Work Text:
“When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human-”
Spain is not anything you imagined it to be, especially the food. The first time you eat something off it makes your stomach feel tense and sore for a whole day, and you go home to the darkened living room with the unpacked boxes and call Victoria. She doesn’t offer any sympathy, although talking is enough, listening to her cool, distracted voice and imagining her going through her daily routines at home. You’re very attached to her, you know this, sometimes it makes you resentful and angry when she doesn’t show you the same bounding affection, when her affected coolness makes you turn away and try to hide your hurt.
She loves you, and you know this too. Why else would she always pick up when you’re calling. But you try to stop calling as often, as a result.
-
Iker.
There’s something about Iker, his warm eyes and the steady set of his jaw, the even measure of his eyebrows; it made you want to trust him. Iker licking warm chocolate off his finger absently in the morning, Iker putting out his churro for you to bite, rolling his eyes indulgently. Somehow you fell into this easily, charmed by his smiles and antics on the pitch, the focused way he fell after the ball when you aimed at the goal.
The smell of warm dirt and fresh grass when you’re pressed to the ground, almost choking with laughter, the heavy feel of him across your back. His hard hands searching for the vulnerable places at the nape of your neck, your sides where your white training shirt rode up to expose your ribs. Iker’s got goalkeeper hands, broad and square and strangely delicate looking when they’re not hidden by his gloves. He catches your shots and he catches you looking all the time.
“Let’s go to my favorite restaurant, Dahvid,” he says, insistent, nudging you with his shoulder, cultivating the intimacy you didn’t know you wanted.
“Dah vid ,” he always says, grinning with the knowledge of saying your name imperfectly. In his own way. As though claiming you, or a part of you at least, someone warming into him like a pat of butter melting in a pan.
-
Gary.
The winter you visit Gary, the first winter you come back from Spain, god knows how you managed it between the busy schedule Real imposed. But you did- you wanted to make up for it, or something, the way you left, even though you know nothing could’ve, not really, the same way you know coming back now for a weekend at Gary’s house is like putting a bandaid on an already cauterized wound.
It had hurt. It had healed, fast, out of necessity. It had left a scar.
“Gaz, it’s two days! I’ll sleep on the couch,” you whisper into the phone, clasped around your secret gleefully, boyish. You say that like he’s still living with his parents, like he doesn’t have a house with 10 empty rooms for you to choose from.
He takes you out for dinner. It’s a charming restaurant, somewhere you can hole up at and have decent food. You almost cry at the familiar smell of meat pie and mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, burning your hands on the chips. Cokes with too big quarters of lemons on the cup rim. Gary flicks lemon seeds at you from across the table, snickering at your expression.
“You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed this,” you say, offering him a chip off your plate. His eyes softens, his head tilts; you can’t seem to look up, to meet his gaze.
“I know,” he says, and you don’t say much for the rest of the meal. Of course he knows. It aches in your heart like a drum.
Later you’re sharing one greasy sandwich Gary bought off a stand on the corner of the street, almost-drunk and giggling at one another. Gary’s wearing your dark glasses even though it's night, and you have your cap on. Your disguises feeling more like fun pranks, the sort you and Gary and the rest of the gang would’ve loved pulling off, back in the day, than inconveniences.
Gary pushes the glasses to the top of his head to better maneuver what’s left of the sandwich into his mouth, and you watch him, stars swimming around the both of you, cars hooting for you to stay on the curb.
The grease paper rustles around his face as he chortles-
And it gets to you, suddenly, the fact that Victoria always reminded you of something light and delicate, something to be eaten out of china plates, and Iker moved in a redolent aura of large warm exotic dishes, that Gary was this , and it pierced you in the heart with something aching and pure and warm like whiskey. Gary was the familiarity you’re not sure you’re allowed to have, and can’t let go off; you want to sink you teeth into it and hold it tight in your hands and never let go.
You want to tilt off the curb - cars be damned - people be damned- and kiss Gary there. He’d taste like grease, probably. Whatever you’d both just been eating. Fried something-or-other unidentified. Mustard, even. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll taste like champagne from a golden trophy, like a goal from the halfway line, like raspberry jam or something sweet. Something red.
You don’t do it, even though he looks at you, even though your fingers flex in your pockets where you’ve jammed them down so they don’t do something stupid, like grab him. You’re not 18 anymore so you don’t do it.
So he tastes a bit like regret, in the end, doesn’t he.
-
You make breakfast early in the morning because it’s what a good guest should do. Then you carry it to Gary’s room and force him awake by lying next to him and singing, badly, off tune, Woke up this morning feeling fine, I’ve got United on my mind-
He swears and glares at you with one eye, buried under his blankets.
Everything swims suddenly, your vision going misty, and you wonder if it’s - old age or something, something settling in finally that you can’t fight off.
This boy you can love but can’t kiss. He nudges the bacon on the plate. You’ve made it into the shape of a smiley face, eggs as eyes and sausages as mouth and the rest arranged neatly on either side. It hurts you, all of it, the rain outside slapping the window panes, Gary’s exhausted eyebags and the rueful way his shoulders sag.
“Gaz,” you say, trying to ask for something without having to.
He gives you a look. Then he holds out his arms and you feel him wrap around you, grateful for now, for him, your best friend.
“Eat your eggs before they get cold,” you say, and he does, obediently. You press a kiss to his forehead, chaste enough to pass for brotherly.