fated to pretend.
Title: Fated To Pretend
Pairing: Cesc Fàbregas / Iker Casillas
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex; language. A bit of a difficult theme that some readers may find improper.
Disclaimer: One hundred percent fiction.
Notes: For drbillbongo. Title taken from MGMT's "Time To Pretend".
Feedback > life. If you feel the need to give constructive criticism, please do.
Cesc took care to slur his speech as he replied to Iker, his fingers in Iker's hand tightening their grip - maintaining control over the situation. Iker seemed firmly in control, his body directing Cesc's, his hips strong and forceful as they weaved clumsily through the bodies in their way, nobody's eyes but Cesc's strong enough to see the droplets of vodka that their cups trailed on the sticky floor.
Iker's gaze swept haphazardly over the blue-lit mass of gyration that they had managed to escape. He grinned, his lips lazy. "Your room key?"
Cesc allowed his body to collapse heavily against the wall as he watched Iker try and fail to fit the keycard in the slot, his breaths sounding quick and heavy in the silence of the corridor. Cesc suppressed his natural urge to take over. Iker seemed firmly in control - so let him be.
They didn't bother with lights, Iker tripping a little over Cesc's feet as they fell in the general direction of the bed - Iker got there on his second attempt. Cesc watched through the faint beams of street light that filtered through the window as Iker fumbled with his belt buckle. Cesc's heart thumped, perhaps audibly. Cesc didn't know, didn't care, his eyes tracing over the corners of Iker's mouth as they pulled back in a smile; the beads of sweat that the club and its alcohol had pressed to his forehead; the eyes that wouldn't quite focus on what his hands were doing. Cesc's breath hitched as Iker reached around him and pulled his shirt over his head, their shuddering chests at last made to touch with the weight of Iker's strength pushing down hard and imploring the oxygen to move from between them.
It was only for a brief moment that Cesc wondered whether Iker's tongue could taste the cleanness of his mouth as it languidly explored it. But then, Cesc reasoned, Iker had drunk enough for the both of them. He submitted when Iker held him, opened him up, lasted for less than a minute before coming inside him - again, allowing Iker all the dominance that his body had dictated it wanted. Cesc had thought it all through too well to feel the pain of being torn into callously, of being taken accidentally by spirit-soaked oblivion. This was satiation, as he had long imagined it, and he came messily and noisily with the raw, unstained gratification of being Iker's that night.
* * * * *
Iker woke up in an empty bed. He looked down at himself and smiled. It clearly hadn't been empty all night. Captain's privilege, he thought wryly.
He turned to his left at the alarm clock on his bedside table, but it was on the right now. Ah. A different room. He would have shrugged it off had it not been for the stiffness in his back. 11.20am. The others would be down at breakfast already, probably finishing up. He inhaled deeply, his mouth tasting of the drunkenness that he always associated with winning. Captain's privilege.
Villa and Silva, typically, burst into sniggers when Iker walked into the dining area. As though they weren't as hungover, as sore, as empty as Iker was.
"You two," Iker began, suprised to find that he was still drawling, "have all the subtlety of - of - "
Iker wasn't one for quick remarks.
"All the subtlety of Fàbregas' shirt fitting too tightly around your back?"
Villa was.
Iker paused. Cesc. The sublime neatness of the hotel room now made some sort of sense.
"I - I'm going to get some breakfast."
The chortling continued behind him as he headed toward the tables at the far end of the room, where Xabi, as was his wont, was reading the nutritional information on two cereal boxes that he held in each hand and appraised with some concentration. He smirked after looking up and seeing Iker eyeing the fried eggs that teased through the kitchen doors.
"None of that for you, sir," Xabi said promptly, pushing a box of bran into Iker's tightly bound chest. "You had enough calories last night."
Iker smiled, trying to look winning. "Did I tell you how well you played, Xabi?"
"You didn't," Xabi responded politely.
"You were magnificent. Dominant."
"Thank you." Xabi reached over for two bowls and poured some milk. "Particularly flattering given that I played all of fifteen minutes." He continued to smile knowingly as Iker flushed scarlett. "I guess I can't return the compliment, though," he shrugged.
"Look," Iker said defensively, "that goal wasn't my fault, no one blames me -"
"I'm not talking about the goal," Xabi said dismissively. "That was probably Sergio's fault, anyway. I'm talking about Cesc."
Bloody Cesc - it kept coming back to him. Iker turned to see where Xabi was looking and found Cesc sitting quietly at a table with a laughing Albert and Joan, staring solemnly back. Iker started. "Well, I couldn't have been that bad."
"The other guys have been giving him some stick," Xabi muttered, leaning in and turning his head away from Cesc's with his hand around Iker's jaw. "And it's not polite to stare."
