[ Knights of Cydonia: VIII. Sergio; Part III ]
Summary: There is something rotten in the state of Andalucía.
Ships: (present) Fernando/Olalla, Sergio/Fernando, Stevie/Xabi, Bojan/Canales, Raúl/Guti (in the future) David/Iker
Disclaimer: Minus the Gladiator-esque themes, I own everything except for the footballers themselves. None of this happened and certainly none of them are actual royalty. Except probably Xabi.
Title blatantly stolen from the Muse song of the same name. Consider it the theme song.
Standing Note: Andalucía is a region of Spain, certainly not its own kingdom (or at least it hasn’t been for a good 500 years). Consider this an AU Spain in an AU world structure. I do not claim to know a thing about Andalusian culture, so again. AU AU AU.
Chapter: VIII. Sergio; Part III
Word Count: 3,098
Chapter Ships & Characters: Sergio Ramos/Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard/Xabi Alonso
Chapter Rating: PG
Links: Table of Contents | AO3
Notes: Any time I decide to focus on this fic, my life becomes all sorts of rambunctious kinds of busy. If I forget to post a week, please remind me!
This is Sergio’s last POV for now. I hope you enjoy. :)
VIII. Sergio
come ride with me
It’s a simple task, leaving the headquarters with Cesc for more fresh air but, more importantly, to set the agenda with the unions. Villa and Puyol had agreed on terms, finally, and all that was needed to initiate action, right here, was a simple exchange of information-a date and time. Xabi didn’t trust computers to run without interference or, for that matter, phones to not be tapped, so he had sent Cesc and Sergio had been more than willing to accompany him.
They’re on the metro when Sergio passes a bald man with an unsettling smile. He looks familiar, but Sergio can’t place it. The man smiles at him, cocks his head, and Sergio would swear it was a look meant for him if, in the intervening time between the train stopping and more people getting off, the man hadn’t disappeared.
Puyol is a tall man with curls that spread across his shoulders and not in a way that Sergio would consider attractive. Villa is shorter-much shorter-and scowls a lot. They eye each other distastefully, but Cesc seems to be in a good enough mood to set them at ease.
No one can truly be at ease, but Cesc buys them both paper cups of coffee. Sergio notices numbers in sharpie written on both of them. He doesn’t get a close look before they’re hidden under their palms.
“Why doesn’t he answer his calls,” Villa scowls. He chugs his coffee. He’s careful not to turn his cup.
“Probably because he doesn’t want to talk to you,” Cesc answers cheerfully.
“Who would want to talk to you?” Puyol says a moment later and Villa mutters rapidly under his breath.
“You’re both remarkably pleasant, did you know that?” Cesc adds. They both glare at him and Sergio doesn’t bother to hide his laugh. They both turn their attention to him, suspicious, and he shrugs.
“I’m with him, hombre,” Sergio says to Villa. Villa doesn’t seem to like that explanation.
They don’t linger after that. Puyol shifts one way and Villa another and they’re gone before Sergio can think that their sudden movements would be suspicious regardless.
“They’re not the brightest are they?” he observes. Cesc buys him a scone and he nibbles on a corner. His stomach growls loudly and he ignores it. He’s tired of being bought food.
“They’re good at what they do,” Cesc chuckles. They turn back onto the street, arms held close to block from the wind. “It doesn’t seem like it, but they’re good friends.”
“Fucking?” Sergio asks, eyebrow raised.
Cesc cocks his head and considers.
“No, I don’t think so.” He shrugs as they decide to skip the metro and take a cab instead. Sergio shifts as Cesc flags one down. Andalucía’s public transit system, much like the rest of the country, is filled with disrepair and the obvious affects of lack of funding and investment.
The cab that stops at the curb is dirty, spitting out plumes of dark exhaust. Sergio can hear the grumbling of the engine even before they get inside. The seats are deeply ripped and covered in grit, but neither of them care.
“To here,” Cesc says, handing the driver a card. He leans back into the seat and turns to whisper to Sergio, “It’s not the real address. We’ll have to walk a block. Hey-what’s that?”
Sergio raises an eyebrow at Cesc before looking down at what he’s talking about.
