Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first time Fermín López considered that something might be wrong with his relationship, it was over a cup of coffee that had gone cold  before either of them remembered to drink it.
It was a Tuesday morning, and Gavi was sitting across from him at the kitchen island with his phone in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, nodding absently at something Fermín was saying.

The apartment was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional sound of traffic drifting in through the windows.

Morning sunlight had begun spilling across the pale countertops, catching on the little ceramic bowl where Gavi kept his keys and the ridiculous collection of hair ties he insisted he never used, despite Fermín finding them everywhere from the bathroom to the pockets of his training clothes.

It was ordinary. Comfortably, unremarkably ordinary. The sort of morning they had experienced hundreds of times since moving in together, the sort of morning Fermín had once imagined he would still be experiencing when they were old enough to complain about their knees and argue over who had forgotten to buy milk.

The kitchen carried the familiar blend of them, too: Gavi's strawberry and vanilla softened by warm sugar, mingling with the cedarwood, orange blossom, and honey of Fermín's scent. After eight years, the combination had become as much a part of home as the coffee machine or the crooked row of mugs they kept forgetting to replace.

Gavi was wearing one of Fermín's hoodies, the sleeves falling over his hands, and his hair was still damp from his shower. 

There was a faint crease on his cheek from where he had apparently slept against his pillow, and Fermín had been looking at it for the better part of five minutes because he had always thought Gavi looked particularly lovely when he had just woken up, all sleepy eyes and unguarded expressions and a softness he rarely allowed anyone outside their home to see.

He had been telling him about something that happened at training the previous afternoon. Nothing important, really, just a disagreement over a drill and a particularly irritating comment from one of the older players. 

He had expected Gavi to have something to say about it, because Gavi always had something to say about everything, especially when he thought someone had been unfair to Fermín.

Usually, he would have put his phone down, leaned across the island, and demanded to know precisely who had said what, his expression becoming progressively more offended on Fermín's behalf until the original incident was somehow transformed into a personal vendetta against the entire world.

Instead, Gavi hummed. Fermín stopped speaking. "Are you listening to me?"

Gavi looked up. "What?"

"Exactly." A flicker of irritation crossed Gavi's face. "I'm listening."

"What did I just say?"

"That someone at training was being an idiot."

"Very specific."

"Fer." Gavi put his phone down with a sigh. "I'm listening to you. I'm just checking something."

"Right." The word came out sharper than Fermín intended. He regretted it almost immediately, although not enough to take it back, and Gavi noticed. Of course he noticed.

Eight years together had made it practically impossible for either of them to miss the smallest changes in the other's voice, the tiny alterations in expression that would have meant nothing to anyone else. 

Gavi's mouth tightened, and he put his toast down. "What's that supposed
to mean?"

"Nothing." Fermín exhaled through his nose. 

He could already feel the argument beginning to take shape, gathering itself out of nothing, and he was tired. He had slept badly, his legs ached from the previous day's training, and he had been looking forward to spending a quiet morning with his boyfriend before they both had to leave. He didn't want to argue over a phone. He didn't want to argue at all.

"I just wanted to talk to you," he said. "That's all."

"And I am talking to you."

"Not really." Gavi stared at him for a moment, his brown eyes narrowing in that familiar way that meant he was trying to decide whether Fermín was being deliberately difficult or whether he genuinely didn't understand why Fermín was annoyed.

Then he picked up his toast again.

"Okay," he said flatly.

That was the first thing Fermín remembered about the morning afterward: not the argument itself, which was over in less than two minutes, but the way Gavi had gone quiet after it. Usually, even when they were irritated with one another, there was an ease to their silence. They could sit together without talking, occupy the same room without needing to fill it, and find comfort in the simple knowledge that neither of them had anywhere else they would rather be.

That morning, however, Gavi finished his breakfast without looking at him, and Fermín left for training with a kiss pressed hurriedly to his boyfriend's forehead instead of the proper goodbye kiss he had been hoping for.

Neither of them mentioned it again. By the following evening, they had almost forgotten about it. Almost.

That was the trouble with small arguments. They rarely seemed important enough to warrant an apology, particularly when the person you were arguing with had been in your life for so long that you could scarcely remember what it was like to exist without them.

They had fought over far more significant things and survived them. They had been teenagers with too much pride and too little understanding of how to communicate what they needed, young adults with exhausting schedules and careers that demanded more of them than either had anticipated.

They had learned, sometimes painfully, that loving someone did not automatically make you good at loving them. And they had always come back to each other. So when Gavi forgot about their dinner plans that Friday, Fermín told himself it was fine.

He had spent most of the afternoon looking forward to it. Nothing extravagant, just a reservation at a little restaurant they both liked, followed by a walk if the weather was pleasant and perhaps dessert somewhere else because Gavi had never been capable of passing a bakery without finding something he absolutely needed to eat.

Fermín had even gone home early enough to shower and change before Gavi sent him a message saying he would be late.

Then another message arrived, explaining that he was still at the training ground.

Then another, an hour later, saying he had forgotten to tell Fermín that he had agreed to meet Lamine after training and wouldn't make dinner.

Fermín read it while sitting on the edge of their bed, dressed and ready to leave, with his watch already fastened around his wrist. He stared at the screen for a long moment.

Fermín: You forgot?

The reply came several minutes later.

Gavi: I'm sorry, I really did. Can we do tomorrow?

Fermín typed out three different responses and deleted all of them before finally settling on something he considered reasonable.

Fermín: Okay.

Gavi sent a heart.

Fermín put his phone down.

He knew Gavi was busy. He knew they both were. Their schedules had been particularly demanding lately, with training sessions, meetings, media obligations, and the constant pressure of having to prove themselves in an environment that could be unforgiving even on its best days.

He understood that. He had never expected Gavi to abandon his responsibilities for the sake of a dinner reservation, and he certainly wasn't about to demand that his boyfriend account for every minute of his day.

But he had wanted one evening. One evening in which they were not teammates, not professional footballers, not two young omegas who had spent years learning how to navigate a world that seemed determined to make everything more difficult for them.

He wanted to be Fermín, and he wanted Gavi to be Gavi, and he wanted to sit across from the person he loved without either of them glancing at the time or thinking about what they needed to do the following morning.

He wanted to feel as though they were still making time for one another instead of merely fitting into whatever spaces remained after everything
else had taken its share.

He didn't tell Gavi any of that.

Instead, he ordered food, watched a film he barely followed, and went to sleep with his phone on the bedside table, telling himself that he was being ridiculous for feeling disappointed.

The next day, Gavi brought him a pastry from his favourite bakery as an apology. Fermín ate it, kissed him, and told him not to worry about it.
They went on with their lives.

And because they had been happy for so long, because their relationship had survived so much already, neither of them recognized how easily they were beginning to mistake the absence of a serious argument for the presence of understanding.

They had met when Gavi was twelve and Fermín was thirteen, at an age when neither of them had possessed much certainty about anything except football and the profound conviction that they were always right.