"He's staring. And - God damn it - he's got sausages and eggs!"
"He's also sober. Try it once in a while, Iker," Xabi said, patting Iker on the shoulder before walking away.
Iker sat down next to Cesc, who did indeed seem to be the subject of Albert and Joan's bemusement. On a better day, Iker might have noticed that Cesc didn't seem bothered by it, but Albert and Joan nonetheless shut up when Iker eyed them pointedly. Even so, they collapsed into giggles a mere few seconds later.
"Drunkards," Iker said, nudging Cesc, who smiled softly in return. "You seem alright, though. You even got sausages," he added enviously.
Cesc's hand was steady as he lifted his fork to his mouth, but after a second's hesitation put it down again. "Do you remember anything?"
Iker glanced across the table at Albert and Joan, who were still laughing to themselves inanely. "Not really," Iker admitted.
"I didn't think so." Cesc didn't look disappointed, or surprised.
"Why, how much do you remember?" Iker asked. Sure, Cesc mightn't have been plastered, but he wouldn't have done something like that unless he'd been -
"All of it."
Iker froze, looking at Cesc very intently, as Cesc eyed his food, calmly cutting it into neat pieces. "All of it," Iker repeated. Cesc nodded.
Iker wasn't sure what he felt first: comprehension, it must have been, followed somewhere along the line by disgust and stupidity and hurt.
He spoke carefully. "You're not hungover."
Cesc looked up at him, expressionless, frustratingly expressionless. His face as pure as his damn bloodstream.
"That's what Xabi said." Iker was getting absolutely no response from Cesc, who seemed more than happy to let him figure it out for himself, like a maths problem or something equally distant from the humiliation that began to stain Iker's cheeks. "You - you weren't drunk last night. At all."
Cesc at last shook his head, and began speaking - something vague about questions being answered and thinking of things in terms of experimentation instead of exploitation. Iker could barely process the headshake, let alone the six-syllable words. It took about a minute of Cesc's airy explanations for Iker's incomprehension to make way for an anger of some confused, misdirected kind.
"Everyone in this room," he said slowly and deliberately, "is calling me a slut. Me."
"Well, you -"
"Don't you start telling me what I am!" Iker hissed. "Jesus. Did you - did we even use a condom?"
"I am responsible, Iker."
"Yeah, real responsible, taking advantage of someone who was clearly too drunk to think and -"
"You wanted it."
"Will you keep your fucking voice down?" Iker snapped, turning to glare at the rest of the room. Nobody bothered to avert their gaze. He took a few moments to breathe in deeply, and absorb Cesc's silence, interpreting it as unfeeling briskness. "What you did," he said, lowering his voice in the hope of better channeling his shock, "could be seen - by a cop, or a football manager, or your mother - as rape. Did you think of that, smart-arse?"
Cesc clearly hadn't, his eyes now at last filling with uncertainty in place of that annoyingly self-assured defiance. "I - I -" He swallowed hard; the sureness returned. "Look, I know saying 'sorry' doesn't really cut it -"
"I cannot fucking believe you!" Iker heaved a deep breath, his pulse flying with the exertion of trying to spit out his outrage comprehensibly. "The nerve in that baby head of yours. And all these -" He spun around. "And all these idiots think you're so fucking heaven-sent!"
The eyes kept staring as he marched too forcefully out of the room.
* * * * *
"Shit," Iker spat, twisting around his room awkwardly as the last traces of alcohol clung to his senses. "Shit, fuck, shit." He tore Cesc's shirt off (quite literally) and threw it disgustedly to the floor where it joined the elite company of Pepe Reina's dirty socks.
Iker wasn't attached to the shirt he'd been wearing (or rather, not wearing) the night before, but he shuddered at the thought of Cesc taking it home and keeping it as a happy reminder of the time he'd fooled the drunken Iker into fucking him.
Iker wasn't an idiot, and tried not be when drunk, either. He never hopped into bed with sober men. He made sure his pride - and that of his victim - was protected by an inch-thick shield of liquor, and never faced the reckoning of the morning after.
Cesc was a slimy shit. Preying on Iker's submission and holding the reins beneath that boyish mask of flushed cheeks and big eyes and "Oh, yes, Iker, I've had at least as much as you" - as he had undoubtedly said, Iker realised with a clenched jaw. And now that slimy shit had his shirt. Well, he was damn well going to give it back. It'd probably be worth testing for DNA, Iker thought as he opened the door violently, in case that slimy shit hadn't gotten himself tested or -
"You can give that back, thank you very much."
Cesc looked down at his hands as Iker snatched the shirt from them and made to close the door in Cesc's face. "Well, yes, that's why I came here."
"Oh, not to get another fuck?" That was one of his wittier moments (speaking very relatively), Iker decided, satisfied, feeling his head at last steadying itself.
