ficlets: javi/fernando, cristiano/kaka, messi gen AU
Title: Playa de Ereaga
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Javi Martínez/Fernando Llorente
Word Count: 1,335
Summary: Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first-doesn’t realize it for a long time-but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t-doesn’t mean anything by it.
Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first-doesn’t realize it for a long time-but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t-doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that he admires Fernando and the way he plays, and he wants to emulate that. But who wouldn’t, right?
Gorka laughs at him over it, too. He’ll stand there by the goalposts and fix the straps on his gloves, and he’ll say things like, “Let me know when it’s a commercial break, okay? I have something to show you,” and, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was impolite to stare?”
Javi doesn’t mind, not especially, even though he always tells Gorka off afterwards, because Gorka keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t tell the rest of the guys that maybe Javi watches Fernando a little bit more than he should. Javi can’t help it, maybe, but he really doesn’t mean anything by it. Fernando is his friend-his best friend-and his teammate and his confidante and his Halo: Reach guru, but that’s it, that’s all he’s ever been to Javi, nothing more.
They go to Playa de Ereaga one Friday after practice. Fernando drives and Javi rolls down his window, smells the salt in the air and feels the wind on his cheeks. Neither of them showered after practice and Javi’s okay with that; he likes the feel of dried sweat on his skin.
He looks at Fernando as they get closer and Fernando is watching him out of the corner of his eyes.
“What?” Javi says, and Fernando just smiles and shakes his head. “Alright, but I’m watching you,” Javi says, because the only times Fernando looks at him like that is when he’s about to flick a football up into Javi’s face for fun.
“It’s nothing!” Fernando says, and Javi laughs because he’s not an idiot, he’s not buying that.
When they get out of the car, the first thing Javi does is take of his shirt and tie it around his head like a turban, or like Ramos does when he gets out of the shower after national team call-ups.
“That looks ridiculous,” Fernando says, but Javi knows he’s really just jealous.
“It’s not hard,” he says. “Just flip your head over, twist the ends, and then toss them back when you stand up.”
Fernando laughs at that one, really laughs, and says, “No, thanks.”
“Your loss,” Javi shrugs. He shoves Fernando so that he loses his footing and takes off running, shouting, “Race you to the water!”
And he’s fast-Javi knows he’s fast, works his ass off in practice every day to stay fast-but he’s not all that fast on sand and he has to use one hand to awkwardly hold his turban to his head, and Fernando is right behind him before he knows it.
“Never!” Javi yells, but he doesn’t look back. Fernando yanks at the waistband of his shorts and Javi stumbles, trips over his own feet until he’s lying face down in the sand. He doesn’t see it, but he can feel Fernando’s foot catch on one of his sprawled out legs right before Fernando lands in the sand next to him.
“Real smooth,” Fernando says, and there’s laughter in his voice.
“Hey,” Javi says, “you tripped me.”
He looks at Fernando then, and his face is real close; Javi can see his own reflection in Fernando’s eyes, can see the sand that’s in Fernando’s hair and on his face. And suddenly-suddenly he doesn’t want to do anything more than kiss Fernando-kiss his best friend-and that’s-he’s not supposed to feel that way about someone that’s been there for him and with him since the beginning.
Only then, he thinks-maybe he is, maybe he’s supposed to feel that way about his best friend; maybe there’s no one else he should feel that way about. Because yeah, there’s tons of things about Fernando that Javi likes and admires, like the way he plays football and wins at videogames, and his defined abs that Javi can never seem to replicate and the way he looks, even after waking up in Javi’s living room with couch creases on his face, but there are things that Javi hates, too, like the way Fernando eats his pizza with a fork and knife, and how he never says what he’s thinking and so Javi has to just guess, and how when Fernando talks about politics sometimes, he talks like Javi doesn’t understand any of it. But at the end of the day, even with all the bad things, the good things are still more important and more in number and Javi wonders if Fernando’s skin would still taste like sweat now, an hour after practice, or if it would taste like something completely different.
