Archive of Our Own

It’s quiet inside the dressing-room. They were happy as fools outside, right after the referee’s last whistle and through the walls David can still hear the whistles of the fans, but nobody’s whistling here, now. Real Madrid’s a big thing but the ghosts in the room are still bigger.

“David, David,” somebody says, and David looks up but it’s not for him. Banega is bugging Guaje, smart feet but still no brains on them, but for once David feels for the kid.

Kid, he thinks again, a little startled at himself, and then he tugs through the last loop on his sneakers. Throws the towel over his shoulder, turns away when Guaje snaps like he means to take off Banega at the ankles and only leave the parts he’d have any use for. It’s not the nicest thing to do, and it’s left to Joaquín to salvage the rest of the team’s humanity and pull Banega away from danger, but sometimes David just doesn’t feel like it. Like himself, like the one who knows what it means to be the kid in the room of silent and sullen men, too angry with each other to ever explain what that means: to be angry.

“We won?” Hildebrand’s muttering to himself, confused lilt on his mangled Spanish, but when he sees David looking at him, his mouth reshapes itself into a wry, harsh smile. “We win…we won…we had won,” he adds. Slow and precise, so David can almost hear the click of the tape at the end. “Won.”

“Oh,” David finally says, and continues walking. He tosses his towel into the used bin, then comes back to get his bag. By then Guaje is pulling his street clothes from his locker, and he sees David, sees the little flick of the end of David’s shoelace against the floor, but he doesn’t miss a beat. Just turns back and jams his hands into the sides of the locker, breathing sharply. Across the room, still leaning against the wall, Hildebrand arches a brow and David slams past him so hard that David’s bag nicks Hildebrand’s shins.

He’s not nice there either and he thinks Hildebrand might deserve that more than Banega, who’s young--and a stupid little fool, oh, his mother, cries David’s mother’s voice in his head—and who’ll forget about this in a while, once the dressing-room’s emptied. But Hildebrand already looks at the room like it’s empty. He’s here to play, says the grass-stains on his knees, the battered gloves clamped to either bicep, but if he has to, he’ll play. Says the way he looks at them, like he doesn’t care that no matter how many saves he makes, they still won’t look back. He’ll just wait for them to go, and then see to himself.

Though he’s nice enough when spoken to, and sometimes, when David’s not angry, he thinks Hildebrand probably would not be a bad one to know, and that it’s not that man’s fault either. But it’s hard for them too: the shadow isn’t put on him by them either but exists by itself, and comes and goes without considering them.

“Where are you going?” Helguera asks at the door. Looking longingly down the hall himself at the other doorway, the noisier one by far even though—they won. Didn’t they? David thinks is what Helguera’s expression is asking, for that one moment. But then the other man shifts, glances into their room where Koeman can just be heard coming in, and David slips by him.

Not that Helguera, when David thinks about it, tries that hard to stop him. But he would know, wouldn’t he? Just as much as David, and then a little more since after all, he’s not used to seeing that extra missing space so much as seeing both places filled, white and white and two dark heads bent together above. And the words twist from David as he shakes his head, not really wanting to see that even though—

--somebody laughs down the hall, and Guaje bashes his shoulder into the edge of the locker, snorting like a teased bull, and David just clutches harder at the strap of his bag. Wishing he wasn’t a kid still, wishing he wasn’t nice and shy and wishing he could just go in there and be angry like the rest of them. He should be.

But he says, “I’m getting my own ride,” to Helguera, and he’s slow and soft and sad about it, because that’s what he actually is. Sad. Fucking off on his own, daring Koeman and those other suited asses to do anything about it now, and he just feels sad and sorry about it, even as he keeps walking away.

Still looking at Guaje the whole way, even when the white walls block the other man from view.

* * *

Villa’s car. David thinks of it that way, even though the man has long since gone to Guaje in his head. Probably because in his head he isn’t so small and stuttering, doesn’t know what to do with his arms and the fold-up arm-rest, can’t seem to fit his heels into the gigantic footspace beneath the dash. In his head, he doesn’t just sit there and shiver like a stupid kid. In his head, he’s twenty-two.

“Want a ride?” Guaje waits a little bit, longer—David wants to think—than he’d do for most others, while David fumbles with his hoodie and his spare boots and his bag, and then just grabs David’s cell as it falls out of his back-pocket. “Get in.”

“…oh, my dad—”

“You can call him on the way, spare him the trip.” The other man turns away, David’s cellphone sliding so fluidly between his fingers as with the same hand, Guaje flicks out his car keys and easily separates out the right one. “God knows he must be tired with surprises, with all the last-minute changes Koeman pulls.”

Except even in his head, David can’t pretend that Guaje’s that nice. It hadn’t been Koeman but some word that David can’t say even when absolutely raging mad. At least, not without feeling the embarrassment flush up under the anger, and that’s him all over. Outside his head, where everything actually happens and he never manages to actually do anything, and he’s twenty-two out here too but he might as well be twelve. Villa’s car, and every single time he thinks he can’t even handle that so no wonder he never gets anywhere by himself.

* * *

David has to dodge a lot of people for a while. It never used to be this many, but between the mess upstairs and Banega downstairs, everyone’s just so paranoid. He doesn’t think it actually helps, and knows that it doesn’t even work, since he doesn’t know too much about sneaking around except for finding out today that the Bernabéu is absolutely a rat’s nest inside, but he still ends up keeping away from everyone he needs to. And maybe Helguera did him a favor and didn’t tell anybody. It’d be easy enough, with the way people are lately. Not talking. It’s not the same as lying.