"Can I come inside?"
"I do believe you've already done that. And I fucking hope you weren't lying about the condom, because I can get this shirt tested -" Cesc groaned, interrupting Iker's second attempt at cleverness. Iker glared. "You're fucking lucky I don't tell everyone right now, and get you kicked off this team."
"Why don't you?" Infuriatingly, Cesc looked genuinely curious.
"Probably because they wouldn't fucking believe me if I did. You prick," he added through gritted teeth. He watched as Cesc visibly fought past his guilt and back towards that inexplicable self-righteousness that danced on his lips in a frustratingly inappropriate smile.
"Have you asked yourself why I did it?"
"You're a slimy shit, that's why," Iker snapped, feeling rather good now.
"I could have been just as willing - and just as persuasive - if I had been drunk," Cesc continued insistently. "You were asking for it, and I would have given it up just as easily. I would have felt less pain. I wouldn't have remembered it, either - I would have been another line in your list of anonymous conquests, I -"
"What the fuck is wrong with you, who talks like that?" Iker ran his hand briskly through his hair, growing rapidly aggravated again with all of this 'you asked for it' business being brought up humiliatingly again. "Anonymous conquests - exactly. I wouldn't have cared, honestly, if it had been you or bloody Carles Puyol," he snapped, determined to regain the upper hand - if he'd ever had it, and he was beginning to doubt that now.
"You are a slut," Cesc said - more of a reminder than a judgement.
"Okay, so I give out fucks for free when David Villa decides he wants to score a winning goal, or Fernando pulls his head out of his arse, or Sergio Ramos remembers to defend. That doesn't excuse what you did." Iker looked at Cesc, hard. "You made me look like a fool," he said, his voice a little softer now.
"I was taking advantage."
"Exactly."
"If I had been drunk, you wouldn't have cared?" Exasperation to match Iker's was creeping into Cesc's voice.
"It's different, Cesc," Iker argued wearily. "How can you not see that?"
"How is it different? If I did it because I was drunk, it was because I wanted to do it sober. Alcohol doesn't make you do what you don't want to do."
The argument had begun to confuse Iker, and thus found him tiring rather rapidly. He was, beneath the fury, ultimately confused and still dizzy with the remnants of the night before, left disjointed by this change of mindset from dark and unseemly chaos with which he was so familiar to a sober, civilised sickness. He wasn't used to looking back on something so deliberate and subsequently feeling so lost.
"But you don't know that you're doing it. It - it excuses you," he said hesitantly, wondering whether he was digging himself into an uncomfortable hole.
"Exactly. You don't feel it, you don't remember it."
"But why would you need to?"
"Don't you see?" Cesc asked, desperation etched between his features.
Iker paused, before shaking his head, which had regained the heaviness of that morning. "I see," he said, his fingers finding the doorknob again, "a piece of crap, who can't explain why he wanted to feel my dick in his arse."
* * * * *
Cesc had recognised Iker's go-to plan for dealing with problems before Iker had even carried it out. Cesc knew that Iker would not consider anything, think anything over, try to understand. Iker had brushed it all under the carpet, the way he had brushed David under the carpet, the way he brushed defeats and second-place finishes away. It was as though nothing had ever happened, although everyone noticed the harder steeliness in Iker's eyes and the tightness of his jaw whenever he was reminded of these things that had never happened.
Cesc could have confessed to disappointment, but he knew better than to bring it up. It was hidden away in the recesses of Iker's past, and Iker looked determined to keep it there, trying his best to keep up a façade of normalcy though his older-brotherly quips played more to insult than affection, and not quite clever enough to be ignored by his teammates, who raised their eyebrows in surprise when he made a disparaging remark about Cesc's haircut or something equally menial.
His hugs were still the same, his fingers ruffling Cesc's hair in the post-match celebrations no less or more tenderly. He was trying.
He was trying, bless him, to pretend that he wasn't wondering what Cesc could possibly have meant, whether there was something there.
And Cesc, once more reverting back to the innocence he thought he'd lost, bought it.
So he felt justified in slipping his hand surrepticiously around Iker's elbow, where Iker couldn't see it for the darkness, and whispering in his ear, where Iker couldn't hear him for the noise. They escaped a sweating, heaving dancefloor, Iker leading the way, as he so liked to do. Cesc felt entirely obliged, to himself, to satiate what was left of his loathsome desire (and there was indeed much of it left) and take advantage of Iker's selfish, cruel compulsion to forget.
"You have no idea how lucky you are," Iker whispered hotly against Cesc's mouth, his breath a document of shots and pints that dictated him now. Cesc ran his fingers up the buttons in the elevator and pushed on the highest, determined to delay further movement for as long as possible. "I haven't had anyone in weeks."
