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1. Early in the season, one night
De Paul went live for no particular reason.
It was the night before an away match, the hotel room was quiet, and his roommate was already asleep. De Paul sat back against the headboard with his phone propped up and read the comments from the top as they came in.
— great game today
— when did you cut your hair??
— i'm hungry
"Me too," De Paul said. "But if I eat now I get yelled at tomorrow morning."
The comments filled with laughing for a moment and then went on scrolling. His eyes stopped on one of them.
— me and my bf fight about the AC every single day. i HATE being cold and he says he's hot. so i just end up sitting there in a jacket lol
"Hang on." De Paul leaned toward the phone. "Let me look at this one."
— ?
— why'd he get serious all of a sudden
"You said you hate being cold."
— yes 😭
"Don't date a guy like that," De Paul said. "Your boyfriend's supposed to adjust for you."
The comments paused for a beat, then exploded.
— LMAOOO
— wait my heart
— now THAT'S a man
— de paul please do dating advice
"It's not advice. That's just how it's supposed to be."
— then what about that other thing
— the happy dog on a leash thing lmao
— that's still going around
"Oh, that." De Paul wasn't embarrassed in the slightest.
— got any tips for being a good bodyguard
— what's the secret
De Paul thought about it for a second. Then he answered with total sincerity.
"You just don't get on his nerves."
— ?
— sorry what
— that was kind of terrifying actually
"No, I mean—" De Paul raised a hand. It was the hand of a man about to explain himself. "Doing the stuff he likes matters, sure. But not doing the stuff he doesn't like matters more. A lot more."
— ohhh
— okay that's fair actually
— but how
"You have to read him." De Paul pulled himself forward. It was the posture of a man about to give a lecture. "You ask, what do you want to eat, and he says, whatever, whatever you want. That is not whatever. That's where it starts. You go, burgers? Pizza? And he goes, …something greasy, huh? And that's it, not today. You pivot straight to the brunch place with the salads. And he's happy."
The comments started moving very fast.
— wow
— so THIS is how our de paul lives
— this isn't a bodyguard this is a personal assistant
— the leash was an understatement
"No, no." De Paul waved a hand. "That's not what I mean."
— then what DO you mean lmaooo
"I like being told off."
— ???
— that made it worse
— sir are you okay? blink twice
"…I mean, not like like, it's — it means he cares, you know? Anyway. Next question."
He talked for another ten minutes or so and then ended the stream.
When the screen went dark the room went quiet. De Paul sat holding the phone and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"Ah, crap."
It came out on its own.
"I'm getting told off when I get back."
He woke the phone and checked his messages. Nothing. He checked again. Still nothing.
"…Guess he didn't see it."
Nobody told him off that night. The stream didn't get many views. A clip went around for a few days and then got buried.
At the time.
2. Some months later, the studio
"We've had a tip."
The host turned over a card. "That Messi, as captain, can be a little — very — involved."
"…Ha."
Messi laughed. It was the kind of laugh you give when there's nothing to deny.
"I think wearing the armband turned me into a nag. I used to not care much what anyone else was doing. Now I notice more, and when I notice, I say something."
"Can we take that as a yes on the nagging?"
"You can take it that way."
"Now, for the source's protection, I can't tell you who this is." The host was enjoying himself. "But one player told us, and I quote: He nags a lot, but he's always right, so it's fine."
Laughter went around the studio. Messi laughed too. He had a good idea who it was, and he could picture exactly the face that had said it.
"Why do you think you care that much?"
"Because they're close to me, if anything," Messi said. "You say more to the people you're comfortable with. If I weren't comfortable, I just wouldn't say anything."
"Oh — and our anonymous source added one more thing." The host flipped another card. "He says he actually likes being told off."
"I don't really have a response to that."
"And there's a phrase going around the fans lately: Messi, doing the group project alone while the kids mess around. Have you seen it?" The host pointed to the monitor.
A piece of fan art was up on the screen. Messi, alone, hauling a sled, with the rest of the team piled on top of it. One was asleep. One was eating snacks. And exactly one had climbed off and was pushing from behind. His shirt number had been drawn in, exactly right.
"Everyone pulled their weight on the project." Messi waved it off. And then, without meaning to, a sentence came out that he hadn't prepared. "Everyone's different, personality-wise, but they're all pulling in the same direction. And… that one, too — he comes off pretty light in front of a camera, but he's actually considerate. He looks after people. There's more to him than you'd think."
"Oh." The host's eyes lit up. "That one."
"I didn't say who."