Eventually David comes out in some little side-lot, which has enough fancy big cars for him to know he’s in a private area and hopefully it’s secured against the reporters but that also means Real Madrid’s security is probably involved. And he thinks about that, kicking the back of his left heel against the wall behind him, and thinks maybe he’ll tell them he was going out to see Madrid and got turned around. Maybe he was going to see friends. Maybe he was going to do nothing at all, just wanted to walk it off and got lost and that’s about as close to the truth as he’s likely to get with them. With himself—

He only just wanted to hang around, David thinks. But he keeps away from everyone he needs to, because he’s polite and considerate and nice like that.

He’s still kicking the wall, squinting at this little round glinting thing high on the opposite wall that he thinks is a camera, when somebody comes out behind him. David turns, setting his shoulders for it, and scuffs his one heel along the side of his other foot so he stumbles instead. He catches himself on the wall, then looks up as a hand falls on his shoulder. “Oh.”

Raúl opens his mouth a little, like he’s going to reply or ask, but instead he just looks David over, eyes slightly narrowed. His hair is plastered down from the showers and his shoulder stays stooped even after he takes his hand off David and uses it to swing down his duffel. “David—”

Iker blows right by them, doesn’t even see them. He’s cursing and hissing, he has spit dripping from his mouth practically, he kicks at the ground instead of walks over it. One of his fists nearly hits Raúl in the head, and when Raúl ducks, David puts up his own hands because it looks like the other man is falling over and David doesn’t hate him. David doesn’t—doesn’t even think of him most of the time, really, though he should because of how it goes, Villa to Fernando to further. But then, David really only sees that much. And then David usually only sees Guaje, period.

David looks at Iker, who goes on nearly into the nearest car, and awkwardly clears his throat.

“Eee,” Raúl says. Grunts, more like, low and tired in his throat, not even able to get the rest of the name out. He’s looking at Iker too, running his hand through his hair over and over again, and after a moment he shakes his head. He looks down then, at the keys his other hand is jangling, and shrugs and bends to pick up his bag again. “Iker. Iker.”

It doesn’t look like Iker hears him, really, but something gets through because Iker moves over to the next car. He grabs hard at the handle, close to ripping it off, and Raúl finally curses as he fumbles with his keys. It’s only a second before Raúl thumbs the button and the car’s lights flash, but by then Iker’s already moved on to the hubcaps, kicking and screaming at them. Raúl winces again, his head turning to the other side, and so when he speaks it takes a moment for David to realize he’s the one to whom Raúl’s speaking. “Listen, just go in and take a left—”

“Do you need help?” David blurts.

“No,” Raúl says. He lifts his head like something else is dragging it up, and when he looks at Iker, his eyes slant like he’s looking into the sharp afternoon sun. “Take a right, and then the elevator, use it to go to the—”

Iker slams something, hard. Raúl jumps and then looks up, and he’s not really that tall. Not that big, not made of white-gold that never tarnishes, and everything that Guaje’s ever muttered to David flashes through his head just then. And it’s all true, and then it’s not either. David blinks hard, his eyes stinging, and thinks I don’t understand for about the thousandth time about the whole thing, except that this time he thinks he really doesn’t understand. It isn’t that he’s ignorant or immature, or that he’s blind at all because he is not, he’s actually looking and all Raúl does is stare at Iker with that groove ground between his brows and that irritated twist to his mouth.

Villa’s wrong, David thinks. And that might be the first time.

“Right.” Raúl bows his head again, twisting his ring about his finger. Only a little glimpse of the gold gets to David, but that sliver seems as careworn as the rest of the other man. “Where was I. The elevator, if you take it—”

“Lemme get this,” David mutters, and catches the strap of Raúl’s bag just a moment before it falls off the man’s shoulder. Then he tugs it up, but Raúl snaps his arm tight to his side and turns in the same moment, sharp and startled. David has to look away, at his scuffing feet. He hangs onto the strap till his fingers begin to hurt. “No, let me. You go get him.”

The strap yanks at David’s hand, scratching his palm as Raúl exhales again. It’s not a sigh or a snort, but somewhere in between, and when David glances up, he finds Raúl looking at him as if he’s somewhere between the ballboys and the legends-as-friends, the long gone Galácticos.

“They’ll miss you,” Raúl tells him, faintly scolding. The shadows stripe one of Raúl’s arms with a wide dark band.

“I’m catching a ride home. I do that a lot. They know not to worry.” And again, David thinks that leaving things out and lying outright are very, very different and do not feel the same and so he doesn’t feel the same about them. He shouldn’t, anyway. He looks at his feet again, then rubs at his flushing cheek with his free hand, hating how he always ends up acting like himself. “You can give me a ride, can’t you?”

Raúl, goddamn Raúl, he breathes in and out so slowly, as if he’s worried still. He pushes at David’s hand, but it’s so polite it could mean anything. Could mean fuck off, could mean stay, could mean push me on this, just push me and see who I am, after a whole life at Real. “David,” he says, and he says it soft, inoffensive, like an arm dropping so lightly about the shoulders that it’s gone by the time one looks up. “I don’t want to—”

“I don’t see your family around. You’ll have the room in the back,” David adds, a little more sharply. He hears himself and can’t believe it. He’s not sure he’s here, and yet there’s Iker snarling in the background and Raúl’s heavy dark eyes on him, and he’s feeling stupid and pathetic and angry and yet with all of that, he’s thinking he should have done this so much earlier. Been less nice, run out more, stood up shaking and terrified and yet there’s this taste in his mouth, almost a touch on his tongue, and it tingles and cuts and he is so unfamiliar with it that he thinks he likes it. “And that’s Iker, you don’t have—”

“Stop,” Raúl says, and not just with his mouth. With his eyes and hand and face, with the sharp jerk of his shoulders, with the way he turns the inside of David’s mouth cold and dry. And he is what they said he is, right now, with that look in his eye like he might kill David after all.