"You haven't?" Cesc asked disinterestedly, his hand now wandering downward.
Iker smiled with a contented little gasp, his eyes refusing to still. "I - oh. I - I was thinking about what you said."
"And?"
"I've been thinking about it a lot, actually." Iker was wearing that vaguely confused expression that slaps itself onto the faces of drunk people when they've suddenly stumbled into a serious conversation. "I realised - I - how much I -"
"How much you?" Cesc prompted.
Iker shook his head, a wicked smile reappearing as he found frivolity again after his momentary lapse into sincerity. "You want me so bad, Fàbregas." Iker licked his lips, Cesc feeling slightly queasy at the sight. "You bastard, you're lucky I'm drunk and desperate or you'd only be doing this in your dreams." Arsehole, Cesc thought, wrapping a hand firmly around Iker and listening to him inhale suddenly with rapid satisfaction, watching the numbers in the elevator creep up slowly. "You wish you could have me sober."
Iker's ego was being massaged so thoroughly, Cesc couldn't quite bear to look at him. He pushed himself harder against him, his jaw clenched as he felt Iker breathing by his ear. "Oh, Iker. One of these days, you'll ask yourself why you choose to fuck Cesc Fàbregas in dark hotel rooms."
He felt Iker smile. "Because you're begging for it?" That older-brotherly tone was so sickening now.
The elevator doors opened and Cesc pushed past a confused elderly lady, dragging Iker behind him onto the unfamiliar floor. Not knowing where they were, he trampled through the corridor, determinedly finding an empty stairwell, and quickly unzipping his jeans as Iker followed him absently.
He fucked Iker hard and fast, his own gasps echoing against the cement on the walls as he thrust forcefully and angrily, willing Iker to remember how good he was.
But with the same breaths, he praised himself for making sure Iker wouldn't; for keeping Iker's ego- and cock-stroking in the elevator and the stairwell; for making Iker wonder, the next morning, why he was so sore, so worn-out; for snatching away these moments during which Iker felt so wanted, so in control, so that in the light of day he'd be nothing more than a naked, oblivious heap of used-up sex. Which was all, Cesc felt, that he deserved.
He got closer to climax, rapidly losing his ability to hear or see or feel anything other than Iker's tightness around him, and his fingers digging hungrily into his back. His grunts were so loud, he didn't hear Iker whisper in a constricted voice.
"I want to remember this."
* * * * *
Cesc would do it again, and again, whenver the alcohol flowed freely enough. And he'd notice the disappointment and hurt in Iker's face when the mornings would illuminate his bruises and bags, but mistake it for anger, and exceed himself in apathy.
He'd watch Iker through steady eyes, stumbling his way through sex and tenderness that Cesc earned, slowly and measuredly. He would remember every pull, every touch, every breath on his neck, shared desperately by a man who didn't have the courage to share it freely; or, as Cesc saw it, given carelessly by a man who refused to learn from his mistakes.
Cesc's respect for Iker declined as he had more and more of Iker, wondering just how resilient the man was if he kept coming back for more, despite the repeated humiliation. Iker's respect for Cesc declined as he wanted more and more of Cesc.
To Cesc, what Iker didn't know couldn't harm him; what he couldn't remember, he couldn't use against him.
To Iker, what he didn't know was Cesc's ruthless judgement, his expedience; what he couldn't remember, he tried desperately to recreate.
It was some months before Cesc found himself entirely repleted, indeed giving more than he was taking, and his last night of pretending saw Iker just as clueless, just as willing to give it up as he had ever been, if not more so.
Cesc stopped watching the liquids pour down Iker's throat; his reflexes grow clumsy as the night got heavier. He instead retired to pursuits that still interested him. He had no more use for Iker, who offered nothing in the way of feeling but merely perpetuated the cycle of fucking and glowering.
Iker drank himself sick the next few times the team went out. The ride was over. He no longer had those nights of swimming memories to lay in; those waters in which to flounder towards a hint of what he and Cesc could have had, what Cesc had tempted him with and given him, before selfishly taking it all away.
He wondered if he should have said something - mentioned, subtly somehow, that he would have done it sober had Cesc asked. That he would have given Cesc the chance to be in control, if he'd wanted it.
He didn't understand that Cesc had been in control the whole time, and so he confused himself, wondering if he had dealt with it all wrong. He could see that Cesc, at least, had dealt with it. Perhaps Iker didn't understand that this meant loving Iker, hating Iker, getting over Iker - but he saw the changes in the way that Cesc looked back at him more and more coldly, the memories and grip on reality that he held over his captain at last reflected in the solidity of his disdain. Iker found himself a fool, no longer outraged at Cesc, but anguished, and teeming with teenage desires that he didn't know how to articulate.
