todo se transforma
by worldcoup
There were days when he looked back at that year and thought: it literally was a summer romance, stolen from cheap paperback books and failed magic tricks and unending naiveté. Sometimes he let himself chuckle about it; sometimes he pressed his fingers to something cold-surfaced, like the glass panels of the window on wet winter evenings, or the rim of freshly washed dishes, or the skin of his girlfriend’s arm when they sat out in the balcony together, and he thought of the metal surface of a medal and cold kisses to steel; and sometimes he lay back against the grass of some midnight-soaked old park and stared at cloudless shapes in the sky.
Sometimes he made the mistake of saying something along those lines to Iker, and he got a smack on his head and a reminder that world-weary twenty-three year olds should exist only in TV soaps and terrible fiction.
The truth was, he liked boys.
This was something had not yet realized when he was ten, and the fourteen year old son of one of the men who worked on the farm took him behind an old shed and they touched each other and they did not kiss. Later, he turned fifteen and he fell in love with the same boy, and they sometimes talked against the dipping sun before his mother called him in, Javier, Javier, the food is getting cold, and he would run and trip over his long limbs and feel guilty at the tired lines that folded her skin. Much later, he was seventeen and he moved out of Ayegui to Bilbao, and he fell out of love with the dusty haired boy from the farm with a carelessness that was only as callous as it was teenaged, and he learned to live alone and to sit at the bench of a top flight match and play with his nails while the ball skidded between grass and mud and boot, and to he learned what it meant to be trusted, and later loved, and he did not learn how to work out the difference.
Bilbao changed nothing but for the fact there were a lot more people that asked him about girls, and instead of pretending to enjoy peeking out at tan-skinned prostitutes on forbidden street corners, he pretended to enjoy flirting with girls in bars; bars they smuggled themselves into on days where there was a stretch of unimportant games they would not start in any case, and he tripped over his own feet and kissed them too fast and expected girls to drop their pants the minute they heard he played for Athletic, even if he’d let in an idiotic goal in the last game (which one particularly brash, red-lipsticked brunette actually had the audacity to point out to him) and even if it never worked. Bilbao was different because he was freer, even if Álvaro was only a twenty minute drive away and checked up on him on weekends, and his family visited every month and his mother kept nagging him about that entrance examinations to Uni and his father gruffly clapped his shoulder and praised him about the last game that he did not watch; but freedom only meant that he was free to pretend more and learn to care less, free to start being careless and let everyone mock him about his luck with girls and flirt as disastrously with boys, free only to become what he already had no trouble being.
The truth was, he had always liked Fernando.
They were not friends. Fernando was older and seemed more serious, and Javi went to Cirque du Soleil every year and deigned to wear tutus and had a fondness for putting things on his head and taking photos of it. (“That’s a dumb cap,” Iker said to him once, “Wear a trophy I will help you win on your head, tío, that will maybe look slightly less ridiculous.” In fact, that was probably the first thing Iker Muniain had ever said to him. A year later, they were best friends. Three years later and a few weeks ago, Javi took a photo with the Eurocopa on his head, and did not forget to text Iker.) Fernando had a girlfriend and kind eyes and a distracted laugh, and sometimes looked too much like he was carved from old Italian stone and musty history-book-paper, and Javi sometimes stretched next to him and said stupidly inappropriate things and got distracted staring and Fernando would laugh in his confused way and the skin around his eyes would crinkle, but they wouldn’t have called each other friends. Javi still liked him, though, liked him from the safe distance of shared goal celebrations and adjacent seats at club dinners and friendly elbows, liked him from the friendly distance of things he couldn’t act on and secrets he did not have to worry over, too much.
(“Hi, Fernando, want to go catch dinner later?” he said once, to the mirror.
“Jo, you’re cute,” he tried again, and added a sleazy eyebrow because it was a mirror and he wasn’t wearing pants, and he could.
“Thanks, it’s the new haircut, I think,” Iker said, coming into the room unexpectedly, and made Javi start and drop his deodorant.
“Iker,” he complained. “Go stick your head in the toilet.”
“Mmhm,” his friend said agreeably, grabbing his toothbrush and speaking through the froth in his mouth. “Who’s the girl?”