Which David’s never going to have, and never mind this sudden, silly little moment of rebellion. He’s not kidding anyone, even himself: he’ll kill the ball, go marauding around in play, but when it comes to it he’s playing a game. He’s never killed the man—never could, never will, never going to want to. And that’ll not matter, really. Except it does to certain people, in certain places and he will never be able to go those places to them, with them, after them.

Except Raúl says something, and David stares so hard that the words freeze till Raúl pushes off his hand and turns away. Then they thaw, and he hears the other man, and he blinks again, hard, because he can’t believe it.

But he is going with them.

* * *

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Iker snarls all the way there. He bangs around in the front seat just as much as he’d done before they’d gotten in the car, throwing himself about so fiercely that David can’t take his arms down from his face, always thinking that Iker’s going to break the window glass.

Raúl drives. He doesn’t say anything, except sometimes to mutter to wait to Iker, and it seems almost as if he’s relaxed. Calmed down, with one arm lying along the bottom of his window and the radio on but turned down so low that David can’t hear anything except a thrumming. Sometimes Raúl hums with it, but not long enough for David to figure out the song.

Once Iker turns himself completely around, and the mad look in his eye makes David shrink back in his seat. Iker nearly snaps his teeth into the head-rest as he growls. “Why the fuck aren’t you riding with Villa? Don’t you?”

He’s so angry he can’t get out his sentences in whole, but David gets it. Raúl gets it, that low thrumming briefly gone and it’s then that David realizes the radio isn’t on but that it’s Raúl drumming his fingers on the wheel. And by the time David takes his breath, Iker’s rage has already spun him back around where he curses at the dash.

“Iker. Leave him alone,” Raúl says, low and hard. His fingers go da-thump twice on the wheel, then fall silent.

Iker lets out an enraged sound that makes it seem like he’s blown out his nose, and for a moment David pictures the whole center of the man’s face gone, exploded. Terrifying, all bone and hole, and David scrunches himself tighter into the corner. He rubs his hands over and over his pants, till he accidentally shoves out his phone, and then he grabs at it like it’s a lifeline. Before he knows it, he’s hit for his home number, and he stares at the damn phone and he’s relieved and horrified and God, he’s not up for this.

“Well, fuck Villa, then. That fucking cabrón, thinks he’s the fucking cock of the fucking—”

David’s neck hurts when he snaps up his head. He sucks in his breath, then looks at his phone again, which is ringing, and then up again. Of course Iker’s long past him or G—Villa, on to somebody else and David’s ears are burning because it’s Cannavaro and he doesn’t think it’s right that he hears this about Iker’s teammate, but—he’s here. And Raúl stares at him via the rearview mirror, watchful and steady, and David’s hand clenches on his phone again. He’s no killer, but he’s no--kid either. He’s heard worse about his own teammates, from—them.

When his father comes on, David just tells him he’s coming home his own way, and that the team…and his father says but didn’t you win and David is silent and his father sighs. And says all right and be careful and don’t worry your mother, and doesn’t say that he’ll tell the Valencia suits to fuck off but he will. He’s been wanting to, David gets the sense, but so far David’s been good about keeping it away from home. Sometimes he gets the feeling, like now, that his father would actually be happier if he let it come in with him a little more.

“Fuck him,” Iker vows to the ceiling.

“All right,” Raúl says, and pulls the car over.

* * *

Maybe it’s some secret training place for Real, and then for a moment David feels bad and averts his eyes. But the wind teases the side of his cheek and he looks up, and he thinks it’s really pretty, this tiny wooded patch, right before Iker storms past him and karate-kicks a tree. The bark’s splintered when Iker’s feet come back down.

“Holy Mary…” Raúl frowns at the tree, less stunned than…than surprised, in a way. Surprised about something about Iker’s fit, not that Iker is having one. Then he looks at David, but his phone goes off and he turns away, walking towards another tree.

He leans on it while he talks to somebody about his kids and wife, and where the extra tissue box in the car is, and it’s only at the end when Raúl puts his forehead against the tree and closes his eyes, saying “Well, you remember Fernando too, can’t you just tell him something for me? I did that for you, right up till you left”—only then that David realizes Raúl’s talking to Luís Figo.

Iker kills a sapling, and scares some birds into the dark sky. Raúl listens for a moment, brow furrowing till it matches the bark against which it rests, and then rubs his nose against the tree. “I know, but I’m tired and a lot of people have left, and I—listen, Luís, I need to stay with Iker, all right? Just…okay, okay. Thank you. I know. I know…I will, the next time—thank you.”

Then he shuts off his phone. He stays hunched against the tree for a moment, breathing deep; his hand fumbles his phone at his pants-pocket, and then into his jacket when he can’t make the first place work. Then Raúl looks up, and his eyes widen so that David steps back, surprised.

“Oh,” Raúl mutters. He shifts his head against the tree, still leaning on it, his eyes half-lidded. “I don’t know what you told your dad—it’ll be a while for Iker. I can call you a—”

“He’s not with—”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? Or I don’t know—I just know I can’t talk to Mori right now, not for a little bit. That’s why I talked to him right afterward,” Raúl tells David, moving as smoothly between topics as David is awkward with just standing there, flinching every time Iker snaps something. For a moment Raúl’s silent, just looking again, but then he puts his head into his hand and rubs at his eyes, as if the skin around them hurts. “Oh…oh, no. He’s not. He never—did you know this? Do you—no, you don’t. Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you did.”

David stares at him.

Raúl stares back. “You don’t know.”

