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Isco is stuck in a little dance, hovering his fingers over the pleasantly glowing instagram icon and pulling away. He’s sat on the balcony, back flat against the wall, and reminding himself to not look at social media. His mom told him not to beat himself up too bad, and he was already playing his sad music playlist. Another round of reading spiteful instagram comments after a loss would be too much.
He hears the familiar opening strum of the guitar from this song, the one he plays after any bad game, and knows that he has to be in a particularly bad mood to empathize with Nick Drake. Why didn’t I bring my guitar?, he asks himself. Maybe it would help. Maybe.
His legs tap on the concrete softly along to the rhythm, suddenly brought back to his dirty patio in Malaga, learning strumming patterns while his mother shucked summer corn. It’s a good memory, but does nothing to dampen his sadness.
In retrospect he shouldn’t really feel that bad—you scored after all— but two was more than one and a loss was still a loss. Isco was a cheerful guy, but he could kick himself over this eternally. Nick Drake wasn’t helping. The paper he still has that his mother had slipped with hastily drawn symbols on it, “just for good luck,” into his bag years and years ago doesn’t help either, even though he still runs his fingers over it. He can almost feel the lines of pen ink, the quickly muttered words as his mother scrawled it. He’s not sure if he believes in good luck charms but the gesture holds some power in it.
Isco is brought out of his painfully nostalgic reverie by the creak of an opening door. He turns to see Toni poke his head out from the hotel room. He isn’t sure how to respond to this sight so he just flashes a toothy almost-smile at the German and hopes it’s enough. Apparently it isn’t, because Toni makes no motions to leave his general vicinity. Instead, he slides the door all the way open and enters the balcony.
“Hey, sorry to bother you, but can I spend the night in your room?”
“Uh,” Isco doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t know Toni too well, and was not expecting any of this, especially when all he wanted to do was sulk by his lonesome. “I think Marco is rooming with me.”
Toni looks guilty. “Yeah about that.... I don’t think he is anymore.”
Isco gives him an incredulous look. “What do you mean?”
“Him and Lucas may or may not have had drinks and may or may not be currently passed out in my— I mean, what was my room.” Toni looks sheepish.
Isco signs out a quick fuck, and hopes Toni can’t hear it. Judging by Toni’s facial expression he probably did. “I— Uh— yeah, sure.” Toni was a quiet guy. He would silently let Isco wallow in his own misery. “That was a real dumbass move on their part, though.”
“Yeah,” Toni echoes. “Dumbasses.” The word sounds awkward coming from him, but so do most Spanish words. Isco wonders if he’s even heard him curse in Spanish. “Sorry to bother you.”
Isco nods and turns back to his phone, torn between whether to or not to self immolate via instagram comments. He expects to hear the neat swinging creak of the door opening, Toni’s soft footsteps on the carpet inside or at least a little good-bye, but instead is greeted with silence. He looks up again to see the German still standing by the door. “You’re still here.”
Instantly he feels bad about how harsh that sounds—he wanted just to be left alone, not to insult— but Toni doesn’t seem to notice that. “I might have accidentally let the door lock.”
“Might’ve?”
“Hey, I’m a man of possibilities. I like to keep my options open.” The irony of this sentence is not lost on Isco, or Toni for that matter. They share a small, still mostly sad post game laugh, and Toni sinks down to rest his back against the door, a meter or two from Isco.
Isco doesn’t make a move to face Toni more, but he does give the blond a sideways glance as he makes himself comfortable. He contemplates texting Sergio or Marcelo, but doesn’t really want any more conversation than he’s already had today. For a moment he wonders if Toni thinks he’s acting strangely, but figures that he isn’t. Toni probably doesn’t care.
A long pause separates them. “Hey, you still played good. You scored,” Toni says, like it negates the loss. Like it makes the cheers in Girona’s stadium any less loud, or the chill that was starting to creep into the breeze any less cold. Isco doesn’t bother responding. He feels icy.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Toni adds. He can almost hear the echo of “you don’t usually act like this,” behind those words.
“I’m not gonna be all sunshine and rainbows after today.” Isco could tell him to shut up, but he doesn’t. He’s always felt things intensely, but now he doesn’t care to get the words out.
There’s another long pause, both of them shivering slightly on the balcony. Silently Isco wonders if it’s a sense of pride that keeps Toni from texting anyone for help, or if it’s just sheer politeness. Toni would be the type to do that, he thinks with a hint of fondness, the type to freeze his ass off just to let him sulk without interruption. Until there is another interruption, and it is Toni staring at his phone.
“Hey, I listen to Nick Drake too!” Toni says, still trying his best to be sunny. “I have, like, all of Pink Moon saved on my phone.”