Javi looked at himself in the mirror one more time, then rolled his eyes at himself, Iker, and that damn blond-and-oblivious-and-probably-getting-called-up-for-the-World-Cup-next-summer-and-sitting-in-the-next-room-right-now-probably-looking-gorgeous-or-something striker, then threw his jacket over his shoulder. “Nobody,” he sighed, making his way towards his shoes.
“Ah, Nobody,” Iker acknowledged intelligently, nodding his head, then paused to gargle. “Yes, I heard you hook up with her quite often.”
“I hook up with--,” Javi said, eyebrows knitting together and lips pushing forward, confused, before he understood the rather poor joke and threw his jacket at his roommate, watching it land on squarely on his head. Iker shifted a sleeve from in front of his eye and gave him a shit-eating grin, characteristically self-satisfied, not unlike an overgrown, diamond-stud wearing cat. “You have toothpaste on your shirt,” Javi said finally in a grumpy but not unhappy reply, and Iker only laughed, delighted.)
He liked to think things could have changed in those four years, if he would have wanted them to. He could have finally gotten into university, could have taken that road trip, could have dated that one girl who kept sending him letters, could have said something to Fer, could. He did this: he helped them stop fighting for relegation and start dreaming of Europe. He did this: he played in a Copa Del Rey final. He did this: he got called up for the World Cup, and cried.
(He did this: he told Ander, and he almost told Iker. Ander said, “Oh,” and asked him if they should invite Fernando on their summer roadtrip to California. Javi reminded him that Fernando was probably going to be at the World Cup. The two of them sighed wistfully, and Iker came in, and they exchanged a silent look before Iker brought up something asinine like a new Youtube video of someone who sold old spices, and that was the last time Javi brought it up.)
They didn't ask him later, in the talk shows and fancy restaurant interviews, what changed; instead, they asked him when it did. Javi thought back to that summer a lot, to those twenty minutes on the pitch against Chile, to talking to Xavi in a situation where he wasn't trying to break the ball off his foot, to the unobtrusive chill of the South African winter, to when he kissed Fernando after they played Portugal because they had both played in the World Cup now and because Javi didn’t always believe in stopping himself from doing things he could. Yet, in all these moments, he couldn’t pinpoint when it all changed, because Cesc was just a grown-up version of Iker in the national team, and because he still tripped over his feet around Fernando after they had kissed, and sometimes, privately, Javi felt that if you couldn’t pinpoint when something changed, then maybe it hadn’t.
Well-Fernando had changed. And by that, Javi meant: Fernando was no longer an abstraction to him, blonde hair and sleepy smiles and brief brushes of elbow to elbow; Fernando was no longer theory and what-if and safe distances. Fernando was: stolen morning kisses in an unnecessarily luxurious hotel room in South Africa, Fernando was: little corner smiles and sitting too close at the breakfast table, Fernando was: thrusting into him at midnight a week before the semi, with his lips pressed into his salty skin to stifle a low moan. Fernando was: conversations about Navarre and La Rioja and Athletic to the press, and shared interviews, and someone he could not feel unfamiliar around. Fernando was: a reminder of how far he had come, and home. Fernando was: Fer.
“I can’t believe you didn’t just slap me that day,” Javi said, one night. Fer, beside him, snored lightly in reply.
(But it wasn’t that hard to believe, because nothing was easy to believe that year: that he was there, at the World Cup, that they later won it, that he was friends with culés and Madridistas and Fer, that you could have a summer romance in winter’s arms. In any case, Javi had never had trouble believing in people trusting him: Athletic, then Spain, now Fer.)
“You know, I had a crush on Fernando Torres once,” he said another time, solemnly, and Fer only laughed beside him and asked him if the only reason he liked him was because he was a blonde striker named Fernando, too.
Javi wanted to ask Fer what was the only reason he liked him. Instead he said, “At least you’re a natural blond, which is the only reason why I chose you over him.”
Fer rolled over and put an arm around Javi, lifting himself up slightly. “I’m glad,” he said with a twist of his lips, and Javi was reminded of how Fer, for all of his angelic charm, was a flirt. “A flirt of the worst order,” he found himself saying out loud. “Because no one suspects you to be one.”