“No,” David spits at him. “Why would I. I.”

He stops there, blushing and frustrated and no, he doesn’t know because he doesn’t ask, because he can’t ask about that sort of thing and anyway how can people ask? Just ask each other, without it even being Gu-Villa and just flat out ask like it was how they like their coffee or something. It’s—it would be—David scrubs at his cheeks, then his forehead, and then over the back of his head.

“I don’t know, I…well, I don’t ask either, but I know. You know. It’s a…it’s a small world, football and Spain,” Raúl says, almost meditative. He moves off the tree and around David a little, to the left. “Never mind. Anyway.”

“Then why isn’t he with you?” David mutters. A moment later he takes down his hands.

He and Raúl are standing in line with each other, shoulder to shoulder, and Raúl looks down that line, frowning again, that hardness creeping over his eyes and they say he’s old and tired, he’s going downhill and most of the time he looks like he knows that, but sometimes, right now, he looks like he’d kill over that. Somebody. Maybe not somebody else, but somebody.

“He’s at Valencia.” Raúl pauses, then swings himself, his hands in his pockets. His body bends back and then his head goes forward as he takes a step.

“Does that really make a difference?” Because it doesn’t from where other people stand, David wants to say. Because Raúl’s not at Valencia, is he, and he doesn’t know what that looks like, for all that he knows the view from Madrid better than anyone. “I don’t think so.”

Raúl glances over again, half-smile hardened to his face, and then turns towards David but looks out at Iker. His shoulder brushes the back of David’s arm. “Well, I don’t care.” He pauses, as if rethinking the firmness of that statement, but merely shrugs. “David. Mori thinks so, and I think so, and he left and I stayed, and it makes a difference to me. To him too, I suppose—”

“He’s an ass,” David says. Tries out, lilts in terror, and then he flinches before Raúl even looks at him. “I mean—oh, no, he’s not. But he—he really doesn’t…then couldn’t he…say…something?”

“If he had something to say,” Raúl replies after a long moment, “He’d say it.”

Iker is still crashing about, but slower now, and when he passes close enough, David can hear the other man panting for breath. Sometimes Raúl shifts towards the noises, like he means to go after the other man, and then David remembers the drumming fingers and looks down, and Raúl is still and silent above but below, on the ground, his feet are sliding back and forth in the grass.

“You played very—”

“Don’t start.” David looks at his own feet, and they’re still moving too, pushing at the grass like any moment he’s going to take off flying, except—where? To who? Nobody’s waiting for him, nobody that he really wants to be waiting, and he can’t go there anyway and sometimes he’s just sick of waiting. Sick of waiting, of being that considerate, and maybe he’s not cut out to do anything else but that doesn’t mean that he’s perfectly cut for what he is either.

“No, I do mean—”

“I didn’t want a ride,” David mutters. He looks up at Raúl, then down. “I just—wanted to—go. Don’t you ever?”

He looks down. His feet keep moving. He feels something touch his shoulders, close around them, and he’s still looking down as Raúl pushes him back against the tree. He puts up his hands and Raúl goes still, and then David fists his fingers in Raúl’s jacket, the slippery crunch drowning out Iker, and Raúl takes a breath against David’s neck. His hands move down David’s chest, and his mouth moves as well, and David clutches at him, awkward and confused and so taken over with what it’s like, what it’s really like. And—and it’s not like he thought, and not just because—because the shoulders are wrong, all rounded with stooping, and the hair into which he buries his face is too fine and curly, and the mouth, the mouth.

He didn’t think it’d be all cute and gentle, like in the movies where the girl’s lipstick doesn’t even smear, but he thought—and Raúl’s not easy with him, not that careful and David winces at the rasp of Raúl’s stubble, the catch of teeth against his neck. But he’s—who he is, and David still somehow flushes at it, the heat stretching all the way down under his shirt to his pants and he hitches and gasps at that so Raúl pushes him harder, up the tree a little. Mouth on his neck, mouth lower, and David grabs and claws and tries to get a handle on it all, and he’s pulling at Raúl’s hair, he’s wrapping his arm around Raúl’s neck and suddenly he can’t—he swears and doesn’t feel bad about it and instead just thinks I’m such a fucking kid.

They aren’t even undressed. When Raúl leans back, putting one hand on the tree for balance, he makes David’s hand slide off his shoulder and with that his jacket and shirt fall back into place, so he doesn’t even look like he did anything. “David?”

“So fucking—is this why he won’t?” David demands. He grabs Raúl’s jacket again and yanks hard on it, so hard that Raúl falls back against him, and it’s still warm and sticky down there and he feels the fabric of his pants squeezing at it, and for a moment David just closes his eyes. “Am I too—”

“No—”

“How do you know, you haven’t even—”

Except Raúl does kiss him right then, hard and angry, and Raúl shoves him into the tree and David shoves back, so they teeter for a moment and then they stumble in different ways, their legs trying to twist their bodies as they scramble against each other, nails scratching through clothes. David’s not sure who loses their balance first, but the other goes quick enough after that it doesn’t matter, and then they’re on the ground and he’s working at it this time, pushing with his hands and he bites Raúl’s lip at one point so Raúl moans, and this little shiver goes through David that he doesn’t totally like but that he can’t stop. And he can’t stop, can’t get his hands off even to push at the root poking him in the back of the head, and he moans too, Raúl’s nails peeling away his clothes and he’s still surprised that it’s not G—not David Villa and it’s not, it’s so very not but it’s still good.