Gavi had been smaller then, all restless energy and sharp elbows, with a temper that could turn an ordinary conversation into a debate and a remarkable ability to make himself heard even when he was the youngest person in the room.

Fermín had liked him almost immediately, although he had been far too embarrassed to admit it. He liked the way Gavi laughed without attempting to make himself quieter for anyone, the way he became animated whenever he talked about football, and the way he could be startlingly gentle when he thought nobody was watching.

They had known each other for barely a year when the subject of dating came up. It had been an entirely unromantic beginning.

Their friends were dating. People at school were dating. People their age were holding hands in corridors, exchanging gifts on birthdays, and talking about their relationships with the sort of dramatic seriousness that made every first kiss sound like a life-changing event.

Gavi, who had never been particularly comfortable with the idea of being left out of anything, had wondered aloud what all the fuss was about. 

Fermín, who had been wondering much the same thing, had suggested they could simply try it.

There had been no grand confession, no trembling declaration beneath a moonlit sky, no moment in which either of them had realized that the person sitting beside them was the love of their life.

They had discussed it with the casual practicality of two boys deciding to try a new hobby. They liked each other. They trusted each other. They spent an absurd amount of time together already. If dating was as wonderful as everyone seemed to think, they might as well see for themselves.

If it didn't work out, they could stop. That had been the agreement. Neither of them had thought to establish an expiration date.

Their first kiss had happened behind the sports hall, where Gavi had spent an entire afternoon complaining that Fermín was making the situation unnecessarily awkward. It had been brief, clumsy, and followed by several seconds of stunned silence before Gavi had started laughing so hard that Fermín, who had been attempting to look composed, had shoved him away in embarrassment.

Then Gavi had caught his wrist, pulled him back, and kissed him again. The second kiss had been better. The third had happened the following day. After that, there had been no particular reason to stop.

They had learned one another slowly, through small things that accumulated over the years.

Gavi learned that Fermín became quiet when he was worried and that he hated being asked whether something was wrong when he wasn't yet ready to discuss it.

Fermín learned that Gavi's temper was often the first sign of hurt, that his stubbornness became most pronounced when he was frightened, and that he sometimes needed to be reminded that asking for help did not make him any less capable of handling his own problems.

They learned how to apologize. They learned how to argue without allowing every disagreement to become a declaration of war. They learned that Gavi liked having someone sit beside him when he was upset, even when he insisted he wanted to be left alone, and that Fermín needed a little time to himself before he could put difficult feelings into words.

They learned how to make each other laugh when the world seemed determined to make them miserable.

Somewhere along the way, the experiment became a relationship. The relationship became a constant. And the constant became something so deeply woven into the fabric of their lives that neither could remember making the decision to love the other.

It had simply happened. By the time Gavi presented as an omega at fifteen, Fermín had already become the person he trusted most in the world.

The announcement had changed everything around them. It had changed the way people looked at Gavi, the way certain adults spoke about his future, the way conversations that had once revolved around his talent suddenly became entangled with questions about his designation and whether professional football was an appropriate career for someone like him.

His parents had not taken the news well. They had spoken about safety, stability, and the practical difficulties of continuing on the path he had chosen, as though the years of work Gavi had already invested in his dream could be dismissed because his body had developed in a way they had not expected.

When Gavi refused to give up football, the disagreement became a rupture neither side knew how to repair. His parents cut him off.

Fermín remembered the night Gavi called him.

He remembered the way his voice had sounded, strained and angry, as though he had been trying to hold himself together for hours and was only now beginning to realise that he could not do it alone.

He remembered arriving at Gavi's place and finding him sitting on the floor beside his bed, surrounded by half-packed bags and clothes he had apparently been attempting to organise before giving up.

Gavi had looked up when Fermín entered. For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Gavi had said, with a brittle sort of humour that had fooled absolutely nobody, "Well. At least I won't have to listen to them complain about my career anymore."

Fermín had sat down beside him.

He had not told Gavi that everything would be fine, because he had been sixteen himself and had no idea whether it would be. He had not promised that Gavi's parents would come around or that the people making decisions about his future would be reasonable. He had not tried to turn an awful situation into a lesson about resilience.

He had simply taken Gavi's hand and stayed.

He stayed through the first heat, which had frightened them both more than either was willing to admit. He stayed through the subsequent appointments, the preparations they had to learn about, the adjustments they made as they grew older and became more familiar with what being an omega meant for each of them.

He stayed when Gavi was frustrated, when he was exhausted, when he hated the attention his designation attracted and wanted nothing more than to be treated like every other player on the pitch.

And a year later, when Fermín presented as an omega at seventeen, Gavi stayed for him in much the same way.

By then, they had been together for years. Gavi had already learned that presentation could change the way the world treated you overnight, and he recognized the stunned quiet that settled over Fermín in the days afterward: the uncertainty, the questions he did not know how to ask, the fear that everything he had worked for might suddenly be seen differently. 

Fermín tried to act as though he was handling it perfectly well. Gavi knew him too well to believe that.

He did not pretend to have all the answers. He simply made sure Fermín never had to face the questions alone. He went with him to appointments when Fermín wanted company, sat beside him when the attention became exhausting, and reminded him- sometimes gently, sometimes with the blunt certainty that was so uniquely Gavi- that presenting as an omega had not made him any less talented or any less deserving of his place on the pitch.

There were evenings when Fermín barely spoke, retreating into himself as he tried to make sense of what had changed and what had not. Gavi would settle beside him, close enough for their scents to mingle: strawberry and vanilla against cedarwood, orange blossom, and honey.

Fermín had once been the one to sit on the floor beside Gavi when his family turned away from him. Now Gavi took his hand and stayed until Fermín stopped looking as though he had to carry every worry by himself.

Neither of them forgot that. Fermín rarely spoke about those weeks afterward, but he remembered how Gavi had never treated him as fragile, never made him feel that he had become someone unfamiliar overnight. 

Gavi had loved him before he presented, and he loved him afterward, with the same stubborn certainty. For Fermín, that steadiness mattered more than any reassurance anyone else could offer.

He stayed when Gavi was injured and the comments began.

Some were made by strangers online. Others came from people who had no business discussing Gavi's career at all. They questioned his toughness, his place in professional football, his ability to recover, and whether he would ever be able to compete at the highest level.

They turned his designation into an explanation for every weakness they could find and an excuse to disregard every strength he possessed. Fermín had been furious on his behalf. Gavi had been worse.

There had been days when Gavi came home so angry that he could barely speak, days when he threw his training bag into a corner and paced the living room until Fermín finally caught him by the shoulders and convinced him to sit down.

There had been nights when the frustration gave way to something quieter, something more difficult to bear, and Gavi had admitted that he was afraid. Not of the injury itself, but of what would happen if he could not return as the player he had been before.

