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“Isn’t it weird?” Iker asks, eyeing the cabinets surrounding him. “We’re considered the heart of this team.”
Sergio raises an eyebrow. “We did win most of these.”
Iker looks at him and shoots a lopsided smile, his fingers cracking in the blue light playing off the walls. “It’s not about winning at all, though, is it?”
Sergio can only smile back. Of course not.
.
“The truth is, we are very gay sometimes.” Isco concludes, scrapping the bottom of his cup for the last piece of jelly. “My mother keeps asking me if I’m playing for another team, and I keep saying – No, mama, I am playing for Real – and she yells that that’s the problem.” He licks the spoon thoughtfully. “Maybe if our asses weren’t as great.”
Iker furrows his brows helplessly and hits Sergio’s foot, his whole body shaking with laughter. “If you ever give him tequila again, I will shoot you.” and Sergio doubles over the couch, laughing harder until he’s out of breath.
Cristiano just scratches his head awkwardly. Even the best player in the world likes to have his secrets.
.
Toni’s spanish is close to flawless in a matter of months. He touches Iker’s shoulder before they get to the cars and Iker stays back, clapping hands with teammates because that’s part of what he does, isn’t it? Feel the team, be the team. Toni fiddles with his hands.
“Iker, you see, I- bueno, Real, el major, si? Es que, I don’t understand, is this team ok? We are magic on a field, but in the locker rooms-“ he widens his eyes exaggeratedly “Iker, we are the worst!”
Iker wants to cry from laughing so long, but what he wants is usually kept safe inside where he can’t really reach or ponder over. He smiles, not too hard, not enough to reach his eyes, and they’re filled with memories and white, blinding light. “Toni. We give the fans what they want, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. So maybe we aren’t the heroes they make us out to be,” he chuckles a bit, thinks they’re really, really not, “When we’re on a pitch, we are. Seventy thousand people are staring at us twice a week. There’s no space to be mediocre. Okay?”
Iker feels like he’s saying there are two worlds and he can’t pick between them. He knows better, though, and Toni is deep in thought as he gets into his car and Iker decides that words were never the way to describe Madrid, anyway.
.
“The new kid was worried?” Sergio chuckles, his hands quick on the buttons of his shirt. “That’s sweet.”
“Can you blame him?” Iker asks near his ear, warm breath coating his neck. “We are pretty fucked up when the cameras can’t touch us.”
“Oi!” he protests, kicking Iker’s shin, but he presses down and grabs both his hands and pins them above him.
“Captain privilege,” Iker claims and tightens his grip and Sergio grumbles quietly, easing down.
“Ok, but, we’re not fucked up.” a bit serious now. “We’re just people.”
Iker looks at him and doesn’t have the heart to break his. Instead he lets his hands free and uses his own to palm Sergio’s jaw and kiss him, slowly, measuredly, painting a work of art. He murmurs- “Are we?” when he moves down his body, and “We’re human, not people,” when he reaches his navel. Sergio looks down at him pleadingly and Iker doesn’t speak.
(Do you not see? We’re only good when we need to be.)
.
“Greatest moments of your life?” they ask him, with no real problem blending football with reality, and Iker shrugs because he can’t properly answer something he doesn’t understand.
“My career has been amazing.” he says, voice neutral and thought out. He massages a spot on his shoulder and forgets there are cameras, for a second, a smile settling on his lips, not enough pixels moving for the lenses to catch it. He thinks, what should I say, knows he’ll say the champions league and the champions league and the champions league and la liga and la liga and la liga and la liga and la liga- repeating moments connected by name and name alone. “The cups with Spain were definitely a high point.”
The reporter turns the page on her notebook and scribbles something down, stopping for a few seconds to scan the questions. When she looks back up at him, it feels like an improvise. “What about days without trophies? Anything that pops?”
Iker puts some work into his smile this time.
.
2011
“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?” Iker laughs in response and doesn’t think he knows what guilt is, anymore. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you’re way too fucking obvious.”
Iker can’t really deny it. “Yeah, well, what good would it do? The more we show, the less they wonder.”
Cristiano stuffs his boots inside his bag and swings it over his shoulder, walking towards the opposite bench. “That’s a good one. Where did you learn it? ‘Cheat on your girlfriend’ support group?”
Iker bristles. His back straightens and he eyes Cristiano with furious eyes and- he smiles. “Yeah. You were sitting next to me, remember?”
Cristiano smiles back. They really are horrible, and so they laugh and leave the locker rooms with no regret weighting them down because they’ve learned that when something weights, you can build a new skin.
They change theirs constantly.
.
2002
He screams and cries and he’s still too young to do one without the other. He holds the trophy with both hands because he fears that if he lets it fall, his whole world will fall with it.
“Wanna know a secret?” Zidane shouts in his ear and Iker looks with eyes so clear they could show the future. “It can get better.”
Iker doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle it if it does. He will, of course, eventually, when it gets better and then tremendously worse and then an euphoria of good, but for now he kisses the trophy with such love he feels his legs give out, and the grass is crisp, soft beneath his body.
It welcomes him home.
.
2012
“I love us,” Sergio sighs as he plops down on the couch, a grin plastered across his face. “Honestly. Everyone would want to be us. We have killer sex.”