And he doesn’t care, doesn’t care when somebody else stumbles on them and curses, and in fact David reaches out to paw at their ankle so they come down, and once they do he kisses them too. So that’s a second one that’s not what he ever thought and it’s different again from Raúl and it’s good, it makes him twist and buck, his nerves overridden, and he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care. He has to, so much of the time, but here and now he doesn’t care and it’s not him at all but it feels good.

* * *

“I,” Iker starts. He’s red, and can’t look straight at David. His fingers slip so much as he tries to dress himself that Raúl abandons his own clothes to help, and Iker shoots the other man a sharp look but doesn’t stop him. Then Iker not-looks at David again, shoulders twitching back and forth. “Are you okay?”

David scrubs at his hair. He’s still got twigs in it, he thinks. They itch, and his mother is going to make him squirm about it later, unless he can get in the shower before she sees him. But then he has to remember to pick out the drain, too. “What?”

“It’s just—I get like, and usually it’s just Raúl—” And there’s another look at Raúl, half-angry and half-embarrassed, and Iker almost jerks out his hand to Raúl’s shoulder. He holds it there, frowning, his brows knitted to one, and then brushes at the other man, light and careful. “Goddamn it.”

“Oh,” David says. He glances at the sky, light enough to see by only because of Madrid’s glow, and then at Raúl’s watch. Then looks at Raúl’s hands, steady and constant as they smooth down Iker’s shirt over his stomach. “No, I’m okay. Can I get a—oh. That’ll be a really long drive.”

“What?” Iker asks, and he’s close to panicking now, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. “Where?”

Raúl looks up, then shakes his head so Iker looks at him. By then he’s already dusting at Iker’s shoulders. “I’ll get you a car.”

“Okay.” David rubs at his hair again, and then frowns as Iker hitches a breath, staring at him.

“But they’ll know,” Raúl adds, and it takes a moment for David to know that Raúl isn’t talking about the people who run Valencia. A moment more, because it’s so dark now, for David to know the look in Raúl’s eyes is that tired worry.

After a moment, David rolls up into a squat and wraps his arms around his knees. He squeezes them, then shrugs. He knew that—he knows Valencia, and he knew back in the lot…no, back when he told Helguera, that they would. And…and he still doesn’t care, about that. “Okay,” he says, and gets up. “Um, I’m sorry…I don’t think I’ve got enough to pay you back right now…”

He stops when Raúl laughs, the sound startlingly bright against the night. The other man stands, his clothes still flapping in disarray, and somehow his eyes catch the city’s glare so they glitter like those of some prowling animal.

“Oh.” Dismissive, Raúl gives David a hand up and then Iker, and then he walks off towards the car. “Oh, that. David, you’re fine.”

* * *

His parents are waiting when he finally does get home, but David never has to explain about the twigs in his hair. Plenty of other things, and his mother cries and he feels sick to his stomach at that, but she comes to tuck him into bed. And in the morning, when he’s feeling like he’s barely laid down, his father doesn’t give him any mercy about waking him, but still hands David a good cup of coffee before he goes out.

They’re relieved, actually. That’s what they tell him, without any words.

He’s relieved. He’s gone to bed and woken up, and looked in the mirror with all those aches and scrapes staring back at him, and discovered he still cares. Still wants to wait, to hope like an idiot and maybe the nice one will be enough somebody, but—he’s okay. With it being never, with him being him and with other things being good, too. They still aren’t the best, and he knows that without trying it, but they’re good and he might take them once in a while, and that’s fine. He’s fine.

* * *

It takes a moment, because David isn’t used to being the one who everyone watches out of the corner of their eye. And after that moment, he still isn’t used to it and doesn’t like it at all, but he can stand it. He can train.

He notices Koeman doesn’t bother asking where he went, and the first suit that comes up gets told it was an emergency and then David doesn’t get bothered again by them. He hopes he wouldn’t, having been here long enough for them to know him, but then again, he’s seen how long service gets repaid.

He kind of aches, David’s embarrassed to admit, but it was a rough game and he can blame it on that, and anyway Koeman is so distracted all the time. Normally David never takes advantage of that, unlike others, but today he does and it’s only because he has to, he tells himself. He’ll train extra hard when he can, but right now he can tell what his body is saying and he should listen to it, if they won’t. His father worries to him sometimes about that, and honestly, David worries about that sometimes.

“Hey.”

David keeps on jogging, not really listening, and so Morientes slides across his front, those giant’s legs eating up the space, and then Morientes cuts him to some of the cones on the side, easy as a dog shepherding sheep. The other man pivots slightly as he slows, so he sees David before David can really get a good look at him.

He’s huge. Almost everyone tends to be big to David and he’s gotten used to ignoring it, but it’s hard with somebody like Morientes, and not only because he’s big to people who David finds big. He’s—it’s hard to describe, the way David kind of fails when asked how he can understand his teammates so well--because he doesn’t, not really, not how it counts, he sometimes wants to say--but there’s something about Morientes that goes beyond size and height and maybe even beyond humanity. It should be inhuman, the way he seems to expand, overlapping and absorbing and filling up even what shouldn’t be filled up. Sometimes he even makes up for the whole rest of the dressing-room, barrels himself in and barrels everything like quarrels and upstairs drama and disappointment out of the room. Which, come on, it’s Valencia, they’re a joke even to David these days, and that’s just inhuman.

“Hey, David,” Morientes says again, slower. He’s smiling, but at somebody past David’s shoulder, his eyes slitted back against the sun like a wolf’s. He stands there, careless and big and bold, and David just thinks that’s not--possible.

“Hey.” Hurts more than it helps, David thinks, to know that. It’s the whole caring thing, and he may be okay with the caring but he’s feeling all over again how much it hurts, that caring. And his back aches and the scrapes on his legs, the ones too high up to have come while he was clothed, they sting and he bites his lip and stares up against the brilliance of Morientes’ wolf-teeth. “What.”

