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There is the incessant noise of a hundred and one cameras pointed in one single direction, snapping shot after shot after shot after pointless shot. There are whispers, a string of voices that flows tightly from one end to another, pausing only occasionally to check the door and their surroundings. When Mourinho finally sits, Iker retreats to the back, but doesn’t leave.
He feels it low in his gut when he announces he’s going back to England. It weights him down until his legs are a little shaky and his breathing a little too slow for his own good. It has been a pleasure, he says, and Iker grits his teeth. I leave with good memories, he says, and Iker looks away, because he does, he does. He thinks that if the dream ever ends, he’ll leave with good memories, too, great ones, grand ones, and his palms grow sweaty in the blink on an eye.
Real Madrid is an amazing team, and it always will be. Yes, you bastard, he thinks, yes it fucking is, and who the fuck gave you the right to speak those words in the first place. Who gave you the right to grab something so whole and tear it to shreds in hopes of something bigger inside (how could you believe that to be better, God, how).
Mourinho pauses, his jaw set. His eyes catch Iker for a quarter of a second and he says, pronouncing each letter, syllable, word like it was his last (it was.), “A true pleasure.”
He believes it. He believes it fully, because he can’t imagine doing something for years without a certain amount of joy, of fulfilment. He believes but doesn’t forgive, because you are not supposed to destroy what is in your hands, nor throw it and drag it through the ground until there are scars so deep all you can do is stich up the live flesh and hope for the best.
He turns to leave, decides he’s heard what he needed to hear and doesn’t intend to watch the parade any longer. His footsteps are quiet, a contrast to the commotion of a goodbye, and the burn of revenge doesn’t even reach his throat. It just burns.
Cristiano finds him later, in the locker rooms, even though there’s no game and no training, a pale statue in a harsh white light.
“You went?” he frowns, sits down beside him on the bench.
“Yeah,” he mutters, a shrug lost on his shoulders, an attempt at a smile failed halfway-through. “Look, I just really-“
“Yeah, shut up,” he cuts off rudely, rude enough to grin so bright Iker flinches at the sight. “Captain of our heart and mind, madridismo to the death, that’s important and all, but it doesn’t always have to be like that.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asks, makes a sound that’s a mixture of a chuckle and something so sad it doesn’t have a word of its own. His eyes lower to the ground. “He’s a ruthless cabrón but he wasn’t wrong when he said- you know, that I wasn’t the star. That I’m not. Madrid. I’m not, fuck, I know that. I just, I worry. I’m captain, and I worry.”
(He thinks: Fuck, yes, you’re the captain, but carrying the whole city on your back will only make you crumble to your knees. Fuck, you’re ours, but giving yourself wholeheartedly in this sport will only leave you crushed in weakness. Fuck, you’re good, you’re pure, but how has this not left you in pieces (I would put you back together).)
Cristiano doesn’t speak. He sits with Iker until he feels like he’s bleeding, too, and then they both leave.
-
They’re all in training the next day. Iker never really expected it- he’s learnt not to think the best when the worst is lurking on the edge of darkness. He somehow thought there were wounds and there was pain and they didn’t always imply one another, but. But he felt like they were going through a revolution, and the last year had been a war in itself, and who still wants to fight after a war, anyway? (He forgets, battles forge brothers.)
Sergio’s music doesn’t play. Marcelo isn’t talking to anyone in his endearingly loud honey voice. Fábio and Dani speak in hushed, short sentences, afraid to break the thick silence that’s settled like dust in a house with nothing but memories. Iker thinks they survived a war, and it’ll take them a long time until they’re whole again. Cristiano looks at him like he’s taken the biggest hit, and Iker can’t tell him he hasn’t. (They are brothers, but every bite leaves its mark.)
“Hey,” Sergio calls, his hand on Iker’s back. “You okay?”
Iker nods (a robot, he thinks, maybe I’m not so far off). Sergio pushes an inch closer and says, quiet and steady, “We’re in this together.”
Iker wants to know this. (He thinks he will. Eventually.)
-
(Their first step is on a field.) It happens like this:
Cristiano forgets about the meaningless stack of papers in his locker that his agent so desperately wants him to sign. He knows he could simply not go, but Irina isn’t home and he doesn’t call it home, so. He goes (home?).
The giant square lights are on. Cristiano leaves the papers and comes out the tunnel- there’s a ball-launcher 10 meters away from the goal and a total of about 30 balls unmoving in the partial darkness (3 are in). Iker is lying on the ground, a ten year old with a dream and a ball and maybe a lucky star. That night, though, the sky is far too dense. There are no stars.