Iker doesn’t smile at him. He bangs the drawers closed and feels dirtydirtydirty – need to- he sits on the other end of the room to get his socks on and maybe retrieve the dignity quickly slithering away.
“Iker?” Sergio raises his head, his hand rubbing at his cheek. “Oye, tio. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Iker mumbles, more to himself than anyone else, really, his chest tightening to a point where he stops breathing altogether. “God, Sergio, I have to go, I seriously have to-“
“You have to what?” he jumps up and grabs him by the arm, and Iker jerks back violently, a wild animal being caged all of a sudden. Sergio doesn’t- he doesn’t even have a leash. “What the fuck?”
“Honestly, when are you going to grow a brain?” Iker growls, pushing his shirt over his head haphazardly. “Do you think this is okay, what we’re doing? Do you?”
Sergio fists his hands, his jaw tense. Iker doesn’t stop getting dressed and Sergio knows he should- why are you saying this now, what changed, how did two years fly by, when did you learn respect, I thought we just decided to pretend?
“Ok. Leave.” He orders, no room for arguing. Iker looks at him like he was expecting something else but shuts the door loudly on his way out.
Iker likes to think he grew a conscience that day. He goes home and cooks for his girlfriend and gives her flowers.
“They’re beautiful,” Sara says, leaving them on the marble counter, never putting them in a jar. They die for a week before they’re really dead and Iker thinks maybe- he should have- should have seen. Sooner.
It’s a week and a day before he goes back.
.
2013
The bed smells of despair and want.
“Me or Real?” the humor doesn’t stick to his voice. The fact that Iker can’t look him in the eye gives him half the answer. “This isn’t just fun anymore, is it?”
Iker bites at his lip. “Real.” He says, because he needs to. Sergio shifts and looks at him like he believes him, and Iker’s glad, really.
Their hands link somewhere under the sheets.
.
“Oh, you know,” Iker scratches his knee lightly. “My debut, winning El Clasico, hearing the fans. Everything is special in its own way.”
The reporter doesn’t look impressed, or rather, convinced. Iker knows he can’t offer her more than that, otherwise everything may just come rushing out in words and aches, that bruise over his elbow from being pushed into the lockers in hunger and covered by a familiar body.
“Everything is special.” He repeats, and she smiles before returning to her questions.
.
When he dyes his hair bleach blonde he wants to grab the closest pair of scissors and chop it off in 4.31 seconds, or maybe pay for blue paint and dump it over his head because he can’t get more ridiculous than now.
“I’m very much considering not touching you until you remove that. That monstrosity.”
“I like it.” Cristiano calls and Xabi looks a little horrified. Sergio blows a kiss and winks in Cris’ direction and Iker scrunches his face up a bit, leans further into the couch.
“See? Someone appreciates me,” he says, his conviction fading as he bumps Iker’s shoulder. He doesn’t budge, pretends not to acknowledge him, something vengeful pressing up, up.
Remember when we used to be able to say these things? When it didn’t mean more than a bed and sometimes the floor? Remember?
“Yeah, apparently.” his eyes fall closed and he doesn’t want to see Sergio’s face, not while all he wants to say is- Ok, but, you know, don’t you? You know what this is and how I- how I-
Sergio moves off the couch eventually, his hand brushing Iker’s on the way.
They’re never fully done.
.
When the humidity of June and Brazil makes his hands shake and sweat and his lungs strain and churn, Iker muses that maybe a ball going in isn’t that big of a problem. Iker thinks, no more, but there’s always too much when you don’t ask enough.
When he goes up to their room Sergio’s lying in bed in his kit and his boots. Iker sits on the floor in front of it, asks “This is just the start, isn’t it?”
Sergio breathes. “Are you asking if we’re doomed?”
“We are. But for how long?” because his hands have swelled up to the size of his misery. “Sergio, how long?”
“You’re the captain,” he starts, but. He lifts the sheets and gets inside- maybe if he gains faith it’ll save them.
Iker doesn’t sleep that night.
.
When it’s May and Portugal is cold, cold silence, Iker thinks back twelve years and a few seconds, falls to the ground in a hopeless explosion of something uncontrollable coming to life. He holds Sergio tight and thank you thank you thank you thank you and you saved us, thank you, God-
“Capitán,” Sergio says fondly, his hands everywhere but his heart. “What would I save if we didn’t have you?”
Iker never wants to hear about Arsenal again.
(It got better.)
.
“You know,” Cristiano says when they’re exiting the tunnel, the sun beating bright on the grass. “I used to think a pitch was the only thing serious in football.”
Iker doesn’t argue because he’s learned that it isn’t, not even close. “What made you change your mind?”
Cristiano smiles like he has a secret, his lines painfully sincere. “The way you look at him. Or, how he sometimes looks back just to check up on you. How you hand him trophies without a drop of selfishness. That’s not just football, Iker.”
He feels his heart fall a little, drop to the ground. Sergio is jogging up to them and he has 0.7 seconds to look at Cristiano and think don’t say another wor- when-
“Hey! Captain club meeting?” he asks, already grabbing Iker’s arm, and Cristiano laughs, walking out into the harsh, harsh light. Iker kisses Sergio in the dark and lets himself, for a moment. Be.
He’s been this 376 moments before. He hopes he’ll find it in him to regret it, one day.
.
The Bernabeu glows 4 hours later. Iker listens, breathes, loves.
Iker loves.