Fer laughed at that, eyes closing, teeth flashing. “I’m not the one who says, ‘Hey, Fernando, if we win the World Cup I will forget to be embarrassed about this, right?’ and then mushes his lips to his teammate’s face.”
“You responded,” Javi protested. “And besides, trust me, tío: that’s not flirting, that’s going for it. I think I still have finger-shaped bruises on my cheek from years ago to attest to that.”
Fer looked at him again, then ducked his head down and chuckled, all shut-eyed and crinkly-skinned. “I’m not a flirt,” he said finally, laughter in his voice. Javi only looked at him and thought of the things he did not say, like you have a girlfriend and you still haven’t told me why you kissed me back, and instead he said something like, “Paraguay tomorrow,” and “Do you think Amore is supporting Spain?” and “We should Skype the boys tomorrow,” and they fell asleep together, Fer’s elbow uncomfortably poking Javi’s side, Javi’s slightly open mouth weighing down the edge of Fer’s shoulder.
Then: they won the World Cup, and even as summer became summer again, things stayed no less surreal. Javi didn't usually remember pin-point moment when things changed, but he remembered this: waking up, half asleep and in a drunken, celebratory stupor to find Cesc Fabregas tying his shoelaces to Fer’s.
“What are you doing down there, Cesc,” he said, politely.
“Giving you a blowjob, campéon,” replied Cesc, endearingly, looking up for a brief second, before he turned back down to complete what he was doing.
“Oh,” said Javi, and put his head back on Fernando’s shoulder, because it was an oddly comfortable way to sleep.
He woke up five minutes later, as did Fer, to a loud “HA!” and the sight of Cesc still on his knees. “Did you finish that blowjob?” he finally asked, when they had stared at each other long enough in a drunken haze, and Cesc, looking down at his handiwork, had nodded. “Fer,” Javi said, nudging his side, “Fer, Cesc apparently just gave me a blowjob.” He almost added, what are you going to do about this?, but he remembered himself, and Fer was too drunk in that moment to do anything but blink confusedly at him and the intricate lacework of their shoes between them. Javi was suddenly struck with the ridiculousness of it all: he was drunk on free beer, he was a fucking World Cup winner, Fer had fucked him, he’d made his debut for Spain before he got into journalism school, and Cesc fucking Fabregas had just created the perfect, messy metaphor for what his life was right now, when, minutes later, Fernando tried to get up on his feet for some reason and promptly tripped, fell over Javi and nearly took his eye and half his nose out, causing him to throw his head back and laugh even harder.
After, they spent hours on hotel beds and fucked and laughed and remembered: they were fucking World Cup winners-they were fucking World Cup winners. They criss-crossed on private planes to pocket awards in town all across Spain, and Javi went home and Fer went to Ibiza, but they still met and kissed the trophy together and gave interviews together and wore ill-fitting tuxedos together, and suddenly they became the crowns of Athletic, pearls of Bilbao; suddenly they became: Javi and Fer.
(The truth was, in those moments: Javi could have loved Fer.)
Much after, Javi remembered why he didn’t like to pin-point moment when things changed: because things never did.
It had to happen, because you didn't win World Cups every day. It had to happen, because Fernando had a girlfriend and because Javi never felt it was his place to ask for more. It had to happen, because summer romances that happened in winter were bad omens, or something, or because those few weeks were a surreal dream, and surreality did not bleed well into the real world. It had to happen, because he saw Fer in training and an oddly familiar new routine clashed uncomfortably with a very different old one, and because both of them twitched and didn't know where to run, and because later, they walked back to the car together and jumped apart when their shoulders brushed against each other’s briefly, once.
Javi sometimes wondered if things would have been different if they had talked to each other then, about this, about everything, but in reality, neither of them knew what they could talk about, or how. They had made no promises to each other in South Africa except to win, and they had, and it felt an awful lot like the gold of the trophy had come with a sign: now, this is over (even if they digested the message only later, like a dull realization in a prolonged but not necessarily unpleasant hangover). There was no reason this should not have happened: they were not friends, still, and they were no longer fucking either, so it was natural that they were this: teammates, acquaintances, Javi-and-Fer: Athletic’s World Cup winners, awkward, stilted, forced, smiling, quiet, distant, one-time fuckbuddies, apart.