He didn't understand that Cesc was the fool.
Pairing: Cesc Fàbregas / Iker Casillas
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex; language. A bit of a difficult theme that some readers may find improper.
Disclaimer: One hundred percent fiction.
Notes: For drbillbongo. Title taken from MGMT's "Time To Pretend".
Feedback > life. If you feel the need to give constructive criticism, please do.
Cesc took care to slur his speech as he replied to Iker, his fingers in Iker's hand tightening their grip - maintaining control over the situation. Iker seemed firmly in control, his body directing Cesc's, his hips strong and forceful as they weaved clumsily through the bodies in their way, nobody's eyes but Cesc's strong enough to see the droplets of vodka that their cups trailed on the sticky floor.
Iker's gaze swept haphazardly over the blue-lit mass of gyration that they had managed to escape. He grinned, his lips lazy. "Your room key?"
Cesc allowed his body to collapse heavily against the wall as he watched Iker try and fail to fit the keycard in the slot, his breaths sounding quick and heavy in the silence of the corridor. Cesc suppressed his natural urge to take over. Iker seemed firmly in control - so let him be.
They didn't bother with lights, Iker tripping a little over Cesc's feet as they fell in the general direction of the bed - Iker got there on his second attempt. Cesc watched through the faint beams of street light that filtered through the window as Iker fumbled with his belt buckle. Cesc's heart thumped, perhaps audibly. Cesc didn't know, didn't care, his eyes tracing over the corners of Iker's mouth as they pulled back in a smile; the beads of sweat that the club and its alcohol had pressed to his forehead; the eyes that wouldn't quite focus on what his hands were doing. Cesc's breath hitched as Iker reached around him and pulled his shirt over his head, their shuddering chests at last made to touch with the weight of Iker's strength pushing down hard and imploring the oxygen to move from between them.
It was only for a brief moment that Cesc wondered whether Iker's tongue could taste the cleanness of his mouth as it languidly explored it. But then, Cesc reasoned, Iker had drunk enough for the both of them. He submitted when Iker held him, opened him up, lasted for less than a minute before coming inside him - again, allowing Iker all the dominance that his body had dictated it wanted. Cesc had thought it all through too well to feel the pain of being torn into callously, of being taken accidentally by spirit-soaked oblivion. This was satiation, as he had long imagined it, and he came messily and noisily with the raw, unstained gratification of being Iker's that night.
* * * * *
Iker woke up in an empty bed. He looked down at himself and smiled. It clearly hadn't been empty all night. Captain's privilege, he thought wryly.
He turned to his left at the alarm clock on his bedside table, but it was on the right now. Ah. A different room. He would have shrugged it off had it not been for the stiffness in his back. 11.20am. The others would be down at breakfast already, probably finishing up. He inhaled deeply, his mouth tasting of the drunkenness that he always associated with winning. Captain's privilege.
Villa and Silva, typically, burst into sniggers when Iker walked into the dining area. As though they weren't as hungover, as sore, as empty as Iker was.
"You two," Iker began, suprised to find that he was still drawling, "have all the subtlety of - of - "
Iker wasn't one for quick remarks.
"All the subtlety of Fàbregas' shirt fitting too tightly around your back?"
Villa was.
Iker paused. Cesc. The sublime neatness of the hotel room now made some sort of sense.
"I - I'm going to get some breakfast."
The chortling continued behind him as he headed toward the tables at the far end of the room, where Xabi, as was his wont, was reading the nutritional information on two cereal boxes that he held in each hand and appraised with some concentration. He smirked after looking up and seeing Iker eyeing the fried eggs that teased through the kitchen doors.
"None of that for you, sir," Xabi said promptly, pushing a box of bran into Iker's tightly bound chest. "You had enough calories last night."
Iker smiled, trying to look winning. "Did I tell you how well you played, Xabi?"
"You didn't," Xabi responded politely.
"You were magnificent. Dominant."
"Thank you." Xabi reached over for two bowls and poured some milk. "Particularly flattering given that I played all of fifteen minutes." He continued to smile knowingly as Iker flushed scarlett. "I guess I can't return the compliment, though," he shrugged.
"Look," Iker said defensively, "that goal wasn't my fault, no one blames me -"
"I'm not talking about the goal," Xabi said dismissively. "That was probably Sergio's fault, anyway. I'm talking about Cesc."
Bloody Cesc - it kept coming back to him. Iker turned to see where Xabi was looking and found Cesc sitting quietly at a table with a laughing Albert and Joan, staring solemnly back. Iker started. "Well, I couldn't have been that bad."
"The other guys have been giving him some stick," Xabi muttered, leaning in and turning his head away from Cesc's with his hand around Iker's jaw. "And it's not polite to stare."
"He's staring. And - God damn it - he's got sausages and eggs!"
