Chapter Text
There was absolutely nothing wrong with his vision, or at least that’s what Cristiano kept telling himself. He didn’t really see the big deal. So sometimes he couldn’t read certain things very well, but that was only when they were far away. He had a hard time reading street signs sometimes, and he had to squint to see Iker’s face in the goal when he was up in the attacking position. But that was normal, right?
It wasn’t until that god-awful, rain-soaked match against Levante that he gave any thought to vision problems. That asshole had elbowed him in the eye and split his face open, leaving him with a concussion. After he’d received stitches, he’d stayed in the game and managed to score a goal, his now famous “Cyclops goal”. He hadn’t been sure if it was because his eye was swelling shut or because he probably had a concussion, but he’d suddenly realized his left eye was totally dark. A wave of nausea hit him and he turned to the bench in a panic. He caught Mourinho’s attention and made hand signs at him that said, “get me out of here!” They couldn’t sub him out before the end of the half, though, so he suffered through nausea, vision loss, and a pounding headache until the ref blew his whistle.
He collapsed with a groan onto the hard bench of the Levante visitors’ locker room. Some players clapped him on the back as they passed by to hear Mourinho’s half time speech. Cristiano shut his eyes, letting the adrenaline seep out of him and waiting for the medic or the physio or whoever was supposed to come fix him up. He felt someone take a seat next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. Kaká, his mind supplied, remembering the familiar weight. He let his head loll on Kaká’s shoulder, his wet hair on the midfielder’s white jersey.
“You were great out there, even through everything,” the Brazilian murmured into his ear.
Cristiano lifted his head with great effort and cracked his eyes open to look at Kaká. Kaká was probably smiling at him, the smile reserved only for Cristiano and maybe he had a bit of amusement in his eyes at seeing Cris so out of it. Maybe he looked concerned. Cristiano’s not sure what Kaká looked like in that moment, because he couldn’t see.
Cristiano clamped a hand on Kaká’s thigh; even though Kaká had an arm around him he still needed the reassurance that he was there.
“What’s wrong?” Kaká asked sounding concerned, and Cristiano could hear their teammates in the background go silent, probably looking over curiously. “What’s wrong, Cris? Are you ok?”
“I can’t see,” Cristiano gritted out, trying not to make a big deal out of it but scared nonetheless.
Kaká’s hand around his shoulder was now rubbing his back soothingly, trying to calm him down. “You got hit in the head pretty hard. You’ll be ok, don’t worry. The physio will be here any minute now.” His voice was steady and confident, and Cristiano latched on to it like a lifeline. He could hear Karanka trying to keep the players focused, could hear Pepe and Fabio muttering, concerned. Mourinho, somewhere near the door, shouting, “Where the fuck is that goddamn medic?”
It had been chaotic in the locker room, but as soon as the medic showed up he whisked Cristiano off to the Infirmary. He re-did the stitches, gave him pain medicine and asked him dumb questions like, “Who is the prime minister of Spain?” The medic had looked vaguely concerned at Cristiano’s blank stare, before switching gears, “Who is the president of Portugal?” Cristiano rolled his eyes. “Silva,” he answered, “And my name is Cristiano Ronaldo, I play for Portugal and Real Madrid, I have a son. Happy now?”
The medic had diagnosed him with a concussion and advised him to take it easy for three days. He’d ordered a visit to the Sanitas ophthalmologist to get his eyes checked out once he got back from seeing the National Team doctors.
Kaká had been waiting for him at home after his pointless 24-hour round trip to Lisbon. He’d greeted him at the door, pulled him in by the folds of his jacket, and pressed a searing kiss on his lips. Cristiano dropped his bags carefully, not pulling away, and cradled Kaká’s face in his hands. It was a very nice ‘welcome home’, until Kaká suddenly pulled away.
“What is today’s date?” he asked with a serious look on his face. Cristiano buried his face in Kaká’s neck and laughed.
