. It seemed like a case of amnesia.
They remained silent for the rest of the ride home.
~X~
Cristiano really wasn't looking forward to all the mud he would have to scrub in the morning.
Now out of his muddy suit and wet socks, Cris pulled out a shrunken wool sweater and a pair of clean cotton shorts from the back of his closet. He handed them to the stranger before leaving the other man the usage of his heated bathroom. The light flush on his guest's cheeks and the heat that radiated from him indicated that he had developed a fever some time during the ride home.
While his guest changed out of the soggy clothes, Cristiano rummaged through his medicine cupboard for a bottle of aspirin. He put a pill and a glass of water on the bedside table of the guest bedroom where his mother or sisters stayed during their visits to Spain.
The stranger emerged from the bathroom, the shrunken clothing still at least two sizes too large. He appeared ragged and thin. With his legs peeking from underneath the shorts, Cristiano could see the number 10 engraved onto his left calf. Dark bruises stood out starkly around the pale wrists, as if they had been bound too tightly. What on earth had he gone through?
Cris led him over to the guest bedroom. "You can sleep in here."
The shorter man stared blankly at the bed for a few moments before vaguely turning toward Cris. "Thank you."
Either he was too ill to react much, or he was an odd fellow.
"You've got a bit of a fever; here, take this." He handed his guest the aspirin and glass of water. "I'm taking you to hospital tomorrow. And contacting police."
The stranger nodded. He took the medicine and settled into the soft blankets. It wasn't long before he fell fast asleep.
Cris had a long night ahead of him.
~X~