“Is that an envelope?” Cesc asks, frowning. He reaches forward and grabs it from Sergio’s pocket before he can react.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” Sergio frowns as well, eyeing it. “It wasn’t there before.”
“Oh fuck,” Cesc says worriedly. “God I hope no one was following us, shit.”
He slides a thumb under the back of the envelope to open.
“No one was following us,” Sergio says, although it’s uneasy. He has a sudden flashback to the metro, to unsettling eyes and an even more unsettling smile.
“It’s a letter,” Cesc says. He pulls out the sheaf of paper and unfolds it.
Sergio looks over at the younger man and it’s a progression of features-it begins slow, a slight frown at the corners of his mouth, a wrinkle to the edges of his eyes. It’s more rapid after that, the crumpling of his face, the widening of his eyes, the way his hand darts out to grip Sergio’s arm until it’s so painful Sergio hisses.
“Cesc, what the fuc-”
“Fuck. Oh fuck. God, Sergio, fuck.”
“Cesc, what the fuck-” Sergio tries again, but Cesc is nearly hyperventilating now.
“Fuck, can you go faster? Please, fuck, I’ll pay you whatever, just book it,” he says to the driver. The driver looks in his rearview window, gives them a suspicious look, but complies.
“Will you answer me-”
Cesc shoves the letter into Sergio’s hand. Sergio opens it carefully, eyes scanning over the words faster than he can process them. He has to slow down, stop, and start again at the beginning.
His eyes grow wider too, his palms clammy, he can feel his heart start to race in a way that’s all too familiar-anxiety, dread, complete and utter terror. He turns his eyes up to Cesc and he can tell they share the same feelings.
Cesc’s grip on Sergio’s arm becomes even more blindingly painful, but Sergio’s too numb to feel it.
“By royal decree,” Cesc whispers so softly he can barely be heard. Sergio shakes his head faintly and stares down at the letter again.
By the Royal Decree of King David,
David Josué Jiménez Silva has been captured and held prisoner. Due to overwhelming evidence, he will not stand trial. He has been found guilty on thirteen counts of treason including: aiding, abetting, creating, encouraging, and catalyzing resistance and rebellion in order to unseat and cause harm and/or death to His Royal Highness. There will be no appeal. He will be put to death by firing squad in one week’s time.
And then scribbled underneath it in a completely unfamiliar and yet completely chilling handwriting-
They’re coming for you next.
“Who gave this to you?” Xabi asks. His eyes are flashing in anger, his shoulders shaking in frustration and alarm. The room has dispersed, windows locked, lights turned down. They left headquarters immediately where they felt their presence compromised. They went in shifts, in groups of twos and threes, watching over their shoulders as though an attack could come at any moment. Of course it hadn’t, but it had unnerved them all to the point of dismissal.
Xabi hadn’t told them when to come back. None of them could be sure, not so long as whoever was privy to their existence and information was found.
Cesc and Álvaro are sitting at the kitchen table. Both have laptops in front of them. Raul had been sent home to run their emails and systems through security checks that he only had access to at his own house. For now, there’s nothing they can do but look through databases and see if they can come up with a definitional match of the only person Sergio could think of-the man on the train.
“That’s all I noticed, Xabs,” Sergio says uneasily. He sits on a stool at the counter. Stevie pours five glasses of strong liquor. Sergio has no idea what it is, but he accepts it gratefully when Stevie offers. “Fuck, I was with Cesc the entire time, he didn’t notice either.”
“How the fuck could you two be so irresponsible?” Xabi glowers. He’s obviously angry, his face turning a mottled pink. Stevie tuts disapprovingly from behind the counter. He’s come home early on the advice of both Sergio and Álvaro in order to calm and contain Xabi. He’s been mostly unsuccessful, although no one blames him for it.
“Calm down, Xabi,” Cesc says from his seat.
“Calm down?” Xabi turns on the young man. “Calm down? We’ve been fucking compromised and-”
“And snapping at Sergio isn’t going to do a damn thing,” Cesc replies firmly. He’s settling Xabi with the look he’s receiving and Stevie looks over at Sergio questioningly, as though to ask when this happened and also how. Sergio shakes his head, not sure himself. “If it was the man he described, we’ll find him. If not, we have no way of knowing. Fuck, it could have been Puyi and Villa for all we know.”