Kaká was not amused. He walked Cristiano backwards into the living room and dumped him onto the large couch. “I’m being serious here. What is my full name?”
Cristiano pressed his lips to Kaká’s in reply, not bothering to justify that question with an answer. Kaká, through an unknown reserve of will power, managed to pull away again, tilting his head back from Cristiano’s onslaught. The Portuguese mentally shrugged and went to work on the column of pale flesh Kaká was presenting him with.
“You’re going to the – unh- ophthalmologist? How do your eyes feel?”
Cristiano stopped, lips still open at Kaká’s Adam’s apple. “They feel like eyes?” he answered cheekily, enjoying the little hitch in Kaká’s breath at the feel of him talking against his throat. “They’re just here, in my skull –”
Kaká cuts him off with a smack before moving away completely, dislodging Cristiano’s lips and teeth from their mission of leaving marks on his skin.
“Don’t be smart with me,” he sounds serious but his smile betrays him. “How is your vision?”
“It’s normal,” he evades. Road names are still blurry and certain signs at the airport were hard to read. But that was normal. They shouldn’t print those signs so small, you know?
“Are you experiencing any double vision, blurry vision, light sensitivity, or other visual anomalies?”
Cristiano throws his head back with a groan. “Have you been going on WebMD again? I thought I blocked that site on your computer.” Bad things happen when Kaká had the time and resources available to make himself sick with worry.
“You did, I looked it up on my phone,” he grumbles defensively. “Is it so wrong to be concerned?”
Schooling his features into his best ‘I’m-ok-just-trust-me’ face, Cris sits up and faces Kaká, who perks up at finally being taken seriously. “My eyes are fine. My head is fine. I’ve been looked at by two different doctors in two different countries and they both said the same thing: I’m fine. I’m going to the eye doctor as a final check up, then Sanitas will clear me for practice. Now quit. worrying.”
Kaká beams a radiant smile. “See? That’s all you had to tell me and now I’m not worried. Was that so har-”
Kaká chuckles when Cristiano shuts him up. With his lips. Suddenly he’s horizontal with his back on the couch cushions and he didn’t even have time to blink. Kaká closes his eyes and lets Cristiano reacquaint himself with his body in that slow, deliberate way Cris likes to do after he feels he’s been travelling too long. Taking his time, dragging it out. Somehow Kaká no longer feels concerned about his health. Every part of Cristiano seems to be, uh, perfectly healthy and alert. But he decides he needs to do a hands-on, physical examination in order to be completely sure.
Can’t blame a guy for being thorough.
Glasses.
He went to the ophthalmologist at Sanitas the next day and she gave him a prescription for… glasses.
“Thankfully you don’t have any residual vision damage from the blow to your head,” she had said as she looked over his chart, “But I do see classic signs for myopia. It’s nothing to—“
“Myopia?!” Cristiano cut in. “What is that? Am I going to live?” He was only half exaggerating; he’d never even heard that word before and suddenly its classic signs were in his eyes.
The doctor had smiled soothingly in the I-get-this-a-lot fashion. “It means you’re near-sided. You had trouble reading the small letters in your vision test, and your doctor from the Portuguese National Team said in his file that you have trouble reading signs at a distance.”
He didn’t even have time to wonder how the team’s doctor even knew that before she was discussing his options. Glasses, contact lenses, corrective surgery. The first two options seemed a lot less scary than the third.
They sat him down and found him a box of contact lenses, then they painstakingly taught him how to put them in. It was weird at first, poking himself in the eye until the lenses stuck, but eventually he figured it out. Once he had the contacts picked out they took him down to a little glasses shop where he perused hundreds and hundreds of frames.
He desperately wished Kaká had been there with him. Kaká had a good eye for fashion and whenever he and Cristiano would sneak off and go shopping together, he was always a good second opinion, never afraid to veto some of Cristiano’s worst choices. Not that that stopped Cristiano from buying, but it was nice.