Morientes takes a breath. A couple of breaths, grimacing with his hands pressed to the small of his back, and across the training field some little dark speck changes the swing of its pace. And David kind of hates that he’s that good at reading people when they’re far, far away and all he can see is that shading of movement.

And David sucks at reading people up close, and Morientes tilts his head, not smiling now but still coming off as amused. He looks at David, his eyes flicking up and down, and David’s not used to thinking ahead in this way but then, maybe it’s that he’s going backwards instead because he thinks of Raúl. Raúl, and the way the man looked at Iker, tired and knowing and too pained for it to be all and only from himself.

“Good luck, this week,” Morientes says again. He stops and waits for David, then shrugs. “With Spain?”

“Oh. Oh.” David’s forgotten. They’re leaving soon for that. Him and—and a lot of others on the team, but not Morientes. “Um.”

“I’m not trying to say anything I don’t mean,” Morientes tells him suddenly, that little bit of amusement gone. Leaning forward, shadow eating up David, and in the middle of that darkness the eyes sharp and glittering and Morientes was one of them too.

Is one of them—maybe it’s something that can’t ever been thrown off, the same way it doesn’t seem to be something that can be learned. At any rate, Morientes has it no matter how much he says he’s happy to have left Madrid and how much he jokes and smiles, and still he can do that.

He seems to realize too, and shifts back, stiff-shouldered with his mouth twitching at an apologetic smile. His hand ruffles awkwardly, charmingly through his hair and he’s merely huge now. “Shit. I—David, I just wanted to wish you good luck. Seems like everyone else has forgotten about that, since we…”

He’s like Raúl there too, with the way he shrinks back from what he is, was, whatever it is for him. “Were you sad about that?” David blurts. He’s nervous and he does that. “Oh, shit,” he adds, and flushes. “Oh.”

“Oh,” and Morientes laughs, and turns away so the world turns with him and turns from David, and David’s glad of that. “Oh, David. I did leave. You have to, you can’t half-ass it with somewhere like that.”

“That’s what he said.” David jangles on his feet, wanting to hop, to run, to go and he can’t. Morientes is too big. “He said—he said you say what you mean.”

Morientes smiles again, thin and tight, and he looks at David and David can look from him all the way back, like looking through a smoggy orange sky at the white-hot sun, and it hurts. And Morientes nods, and shakes his head. “I said good luck, David.”

He moves. David stands there.

The other man slows a moment, off to David’s left, and the black speck beyond slows too and then David has that other line of sight. Two lines, starting with Morientes and David looks down both right then and he thinks they’re not so different. Not so much as they might want, not so much that they won’t inevitably cross.

“He says sorry, by the way. He said you were…young,” Morientes adds, afterthought flipping off the tongue. When David turns, Morientes is ambling away, hands to hips, hipbones bumping up to show against his waistband every so often. His walk is awkward, his head carelessly high, his voice too thoughtful. “I said you got home, and so did he, after all, and we laughed, you know. Not at you. Raúl thinks he’s ancient sometimes. He’s human, is all.”

And he’s human too, David thinks.

* * *

I don’t hate him, David Villa said once, grit in his eyes, teeth welded together. I don’t think anything of him. He’s nothing to me. That’s why it’s a silly question. You can’t hate what you don’t think about.

It’s enough if somebody else thinks about them, though. Lines of thought and lines of sight tend to stretch the same way.

* * *

It’s an awkward time at national team camp. David knows more of his teammates than usual, what with the coach’s sudden liking for Valencia and then he surprises himself with wondering what that means, with how Valencia is now. What maybe that says about the coach, and David doesn’t want to go on then because he doesn’t really like the coach. That’s not a good thing and definitely not professional but deep down he’s pretty sure the coach isn’t a good person. It’s just he doesn’t know what to do about it, so he doesn’t do anything.

Just beforehand, not in the tunnel or the dressing-room but on the bus, during one of those mad scrambles to get on ties and drag out dress shoes that’ve slid down three seats and find that stupid cellphone-cover. Then, when everyone’s distracted and frustrated and thinking no farther than the end of their fingertips if even that, there’s: “What were you doing?”

David jerks up, sucking in a breath. He stares at the window, at the sock that’s somehow snagged on the top of its frame and is in danger of dropping completely outside any second now.

“Where did you go? Helguera said, after he’d fucked off with his old friends--and Mori didn’t see you on his way back. He said he’d ask but he never told me the answer, and Helguera just smiles like the creaky b—”

“What?” David says, turning around. He stares, his mind still half-on how that last loop of his tie’s supposed to go. “What?”

After a moment, Guaje lets out his disgusted sigh and hitches over a little to glower at the back of Cesc’s head. “Oh, David.”

And David cares but caring isn’t always the same, doesn’t always look the same. Sometimes it looks like little raw scrapes on his knuckles and twisted-up snags in his hair where the twigs knotted together the strands and deep dark bruises in his eyes. Sometimes like history laid out backwards in a man’s face, the sun burning his back, and sometimes like the disdainful tilt of a head, and it’s not the same but it’s always there even when David clenches up all over, and he realizes now he never had a moment of not caring. It just went and changed on him, and it’s changed on him now, and so he just looks at David Villa and the other man turns back.

He cares, he thinks. He gets tired and cares, and gets angry and cares, and gets depressed and cares, and maybe even gets bitter and cares. And he just wishes Villa would see that.

“I wasn’t thinking about you,” David says. He stumbles as somebody pushes him from behind, then looks up and sees the shoulder squeezing away between two others. “Gua—”

Gone. And it’s okay, David thinks. He still cares.