“We’ll have to let them know,” Xabi says with a weary sigh. He rubs his face, clearly on edge and stressed. Stevie comes around from behind the counter and hands him a glass of bourbon. He wraps his arm around Xabi’s waist from behind and rests his chin on his shoulder.
“Don’t tell them, love,” he says quietly.
Xabi twists his head back questioningly.
“What?”
“You’re only going to create panic and undermine everything you’ve been working for,” Stevie says logically, calmly. “You don’t know where this is from or who it’s from. You haven’t found Silva yet and you don’t know if or when they’ll come for you. What are you going to tell Puyol and Villa? That a threat exists? What do you think they’re going to do?”
“Protect themselves,” Xabi answers, somewhat miserably.
“He’s right,” Sergio says. He rolls his shoulders uneasily. He hates getting mixed up in politics. He hates it. It’s ironic, then. “You can tell them to be cautious because it’s dangerous. Say that it’s a precaution because of what happened in Murcia. But telling them about ominous notes and half-baked ideas? It’s pointless. They won’t be able to do anything and they’ll be pissed at you and the movement for jeopardizing them in the first place.”
Sergio gets nods from Cesc and Álvaro.
“He’s right, chico,” Álvaro agrees. “And anyway maybe this isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s a good thing that we know. We’ve been too naïve thinking that we are the only ones who know about us. The police and the Knights have eyes and ears everywhere, we haven’t been careful enough.”
Xabi’s entire body, stiff with tension and anxiety, slowly releases. He leans back into Stevie who murmurs something in his ear and presses a kiss to the back of his jaw.
“You’re right,” Xabi admits.
“Of course we are, love,” Stevie says. “I can only offer legal advice, but what I can say is that there are no laws that allow a man to be sentenced to death without a trial. It’s completely against the law, both domestic and international. Granted laws here are fucked up because it’s all unwritten, but even then the Royals will have an incredibly difficult time executing Silva if people come to know about it. The international human rights watchdogs haven’t turned their attention to us yet, but if they do-”
Stevie lets out a low whistle to complete his thought.
Xabi’s eyes narrow and he turns his head to look at his boyfriend.
“You want us to leak the decree?”
Stevie shrugs.
“It’s an idea,” he says. And then adds, “Think of the backlash it would generate. It could be just what you need.”
“That’s what you said, isn’t it?” Sergio says suddenly.
Everyone in the room quiets and looks over at him.
“Earlier today. Isn’t that what you said? That we could use more anger in Andalucía.”
Xabi looks at the decree in his hand, at the writing near the bottom in scrawled handwriting. He crushes the bottom of it in his palm and looks at his glass of bourbon.
He wriggles free of Stevie and downs half the glass with a wince before setting it down. He looks a bit green, just a little bit nauseous. He looks down at the paper again and nods.
“So I did, Serge. So I did.”
It gathers pace after that, swift movements and late nights. Unfinished cups of coffee and deft looks over shoulders to make sure no one’s watching. He spends more time at the headquarters, spends more time with Xabi, spends more time reading through newspapers and watching riots unfold across the landscape. Suddenly he has an opinion, a smoldering anger that settles in the pit of his stomach, a voice he thinks could be heard if he thought to speak loudly enough. He becomes a whole person, or maybe the shell of who he used to be, but it’s less difficult to fall asleep at night when the person falling asleep isn’t the person who’s been broken time and time again. Sergio slowly recreates the life around him until he can barely recognize the person staring back at him in the mirror anymore. The outline is there, the traces of who he was and how he used to feel, but these days all he needs is a brush of his thumb across the mirror and the image changes. His eyes are expressionless and, Sergio thinks, he prefers it that way.
One morning Stevie looks up at him over a bowl of cereal, spoon in mouth, and eyebrows knit together like Sergio’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.
“What?” Sergio asks nervously, toast halfway to his mouth. Xabi’s left for the office already. Sergio’s made plans to meet Cesc for lunch because the younger man hates running errands by himself, and Stevie has a late morning meeting with a client that he’s planning to drive to straight. It’s just the two of them quietly eating breakfast, Stevie ruffling through the sports section of the morning paper and Sergio staring blankly out the window.