And it’s just-he never even thought of Fernando like this before-never thought of him sexually before, it never even occurred to him that he could, and now that he has he doesn’t think he can go back. Because why wouldn’t you want to have sex with your best friend? No one looks good when they’re coming, Javi knows, so why not come with your best friend, the one person who doesn’t care what you look like?
And he thinks-he thinks he’s going to say all of this to Fernando, because Fernando’s who he tells everything to, but then Fernando says, “Hey, Javi?”
“Yeah?” Javi says.
“I win.”
And Javi doesn’t know what that means, not at all, not until he sits up and sees how close to the water they actually are, not until he sees a small wave wash up on shore, running over Fernando’s feet and legs before pulling away, back to the ocean.
“Man,” Javi says. “I was close.”
“Next time,” Fernando says. “Your turban fell off.”
Javi gets up and brushes the sand off of his shorts, picks up his t-shirt and wraps it around his head again. Fernando laughs at him as he stands up, too.
“Jealousy is very unbecoming on you, Fer,” Javi says.
“Yeah,” Fernando agrees, and he reaches out, grabs Javi’s wrist. His hand is wet and the sand on his fingers is coarse and rough against Javi’s skin. “Are we on the same page?”
“I don’t know,” Javi says. “What page are you on?”
Fernando laughs again and something flares up in Javi’s chest, something like pride over the fact that he can make Fernando laugh, even though Fernando’s easy and everyone can make him laugh.
“I don’t know,” Fernando says, and then he leans in, kisses Javi right there on the empty beach, and Javi kisses back-kisses his best friend-and it’s better than Javi ever could have imagined, only he didn’t imagine it at all and he doesn’t know why.
Fernando pulls back and looks at Javi, looks at Javi like maybe Javi’s going to be mad at him or something, but Javi’s not, not at all, and he waits for Fernando to say something. Fernando doesn’t say anything, though, and Javi doesn’t say anything, and Javi thinks that maybe he should say something, maybe he’s the one who’s supposed to talk first, and he hates the fact that he doesn’t know what to say.
“Yes,” is what he settles on. “Yes, I am on that page.”
Fernando laughs again-all the time, always laughing when they’re not playing a match-and grabs the shirt-turban off of Javi’s head. He runs with it into the water, high knees and awkward arms, and Javi thinks he looks ridiculous. He doesn’t say that, though. Instead, he says, “Surrender now, or prepare to die!” and races in after him with even higher knees, his arms flailing as the cold water hits his skin.
Title: To Say and To Mean
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Cristiano Ronaldo/Kaká
Word Count: 930
Summary: They’re at Kaka’s house, sitting on the couch, and everything’s quiet except for the tv, loud and blasting the evening news. They hung out all day, no practice or anything, and that’s pretty-pretty ideal for Cristiano, to just sit in Kaka’s empty house and do nothing with him.
They’re at Kaká’s house, sitting on the couch, and everything’s quiet except for the tv, loud and blasting the evening news. They hung out all day, no practice or anything, and that’s pretty-pretty ideal for Cristiano, to just sit in Kaká’s empty house and do nothing with him.
“You should get a dog,” Cristiano says, and he suggests it because that’s what he did when he was lonely, by himself in his big house, and while it didn’t really do anything, didn’t fix the problem, it did ease the pain in his chest to the point where it became bearable, something he could live with.
“No,” Kaká says, even though Cristiano can tell that he wants one. “I’m always busy, not home nearly enough to take care of another living thing. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.” He smiles and shrugs and there’s hair in his eyes that Cristiano wants to brush aside.
And Cristiano thinks about that now, thinks about that even though the newscasters are talking about natural disasters and house fires, things Cristiano should care about-and he does, he does care about them, but it’s hard to focus when he’s sharing a couch with Kaká, Kaká’s arm pressing against his own, shifting every time he takes a breath.
Cristiano tries to be perfect-he does, he really does, wants nothing more to be perfect on the pitch and off it, in the bed and out of it, in person and on the phone and though his bank account. He tries so hard, and maybe that’s where he fails, but here he’s sitting next to Kaká, the most perfect person in the entire world, and the sad part is that Kaká doesn’t even know how perfect Cristiano thinks he is, will never know because Cristiano can never tell him.