"Now that you mention it, an old clip of one of De Paul's livestreams has been going around again lately." The host was getting excited. "A fan wrote in that she fights with her boyfriend over the air conditioning every day — she's the one who gets cold, but she ends up bundling up in a jacket and putting up with it. And De Paul cut right to it: Don't date a guy like that. Your boyfriend's supposed to adjust for you."
The host clapped once.
"It's all over everyone's feed. Every single comment says the same thing — find yourself a man like De Paul."
Messi stopped.
"…I didn't know that was out there."
He really hadn't. The man had never said a word about it.
Then again.
The time Messi had asked what they should eat and then gone vague on the answer, and from then on De Paul simply offered him two options to choose between. The days Messi forgot his thermos, when there was still always a mate at exactly the right temperature waiting in the passenger-side cupholder.
He'd never heard your boyfriend's supposed to adjust for you before. But he'd been watching it done every day.
"And he's always been good-looking, so he's very popular with female fans."
It was half a beat after it was out that he thought, oh no.
"Is his face on the nagging list too?" The host took it smoothly in stride. "Keep it in shape, for fan recruitment purposes?"
Swallowed by the laughter in the studio, the aside seemed to pass without incident.
The internet, of course, lets nothing pass without incident.
3. That night, the lodge
By evening, the internet had dug it back up.
The late-night stream a handful of people had watched and wandered away from months ago had been cut into clips and was running through every feed. Under Don't date a guy like that, someone had lined up Messi's interview answer. Under that, both their names. Along with words like reading the room and happy dog on a leash.
The living-room light was on.
Messi put his face in order once while he took his shoes off at the door. The interview was already being clipped and passed around on the ride home, and he could guess what kind of face was waiting for him. The second the door opened, that idiot would be grinning, insufferable, shoving his phone screen in Messi's face.
He walked into the living room braced for that face.
The living room was quiet. De Paul was sitting on the sofa holding his phone, blinking twice.
The face of someone who hadn't expected to win and had just heard his name called. The who, me? face.
At the sound of him, De Paul looked up. With that same face.
"…You're back?"
Messi cleared his throat for no reason.
"The internet thinks you're a really good guy. You never said a word."
De Paul scratched the back of his head.
"…Honestly, I don't even remember it."
"What?"
"The guys kept sending me the link, so I just watched it. I seriously don't know what I was doing when I said that."
A laugh slipped out of Messi, just air through his nose.
De Paul looked back down at his phone. It was the face of a man reading about somebody else.
And then his brow creased slightly. So serious it had come out the other side into aggrieved.
"If they're going to hype me up overnight over something I don't even remember, they could've laid off me for that missed pass two days ago. Christ."
Messi burst out laughing. A midfielder's pride lived in his pass completion rate, not in the view count on his dating advice.
"Don't laugh. That actually hurt."
"That one was your fault, to be fair."
"So pick one. Either yell at me for what I did wrong, or praise me for stuff I don't remember. Not both."
Messi sat down at the end of the sofa. The laugh hadn't quite left him yet.
"But you," Messi said. "Before it was the leash thing, and now you're telling people you don't get on my nerves?"
"That was bragging."
"How is that bragging. Anyone who heard it would think I keep you on a chain."
"No, see—" De Paul put his phone down and gestured. The gesture went first and the words followed. "What I was trying to say is that not doing what the other person hates is what matters. That's respect. Respect. I was talking about respect."
"If you were talking about respect, why did it turn into a tutorial on ordering food?"
"Because that's the easiest example."
"Something greasy, huh? You know what the top comment under that was? So this is how our De Paul lives."
"That's taken out of context."
"It was live."
De Paul sank back into the sofa with an aggrieved face, and Messi looked at that face and laughed.
It went quiet for a moment like that. Then De Paul turned his head.
"But you said I was good-looking on the show today?"
Messi pretended to look at his phone.
"Well, it's true you've got a lot of female fans."
He expected the answer to come back puffed all the way up.
Instead De Paul gave one shrug, and said something he hadn't expected.
"But you can't make money being good-looking. Not me." Half a teaspoon of something bitter was mixed into his voice. "It only means something to have Beckham's face if you've got Beckham's game."
Any other time he'd have laughed it off. But that half a teaspoon got on Messi's nerves in some odd way.
Messi looked off into the middle distance and let it drop.
"If you've got Beckham's game, the club's happy."
De Paul looked up.
"But being good-looking — that means something to whoever gets to see it every day."
Messi felt the edges of his ears go warm, but he didn't stop. He drove it home.
"It's plenty useful to me."