Cristiano breathes deeply before he starts walking. Iker doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to acknowledge him at all, his gloves forgotten carelessly on the other side of the pitch and his dress shirt soaked in sweat. Cristiano doesn’t comment on his clothes, and Iker doesn’t ask him why he’s there.
“Hi,” he says, because he never knows how to start a conversation properly, and so he makes people believe he does. He lies next to Iker and thinks this is ridiculous, but still slightly ironic (he doesn’t consider them synonyms).
Iker lifts his hands, red and bruised enough to hurt. There’s blood trickling down his fingers, and it reflects the poor light sickeningly, and Iker smiles (look at what I’ve done, look. Watch me fight myself).
“I don’t trust them,” he replies, no hello or goodnight because this is more important. “I used to. Fuck, I used to. Now I feel like they’re strangers.”
Cristiano looks at him, all brushed hair and defined cheekbones even lying on dirty grass under an ugly sky. “I know. Sometimes my feet feel strange, too.” He’s lying, even though what he’s saying is true. Sometimes he’ll feel like his body has more control over him than his mind and he just lets, lets lets and lets it go and feels like he’s flying or falling or both. Sometimes it’s so good he thinks he’d survive off of it, if he had to. Sometimes it scares him so much it blinds him and slides the floor off his feet- but they’re still his feet, he knows this. They’re no strangers.
Iker stares blankly at a dead spot surrounded by bright, bright life. He’s still holding his hands up as he says- “I get nervous a lot. But I’ve never been bad.”
“You’re not bad.”
“I am,” he laughs, rubs one of his hands through his face (he feels like they’re both dirty enough to never be clean again). “God, I am. I’m supposed to be your captain and I can’t even lead myself.”
Cristiano opens his mouth, but nothing comes out (he doesn’t lie). He nods and goes to stand up, feels Iker’s hand grabbing his arm and looks back in-
“Don’t pity me,” Iker says (angrily, a warning), because it’s evident in his eyes. Because Cristiano can’t always hide whatever he wants. He doesn’t pretend he can, and so he does what he was always going to do- he runs to the sideline to pick up Iker’s gloves, throws them next to him when he’s back.
“Okay. I won’t. Put these on,” he smiles. A reassurance.
They collapse back on the ground at around midnight, and Cristiano is smiling wider now (hopes and tears his faith so he can give it away). Iker’s breath heavies and he’s trying to form words that can convey how much he- how much he- fuck, he doesn’t. He does.
“Thank you,” he pants, still a little broken and still a little sore, but with a heart full of pumping, fiery blood (and something more).
Cristiano winks and rolls over on the grass. He looks up at the sky and decides that it’s better to have people thinking they know him, just as long as he knows them.
-
“I talked to him today,” Iker rolls the water bottle on his hands, his eyes trained on the pitch. Cristiano looks at him and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t ask. “He called me, actually.”
“Jupp?” he frowns, pretty sure he’s butchering the language with a single word.
Iker shakes his head slowly, his mouth pressing into a thin line. “No. Carlo.”
Cristiano raises his brows. He turns back to the pitch, watches as the team transform themselves into something secure, steady and thickly knitted together, some mass that dances beautifully across whatever distance only to burst into emotion-filled fireworks that sometimes don’t leave his ears for days.
He nods, having no need to, searching for the right question. “Who have you told?”
Iker meets his eyes, and Cristiano wishes he hadn’t (don’t.) “No one. I’m- no one.”
“Okay,” he says, and acknowledges the growing despair staining his insides. “He’s good, really good. He could be great for us. Xabi will be happy to see him.” he adds with a smirk, if only to point out that hey, this isn’t the slightest about us. Remember?
“Nothing is definite yet,” Iker replies, suddenly not aware of how to follow his own train of thoughts- he kicks the grass lightly and puts his gloves back on, shakes the tension off his shoulders. Gets ready.
“Oi. You’ll be alright.” (He’s great, but so are you.) he smiles and he’s always smiling, even when he doesn’t want to (and this isn’t poetic, nor is it poetry).
Iker runs back to the goal and Cristiano runs behind him (this is them).
-
“Wanna come over for dinner tonight?” he asks, body half tucked into his car and eyes on anything but Cristiano’s face.
Cristiano laughs, slides his sunglasses on even though there’s no sun. “Did Sara put you up to this?”
“Yeah, kinda,” he laughs too, a bit quieter, a bit rougher. “Said you must be feeling lonely.”