“What happens if you can’t blame anyone in a break-up,” he said out loud one day, watching Iker put on cologne to practice, for some reason he didn't ask about because it was Iker.
What happens if you can’t even call it a break-up, he asked himself afterwards.
“You find some reason and blame the other person anyway,” said Iker cheerfully in reply. “You have so much to learn about love, from me. Now come and smell me and tell me if this cologne is musky enough.”
A month later, he jogged next to Fernando in training.
“Bielsa brought an inch ruler with him to the pitch again,” he said. “It’s hard not to take this the wrong way.”
It was the first thing he’d properly said to Fernando in months. Fernando looked at him incredulously, then burst out laughing in that disoriented way from lifetimes ago, and for a second Javi had trouble deciding if nothing had changed, or everything had. It wasn't all fixed, of course. If it were, Fernando would reply: not that you have anything to worry about, hombre, and wink. If it were, Javi would reply: flirt. I told you you were a flirt. Instead Fernando mumbled something about him being ridiculous, and Javi flashed his teeth in reply; instead Javi said, “Oye, you haven’t come over to my house yet. I promised you ages ago, you have to meet Marta.” Instead Fernando did, Marta loved him and slobbered over his jeans, and instead they never kissed again.
(In 2012 two things would change: life, and Javi’s ability to acknowledge that it had. He would get a girlfriend and this time he wouldn’t kiss her too soon, and he would get called up to the Euros and not cry this time, and this time, Fer would not get to set foot on the pitch. “Maybe he’s saving you for the final,” Javi would whisper, when they stared out of the balcony together in the warmth of the Polish wind, and Fer would smile and say that he wasn’t upset, and Javi would stare at him and try and read his face, and Javi would feel like he could begin to understand him. In 2012 Javi would wrap one arm around Fernando and another around his Eurocup and get piss-faced drunk, and he would think: we both have girlfriends now and I don’t understand it either, and we’re not in love anymore, but it’s summer again and we’re European Champions, and he would think: we’re friends now and everything has changed, but maybe I could get used to all of this.)
note: liberta helped with a tiny bit of the dialogue.
There were days when he looked back at that year and thought: it literally was a summer romance, stolen from cheap paperback books and failed magic tricks and unending naiveté. Sometimes he let himself chuckle about it; sometimes he pressed his fingers to something cold-surfaced, like the glass panels of the window on wet winter evenings, or the rim of freshly washed dishes, or the skin of his girlfriend’s arm when they sat out in the balcony together, and he thought of the metal surface of a medal and cold kisses to steel; and sometimes he lay back against the grass of some midnight-soaked old park and stared at cloudless shapes in the sky.
Sometimes he made the mistake of saying something along those lines to Iker, and he got a smack on his head and a reminder that world-weary twenty-three year olds should exist only in TV soaps and terrible fiction.
The truth was, he liked boys.
This was something had not yet realized when he was ten, and the fourteen year old son of one of the men who worked on the farm took him behind an old shed and they touched each other and they did not kiss. Later, he turned fifteen and he fell in love with the same boy, and they sometimes talked against the dipping sun before his mother called him in, Javier, Javier, the food is getting cold, and he would run and trip over his long limbs and feel guilty at the tired lines that folded her skin. Much later, he was seventeen and he moved out of Ayegui to Bilbao, and he fell out of love with the dusty haired boy from the farm with a carelessness that was only as callous as it was teenaged, and he learned to live alone and to sit at the bench of a top flight match and play with his nails while the ball skidded between grass and mud and boot, and to he learned what it meant to be trusted, and later loved, and he did not learn how to work out the difference.
Bilbao changed nothing but for the fact there were a lot more people that asked him about girls, and instead of pretending to enjoy peeking out at tan-skinned prostitutes on forbidden street corners, he pretended to enjoy flirting with girls in bars; bars they smuggled themselves into on days where there was a stretch of unimportant games they would not start in any case, and he tripped over his own feet and kissed them too fast and expected girls to drop their pants the minute they heard he played for Athletic, even if he’d let in an idiotic goal in the last game (which one particularly brash, red-lipsticked brunette actually had the audacity to point out to him) and even if it never worked. Bilbao was different because he was freer, even if Álvaro was only a twenty minute drive away and checked up on him on weekends, and his family visited every month and his mother kept nagging him about that entrance examinations to Uni and his father gruffly clapped his shoulder and praised him about the last game that he did not watch; but freedom only meant that he was free to pretend more and learn to care less, free to start being careless and let everyone mock him about his luck with girls and flirt as disastrously with boys, free only to become what he already had no trouble being.