He ended up Skyping Irina for help, waking her up from her sleep in Belize or the Maldives or wherever she was that day. She must have talked him through trying on about fifty pairs before she crankily told him to narrow it down to two so she could go back to bed. In the end he went with a pair of low-key yet enormous, matte-black Dolce & Gabbana frames. They were pretty large on him, but Irina assured him that yes, that was the style that was popular, Cris you look great, and goodbye, let me sleep. She mumbled something about why he couldn’t have just asked Kaká for his opinion, but Cristiano hung up the call before she could say anything else.
Cristiano keeps the glasses in his sock drawer next to his bed. He’s not even sure why he’s so embarrassed about them. Plenty of people wear glasses, hell, even Kaká wears glasses every now and then though he tends to prefer contact lenses. It’s not that he thinks Kaká would make fun of him or anything. It’s just… weird.
He wears the contacts while driving and playing football. The first time he wore them during a match he was floored by all the new details he hadn’t realized he was missing out on. Were normal people able to clearly see the ads on the other side of the pitch? Did the fans up on the stands always have faces, not just indiscernible skin colored blurs? He scored two goals that day, he was that excited.
The rest of the time he keeps them off, and keeps the glasses in his drawer. He puts them on sometimes when it’s just him and little Cris, and the toddler always tries to yank them off his face anyways so he always ends up taking them off. He keeps them off when it’s just him and Kaká, too. Kaká is the one person who knows him better than anyone, who knows all the stupid, terrible shit he’s done and who still loves him anyway. But somehow, irrationally, Cristiano can’t bring himself to put them on in front of him. And every day that passes makes it even harder, because what’s he going to say? “Hey, remember that day three months ago when I went to the eye doctor? Well I got these glasses…” Yeah that’s not going to go over well at all.
Cristiano thinks he’ll just keep the Dolce & Gabbana frames in his drawer forever, and maybe he’ll never have to tell Kaká anything. Maybe he can just get away with wearing contacts for the rest of his life, or maybe he can read up on corrective surgery and have that as an option. It was a good, solid plan, right?
Of course, nothing with Kaká ever went according to plan.
He wakes up with the weight of someone against him and he turns over into it. As he becomes more lucid, his mind tells him it’s not little Cris, who would sometimes come into his daddy’s room at night and curl up with him if he was scared or couldn’t sleep. It’s Kaká, but he’s not really in bed with him, he’s just sitting at the edge of the mattress. Cristiano blinks his eyes open, confused.
Kaká is sitting there, trying on Cristiano’s glasses. The Brazilian looks down at him before Cristiano can feign sleep.
“Who’s glasses are these, Cristiano?” he asks curiously, squinting against the prescription lenses.
Cristiano’s mouth goes dry and he could bang his head on the table for being so stupid. The past few days had been long and he’d worn his contacts the whole time. He’d driven around town doing errands and dropping off little Cris at day care. Then he went to practice, then home and back for concentration. At the hotel he had to sign dozens of autographs and pose for endless pictures for fans. The next day was full of press and then the match and more press and by the time he’d gotten home, his eyes were dry and itchy, and he’d wanted nothing more than to just rip his contacts out. His eyes felt tired and squinting was giving him headaches lately, so he ended up digging the glasses out of his drawer to give his eyes a break.
Kaká takes the glasses off and peers at the logo on the side. “Dolce & Gabbana? Are these… are these yours?” he asks, amused.
“Yeah, they’re mine. Just for fashion, you know,” he dodges quickly.
“I can clearly tell these have a prescription, Cristiano,” Kaká answers not buying it at all, “You obviously must need them for something.”
“I need them for seeing things at a distance,” he admits. It’s all quite anticlimactic now that the secret is out.
“When did you get them? I never noticed you wearing them.”
“I – uh ,” he scratches at his hair sheepishly. “I got them in November.”
Kaká levels Cristiano with a thoroughly un-amused look, eyebrow quirked. “And I’m just now seeing them in May?”