“Do you want me to come?”
Iker is still half inside his car, but he doesn’t move. He still isn’t looking at Cristiano, but he’s looking at Iker, and that’s enough exposure. “Yeah. Yeah, it’d be nice.”
He has a no on the tip of his tongue. I (we) can’t. I (we) think we shouldn’t. “Sure. What time?”
-
“She’s beautiful,” he says later, his tone even and measured, but Iker wouldn’t think anything of it, anyway. They’re walking on the grass outside Iker’s house and Cristiano wonders idly if he could ever live without being so close to home (the green. the field. the pitch.).
“Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” thing, he says, and Cristiano knows. Iker looks at him and rubs the wound harder, scratches deeper into the abyss, “Maybe I just haven’t seen it all.”
“Oh, I think you’ve seen plenty,” Cristiano laughs and looks away, and, fuck. “Iker.”
“Yes?”
“Can I tell you something? You can yell at me later.”
Iker looks inside. Sara is chatting happily on the phone, joyful and bright and good, good, and why not great. Why can’t I think of you as great. “Shoot.”
“Mourinho fucked you up. Everyone always praised you as the savior and the king, the magician, the one who says we can and we will and follows through. A year of bullshit hasn’t changed that. People may not think the same, but sometimes, we get it right the first time around. They did, you are. You are.”
Iker blinks. Slowly, he turns to watch the sky (there are stars tonight). “A year of bullshit doesn’t change, but it bends. Breaks you a little.”
Cristiano feels his chest being ripped open with brutal, wrecking honesty, even though it’s not his. “Everything broken can be mended.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“You’re the one who asked me for dinner.”
Iker looks back at him. “I didn’t ask you. Sara did. Remember?”
Cristiano does. And in another world, not another time, maybe he would have reached out and maybe he would have told him I keep chasing you, but you never push me back. I may not be an open book, but you’re the only one that’s made it into the hardest chapters. I see your pain and it hurts, it hurts me, me, Iker. But you’re kind and noble and I won’t let you read what would kill you (but let me rewrite your book. Please).
Cristiano says- “Yes, I remember,” and smiles, because that’s what he always does. Iker’s eyes go back to the stars and he hides everything again, because their habits aren’t that far off.
-
They train during nighttime. They talk afterwards, or: Iker talks and Cristiano listens, and sometimes Iker’s words stab him in all the right places but Cristiano doesn’t mind because at least this, them, he can control. (Maybe.)
“They’re making it official tomorrow.” Iker leans against the post, fiddles with the dirty glove in his left hand. “Do you think we’ll be okay?”
“You know him better than I do,” Cristiano’s sitting behind him, and Iker cranes his neck to look at him. “But that’s not what you want to ask.”
“Do you think I’ll be okay?” he asks after a moment, and goes to sit next to him.
“I like to think everything is better after a change. Otherwise you wouldn’t be bothered with it in the first place,” he says bluntly, and smiles again.
Their fingers almost touch and their legs almost tangle and their hearts almost race, but the night is too cold for that. “You can’t control change, Cristiano.”
“Yes you can. If you can control yourself, you can control anything.”
Iker frowns. No. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you control yourself?”
Cristiano catches his eyes. He laughs, sadder than usual, shorter than usual. “Isn’t it obvious?”
-
Iker calls him one day.
“Go ahead. This conversation never happened.”
“Never will happen, you mean.”
“No. It will happen. And then it didn’t.”
Cristiano doesn’t agree with the order. He sits. “Let’s say it didn’t happen. Ok. I didn’t hate you at first. I didn’t think you were overrated, and you didn’t think I was all papers and headlines, not much else. I didn’t feel like locking myself in silence when we first lost. I didn’t feel better when I saw you, fuck, I didn’t. I didn’t fall so hard I felt like I was falling without no real place to crash into, and I most certainly didn’t love you. I didn’t. I don’t. And you don’t, either. And maybe if I was good, not great, we could be. But I am, and you are, too.” His mouth feels sticky. He says. “Hey. Maybe in a different place, I could be kissing you. But we control where we are. And so we aren’t.”
“A different place?”
Cristiano closes his eyes. “Yes. I would kiss you anywhere but here.”
Iker hangs up after that. They can control change, but sometimes change controls them, too.
-
They win.
Cristiano grins so hard Iker feels like grabbing him and-
“Different people make different places, Iker.”
Iker looks at him and smiles. Cristiano smiles back.
(This isn’t a habit.)