For some reason this is what gets Isco to come out of his shell. “Pink Moon is my favorite of his too.” Out of courtesy he pulls out his earbuds, lets his phone play the music out loud.
Toni gives him a tiny smile. “Thanks.”
Isco’s unsure of exactly why Toni was thanking him, but the music is nice and conversation actually flows. Fast forward an hour later and they’ve discussed music, Toni’s inability to play the kazoo and whether or whether not Nacho and Rapha were fucking on the downlow. Subconsciously they had shifted closer too, maybe because Toni leans forward when he laughs or because temperatures were dropping outside and they had very little in the way of protecting themselves from the elements.
Toni currently is tapping his foot off-rhythm along to whatever song is playing and staring down below at the fluorescent depths of the pool beneath them. Isco pulls his glance away from the pool to look at Toni for a second and realize that he was far better a man than he’d ever anticipated. He didn’t expect to be friends with the German, or to even be friendly with him, having never had a good command of the English language. Now that Toni’s Spanish was comprehensible, Isco realized that his personality was enjoyable, his sense of humor wry and his mannerisms personable.
He shivers from the cold, doesn’t even mean to, and next thing he knows Toni has scooted all of the way over to him, close enough to actually radiate body heat. Isco figures that at this point it doesn’t matter, and shuffles to lean up against the taller man. Toni wraps an arm around Isco and reaches for the Spaniard’s phone. Isco moves to swat him away before he sees Toni turn up the volume slightly.
“Use your words, bitch,” Isco hisses, and is immediately met with a wall of laughter from Toni. It shakes him around, having had rested himself against Toni’s chest, and the startled expression on the Spaniard’s face just makes the both of them laugh more.
A moment later they have cooled down and Toni looks at Isco to ask him “Why are we still outside?”
“I dunno,” a shrug. “The aesthetic?”
“Did you really just say that?”
Isco looks up at him with a scheming glimmer in his eyes. Toni blinks. “Well you have a tumblr, so I wouldn’t talk.”
“Hey!” Toni is annoyed for a moment before his brain starts up again. “Wait, how do you know that?”
“Lucas told me.” Isco looks pleased with himself. Internally, Toni reminds himself to never tell Lucas anything again. He’s shaken out of his thoughts, quite literally, by a shiver. It was cold outside.
“Oh god, can you get someone to unlock the door before we get sick? Let’s just get back inside.”
Isco nods. He calls Nacho over speakerphone and practically screams at him over the line. Raphael answers in slow Spanish and Toni gives Isco the Look, the look anyone on the team gave when they knew they had just lost a bet. A minute later a very annoyed Nacho comes to unlock the door, shirtless and wearing french flag print pajama pants. This time Isco gives Toni the Look.
Settled back in Isco’s room, finally, Toni flops onto one of the beds. Isco had offered to make them hot chocolate, because he apparently brought the Abuelita’s hot chocolate mix he’d gotten back in their tour of the states to every away game. “You never know when it comes in handy,” he says, right before flashing the tiny bottles of rum you could find at the hotel lobby at Toni. Apparently the aforementioned logic dictated that stealing those was equally important.
“How much do we owe Marcelo?” Toni sighs after his sip of hot cocoa. The rum is a good addition.
“We? It’s just you, man,” Isco says, pulling on Lucas’s beanie. It’s the ugly one with a big pom-pom on top, but it looks good on him. “Besides, we can’t prove anything just yet.”
Toni narrows his eyes at him. “‘Can’t prove anything just yet?’ Shirtless, Rapha’s pj pants. That’s as proven as it gets.”
Isco shrugs, sipping his cocoa. “If we didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.”
Toni nods, and they clink glasses of cocoa to that. He wonders why they hadn’t hung out more before this. Isco was entertaining and the cocoa was good. They’d done this maybe one other time, but with James. He doesn’t think they’d talked much since James left. But now they were, just sitting around discussing music and flipping through shitty hotel TV channels until they found one playing a dog show.
“Yes!” Isco says, hopping up in his bed, the mug of cocoa swinging precariously in his hand. “This is the shit.”
“Dogs,” Toni agreed.
Isco doesn’t respond, but he shuffles over in his bed so there’s enough room for Toni to sit next to him on it. Wordlessly, Toni gets up to move over. Isco smiles at him, the warmest look on his face. Toni returns it.
The next hour they spend curled up, looking at the dogs. Maybe it’s the warmth he radiates or the rum, but Toni can feel his heart beat a little faster when Isco leans his head on his shoulder. He wraps his arms around Isco and eventually they just switch to cuddling on the bed.
“Hey, for the record, we’re not telling Lucas any of this.”