The truth was, he had always liked Fernando.
They were not friends. Fernando was older and seemed more serious, and Javi went to Cirque du Soleil every year and deigned to wear tutus and had a fondness for putting things on his head and taking photos of it. (“That’s a dumb cap,” Iker said to him once, “Wear a trophy I will help you win on your head, tío, that will maybe look slightly less ridiculous.” In fact, that was probably the first thing Iker Muniain had ever said to him. A year later, they were best friends. Three years later and a few weeks ago, Javi took a photo with the Eurocopa on his head, and did not forget to text Iker.) Fernando had a girlfriend and kind eyes and a distracted laugh, and sometimes looked too much like he was carved from old Italian stone and musty history-book-paper, and Javi sometimes stretched next to him and said stupidly inappropriate things and got distracted staring and Fernando would laugh in his confused way and the skin around his eyes would crinkle, but they wouldn’t have called each other friends. Javi still liked him, though, liked him from the safe distance of shared goal celebrations and adjacent seats at club dinners and friendly elbows, liked him from the friendly distance of things he couldn’t act on and secrets he did not have to worry over, too much.
(“Hi, Fernando, want to go catch dinner later?” he said once, to the mirror.
“Jo, you’re cute,” he tried again, and added a sleazy eyebrow because it was a mirror and he wasn’t wearing pants, and he could.
“Thanks, it’s the new haircut, I think,” Iker said, coming into the room unexpectedly, and made Javi start and drop his deodorant.
“Iker,” he complained. “Go stick your head in the toilet.”
“Mmhm,” his friend said agreeably, grabbing his toothbrush and speaking through the froth in his mouth. “Who’s the girl?”
Javi looked at himself in the mirror one more time, then rolled his eyes at himself, Iker, and that damn blond-and-oblivious-and-probably-getting-called-up-for-the-World-Cup-next-summer-and-sitting-in-the-next-room-right-now-probably-looking-gorgeous-or-something striker, then threw his jacket over his shoulder. “Nobody,” he sighed, making his way towards his shoes.
“Ah, Nobody,” Iker acknowledged intelligently, nodding his head, then paused to gargle. “Yes, I heard you hook up with her quite often.”
“I hook up with--,” Javi said, eyebrows knitting together and lips pushing forward, confused, before he understood the rather poor joke and threw his jacket at his roommate, watching it land on squarely on his head. Iker shifted a sleeve from in front of his eye and gave him a shit-eating grin, characteristically self-satisfied, not unlike an overgrown, diamond-stud wearing cat. “You have toothpaste on your shirt,” Javi said finally in a grumpy but not unhappy reply, and Iker only laughed, delighted.)
He liked to think things could have changed in those four years, if he would have wanted them to. He could have finally gotten into university, could have taken that road trip, could have dated that one girl who kept sending him letters, could have said something to Fer, could. He did this: he helped them stop fighting for relegation and start dreaming of Europe. He did this: he played in a Copa Del Rey final. He did this: he got called up for the World Cup, and cried.
(He did this: he told Ander, and he almost told Iker. Ander said, “Oh,” and asked him if they should invite Fernando on their summer roadtrip to California. Javi reminded him that Fernando was probably going to be at the World Cup. The two of them sighed wistfully, and Iker came in, and they exchanged a silent look before Iker brought up something asinine like a new Youtube video of someone who sold old spices, and that was the last time Javi brought it up.)
They didn't ask him later, in the talk shows and fancy restaurant interviews, what changed; instead, they asked him when it did. Javi thought back to that summer a lot, to those twenty minutes on the pitch against Chile, to talking to Xavi in a situation where he wasn't trying to break the ball off his foot, to the unobtrusive chill of the South African winter, to when he kissed Fernando after they played Portugal because they had both played in the World Cup now and because Javi didn’t always believe in stopping himself from doing things he could. Yet, in all these moments, he couldn’t pinpoint when it all changed, because Cesc was just a grown-up version of Iker in the national team, and because he still tripped over his feet around Fernando after they had kissed, and sometimes, privately, Javi felt that if you couldn’t pinpoint when something changed, then maybe it hadn’t.