Stevie doesn’t say anything for a moment, a moment too long, and it unnerves Sergio until his features fold into a frown.
“Did I do something?” Mentally, he begins counting the days; one weeks, two weeks, three- until Stevie clicks his tongue disapprovingly.
“Now don’t start with that again,” he interrupts, as though he knows exactly what’s running through Sergio’s mind. “It’s been nice having you around, Serge. This house is too bloody big for just the two of us anyway and Xabi won’t let us get a goddamn dog-”
Sergio raises his eyebrow and Stevie’s lips twitch up.
“-something about dog hair and his impeccable suits, you know the man as well as I do,” Stevie waves his hand dismissively.
Sergio tries not to smile despite himself and settles with taking another bite of his toast. It’s slightly burnt, but the taste is lost on his tongue anyway. These days, he has more to eat than he’s ever had, but he can’t seem to stomach any of it. He nibbles at corners and picks at his food more like a bird than a person until the wave of nausea hits him and he gives up altogether.
Stevie carefully folds the newspaper, fingers drumming on the rest of the pages underneath. Sergio’s eyes flicker to the front page where he sees a picture of a slender woman with brown hair, pictured hand-in-hand with someone who’s trying to duck the flash of cameras. He doesn’t do a very good job, mostly because he’s laughing at something she’s said. His hair is no longer shocking streaks of blond, but a deep chestnut brown. It suits him. It suits him a lot.
Sergio’s eyes flutter closed briefly, toast forgotten. It’s hard to breathe with the buzzing in his head, the acrid taste on the tip of his tongue and there it is again, that wave of nausea that steamrolls over him.
He loses his appetite altogether.
Then again, he hasn’t had one in weeks.
When he opens his eyes again, his vision swims in and out momentarily, but he doesn’t miss the steely and slightly sympathetic look that Stevie gives him.
“Are you happy, Serge?” Stevie asks then, just as quiet as if Sergio had asked himself.
Sergio inhales through his nose, slowly, fighting the rising bile at the back of his throat. He reaches for his glass of orange juice and tips it back against his mouth. He drains it, lets the orange pulp coat his mouth until he can’t taste his feelings anymore.
He puts it back down on the table with a slight upshrug of his shoulder.
“Other people are happy,” Sergio finally says. He avoids Stevie’s eyes, avoids the concern, the worry lining the older man’s face because Sergio doesn’t need a reminder, he doesn’t need one more fucking reminder.
“I don’t care about other people,” Stevie says softly and it’s about as much as Sergio can bear.
He pushes his chair back and gets up from the table.
“I’ve gotta meet Cesc,” he mutters. He slides his thin frame into the worn leather of his jacket. It feels heavier on his shoulders than usual, the material dragging at the thin cotton shirt he’s wearing underneath. He takes his plate and glass to the sink, lets the water run over them and tries to exhale while he has the space to.
Stevie, for his part doesn’t say anything else. If he’s worried, he doesn’t show it and Sergio would be grateful if he had the capacity to feel anything else at all.
“Hey, Sergio-” Stevie says just as Sergio’s about to leave the kitchen.
Sergio turns back, despite himself.
“I don’t know what happened. And it’s none of my business,” Stevie says softly. “But I bet it’s killing him more, not to have you in his life.”
Sergio’s eyes flicker toward the newspaper cover. If Stevie notices, he doesn’t follow his gaze.
“How could you know that?” Sergio finally replies, mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Because,” Stevie says. He gets up from the table himself, pushes his chair back and stands, stretches, and when he looks at Sergio again, it isn’t soft or apologetic, it’s sincere and matter-of-fact. “It kills everyone not to have you in their life.”
Sergio has no response. When he finally steps outside, blinks slowly up at the bright blue sky, the words settle thickly at the bottom of his stomach.
“It might kill him either way,” Sergio says softly to himself. Something flickers across his face quickly, briefly, a tightness in his chest, of aching or guilt, something as simple as sadness or complicated as saudade. Maybe it’s a part of him that one was, but has since gone missing. Whatever it is, it lasts no longer than a moment.
Then he runs his tongue over his dried lips and shakes his head. Sergio sticks his hands in his pockets and picks his way to the metro station.
He’s expressionless again. Just the way he prefers.