On those nights, Fermín would sit close enough that Gavi could lean into him, the familiar warmth of cedarwood and honey settling around him beneath the softer note of orange blossom. Gavi's own sweet scent would cling to Fermín's shirt afterward, strawberry and vanilla lingering like a small reminder that, whatever happened on the pitch, they still had each other.

Fermín had told him that he did not have to prove anything to anyone that evening. Gavi had called him an idiot. Then he had buried his face against Fermín's shoulder and held on until he felt better.

And when Robert Lewandowski, the man Gavi had come to regard as a father figure, became a source of support and reassurance in those difficult years, Fermín had been there too.

He had watched Gavi cling to that guidance with the desperate gratitude of someone who had been let down by the people he had expected to protect him.

He had watched him slowly regain confidence, rebuild his strength, and return to the pitch with the same fierce determination that had made Fermín fall in love with him in the first place.

The next disagreement happened on a Thursday, after training.

It was hardly worth calling an argument, at least not at first. They had been talking about the weekend, about whether they would visit some friends or spend the two days at home, and Gavi had apparently already made plans without discussing them with Fermín.

"I told them we'd come," Gavi said, scrolling through his messages as they walked towards the car park. "You told them we'd come?"

"I have plans on Saturday," he reminded him.

Gavi blinked, as though the words had taken a moment to register. "Since when?"

"Since I made them."

"Okay, but you can tell them you can't come." Gavi said it so simply, without a hint of malice, already turning his attention back to his phone. "It's only for a couple of hours. We can go together, and then we'll leave."

Fermín stared at him.

There it was again. That effortless certainty that Fermín would rearrange his life around Gavi's without a second thought, that whatever Fermín had planned could be moved, postponed, or abandoned because something else had come up.

Gavi didn't even seem to realise he was doing it. That was what made it difficult to explain, because how could Fermín tell his boyfriend that something he'd done a hundred times before had suddenly begun to hurt? How could he admit that he'd started feeling like an afterthought in decisions that somehow always involved him?

"You could've asked me first," he said at last.

Gavi's attention returned to him. His eyebrows drew together, a small crease appearing between them. "I didn't think you'd have a problem with it. Fer, it's Saturday. We're going to be there for a couple of hours, and then we can do whatever you want."

"It's not about how long we're going to be there."

"Then what is it about?" Gavi asked, the first traces of irritation creeping into his voice. He slipped his phone into his pocket and gave Fermín his full attention, apparently expecting a straightforward answer. "Because I don't understand why you're making this into such a
big deal."

And that, more than anything, made Fermín's chest tighten.

Because he didn't want to make it a big deal. He didn't want to stand in a corridor after training and argue with the person he'd loved since they were children over a Saturday afternoon.

He didn't want to count all the times he'd swallowed his irritation, all the occasions he'd agreed to something because it was easier than explaining why he didn't want to, or the number of conversations they'd abandoned halfway through because one of them had a match to prepare for and the other had decided it wasn't worth fighting over.

"You do this all the time," Fermín said, quieter than before. "You make plans for us, and you just expect me to go along with them."

Gavi looked genuinely taken aback. "I make plans for us because I want to spend time with you."

"I know that."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is that you never ask me what I want!"

His voice had risen before he'd meant it to. A couple of teammates farther down the corridor glanced in their direction, and Fermín immediately lowered it, embarrassed by how quickly his frustration had spilled over. Gavi noticed them too. His mouth tightened, and for a moment neither of them said anything.

"I didn't know you felt like that," Gavi muttered.

Fermín almost laughed, though there was nothing remotely funny about it. He'd been trying to explain it for weeks, hadn't he? Perhaps not in those exact words. Perhaps he'd let it come out in the form of clipped replies, cancelled plans, and an impatience that Gavi had mistaken for tiredness.

Perhaps he was just as responsible for the distance growing between them as Gavi was. But he'd hoped his boyfriend would notice that something had changed, the way Fermín had noticed every time Gavi went quiet or started picking at the skin around his nails when he was anxious.

"That's because you don't listen when I try to tell you."

Gavi's expression hardened. "That's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

"No, it isn't, Fer. I can't read your mind. If something bothers you, you have to tell me instead of acting like I'm doing everything wrong." The words landed harder than Fermín expected. He looked away, swallowing the response that immediately rose to his tongue.

Because Gavi was right about one thing: he couldn't read his mind. But Fermín had never wanted him to.

"I shouldn't have to explain every little thing," he said finally. "Sometimes I just want you to ask me."

Perhaps they were both tired. Perhaps neither was handling the demands of their schedules particularly well. Perhaps the issue was so small that they would have laughed about it on another day.

But Fermín was tired of feeling as though he had to justify wanting to be consulted about his own time.

"I'm going to drive myself home," he said.

Gavi blinked. "What?"

"I'll see you later."

"Fer, seriously?" He kept walking.

He could hear Gavi following him, muttering something under his breath, and for one awful second he wanted to turn around, take him by the hand, and tell him that he was being stupid.

He wanted to make a joke, to kiss the crease between Gavi's eyebrows, to do the familiar little things that had always brought them back to one another before a disagreement could become anything more serious.

Instead, he unlocked his car.

"Text me when you get home," Gavi said, his voice suddenly quieter. Fermín looked at him.

Gavi was standing a few feet away, his hands shoved into the pockets of his training jacket. His expression had changed, the irritation giving way to a small, reluctant uncertainty that Fermín recognised immediately.

Even from a few feet away, Fermín could catch the familiar sweetness of Gavi's scent, though it was muted beneath the traces of training and the cool air outside. It should have made him feel better. Instead, he felt guilty for noticing how badly he wanted to step closer.

It was the look Gavi wore when he knew he had upset him but wasn't quite ready to admit that he might have been wrong.

For a moment, Fermín almost gave in. Then he nodded, got into the car, and drove away.

He texted Gavi when he got home. Home. Gavi replied with a heart.

That evening, they sat together on the sofa and watched television. Gavi rested his head on Fermín's shoulder halfway through the programme, and Fermín let him. When Gavi reached for his hand, Fermín intertwined their fingers without looking away from the screen.

They did not discuss the argument.

They did not discuss the dinner they had missed or the plans they had failed to make. They did not discuss the way both of them had begun to feel that something was wrong, although neither could have explained exactly what it was.

Instead, Gavi kissed Fermín's cheek before they went to bed, and Fermín kissed him properly in return.

The following morning, Gavi made him coffee. For a little while, that was enough.

There were other things, too, although Fermín would struggle to remember them clearly afterward.

There was the evening he came home late and found Gavi already asleep, curled up on his side of the bed with one arm stretched across the empty space where Fermín usually lay.

Fermín stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him, and felt a sudden, ridiculous ache of affection. He changed quietly, slipped beneath the covers, and carefully moved Gavi's arm out of the way.

Gavi woke almost immediately.

"You're home," he mumbled.

"Yeah. Go back to sleep." Gavi made a small, unhappy sound and shuffled closer until his forehead rested against Fermín's shoulder. "You took ages."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I didn't know you were waiting up for me." Gavi was silent for a moment.