Well-Fernando had changed. And by that, Javi meant: Fernando was no longer an abstraction to him, blonde hair and sleepy smiles and brief brushes of elbow to elbow; Fernando was no longer theory and what-if and safe distances. Fernando was: stolen morning kisses in an unnecessarily luxurious hotel room in South Africa, Fernando was: little corner smiles and sitting too close at the breakfast table, Fernando was: thrusting into him at midnight a week before the semi, with his lips pressed into his salty skin to stifle a low moan. Fernando was: conversations about Navarre and La Rioja and Athletic to the press, and shared interviews, and someone he could not feel unfamiliar around. Fernando was: a reminder of how far he had come, and home. Fernando was: Fer.
“I can’t believe you didn’t just slap me that day,” Javi said, one night. Fer, beside him, snored lightly in reply.
(But it wasn’t that hard to believe, because nothing was easy to believe that year: that he was there, at the World Cup, that they later won it, that he was friends with culés and Madridistas and Fer, that you could have a summer romance in winter’s arms. In any case, Javi had never had trouble believing in people trusting him: Athletic, then Spain, now Fer.)
“You know, I had a crush on Fernando Torres once,” he said another time, solemnly, and Fer only laughed beside him and asked him if the only reason he liked him was because he was a blonde striker named Fernando, too.
Javi wanted to ask Fer what was the only reason he liked him. Instead he said, “At least you’re a natural blond, which is the only reason why I chose you over him.”
Fer rolled over and put an arm around Javi, lifting himself up slightly. “I’m glad,” he said with a twist of his lips, and Javi was reminded of how Fer, for all of his angelic charm, was a flirt. “A flirt of the worst order,” he found himself saying out loud. “Because no one suspects you to be one.”
Fer laughed at that, eyes closing, teeth flashing. “I’m not the one who says, ‘Hey, Fernando, if we win the World Cup I will forget to be embarrassed about this, right?’ and then mushes his lips to his teammate’s face.”
“You responded,” Javi protested. “And besides, trust me, tío: that’s not flirting, that’s going for it. I think I still have finger-shaped bruises on my cheek from years ago to attest to that.”
Fer looked at him again, then ducked his head down and chuckled, all shut-eyed and crinkly-skinned. “I’m not a flirt,” he said finally, laughter in his voice. Javi only looked at him and thought of the things he did not say, like you have a girlfriend and you still haven’t told me why you kissed me back, and instead he said something like, “Paraguay tomorrow,” and “Do you think Amore is supporting Spain?” and “We should Skype the boys tomorrow,” and they fell asleep together, Fer’s elbow uncomfortably poking Javi’s side, Javi’s slightly open mouth weighing down the edge of Fer’s shoulder.
Then: they won the World Cup, and even as summer became summer again, things stayed no less surreal. Javi didn't usually remember pin-point moment when things changed, but he remembered this: waking up, half asleep and in a drunken, celebratory stupor to find Cesc Fabregas tying his shoelaces to Fer’s.
“What are you doing down there, Cesc,” he said, politely.
“Giving you a blowjob, campéon,” replied Cesc, endearingly, looking up for a brief second, before he turned back down to complete what he was doing.
“Oh,” said Javi, and put his head back on Fernando’s shoulder, because it was an oddly comfortable way to sleep.
He woke up five minutes later, as did Fer, to a loud “HA!” and the sight of Cesc still on his knees. “Did you finish that blowjob?” he finally asked, when they had stared at each other long enough in a drunken haze, and Cesc, looking down at his handiwork, had nodded. “Fer,” Javi said, nudging his side, “Fer, Cesc apparently just gave me a blowjob.” He almost added, what are you going to do about this?, but he remembered himself, and Fer was too drunk in that moment to do anything but blink confusedly at him and the intricate lacework of their shoes between them. Javi was suddenly struck with the ridiculousness of it all: he was drunk on free beer, he was a fucking World Cup winner, Fer had fucked him, he’d made his debut for Spain before he got into journalism school, and Cesc fucking Fabregas had just created the perfect, messy metaphor for what his life was right now, when, minutes later, Fernando tried to get up on his feet for some reason and promptly tripped, fell over Javi and nearly took his eye and half his nose out, causing him to throw his head back and laugh even harder.