For an instant the air in the living room stopped.
Messi was regretting it, his lips just starting to move, when—
"…Hold on."
De Paul came up off the sofa and was right in front of him. His big shadow covered Messi completely.
"I think I just heard something huge."
"You're mistaken. Back up."
Messi made a show of calm and tried to push him off, but De Paul didn't budge an inch. If anything, he leaned his face in closer.
"I'm your type? You're with me for my face?"
Close enough that Messi could feel his breath, De Paul hung on to it in a voice full of delight. You could almost hear an invisible, very large tail going around behind him like a propeller.
"Don't read into it. I was stating a fact."
"Wow. My face really is your type. So that's why you couldn't help bragging about it in the interview?"
Without waiting for an answer, De Paul buried his nose in the side of Messi's neck and threw his arms around him. The whole weight of him landing at once knocked Messi helplessly back, and he let out a small sigh.
Shouldn't have said it. He'd be dealing with this energy all night.
And yet it didn't once occur to him to peel off this heavy warmth, rubbing its face into his neck and not knowing what to do with how happy it was. With a show of reluctance, Messi ran a hand lightly over the broad back of the man wrapped around his waist.
4. The next morning, before dawn
The morning after, with no training, time moved differently.
The hour when dawn rose thin beneath the curtains. His eyes opened before the alarm, and there was not one reason to get up. Messi distrusted the unfamiliar ease of it for a moment, then turned his head.
De Paul was asleep.
Just as he'd been last night, one arm reaching toward Messi. The eyebrows that fought for the ball on the pitch were making no claims about anything. His mouth hung half open, and his breath went in and out, long and even. The face of someone truly asleep, every last bit of strength gone out of it.
Messi didn't wake him. Instead he settled his head more comfortably on his arm and looked at that face. He looked for a long time.
After a long while of looking, Messi's eyes narrowed.
Something had changed.
The gaps between breaths had gotten fractionally shorter. Somewhere in those eyebrows that had been making no claims, there was effort now. The half-open mouth had closed at some point, and the closed line of it was being oddly managed.
And, decisively, his ears were turning pink.
Messi took his expression back. He gathered in whatever had been spilling out of his gaze and selected a voice in which nothing had happened.
"…You're up?"
There was a brief silence of the kind that fools no one.
"Ah." De Paul finally opened his eyes. It was the smile of a man who'd been caught. "When'd you wake up?"
"Just now."
"Pretty long stare for just now. Why were you lying there watching instead of waking me up?"
Messi shrugged and answered, unbothered.
"No reason. Your sleeping face looks stupid."
"Oh, really?" De Paul grinned. It was the maximum shamelessness a half-asleep face could produce. "I thought you were trying to seduce me."
"…What?"
It came out calmer than it felt. That could count as a win. Messi managed his face. He'd been doing it in front of cameras for ten years. There was no reason he couldn't do it in his own bed.
"Yesterday you said my face was useful."
"Are you going to bring that up again?"
"I am. I'm going to keep bringing it up."
Messi went through the options he had left. Denial — too late. Changing the subject — obvious, and he didn't want to do something obvious. Counterattack had always been easier than defense.
"…Fine, say I was." Messi folded his arms on top of the blanket. "So what. You'd already fallen for it anyway."
He was confident in his returns. He'd spent years living on them.
The trouble was that De Paul never returned them.
"Yeah," De Paul said, without one second of defense. "A long time ago."
…This was why you couldn't argue with him. He arranged it so the moment you won, you lost.
Messi let out a short laugh and shook his head and was just starting to sit up when De Paul's thick, solid arm shot out and pulled him in tight around the waist.
"So since I'm already all the way gone — one more time?"
If shamelessness came in divisions, this was top flight. He could feel the back of his ears going hot. The moment to push him off had already passed, and he'd had no intention of pushing him off anyway. Messi looked at the ceiling for a moment and, in the end, said one thing.
"…Go close the curtains."
De Paul kissed him on the cheek. Smack, not an ounce of finesse in it. Then he was off the bed and across the room before the mattress had finished moving.
Messi watched his back.
Dog on a leash — please. If anything, the one holding the leash was getting dragged around by a very large dog.
The curtains came together. The room went dark and warm and belonged only to the two of them.
And then De Paul came back at a run, at a speed that had nothing to do with the distance, looking about ready to wag his tail, and bounded up onto the bed and gathered Messi into his arms and kissed him properly this time. Feeling that warmth, Messi slowly closed his eyes.
…Not so bad, this.
And for a while he didn't think about anything at all.