Then he said, "I always wait for you."

Fermín's chest tightened. He kissed the top of Gavi's head. "I know, cariño."

It was such an ordinary exchange, so familiar that neither of them thought much of it. Yet Fermín remembered it afterward with a clarity that made him feel faintly sick, because there had been nothing false about Gavi's words. He had meant them. Even when they were annoyed with one another, even when they had spent the evening apart, Gavi had still wanted him home.

There was the afternoon Fermín forgot to tell Gavi about a change in his training schedule, leaving Gavi waiting in the car park for nearly forty minutes before he realised what had happened.

Gavi was furious when he finally called, and Fermín was equally defensive because he had been exhausted and overwhelmed and had simply forgotten. They argued over the phone.

Then Fermín arrived home to find Gavi sitting on the kitchen counter, eating strawberries straight from the container.

"You're an idiot," Gavi informed him, with the sort of conviction usually reserved for matters of great personal importance.

Fermín nodded solemnly. "I know."

"You could have told me."

"I know."

"I was sitting there like an idiot, Fermín. Waiting for you. Do you know how long I waited?" Fermín wisely decided not to answer that. Gavi had already told him the exact number of minutes three times, and judging by the look on his face, he was prepared to repeat it a fourth.

"I know, Gavi." Gavi threw a strawberry at him.

It struck Fermín's shirt and dropped onto the floor. For a moment, they stared at each other before Fermín burst out laughing.

"Oh, you're laughing now?" Gavi demanded.

"No," Fermín managed, picking up the strawberry. "I'm not."

"You literally are." Gavi tried to maintain his glare, but the corners of his mouth twitched. The sweet scent of strawberries and vanilla that clung to him seemed to grow a little stronger as his annoyance gave way to reluctant amusement, and Fermín found himself smiling before he could
help it.

Eight years together, and Gavi could still make him feel ridiculously lucky over something as simple as the sight of him trying not to laugh.

Fermín set the strawberry aside and opened his arms. "Come here."

"Why?"

"Because I missed you." Gavi's expression softened so quickly that Fermín almost felt embarrassed for having said it. He had meant it, of course, but there was something about the way Gavi looked at him afterward, as though those four words had mattered more than all his apologies, that made Fermín feel suddenly shy.

For a moment, Gavi remained where he was, looking at Fermín with an expression that was still a little wounded beneath the lingering irritation.

Then he glanced away, muttered something about how ridiculous his boyfriend was, and slid off the counter.

Fermín caught him as soon as he stepped close enough, wrapping both arms around his waist. Gavi's hands settled against his back, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, and Fermín buried his face against the side of his head.

The familiar scent of cedarwood, orange blossom, and honey surrounded Gavi, warm and comforting. It was the scent of Fermín's clothes, his pillows, the passenger seat of his car, and the hoodies Gavi routinely stole and then refused to return.

It was so familiar that Gavi rarely thought about it anymore. He simply knew that when Fermín was close, the world felt a little easier to bear.

Fermín, meanwhile, breathed in the sweetness of Gavi's strawberry-and-vanilla scent and felt something inside him settle. He had known Gavi since they were children, had watched him grow into himself, had been there through the difficult years and the good ones.

Sometimes he forgot how extraordinary it was that the boy who had once sat beside him at thirteen had become the person he wanted beside him for the rest of his life.

"You're still an idiot," Gavi muttered into his shoulder.

Gavi tightened his arms around him. "And don't laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing."

"You're smiling. I can feel it." Fermín laughed, and Gavi gave his shoulder an indignant shove that did absolutely nothing to move him away. If anything, Fermín only held him closer, rubbing a slow hand over his back until Gavi's indignation dissolved into something quieter.

They stayed like that for a while, neither particularly interested in being the first to let go. The kitchen smelled faintly of fresh strawberries, and somewhere behind them, the abandoned container  remained balanced on the counter.

Fermín had no idea what Gavi had originally intended to make with them, but he suspected that asking would only earn him another lecture.

"You love me," Fermín murmured.

Gavi made a disbelieving noise against his shoulder. "Unfortunately."

Fermín smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Gavi's fingers curled more securely into his shirt, and the faint sweetness of his scent mingled with Fermín's own until neither could quite distinguish where one ended and the other began.

"Love you, too," Fermín said.

Gavi went quiet. Then, very softly, he replied, "Love you."

Fermín's arms tightened around him.

He had heard those words thousands of times. They had said them at thirteen, when neither of them had quite understood what they were doing. They had said them at fifteen, when the world had become considerably less kind to Gavi. They had said them through injuries, disappointments, arguments, victories, and all the ordinary evenings that made up a life together.

Still, Fermín never quite grew tired of hearing them.

Gavi pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were softer now, his expression no longer carrying the sharpness it had earlier.

"Are you going to make it up to me?"

Fermín raised an eyebrow. "I just hugged you."

"Congratulations. Do you want a medal?" Gavi poked him in the chest. "You're buying me dinner."

Gavi stared at him.

Fermín looked at him for a long moment before shaking his head, smiling helplessly. "You're impossible."

"And you're in love with me."

"Unfortunately." Gavi's face lit up with the triumphant grin Fermín had been trying to coax out of him all evening. He leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to Fermín's cheek before wrapping his arms around him again.

"Good," he mumbled. "Because I'm not going anywhere."

Fermín rested his chin on top of Gavi's head, his smile fading into something gentler. "Neither am I."

Gavi kissed him.

They made up in the kitchen, laughing when Fermín accidentally knocked the strawberry container to the floor, and the entire disagreement was forgotten by the time they went to bed.

It should have been reassuring. It should have reminded Fermín that they had always been capable of finding their way back to one another.

Instead, in the weeks that followed, he began to notice how often they relied on those little reconciliations without ever addressing what had gone wrong in the first place.

They would argue, then kiss. They would become frustrated, then make each other laugh.

They would spend an evening feeling misunderstood and wake the following morning with Gavi's leg thrown over Fermín's and the warm certainty that they still loved one another.

And because they still loved one another, they assumed that everything else would eventually sort itself out.

Neither of them considered that love could remain intact while trust began to fray.

The first time Fermín heard the rumour, he was not looking for it.

He had stayed late after training to finish a few things with the coaching staff, then wandered into a corridor near the administrative offices while looking for his phone, which he had apparently left somewhere and could not find despite having checked his pockets six times.

He was tired, hungry, and irritated with himself. His mind was occupied with the practicalities of getting home, finding something to eat, and perhaps persuading Gavi to let him choose what they watched that evening.

He was almost past the open office door when he heard his name.

"... López would be a sensible option." Fermín slowed.

He did not stop immediately. He told himself that he had probably misheard, that there were dozens of people with the same surname, that it would be absurd to stand in a corridor listening to a conversation that had nothing to do with him.

Then another voice answered. "Perhaps. But I doubt he'll agree to it."

"It doesn't matter whether he agrees. If the right offer comes in, the club will make a decision." Fermín felt something cold settle in his stomach.