"He's also sober. Try it once in a while, Iker," Xabi said, patting Iker on the shoulder before walking away.
Iker sat down next to Cesc, who did indeed seem to be the subject of Albert and Joan's bemusement. On a better day, Iker might have noticed that Cesc didn't seem bothered by it, but Albert and Joan nonetheless shut up when Iker eyed them pointedly. Even so, they collapsed into giggles a mere few seconds later.
"Drunkards," Iker said, nudging Cesc, who smiled softly in return. "You seem alright, though. You even got sausages," he added enviously.
Cesc's hand was steady as he lifted his fork to his mouth, but after a second's hesitation put it down again. "Do you remember anything?"
Iker glanced across the table at Albert and Joan, who were still laughing to themselves inanely. "Not really," Iker admitted.
"I didn't think so." Cesc didn't look disappointed, or surprised.
"Why, how much do you remember?" Iker asked. Sure, Cesc mightn't have been plastered, but he wouldn't have done something like that unless he'd been -
"All of it."
Iker froze, looking at Cesc very intently, as Cesc eyed his food, calmly cutting it into neat pieces. "All of it," Iker repeated. Cesc nodded.
Iker wasn't sure what he felt first: comprehension, it must have been, followed somewhere along the line by disgust and stupidity and hurt.
He spoke carefully. "You're not hungover."
Cesc looked up at him, expressionless, frustratingly expressionless. His face as pure as his damn bloodstream.
"That's what Xabi said." Iker was getting absolutely no response from Cesc, who seemed more than happy to let him figure it out for himself, like a maths problem or something equally distant from the humiliation that began to stain Iker's cheeks. "You - you weren't drunk last night. At all."
Cesc at last shook his head, and began speaking - something vague about questions being answered and thinking of things in terms of experimentation instead of exploitation. Iker could barely process the headshake, let alone the six-syllable words. It took about a minute of Cesc's airy explanations for Iker's incomprehension to make way for an anger of some confused, misdirected kind.
"Everyone in this room," he said slowly and deliberately, "is calling me a slut. Me."
"Well, you -"
"Don't you start telling me what I am!" Iker hissed. "Jesus. Did you - did we even use a condom?"
"I am responsible, Iker."
"Yeah, real responsible, taking advantage of someone who was clearly too drunk to think and -"
"You wanted it."
"Will you keep your fucking voice down?" Iker snapped, turning to glare at the rest of the room. Nobody bothered to avert their gaze. He took a few moments to breathe in deeply, and absorb Cesc's silence, interpreting it as unfeeling briskness. "What you did," he said, lowering his voice in the hope of better channeling his shock, "could be seen - by a cop, or a football manager, or your mother - as rape. Did you think of that, smart-arse?"
Cesc clearly hadn't, his eyes now at last filling with uncertainty in place of that annoyingly self-assured defiance. "I - I -" He swallowed hard; the sureness returned. "Look, I know saying 'sorry' doesn't really cut it -"
"I cannot fucking believe you!" Iker heaved a deep breath, his pulse flying with the exertion of trying to spit out his outrage comprehensibly. "The nerve in that baby head of yours. And all these -" He spun around. "And all these idiots think you're so fucking heaven-sent!"
The eyes kept staring as he marched too forcefully out of the room.
* * * * *
"Shit," Iker spat, twisting around his room awkwardly as the last traces of alcohol clung to his senses. "Shit, fuck, shit." He tore Cesc's shirt off (quite literally) and threw it disgustedly to the floor where it joined the elite company of Pepe Reina's dirty socks.
Iker wasn't attached to the shirt he'd been wearing (or rather, not wearing) the night before, but he shuddered at the thought of Cesc taking it home and keeping it as a happy reminder of the time he'd fooled the drunken Iker into fucking him.
Iker wasn't an idiot, and tried not be when drunk, either. He never hopped into bed with sober men. He made sure his pride - and that of his victim - was protected by an inch-thick shield of liquor, and never faced the reckoning of the morning after.
Cesc was a slimy shit. Preying on Iker's submission and holding the reins beneath that boyish mask of flushed cheeks and big eyes and "Oh, yes, Iker, I've had at least as much as you" - as he had undoubtedly said, Iker realised with a clenched jaw. And now that slimy shit had his shirt. Well, he was damn well going to give it back. It'd probably be worth testing for DNA, Iker thought as he opened the door violently, in case that slimy shit hadn't gotten himself tested or -
"You can give that back, thank you very much."
Cesc looked down at his hands as Iker snatched the shirt from them and made to close the door in Cesc's face. "Well, yes, that's why I came here."
"Oh, not to get another fuck?" That was one of his wittier moments (speaking very relatively), Iker decided, satisfied, feeling his head at last steadying itself.