* * *

All David can do is marvel. Nothing, nothing, and then that, like fire had dropped from heaven and possessed the man. David’s getting his holy days mixed up, he’s getting everything else mixed up too but he doesn’t care because God.

Except later: fire again, burning in eyes and breath, and David’s back to slow plodding earth that’s tired and wants to go home, and he grimaces at the hard fingers on his arms, shakes his head at the question. “God, Guaje, you know how good that was. You always—”

“Was it better than him?”

“God,” snaps out of David, and his head goes up with it and he stares for a moment, blindly, without knowing who’s there or where there is. Then he breathes, and sees the other man, and it doesn’t change a thing except David remembers he’s tired. “God…David, I just…”

“Was it—”

“For God’s sake, I don’t think about him! Who do I look like?” And David meant what, he meant what do I look like, because he’s not that clever or that brassy, but it came out the way it came out. And he breathes short and wavery, curling his hands up against his hips, and waits for it.

Villa stares at him, fingers flexing on David’s arms. The man’s mouth works, doesn’t know what to say but whatever it is, it wants to say it now and hard and sharp.

David puts his hand on Villa’s forearm, and the other man glances at it like he’s never seen it before. He hunches over so far that he forces David back into the wall, and then his head flinches up like a wild thing when David winces. And David wants, stupidly, to smooth that rough crest on Villa’s head, to say something soothing, and even though he knows it won’t do any good. He can’t lie, and with Villa he can’t even leave things out because the other man sees those anyway, blind as he is to everything else.

“I wasn’t—it wasn’t—I wasn’t getting back at you. Or Fernando, or…I wasn’t. I just—I just went with him. I wanted to go, and he said yes,” David stammers. He tugs mindlessly at Villa’s arm; the other man’s grip still hurts but not that much, and David’s feet dance their nerves on the floor but not that much, and David just doesn’t really know why he pulls. “I didn’t think about you when I did it. You weren’t even there, you were waiting for…”

“Do you ever think about me?” And Villa asks that, shivering because he can’t get the words out fast enough, his eyes bent even harder on David, and only he could ask that. That way, right then, and—and still it’s almost too much.

Cares, David thinks dully. He shrugs. “That’s a stupid quest—”

“Then just answer it.”

“—yes, all the time, more than I should and it’s stupid and I know, okay? All right?” David pulls hard at the other man’s arm, then stumbles as it comes away. He has to shoulder himself back up against the support of the wall, as Villa seems stonelike, motionless. “Yes. Yes. There. I just—okay, I went with him and I wasn’t thinking of you when I did it because I was trying not to think of you, not to—to do anything that went to you, and it seemed like he was pretty far from that. I—I know. Stupid.”

Villa stares at him. Hands on thighs now, still bent over, and he wants to tear into David and he looks it, and David wishes he couldn’t say that that’s the most he’s ever gotten from the man.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he finally says, a little stirring of worry rising at the way Villa continues not to move. “I’m—I’m me, all right? I won’t go, you wouldn’t lose me. You’ll leave. Not me. I know that already.”

“I,” Villa mumbles. “What?”

“I.” David breathes. “Sorry. I didn’t really think you thought about me with that, but…sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“What?”

“It’s okay,” David says. “As long as you don’t hate me.”

Villa stares, still. “What?”

“I didn’t think you thought about me either,” David mutters, and pushes off the wall. He wobbles for a moment, then slips away and goes while he can.

* * *

It’s Easter, Raúl said on the way back. Under his breath, the radio really on now so it nearly drowned him out. It’s all right. Today’s when everybody gets forgiven.

You’re full of shit, Iker said back. You’re like those poor women, oh, I got him upset, it’s my fault. Goddamn it, you wonder why I get angry so much. Somebody has to.

Raúl laughed again, his head rolling back so his eyes met David’s in the rearview mirror.

Shit, Iker repeated. Shit. I wish you’d just—

It’s all right, and Raúl said that to David, the man’s eyes fixing David’s gaze to that mirror. It’s all right. You think it’s fine and then it comes out, and if it has to come out, it has to come out.

Iker sighed, and slouched so his arm flopped over the back of the seat. But I don’t like getting angry, you bastard.

I know, Raúl said, looking away from the mirror, from David. But if you have to, you have to. Sometimes you just have to be what you are.

* * *

“Congratulations,” Morientes says to Villa, who brushes by himself without so much as a grunt. Morientes steps back, surprised and blinking.

Something sinks in David’s chest, and he slides over. “I. Sorry. I didn’t think—”

“Oh,” and Morientes has teeth in his eyes again. But not for David: for David he has a casual ruffle of the hair, and then a short laugh. “Oh, he didn’t either, I’m sure. I wouldn’t worry about me, David. I don’t think he does.”

David looks up sharply.

“I know what it looks like,” Morientes adds. He glances down, then away. His shoulders roll, loose and ready. “I know what I look like to somebody, when it’s what and not who. So I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I don’t understand—” David starts.

And Morientes smiles again, and turns into the sun. “I wouldn’t either, if I could help it. It’s not a nice thing.”

* * *

Training is bad, and doesn’t end when Koeman said it would, and even David can see the white of Madrid last weekend glazing over the man’s eyes. But he just shrugs now, shrugs and calls his father and forgets to find out what’s the real time before he gets off the phone. Well, he’s tired.

“David.”

He stares out at the parking lot, juggling his cell in his hand, and he thinks he’s tired but he’s not. He’s just sick, and he wants to go but his father, his mother, they won’t be relieved if it turns into a habit. And anyway he wants to but he won’t, he can’t because it just is that way for him. It’s how he is.

“David.”