He knew enough about football to understand what they were discussing. He had been around long enough to know that careers could change with a single meeting, that players could spend years building a future at a club only to discover that their place there had become a matter of negotiation.

He knew that contracts, transfers, and opportunities were discussed behind closed doors every day. He also knew that being considered expendable was a particular kind of humiliation.

He moved closer to the doorway before he could talk himself out of it.

The conversation continued, although the voices had dropped low enough that he could no longer make out every word.

He heard references to a smaller club, to an opportunity that might suit him, to whether the timing was right. He heard someone say that the decision would be easier if certain people stopped interfering.

Then he heard Gavi's name. Fermín went still.

It was not unusual for Gavi's name to come up in conversations about the club. He was one of their most recognisable players, and his opinions carried weight.

He was fiercely protective of his teammates, sometimes to a degree that made Fermín privately worry that he would one day get himself into trouble by refusing to let something go.

But the tone of the conversation changed when his name was mentioned. "I heard Gavi was the one pushing for it."

Fermín frowned. Another voice gave a short, humourless laugh. "Of course he was."

"Apparently, he's been making it clear that he doesn't think López has a future here." The words did not make sense.

For a moment, Fermín simply stood there, his mind refusing to arrange them into anything coherent. He thought of Gavi at fifteen, furious and frightened and determined to prove that nobody else had the right to decide whether he belonged in football.

He thought of Gavi watching Fermín's matches, complaining about his positioning, celebrating his goals as though he had scored them himself. He thought of the nights Gavi had stayed awake with him after difficult games, insisting that one bad performance did not erase everything he had worked for.

Gavi knew what this meant to him. Gavi knew exactly how hard he had worked to get where he was.

He knew the sacrifices Fermín had made, the uncertainty he had endured, the years he had spent wondering whether he was good enough. He knew how much it would hurt to be told that the club no longer had a place for him.

There was no version of Gavi that Fermín could imagine wanting that for him.

"Why would he do that?" someone asked.

"Who knows? Perhaps he's thinking about the squad or maybe he's decided López is competition." Another pause.

Then, more quietly, "Or perhaps the relationship isn't as perfect as everyone thinks it is."

Fermín's fingers curled around the strap of his bag. He should have walked away.

He would not understand the cost of that moment yet. Right now, he could only hear the accusation again and again, each repetition turning his hurt into something hot and blinding.

He should have stepped into the office and asked them to repeat what they had said. He should have demanded to know where the information had come from, who had told them, what evidence they had, and whether anyone had bothered to ask Gavi for an explanation.

He should have remembered that rumours were easy to start and difficult to stop.

Instead, he stood in the corridor and listened.

He heard them speak about the two of them, about the way Gavi had always seemed to have an opinion on Fermín's career, about how frequently they were together.

He heard someone make a disparaging remark about their relationship, and he felt a sudden, sharp burst of anger that had nothing to do with the transfer discussion.

They had been together for eight years.

Eight years.

They had never made a secret of loving each other among the people they trusted, although they had learned to be careful in public.

They had learned which cameras to avoid, which corridors to use, how to steal a kiss in the few seconds before training without attracting unwanted attention. They had learned to keep certain things private because the world was not always kind to two omegas who had chosen one another.

They had never been ashamed of each other.

And now these people were discussing their relationship as though it were an inconvenience, as though the years they had spent together were something to be examined and judged by people who knew nothing about them.

Fermín should have been angry enough to leave. Instead, he heard Gavi's name again, followed by a statement that made the blood rush to his ears.

"He's the one who wanted López gone. You can be sure of that." There was no hesitation in the speaker's voice. No uncertainty, no qualification. It was delivered with the confidence of someone repeating a fact everyone in the room already knew.

Fermín felt, with startling clarity, the moment something inside him shifted. He wanted to disbelieve it.

He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, to walk into the room and demand that they explain themselves, to call Gavi immediately and hear him tell Fermín that none of it was true.

He wanted the simple certainty of knowing that the person he loved would never deliberately hurt him in a way that struck so close to the heart of everything he had worked for.

But the words had been spoken, and they had been spoken by people who worked at the club. People who had access to meetings and conversations he would never be privy to. People who knew things he did not.

He told himself that they had no reason to lie. He did not consider that they might have one.

He should have gone straight to the people in that office and demanded to know what they were talking about. He should have taken a breath, let the first shock pass, and remembered that eight years of loving Gavi ought to mean more than a few confident words overheard through an open door.

Instead, anger rose too quickly for reason to catch it.

It was not only the thought of being sold, or the humiliation of learning that his future might have been discussed without him. It was Gavi's name attached to it. 

Gavi, who had stood beside him through every uncertainty, who knew exactly how much his career meant to him, who had held him together when the world seemed determined to make him feel that he did not belong. 

The idea that Gavi could use that knowledge against him felt so intimate, so cruel, that Fermín could barely stand still.

He turned away from the office and went straight back towards the changing rooms.

He did not stop to consider that the men behind the door might have lied. He did not think to ask why they had been so eager to discuss his relationship, or why their certainty had sounded more like spite than concern. He heard their words again with every step, each repetition sharpening the hurt until it had become something hot and blinding.

He would ask Gavi. He would make him look him in the eyes and explain.

But by the time Fermín reached the locker room, he was no longer thinking about asking. He was thinking about answers, about betrayal, about the eight years he had given someone who apparently knew exactly where to hurt him.

The locker room was loud when Fermín walked in.

Someone was laughing near the benches. A couple of the players were arguing about something that had happened during training, and music played from a phone left on top of one of the lockers. The air smelled of damp training clothes, soap, and the familiar mixture of scents that clung to the room after a session.

Gavi was sitting on the bench near his locker, bent over his bag as he searched for something. He looked up when Fermín entered.

The locker room was thick with the mixed scents of the team, sweat and soap and damp training clothes, but Fermín could still pick out Gavi's familiar strawberry-vanilla sweetness beneath it all. 

For eight years, it had been one of the easiest things in the world to find him in a crowded room. Today, the familiarity only made the knot in Fermín's chest tighter.

For a moment, his expression brightened with the simple, unconscious pleasure of seeing him. It was a small reaction, almost imperceptible, but Fermín saw it. He saw the way Gavi straightened slightly, the way his eyes followed him across the room, the way he opened his mouth as though he were about to say something.

Perhaps he was going to ask if Fermín was all right.

Or he was going to make some stupid joke, as he had done a thousand times before, and Fermín would be forced to confront the fact that he still wanted to laugh at it.

He could not bear the thought.

"Gavi." Something in his voice made the conversation nearest them falter.

Gavi looked at him properly. "What?"

Fermín stopped in front of him. "Did you tell the club to sell me?"

The room did not become silent all at once. It happened gradually, the way it does when people begin to realise that a conversation has taken a turn they were not expecting.

A laugh died near the lockers. Someone stopped talking halfway through a sentence. A phone continued playing music for another few seconds before its owner hurriedly turned it down.