Kaká leans into Cristiano’s side a little more to get his attention and says, “What’re you thinking about?” And that gets Cristiano going again because he can tell that Kaká wants to know-really, genuinely wants to know-and no one else in the world has ever asked Cristiano that and really cared, not in the way Kaká does.
“Nothing,” he says, because he can’t tell Kaká any of this. “The news.”
Kaká smiles, and there it is again-his smile. Cristiano loves his smile, wants to touch Kaká’s lips with the pads of his fingers and with his own mouth, and maybe that’s what’s keeping him from being perfect, knowing that no matter how hard he works, everything he wants will still always be unattainable, just slightly out of reach.
“No, you’re not,” Kaká says. He lets his knees fall farther apart, to the point where one of them is touching Cristiano’s thigh.
“No,” Cristiano says, “I’m not,” and it comes out so sad-sadder than he ever meant it to, only the words changed themselves as soon as they hit the air.
“I worry about you,” Kaká says, and the way he looks at Cristiano would make Cristiano uncomfortable if it were anybody in the world but Kaká.
“You don’t need to,” Cristiano says to him.
“I know,” Kaká says. “But I do anyways.”
There’s a commercial on for a kid’s show-some cartoon that Cristiano figures he should probably know but doesn’t-and the music is loud and annoying as Kaká grabs Cristiano’s wrist.
“I pray for you all the time," Kaká says, and it’s almost too much for Cristiano because there’s two ways to take that, and the way that Cristiano wants Kaká to have meant it-I pray for you, I pray to have you, because I want you, I love you-there’s no way Kaká could ever mean something like that, not if he’s saying it to Cristiano.
So Cristiano says, “Thank you,” and he means it. He means Thank you and You’re perfect and I want to map out the contours of your body, trace your skin with my tongue until you’re as familiar to me as I am to myself, but that’s all he says, just those two words, just Thank you.
Kaká lets go of his wrist and smiles, smiles so sadly, and Cristiano wants to know what he’s done wrong. But then Kaká smiles for real-small but unrestrained-and says, “You’re welcome.” His leg is still resting against Cristiano’s own.
“I should probably go,” Cristiano says, and he moves to stand up. Normally-normally he’s fine, but being this close to Kaká is just suddenly too much for him, too much for him with the added pressure of the media and of second place and of not quite enough, and all Cristiano wants to do is to touch Kaká or to kiss Kaká, or to just sit with Kaká knowing that Kaká is his and he is Kaká’s and that they are together, just the two of them, alone in Kaká’s empty house.
“Oh,” Kaká says, and his eyebrows disappear under the hair that covers his forehead. “You can sleep here, if you want.”
And Cristiano does, he does want, but he can’t and so he shrugs and says, “Someone’s got to feed the dogs.”
Kaká walks with Cristiano to the door and doesn’t say anything, not until Cristiano’s about to get into his car.
“Everything will be okay,” he says, although he can’t possibly know what has Cristiano feeling down. “God has a plan for everyone and everything.”
“Thank you,” Cristiano says again.
“You’re welcome,” Kaká says, and the words hang heavily in the air.
Cristiano wonders what he really means by them.
Title: Family Feud
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leo Messi, gen
Word Count: 901
Summary: Mafia!AU. After dinner, Don Guardiola calls Leo into his office and no one says anything because getting called into the Godfather’s office is serious and rarely results in anything good.
They drag Puyi into the garage, and the second they’re inside, Victor’s yelling for them to lay him out on the couch. Leo watches as Victor tries to staunch the blood at Puyi’s shoulder, at his side, watches the way Puyi bites down on his shirtsleeve to stop from screaming as Victor digs out the bullet with a blunt knife, and he wants to look away because he’s not-he’s not ever going to be ready for this, but he makes himself watch because he doesn’t know what else to do.
There’s blood all down the front of his shirt. Leo thinks that he’ll have to do laundry tonight.