After, they spent hours on hotel beds and fucked and laughed and remembered: they were fucking World Cup winners-they were fucking World Cup winners. They criss-crossed on private planes to pocket awards in town all across Spain, and Javi went home and Fer went to Ibiza, but they still met and kissed the trophy together and gave interviews together and wore ill-fitting tuxedos together, and suddenly they became the crowns of Athletic, pearls of Bilbao; suddenly they became: Javi and Fer.
(The truth was, in those moments: Javi could have loved Fer.)
Much after, Javi remembered why he didn’t like to pin-point moment when things changed: because things never did.
It had to happen, because you didn't win World Cups every day. It had to happen, because Fernando had a girlfriend and because Javi never felt it was his place to ask for more. It had to happen, because summer romances that happened in winter were bad omens, or something, or because those few weeks were a surreal dream, and surreality did not bleed well into the real world. It had to happen, because he saw Fer in training and an oddly familiar new routine clashed uncomfortably with a very different old one, and because both of them twitched and didn't know where to run, and because later, they walked back to the car together and jumped apart when their shoulders brushed against each other’s briefly, once.
Javi sometimes wondered if things would have been different if they had talked to each other then, about this, about everything, but in reality, neither of them knew what they could talk about, or how. They had made no promises to each other in South Africa except to win, and they had, and it felt an awful lot like the gold of the trophy had come with a sign: now, this is over (even if they digested the message only later, like a dull realization in a prolonged but not necessarily unpleasant hangover). There was no reason this should not have happened: they were not friends, still, and they were no longer fucking either, so it was natural that they were this: teammates, acquaintances, Javi-and-Fer: Athletic’s World Cup winners, awkward, stilted, forced, smiling, quiet, distant, one-time fuckbuddies, apart.
“What happens if you can’t blame anyone in a break-up,” he said out loud one day, watching Iker put on cologne to practice, for some reason he didn't ask about because it was Iker.
What happens if you can’t even call it a break-up, he asked himself afterwards.
“You find some reason and blame the other person anyway,” said Iker cheerfully in reply. “You have so much to learn about love, from me. Now come and smell me and tell me if this cologne is musky enough.”
A month later, he jogged next to Fernando in training.
“Bielsa brought an inch ruler with him to the pitch again,” he said. “It’s hard not to take this the wrong way.”
It was the first thing he’d properly said to Fernando in months. Fernando looked at him incredulously, then burst out laughing in that disoriented way from lifetimes ago, and for a second Javi had trouble deciding if nothing had changed, or everything had. It wasn't all fixed, of course. If it were, Fernando would reply: not that you have anything to worry about, hombre, and wink. If it were, Javi would reply: flirt. I told you you were a flirt. Instead Fernando mumbled something about him being ridiculous, and Javi flashed his teeth in reply; instead Javi said, “Oye, you haven’t come over to my house yet. I promised you ages ago, you have to meet Marta.” Instead Fernando did, Marta loved him and slobbered over his jeans, and instead they never kissed again.
(In 2012 two things would change: life, and Javi’s ability to acknowledge that it had. He would get a girlfriend and this time he wouldn’t kiss her too soon, and he would get called up to the Euros and not cry this time, and this time, Fer would not get to set foot on the pitch. “Maybe he’s saving you for the final,” Javi would whisper, when they stared out of the balcony together in the warmth of the Polish wind, and Fer would smile and say that he wasn’t upset, and Javi would stare at him and try and read his face, and Javi would feel like he could begin to understand him. In 2012 Javi would wrap one arm around Fernando and another around his Eurocup and get piss-faced drunk, and he would think: we both have girlfriends now and I don’t understand it either, and we’re not in love anymore, but it’s summer again and we’re European Champions, and he would think: we’re friends now and everything has changed, but maybe I could get used to all of this.)
note: liberta helped with a tiny bit of the dialogue.