"Can I come inside?"
"I do believe you've already done that. And I fucking hope you weren't lying about the condom, because I can get this shirt tested -" Cesc groaned, interrupting Iker's second attempt at cleverness. Iker glared. "You're fucking lucky I don't tell everyone right now, and get you kicked off this team."
"Why don't you?" Infuriatingly, Cesc looked genuinely curious.
"Probably because they wouldn't fucking believe me if I did. You prick," he added through gritted teeth. He watched as Cesc visibly fought past his guilt and back towards that inexplicable self-righteousness that danced on his lips in a frustratingly inappropriate smile.
"Have you asked yourself why I did it?"
"You're a slimy shit, that's why," Iker snapped, feeling rather good now.
"I could have been just as willing - and just as persuasive - if I had been drunk," Cesc continued insistently. "You were asking for it, and I would have given it up just as easily. I would have felt less pain. I wouldn't have remembered it, either - I would have been another line in your list of anonymous conquests, I -"
"What the fuck is wrong with you, who talks like that?" Iker ran his hand briskly through his hair, growing rapidly aggravated again with all of this 'you asked for it' business being brought up humiliatingly again. "Anonymous conquests - exactly. I wouldn't have cared, honestly, if it had been you or bloody Carles Puyol," he snapped, determined to regain the upper hand - if he'd ever had it, and he was beginning to doubt that now.
"You are a slut," Cesc said - more of a reminder than a judgement.
"Okay, so I give out fucks for free when David Villa decides he wants to score a winning goal, or Fernando pulls his head out of his arse, or Sergio Ramos remembers to defend. That doesn't excuse what you did." Iker looked at Cesc, hard. "You made me look like a fool," he said, his voice a little softer now.
"I was taking advantage."
"Exactly."
"If I had been drunk, you wouldn't have cared?" Exasperation to match Iker's was creeping into Cesc's voice.
"It's different, Cesc," Iker argued wearily. "How can you not see that?"
"How is it different? If I did it because I was drunk, it was because I wanted to do it sober. Alcohol doesn't make you do what you don't want to do."
The argument had begun to confuse Iker, and thus found him tiring rather rapidly. He was, beneath the fury, ultimately confused and still dizzy with the remnants of the night before, left disjointed by this change of mindset from dark and unseemly chaos with which he was so familiar to a sober, civilised sickness. He wasn't used to looking back on something so deliberate and subsequently feeling so lost.
"But you don't know that you're doing it. It - it excuses you," he said hesitantly, wondering whether he was digging himself into an uncomfortable hole.
"Exactly. You don't feel it, you don't remember it."
"But why would you need to?"
"Don't you see?" Cesc asked, desperation etched between his features.
Iker paused, before shaking his head, which had regained the heaviness of that morning. "I see," he said, his fingers finding the doorknob again, "a piece of crap, who can't explain why he wanted to feel my dick in his arse."
* * * * *
Cesc had recognised Iker's go-to plan for dealing with problems before Iker had even carried it out. Cesc knew that Iker would not consider anything, think anything over, try to understand. Iker had brushed it all under the carpet, the way he had brushed David under the carpet, the way he brushed defeats and second-place finishes away. It was as though nothing had ever happened, although everyone noticed the harder steeliness in Iker's eyes and the tightness of his jaw whenever he was reminded of these things that had never happened.
Cesc could have confessed to disappointment, but he knew better than to bring it up. It was hidden away in the recesses of Iker's past, and Iker looked determined to keep it there, trying his best to keep up a façade of normalcy though his older-brotherly quips played more to insult than affection, and not quite clever enough to be ignored by his teammates, who raised their eyebrows in surprise when he made a disparaging remark about Cesc's haircut or something equally menial.
His hugs were still the same, his fingers ruffling Cesc's hair in the post-match celebrations no less or more tenderly. He was trying.
He was trying, bless him, to pretend that he wasn't wondering what Cesc could possibly have meant, whether there was something there.
And Cesc, once more reverting back to the innocence he thought he'd lost, bought it.
So he felt justified in slipping his hand surrepticiously around Iker's elbow, where Iker couldn't see it for the darkness, and whispering in his ear, where Iker couldn't hear him for the noise. They escaped a sweating, heaving dancefloor, Iker leading the way, as he so liked to do. Cesc felt entirely obliged, to himself, to satiate what was left of his loathsome desire (and there was indeed much of it left) and take advantage of Iker's selfish, cruel compulsion to forget.
"You have no idea how lucky you are," Iker whispered hotly against Cesc's mouth, his breath a document of shots and pints that dictated him now. Cesc ran his fingers up the buttons in the elevator and pushed on the highest, determined to delay further movement for as long as possible. "I haven't had anyone in weeks."