He looks up, and Villa stoops a little before abruptly hanging back, a street-lamp throwing a fierce angled shadow over his face. Silver glints and jangles in his hand.

“David,” Villa says again, like he can’t quite feel the edges of the word. His mouth works oddly. “Want a ride?”

David looks at him.

Villa scowls harder, kicks at the ground and sends his head up in the same motion to stare at the cars across the way. “Look, want to go already?”

“Okay,” David says after a long, long time.

He gets into Villa’s car and Villa drums all his fingers against his legs, flamenco-quick, for a moment before curling them about the wheel. Then they skid out of the parking lot, the wheels snarling at the pavement, and go.

Nowhere in particular, familiar sights flashing by the windows in no discernible pattern. It’s not too hot but the sun makes David drowsy to go with his exhaustion, and he slumps in the seat with his eyes half-closed. He hears a growl every so often and his fingers curl but he doesn’t look over. Doesn’t have to in order to know, for one, and doesn’t when he knows he won’t make it stop, for two. He minds it and it bothers him but he doesn’t pretend to think he can press over that for the other man. He cares, but he’s not an idiot.

They stop and Villa’s hands make the wheel creak in their grip while the engine idles into silence. He breathes hard once, twice, and then takes a deep long breath that seems to encompass all the air in the car. “David.”

“I wish this meant something to you,” David mumbles. He feels like he’s asleep. “Not for me—for you. It’s like you never have enough somethings, and I think you should. You deserve them.”

“David,” Villa says. Gasps, almost.

“I don’t hate him.” David tilts his head a little and his neck hurts. He’s been laying here too long, and he’s not relaxed at all, tired as he is. No, he’s been rigid as a skeleton since they left the parking lot. “I don’t hate Mori, and I do think about him. Did, I mean—a lot. I just didn’t—but it doesn’t really matter, right? Well, okay. It doesn’t really matter to me, anyway. I don’t—I don’t think it does to him either, or Raúl, though he feels bad about it. I kind of do too, but…it doesn’t matter, really.”

Villa yanks at the wheel so hard that it groans, and then throws himself back into his seat so that the whole car shakes. So David looks at him then, startled, and Villa whips on him. “David. This—”

“I know now, but later? I—Guaje, I know,” David tells him, all the desperation welling out of absolutely nowhere. He rolls over, then stops himself with a hand to the edge of the seat cushion, and his nails sink nearly through the leather. “I know. It changes on you.”

“David—”

“I know how you are.” David pauses to breathe, and it hurts. Then, from that same nowhere, comes a laugh and it pushes up his head so he looks at the other man, though it hurts and he cares and still the laugh comes from him. And it fits, even if it doesn’t make sense. “Guaje—listen—I’m twenty-two. I’m old enough to know when I can go and when I can’t. Even if I don’t have a driver’s license, so I always have to get somebody else to take me—but I’m old enough. And I know…”

The snarl barrels out of Villa, shoving him so far over he nearly swings his head into David’s. “What do you know? About me? What do you know about me—”

“David,” David says, and smiles because it hurts. “I’m not him.”

Villa sucks in a breath like he’s been punched, and looks like it too. His shoulders hunch, and then he glances down and up and sideways before his hands come up to crush at David’s shoulders. He shakes his head, his muttering warm against David’s cheek. His fingers pull at David, as if trying to strip the flesh from David’s bones, and the fringe of his hair feathers across David’s brow as he bows down.

“I know who you are,” Villa says, savagely, and then kisses him.

* * *

“I remember,” Iker says suddenly, so David realizes they’ve drifted off together in the hotel lobby. “I remember what they were both like, before. And it wasn’t all their fault, I’m not even saying that it was maybe any of their fault, but they still did it themselves. And you’re not either of them.”

David looks at him, frowning.

“I don’t get angry all the time.” Though that restless twitch of the shoulders says otherwise, and then Iker snorts at himself, catching it. “Just when I have to.”

And a moment later, when David thought they were leaving: “You know, you can go back. If you want to, because that’s all that gets in the way for that. Luís—Figo, he comes back, he gets that. I wish they would.”

It’s always something to get angry over so just do it for yourself in the first place, is what Iker is saying. But David doesn’t figure this out right away.

* * *

“This is what I want,” David says later. He’s tentative, just trying it out, and it sounds weak and he struggles up, moving away the other man’s arm so he can say it to the rearview mirror. “This is what I want.”

The body around him stirs, tightens itself. The hand on David’s hip tugs hard, then stretches itself over the curve of the bone when he doesn’t come, and then a hard hot mouth grinds into the small of his back. It’s not nice, it’s more than the spark of heat and the sudden lack of breath in his lungs, it’s something with those hungry wanting teeth that waits in the dark for its chance.

“I know who you are.” But that’s soft, for some reason. “I—David, I know what I’m like. But I don’t mean to—”

“I know.”

“—I just want, when I want—”

“I know.”

“And it’s you. I know it’s you,” is the rest, sharp and irritable. That mouth nips at David’s back, not able to help itself. It cuts more than the roots and the twigs. “I didn’t see. I do now. I can be blind, I don’t go blind.”

There’s David in the mirror, ruffled and flushed, with his lack of edge in his eyes though he’s old enough all the same. And then lower, David, restless even now, satiated and lazy but his hands can’t stop moving, his mouth keeps shifting though he grimaces and mutters at the aches. And then the others, lines of sight going in all direction and no, blindness is not the problem. Though David blinks hard, thinking the sun dazzles him as it comes off the mirror, and maybe it does and maybe it’s something else stinging his eyes but he doesn’t care. And he does. He always will, no matter what else he sees. What else David sees.

“This is what I want,” David says, strongly. He means it.