After dinner, Don Guardiola calls Leo into his office and no one says anything because getting called into the Godfather’s office is serious and rarely results in anything good. Xavi answers when Leo knocks on the door, and of course Xavi’s there, he’s consigliere, what else was Leo expecting?
“I was just leaving,” Xavi says. “The Godfather will see you now.” And he sounds so different up here, up in the Don’s office, than he did a few years ago, hanging out behind the house with Andrés. Leo wonders if maybe sometimes he misses it, being one of the guys. It’s an honor-of course it’s an honor-to be consigliere, but Xavi barely has the time to see Andrés anymore, barely has the time to see Victor or Gerard or Leo anymore.
When Xavi leaves, it’s just Leo and Don Guardiola-Leo and the head of the family-alone together in the room.
“Xavi told me about what happened earlier today,” the Godfather says. “You shouldn’t have been in Madrid territory to begin with.” He’s got a pen in his hand and papers spread out all over his desk, and he doesn’t look up at Leo as he speaks, but Leo nods anyways. He doesn’t say anything back because nothing was asked of him.
Don Guardiola looks up. Leo tries his hardest not to fidget.
“Well?” he asks. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, sir,” Leo says, and he wonders why he, out of all the people that were there that afternoon, got called upstairs.
“What’s that on the side of your face?” Don Guardiola asks, and Leo’s hand flies up. There’s still dried blood caked in the hair at his temple, and he can’t believe he missed it.
“It’s nothing,” Leo says. “A book was thrown at me.”
“And what happened to the merengue that did that to you?” he asks, and Leo feels like this is a test, only he doesn’t know what for.
“Nothing,” Leo says, and his picks his words carefully. The last thing he wants is to upset the Godfather, and Leo knows that what he’s about to say is not going to make him happy. He thinks of Canales and how he looked, afraid and alone in the back of the warehouse as Leo accidentally stumbled upon him. “He was just a kid.”
Don Guardiola looks at him for a while. It makes Leo feel uncomfortable, like the Godfather can read him like a book. Maybe he can, Leo doesn’t know.
“And how old are you, Leo?” he asks.
“Twenty-three, sir,” Leo says, and Don Guardiola laughs a little and then puts his head in his hands, rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms. Leo thinks this must not be how he always acts, not judging by of the stories that Cesc and Gerard had told him.
“Leo,” he says. “Leo, you’re just a kid.” He pauses for a minute then and looks up. “Do you want to leave the family? Would you rather-”
“No,” Leo says, and then he blushes and looks down when he realizes that he just cut the Godfather off. “I mean, no, sir. I owe this family a lot.” He thinks of when he was younger, when his family didn’t have the money to pay for his medical bills and Don Valenti Guardiola stepped in to help, just months before his heart attack.
“You don’t owe this family anything, Leo,” the Godfather says, and Leo-Leo doesn’t get it. Does Don Guardiola want him gone? Because there are a lot of other ways-ugly ways-that the Don can get rid of people.
“I owe this family everything,” Leo says, and Don Guardiola smiles. It reminds Leo of his own father and he has to shake that thought out of his head. This is the Godfather; this is Josep Guardiola, and Leo has no right to be thinking of him like that.
Besides, he barely remembers his own father.
“Okay,” Don Guardiola says. “Alright.” He goes back to his paperwork and Leo understands that he’s dismissed, closes the door quietly behind him as he leaves. His hands shake like mad.
Through the hall window, Leo can see Jeffren and Bojan playing football barefoot with the new guy, Ibrahim. He wants to go out and play with them, and he wants to go visit Puyi to see how he’s doing, and he wants to go to Gerard and Cesc’s room and play mus like they did when they were young, before they understood anything about the family or the blood feud or what it meant to grow up.
Instead, Leo lies in his bed and stares at the ceiling for a long time; he falls asleep still in his jeans.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Javi Martínez/Fernando Llorente
Word Count: 1,335
Summary: Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first-doesn’t realize it for a long time-but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t-doesn’t mean anything by it.