“Um, like I said, I don’t really wear them. It’s just every now and then. Rarely.”
“Hm, if you say so. They’re pretty cool. Very fashionable.”
Cristiano nods emphatically, happy that Kaká is finally going along with it. “Yeah, that’s what Irina said when I picked them out. Something fashionable and very ‘now.’” The smile slides right off his face when he sees Kaká’s expression.
“Irina helped you pick them out?” his voice is too blasé, and Cristiano knows he’s in trouble.
“Um, yeah. I just needed a second opinion, and you know how she always knows what’s in and what’s out,” he answers, wracking his mind for a change of subject.
“That was very nice of Irina to help you, all the way back in November, when you got the glasses,” Kaká replies in that too-calm voice.
“What’s for breakfast?” It’s not the most subtle of subject-changes, but Cristiano needs for Kaká to stop thinking about the fact that Cristiano’s fake girlfriend knew something about his very real boyfriend months before Kaká even had a clue.
Kaká, of course, doesn’t bite.
“Here, put them on,” he ignores Cristiano completely. “I want to see how they look.” He hands them back to Cristiano almost challengingly, the Portuguese still lying on the pillow under the covers. Cristiano takes them, hesitant, and slowly unfolds the temples. He’s still pretty insecure about this whole wearing glasses business, and now he’s about to try them on for his boyfriend while he’s rightfully pissed at him. He slides the glasses on his face and props himself up on his elbows for Kaká to take a better look.
There’s not a word for the look that came over Kaká at seeing Cristiano like that. He’s silent, eyes darting back and forth across Cris’s face, drinking in the sight. Cristiano sits frozen, letting the man look all he wants. He’s a bit worried when Kaká doesn’t say anything after a while.
Then, Kaká’s lip curls and his eyes narrow, and Cristiano would give anything to know what Kaká is thinking.
“Take them off,” Kaká requests abruptly.
Cristiano blinks. He doesn’t like them. He doesn’t like me in them. He nods and quickly takes the frames off, his insecurities materializing in front of him. “That’s ok,” he says thickly, swallowing down a lump in his throat at the thought of his boyfriend finding him unattractive. “We can pick out a different pair, I know these are a bit too extravagant.” He doesn’t meet Kaká’s eyes.
Suddenly he’s being straddled. Well, that definitely came out of nowhere.
“What?” he breathes out, looking up to see Kaká staring at him like he wants to devour him.
“Forget about the glasses,” Kaká growls, leaning forward to breathe into Cristiano’s ear, “We have more important things to take care of.” By that Cristiano is assuming that Kaká means the raging erection that the Brazilian is now rubbing against his thigh, practically humping his leg. He has no idea what has gotten into Kaká, and he’s not going to argue against morning sex, but he can’t help but think that maybe Kaká is trying to distract him from the fact that he hated his glasses.
Once again, he really wishes he knew what was going through Kaká’s mind.
Because if he did, then he’d know that when Kaká saw him put his glasses on for the first time, it had taken his breath away. Looking at Cristiano, in his bedhead hair and pre-shave scruff, with those black frames, with that cautiously hopeful look in his eyes, Kaká knew he had never seen anyone more beautiful. He’d sent a prayer of gratitude to God, thanking him for putting this gorgeous creature in his life.
Then he was turned on. Like, really fucking turned on. He wanted nothing more than to pull Cristiano’s hair and bite him and be fucked by him as hard as was physically possible. His thoughts were so intense they almost scared him. The glasses had to come off or he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions.
Cristiano probably thought he hated the glasses, but he couldn’t be more wrong. It was an instant turn on if there ever was one. He just had to find a way to convince Cristiano that they were sexy, that he loved him in them, that he didn’t care that Irina picked them out or anything. He didn’t even think it was the glasses themselves, but more just Cristiano and his vulnerability, aside from the fact that Cristiano made anything sexy.
He was going to come up with a way to prove that to him.