Gavi stared at him. "What?"

"Did you tell them to sell me?" For a moment, Gavi seemed genuinely unable to understand the question. He looked at Fermín as though he were waiting for the punchline, for the explanation that would turn this into another one of their arguments about something small and stupid.

Then his expression changed. "Fer, what are you talking about?"

Fermín felt his heart hammering against his ribs.

There it was. The question he had imagined hearing for days, delivered in precisely the tone he had feared. Not an immediate denial. Not outrage at the accusation itself. A question.

What are you talking about?

As though he had invented the entire thing. "Don't do that."

Gavi stood up slowly. "Do what?"

"Act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" His voice rose, confusion sharpening into alarm. He glanced briefly at the people around them, then looked back at Fermín. "Can we talk about this somewhere else?"

"No. I think they should hear this."

"Fer---"

Fermín laughed, and the sound was so harsh that even he barely recognised it. "I've been listening to you make excuses for weeks, and I'm done."

Gavi went very still. "What excuses?"

"Don't."

"Don't what? You're accusing me of something, and I don't even know what happened!"

"You wanted them to sell me!" The words rang through the locker room.

Gavi's face drained of colour.

For a second, Fermín thought he might actually be sick. The sweetness of Gavi's scent seemed to thin beneath the sudden distress, and Fermín's instincts urged him to step closer, to soften his voice, to do what he had done countless times before when Gavi was frightened. He kept himself still instead. He saw Gavi's lips part, saw the way his hands tightened around the strap of his bag, saw something flicker across his expression that Fermín could not immediately identify.

Then Gavi shook his head. "No."

The answer was quiet.

So quiet that Fermín almost wished he had not heard it.

"No?" he repeated. "No, Fer. I didn't---"

"Don't lie to me!" Gavi flinched.

It was a tiny movement, barely more than a tightening of his shoulders, but Fermín saw it, and something inside him twisted.

For one suspended moment, he was back in their kitchen, watching Gavi turn towards him with that same bewildered expression, asking whether he was all right. He was back in their bedroom, listening to Gavi tell him that he always waited for him to come home.

He was back in every ordinary, unremarkable moment of their life together, and all of it seemed to be slipping away from him.

"I know what you did," Fermín said, his voice shaking. "I know you were talking to them. I know you wanted me gone."

Gavi stared at him. "Who told you that? Why would I ever want that?"

The question made Fermín's anger flare. "Does it matter?"

"Yes! Of course it matters! Who told you that?"

"Why? So you can find another excuse?" Gavi's mouth fell open.

For the first time since Fermín had begun speaking, he seemed to have no response at all. He looked at Fermín with an expression of such naked disbelief that, under different circumstances, Fermín might have stopped. He might have recognised that something about this conversation was terribly wrong.

But he was too hurt.

He had imagined anger, certainly, and perhaps tears, but he had never imagined standing in front of the person he loved with so much hurt inside him that he could scarcely breathe.

He had never imagined that Gavi would look at him like a stranger.

"I have spent eight years of my life with you," Fermín said.

Gavi's eyes began to shine. "Fer, please---"

"Eight years, Gavi! Eight years!" His voice cracked on the second repetition. He barely noticed.

"I was there for you when your parents cut you off. I was there when you presented, when everyone decided that you weren't good enough to play football anymore, when you thought you were never going to recover from your injury. I was there for every single thing you went through, and I never once made you feel like you had to earn my support!"

"Fer---"

"No, let me finish!" Gavi fell silent.

Fermín was crying now. He could feel the tears gathering in his eyes, and he hated it, hated that his voice was shaking and that his chest hurt and that the people around them were watching him fall apart in front of everyone.

He had not wanted this to happen here. Some distant, sensible part of him knew that this was the last place he should be having this conversation.

But he could not seem to stop.

"I stood by you when people were calling you names. I stood by you when you were at your worst. I stood by you when you didn't even believe in yourself anymore, and I did it because I loved you! Because I thought that was what we did! We stood by each other!"

Gavi's tears began to fall.

He did not wipe them away. He simply stared at Fermín, his lips trembling, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and a grief so sudden that it seemed to have robbed him of the ability to speak.

"And you couldn't even tell me?" Fermín demanded. "You couldn't even come to me and say that you didn't want me here anymore? You had to go behind my back and try to ruin my career?"

"I didn't---"

"Eight years, and you couldn't even give me the respect of telling me to my face!" The words came out almost as a sob.

Gavi shook his head desperately. "That's not--- Fer, that's not what---"

"Then what is it, Gavi? What is it?" He stepped closer, searching Gavi's face for something that would make sense of what was happening. An explanation. A confession. Anything.

"Tell me what I've done to you. Tell me what I have ever done that made you decide I wasn't worth keeping around. Because I don't understand it, Gavi. I genuinely don't understand what I've done to deserve this."

Gavi made a small, broken sound.

It was not quite a sob, although it might have become one if he had been able to draw a proper breath. He pressed his lips together, trying to hold himself together, trying desperately to keep his face from crumpling in front of their teammates.

Fermín saw it.

He saw the tears slipping down Gavi's cheeks, the way his fingers trembled around the strap of his bag, the way he seemed to be fighting for control of himself with every breath.

For eight years, Fermín had known exactly what to do when Gavi looked like that.

He knew how to reach for him. He knew how to lower his voice, how to tell him to breathe, how to make the world feel a little less overwhelming. He knew that Gavi hated crying in front of other people and that he would rather be angry than allow anyone to see how deeply something had hurt him.

He knew how to comfort him.

His hands even moved, almost involuntarily, before he forced them back to his sides.

He could not comfort him. Not when Gavi was the reason he was crying, or so Fermín had convinced himself.

"You know what?" Fermín said, wiping at his face with the heel of his hand. "I'm done. I'm so tired of this. I'm tired of feeling like I'm the only person who actually cares about what happens to us."

Gavi looked at him with wide, wet eyes.

"Please," he whispered.

One word. Fermín felt it land somewhere deep inside him.

For a moment, he was fourteen again, standing behind the sports hall with Gavi's hand in his, both of them laughing nervously after their first kiss.

He remembered how easily they had begun, how little they had expected, how neither of them had imagined that one day they would stand in a room full of people and look at each other as though everything they had shared had been a mistake.

He remembered Gavi falling asleep against him on the sofa. Gavi stealing food from his plate. Gavi waiting up for him at night. Gavi telling him that he loved him as casually as he might have asked what they were having for dinner.

He remembered eight years.

Then he looked at Gavi, standing in front of him with tears on his face, and thought of the accusation again.

He's the one who wanted López gone.

"I don't know what I've ever done to you," Fermín said, his voice suddenly quieter, "that you had to try to ruin my career. I don't know why you couldn't just talk to me, why you couldn't tell me that you didn't want me anymore, why you had to make me find out like this."

Gavi shook his head. His mouth moved, but whatever he was trying to say never made it past his lips.