"You haven't?" Cesc asked disinterestedly, his hand now wandering downward.
Iker smiled with a contented little gasp, his eyes refusing to still. "I - oh. I - I was thinking about what you said."
"And?"
"I've been thinking about it a lot, actually." Iker was wearing that vaguely confused expression that slaps itself onto the faces of drunk people when they've suddenly stumbled into a serious conversation. "I realised - I - how much I -"
"How much you?" Cesc prompted.
Iker shook his head, a wicked smile reappearing as he found frivolity again after his momentary lapse into sincerity. "You want me so bad, Fàbregas." Iker licked his lips, Cesc feeling slightly queasy at the sight. "You bastard, you're lucky I'm drunk and desperate or you'd only be doing this in your dreams." Arsehole, Cesc thought, wrapping a hand firmly around Iker and listening to him inhale suddenly with rapid satisfaction, watching the numbers in the elevator creep up slowly. "You wish you could have me sober."
Iker's ego was being massaged so thoroughly, Cesc couldn't quite bear to look at him. He pushed himself harder against him, his jaw clenched as he felt Iker breathing by his ear. "Oh, Iker. One of these days, you'll ask yourself why you choose to fuck Cesc Fàbregas in dark hotel rooms."
He felt Iker smile. "Because you're begging for it?" That older-brotherly tone was so sickening now.
The elevator doors opened and Cesc pushed past a confused elderly lady, dragging Iker behind him onto the unfamiliar floor. Not knowing where they were, he trampled through the corridor, determinedly finding an empty stairwell, and quickly unzipping his jeans as Iker followed him absently.
He fucked Iker hard and fast, his own gasps echoing against the cement on the walls as he thrust forcefully and angrily, willing Iker to remember how good he was.
But with the same breaths, he praised himself for making sure Iker wouldn't; for keeping Iker's ego- and cock-stroking in the elevator and the stairwell; for making Iker wonder, the next morning, why he was so sore, so worn-out; for snatching away these moments during which Iker felt so wanted, so in control, so that in the light of day he'd be nothing more than a naked, oblivious heap of used-up sex. Which was all, Cesc felt, that he deserved.
He got closer to climax, rapidly losing his ability to hear or see or feel anything other than Iker's tightness around him, and his fingers digging hungrily into his back. His grunts were so loud, he didn't hear Iker whisper in a constricted voice.
"I want to remember this."
* * * * *
Cesc would do it again, and again, whenver the alcohol flowed freely enough. And he'd notice the disappointment and hurt in Iker's face when the mornings would illuminate his bruises and bags, but mistake it for anger, and exceed himself in apathy.
He'd watch Iker through steady eyes, stumbling his way through sex and tenderness that Cesc earned, slowly and measuredly. He would remember every pull, every touch, every breath on his neck, shared desperately by a man who didn't have the courage to share it freely; or, as Cesc saw it, given carelessly by a man who refused to learn from his mistakes.
Cesc's respect for Iker declined as he had more and more of Iker, wondering just how resilient the man was if he kept coming back for more, despite the repeated humiliation. Iker's respect for Cesc declined as he wanted more and more of Cesc.
To Cesc, what Iker didn't know couldn't harm him; what he couldn't remember, he couldn't use against him.
To Iker, what he didn't know was Cesc's ruthless judgement, his expedience; what he couldn't remember, he tried desperately to recreate.
It was some months before Cesc found himself entirely repleted, indeed giving more than he was taking, and his last night of pretending saw Iker just as clueless, just as willing to give it up as he had ever been, if not more so.
Cesc stopped watching the liquids pour down Iker's throat; his reflexes grow clumsy as the night got heavier. He instead retired to pursuits that still interested him. He had no more use for Iker, who offered nothing in the way of feeling but merely perpetuated the cycle of fucking and glowering.
Iker drank himself sick the next few times the team went out. The ride was over. He no longer had those nights of swimming memories to lay in; those waters in which to flounder towards a hint of what he and Cesc could have had, what Cesc had tempted him with and given him, before selfishly taking it all away.
He wondered if he should have said something - mentioned, subtly somehow, that he would have done it sober had Cesc asked. That he would have given Cesc the chance to be in control, if he'd wanted it.
He didn't understand that Cesc had been in control the whole time, and so he confused himself, wondering if he had dealt with it all wrong. He could see that Cesc, at least, had dealt with it. Perhaps Iker didn't understand that this meant loving Iker, hating Iker, getting over Iker - but he saw the changes in the way that Cesc looked back at him more and more coldly, the memories and grip on reality that he held over his captain at last reflected in the solidity of his disdain. Iker found himself a fool, no longer outraged at Cesc, but anguished, and teeming with teenage desires that he didn't know how to articulate.
He didn't understand that Cesc was the fool.