Fermín's eyes burned. "But I don't care anymore."

The sentence came out with a finality he had not expected. It seemed to settle over the room, heavier than all the shouting that had come before it. "I've been putting up with this for long enough. I'm done, Gavi. We're over."

Silence.

Fermín wiped at his face with a shaking hand. "Don't follow me, Gavi. Please. I need to be alone."

Gavi's lips parted. Every instinct in him urged him to go after Fermín, to catch his sleeve, to make him stop long enough to listen. He wanted to follow him into the corridor and demand that he look at him, that he give him one chance to explain. 

He wanted to remind him that he was Fer, that he was the boy who had once promised to listen to him, that eight years could not simply be thrown away because someone else had said something cruel.

But he knew Fermín.

When Fermín asked to be alone, he meant it. He needed quiet to sort through his feelings, and pushing after him would only make him retreat further. Gavi had respected that about him for years, even when it was difficult; he had learned the difference between giving Fermín space and leaving him behind.

This time, the distinction felt impossible. Still, Gavi stayed where he was. He would not chase someone who had just asked him not to, even if every part of him was screaming that letting Fermín walk away might mean losing him forever.

Not the ordinary silence they had shared at home, comfortable and familiar, filled with the unspoken understanding of two people who knew they did not need to talk to remain close.

This was something else entirely. Gavi stared at him.

For one terrible second, Fermín thought he might laugh. That Gavi might shake his head, call him an idiot, tell him he was being dramatic, and demand that they go somewhere private to talk about whatever had happened.

He had done that before, after all. They had both been stubborn, both said things they regretted, both threatened to walk away from arguments they had no intention of abandoning. They had always come back.

But Gavi did not laugh. He did not argue.

He simply stood there, crying so quietly that Fermín could hear the unevenness of his breathing.

His expression changed slowly, as though the words had taken several seconds to reach him. The disbelief faded first. Then the anger he had been struggling to summon. What remained was a kind of devastation Fermín had never seen on his face before, so complete that it seemed to strip him of every defence he had ever possessed.

Gavi had spent eight years believing that, whatever happened, Fermín would listen to him.

He had believed that they could argue, that they could be angry, that they could hurt each other's feelings and apologise and try again. He had believed that the life they had built together was strong enough to withstand a difficult conversation.

He had never imagined that Fermín would end it without allowing him to explain himself.

"Fer," he whispered.

Fermín looked away.

He could not bear to look at him any longer. He could not bear the tears, the trembling mouth, the familiar face that suddenly seemed to contain so much pain that Fermín did not know what to do with it.

He had wanted Gavi to tell him that he had misunderstood, that someone had lied, that there was some reason he could not yet comprehend. But he didn't want to hear it, if it were true. He couldn't bear it.

Instead, he had given Gavi no room to say anything at all.

He had talked over every attempt. He had interpreted every question as evasion and every denial as a lie. He had taken eight years of knowing Gavi and used that knowledge to build a case against him, finding meaning in every disagreement, every missed dinner, every moment of frustration.

He had convinced himself that he was protecting his heart.

Now, standing in front of the person he had loved since he was fourteen, he could not remember what he had been trying to protect it from.

He wiped his face again. Then he turned around. He did not say goodbye. He did not look back.

He walked out of the locker room with his bag hanging from one shoulder, his eyes fixed on the floor ahead of him, and the sound of Gavi's broken breathing following him all the way to the corridor.

For several seconds after Fermín left, nobody moved. The door swung shut behind him.

Somewhere near the back of the room, a phone continued playing music at a volume that suddenly seemed obscenely loud. Someone reached over and turned it off. The resulting silence was so complete that the smallest sounds became impossible to ignore: the scrape of a shoe against the floor, the rustle of clothing, the uneven breath Gavi was trying desperately to steady.

He was still standing beside his locker.

His hands hung at his sides, and his face was wet with tears. The scent of strawberry and vanilla had turned faint and uneven, almost lost beneath the sharp distress that filled the space around him. 

Gavi could barely think about it; all he could register was that Fermín had left, and that the cedarwood-and-honey scent he had associated with safety for years was already fading down the corridor. He seemed not to have noticed that he was crying anymore. He stared at the closed door with an expression of such bewilderment that Pedri took an uncertain step towards him before stopping.

Nobody knew what to say.

They had all heard the accusation. They had all heard Fermín list the things he had done for Gavi, the years he had spent supporting him, the sacrifices he had made. They had heard him say that Gavi had tried to have him sold, that he had been going behind Fermín's back, that he had apparently decided their relationship was no longer worth preserving.

And they had watched Gavi fail to deny it convincingly enough to stop Fermín from leaving.

They did not know what had happened before that morning. They did not know about the conversations Fermín had overheard.

They did not know how many times Gavi had tried to ask what was wrong, how many times Fermín had told him that nothing was wrong, how many ordinary evenings had passed with both of them sitting beside each other while something neither understood slowly came between them.

They knew only what they had witnessed.

And the accusation had been ugly enough that it was difficult to look at Gavi without wondering whether there was some truth to it.

Gavi noticed. He noticed the way the others looked at him, the hesitation in their expressions, the uncomfortable silence that fell whenever he turned his head. He had spent years learning how to recognize the difference between curiosity and judgement, between someone who was genuinely concerned about him and someone who had already decided what kind of person he was.

He knew that look. He had seen it when he presented as an omega, when people who had known nothing about his work suddenly decided they understood his limitations.

He had seen it when he was injured, when strangers questioned whether he would ever be good enough again.

He had seen it when people decided that his temper made him difficult, that his determination made him arrogant, that his refusal to give up made him selfish.

He had learned to endure it.

He had never expected to see it on the faces of his teammates after his boyfriend of eight years accused him of betraying him.

Gavi swallowed.

He tried to draw a proper breath, but it caught in his chest, and he pressed his lips together until the trembling eased. He could still feel the shape of Fermín's words, each one lodged somewhere beneath his ribs.

We're over. He had heard it.

He simply could not make himself believe that it had happened.

"Gavi," Ferran said cautiously.

Gavi flinched at the sound of his name.

Pedri took another step towards him. "Are you---"

"I'm fine." The answer came too quickly.

His voice broke on the second word. He shut his eyes.

For a moment, he thought he might try to explain himself. He could tell them that whatever Fermín believed, there had to be a mistake.

He could tell them that he would never deliberately do something like that, that he knew what it meant to have his future questioned, that he would never willingly put someone he loved through the same uncertainty.

He could tell them that he loved Fermín.

He could tell them that, only that morning, he had woken up beside him and thought about how much he wanted to spend the evening together.

He could tell them everything. But the words would not come.

Because if he began to explain, he would have to acknowledge that Fermín had really left. He would have to accept that the person who had stood beside him through every difficult moment of his life had just looked him in the eyes and decided that eight years together were not worth another conversation.

And Gavi could not bear to say it aloud.

He lowered his head and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to wipe away the tears. It was pointless. They kept coming, and the more he tried to stop them, the more difficult it became to breathe.

He had cried in front of Fermín before.

Of course he had. He was not ashamed of that. Fermín had seen him frightened, frustrated, exhausted, and heartbroken. He had seen him at his worst and never made him feel that his tears were something to be embarrassed about.

But this was different. Fermín had looked at him while he cried and walked away anyway.

His fingers fumbled with the straps of his bag, and he nearly dropped it before managing to pull it onto his shoulder. He did not look at anyone. He could not bear the thought of meeting another person's eyes and finding the same uncertainty, the same suspicion, the same quiet judgement that seemed to have settled over the room.

He wanted to go home.

The thought came automatically, and the realisation that he had nowhere to go that would make him feel better nearly undid him.

Home was the apartment he shared with Fermín.

Home was the kitchen where they made breakfast together, the sofa where they fell asleep watching television, the bedroom where Fermín always reached for him in the middle of the night.

Home was the place where his boyfriend had kissed his forehead and told him that he loved him, where they had argued over dinner plans and made up over stolen kisses, where five years of their lives had accumulated in ordinary objects and familiar routines.

He could not go home.

Not now. Not knowing that Fermín might be there, packing his things or sitting alone in their bedroom, perhaps already regretting nothing.

Gavi tightened his grip on the bag. He turned towards the door. Nobody tried to stop him.

For a moment, he thought someone might call after him, might ask him to stay, might offer him the chance to explain what had happened. But the room remained silent, and he could feel their eyes following him as he walked towards the exit.

He had never felt so exposed in his life.

Fermín was gone.

Gavi turned and walked out.

He made it halfway down the corridor before the tears became impossible to hide. He stopped beside a window, pressed a trembling hand against the wall, and tried to breathe through the ache in his chest. The training ground stretched out beyond the glass, grey beneath the rain, the familiar pitches shining with water.

He had spent so much of his life fighting to remain there.

He had fought his parents. He had fought the people who doubted him. He had fought through injury and uncertainty and the relentless pressure of being expected to prove himself over and over again. He had learned how to stand his ground, how to swallow his pride, how to keep moving even when he wanted nothing more than to sit down and admit that he was tired.

He had never imagined that he would have to fight to convince Fermín that he loved him.

And the worst part was that he did not know how.

He could not defend himself because Fermín had not given him the chance. He could not even begin to repair what had broken between them because Fermín had walked away before Gavi could say a single thing that might have mattered.

For eight years, Fermín had been the person he turned to when the world became too difficult to face alone.

Now, for the first time in his life, Gavi had no idea what to do without him.

He wiped his face with his sleeve, drew one unsteady breath, and continued down the corridor. He did not know where he was going. He only knew that he could not stay there.

Fermín made it to his car before he started crying again.

He sat behind the steering wheel with the door shut and the engine off, his hands resting uselessly in his lap.

The car still carried traces of Gavi: strawberry, vanilla, and warm sugar caught in the fabric of the passenger seat and the hoodie he had left there the previous week. 

Fermín stared at the empty seat, suddenly aware of how often their scents had blended in this small space, how often he had driven with Gavi's hand tucked into his and his own cedarwood-and-orange-blossom scent wrapped around them both. He had never imagined that something so familiar could become painful to breathe in.

Rain tapped against the windscreen, blurring the training ground beyond it into indistinct shapes and muted colours. He could hear his own breathing, uneven and embarrassingly loud in the enclosed space, and he pressed his palms against his eyes as though that might somehow make the last twenty minutes disappear.

He had done it. He had actually done it.

He had looked at Gavi and ended their relationship.

Eight years. He could not seem to think about anything else.

He remembered being fourteen, standing behind the sports hall and pretending that the first kiss had been no big deal.

He remembered Gavi laughing at him, remembered the way they had held hands beneath tables and exchanged messages late at night when they were supposed to be sleeping.

He remembered the first time Gavi had introduced him as his boyfriend without stumbling over the word, the first time they had spent an entire weekend together, the first time Fermín had realised that he had stopped imagining what life would be like without Gavi because the idea had become too strange to contemplate.

He remembered every difficult year.

He remembered Gavi's fear when his parents cut him off, the anger that had carried him through the worst of his injury, the determination that had made him return to football even when people had insisted that he would never be the same again.

He remembered the way Gavi had looked at him in the locker room.

The tears. The disbelief. The desperate attempts to speak.

Fermín's throat tightened. He could still hear him saying his name.

Fer.

Just his name, spoken with a kind of pleading that Fermín had never heard from him before.

He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. He wanted to call him.

The desire was immediate and overwhelming. He wanted to turn the car around, find Gavi, take him somewhere private, and ask him to explain what had happened.

He wanted to tell him that he had been angry, that he had been hurt, that he had not known what to do with the things he had heard.

He wanted to give them both a chance to breathe, to calm down, to speak without an audience. He wanted to undo the last twenty minutes.

But then he remembered the accusation again, and the hurt returned so quickly that it almost felt like a physical blow.

He could not understand how Gavi could have done something like that. He could not understand why he had not told him.

And he could not understand why, after eight years of trusting one another with everything, he had been forced to hear about it from someone else.

Fermín lifted his head.

His eyes were red. His face felt tight and hot, and he could still feel the tremor in his hands. He looked towards the entrance of the training ground, half expecting to see Gavi coming towards him, as though the other boy might somehow have understood that Fermín was waiting for an explanation after all.

But Gavi couldn’t read his mind, could he?

Nobody appeared. He started the engine.

For several minutes, he remained in the car park, unable to make himself drive away. He knew that if he went home, he would see Gavi's things everywhere.

His shoes by the door. His jacket on the back of a chair. The photographs on their shelves, the little objects they had accumulated over the years, the life they had built together without ever quite noticing when it had become permanent.

He could not face it. Not yet. So he drove.

He did not know where he was going until he found himself turning towards a familiar road, one he had travelled hundreds of times during the years they had been together.

The road that led past the little bakery where Gavi always insisted on buying something sweet, past the café where they had celebrated their first anniversary, past the park where they had once spent an entire afternoon arguing over football before making up on a bench.

He kept driving. He told himself that he had done what he needed to do.

He told himself that he could not remain in a relationship with someone he no longer trusted. He told himself that eight years were not enough to excuse a betrayal of this magnitude.

And yet, beneath every justification, one thought continued to surface, persistent and unwelcome.

What if I'm wrong? Fermín gripped the steering wheel. He did not answer himself.

He drove through the rain, carrying the certainty that he had been betrayed and the terrible, unshakable feeling that he had just destroyed the most important thing in his life.

Neither feeling would leave him alone. Neither would tell him the truth.

And somewhere behind him, Gavi was trying to understand how the person who had loved him for eight years could look at him and decide, without listening, that he was capable of something so cruel.

He had not yet begun to understand that the worst part of losing Fermín was not the breakup itself. It was that Fermín had left believing a lie.