Javi watches Fernando, sometimes. He doesn’t realize it at first-doesn’t realize it for a long time-but when he does, it’s all he can think about. Is it weird? It’s probably weird, he thinks. Or, well, maybe not; Fernando’s his best friend and a great footballer and Javi doesn’t-doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that he admires Fernando and the way he plays, and he wants to emulate that. But who wouldn’t, right?
Gorka laughs at him over it, too. He’ll stand there by the goalposts and fix the straps on his gloves, and he’ll say things like, “Let me know when it’s a commercial break, okay? I have something to show you,” and, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was impolite to stare?”
Javi doesn’t mind, not especially, even though he always tells Gorka off afterwards, because Gorka keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t tell the rest of the guys that maybe Javi watches Fernando a little bit more than he should. Javi can’t help it, maybe, but he really doesn’t mean anything by it. Fernando is his friend-his best friend-and his teammate and his confidante and his Halo: Reach guru, but that’s it, that’s all he’s ever been to Javi, nothing more.
They go to Playa de Ereaga one Friday after practice. Fernando drives and Javi rolls down his window, smells the salt in the air and feels the wind on his cheeks. Neither of them showered after practice and Javi’s okay with that; he likes the feel of dried sweat on his skin.
He looks at Fernando as they get closer and Fernando is watching him out of the corner of his eyes.
“What?” Javi says, and Fernando just smiles and shakes his head. “Alright, but I’m watching you,” Javi says, because the only times Fernando looks at him like that is when he’s about to flick a football up into Javi’s face for fun.
“It’s nothing!” Fernando says, and Javi laughs because he’s not an idiot, he’s not buying that.
When they get out of the car, the first thing Javi does is take of his shirt and tie it around his head like a turban, or like Ramos does when he gets out of the shower after national team call-ups.
“That looks ridiculous,” Fernando says, but Javi knows he’s really just jealous.
“It’s not hard,” he says. “Just flip your head over, twist the ends, and then toss them back when you stand up.”
Fernando laughs at that one, really laughs, and says, “No, thanks.”
“Your loss,” Javi shrugs. He shoves Fernando so that he loses his footing and takes off running, shouting, “Race you to the water!”
And he’s fast-Javi knows he’s fast, works his ass off in practice every day to stay fast-but he’s not all that fast on sand and he has to use one hand to awkwardly hold his turban to his head, and Fernando is right behind him before he knows it.
“Never!” Javi yells, but he doesn’t look back. Fernando yanks at the waistband of his shorts and Javi stumbles, trips over his own feet until he’s lying face down in the sand. He doesn’t see it, but he can feel Fernando’s foot catch on one of his sprawled out legs right before Fernando lands in the sand next to him.
“Real smooth,” Fernando says, and there’s laughter in his voice.
“Hey,” Javi says, “you tripped me.”
He looks at Fernando then, and his face is real close; Javi can see his own reflection in Fernando’s eyes, can see the sand that’s in Fernando’s hair and on his face. And suddenly-suddenly he doesn’t want to do anything more than kiss Fernando-kiss his best friend-and that’s-he’s not supposed to feel that way about someone that’s been there for him and with him since the beginning.
Only then, he thinks-maybe he is, maybe he’s supposed to feel that way about his best friend; maybe there’s no one else he should feel that way about. Because yeah, there’s tons of things about Fernando that Javi likes and admires, like the way he plays football and wins at videogames, and his defined abs that Javi can never seem to replicate and the way he looks, even after waking up in Javi’s living room with couch creases on his face, but there are things that Javi hates, too, like the way Fernando eats his pizza with a fork and knife, and how he never says what he’s thinking and so Javi has to just guess, and how when Fernando talks about politics sometimes, he talks like Javi doesn’t understand any of it. But at the end of the day, even with all the bad things, the good things are still more important and more in number and Javi wonders if Fernando’s skin would still taste like sweat now, an hour after practice, or if it would taste like something completely different.
And it’s just-he never even thought of Fernando like this before-never thought of him sexually before, it never even occurred to him that he could, and now that he has he doesn’t think he can go back. Because why wouldn’t you want to have sex with your best friend? No one looks good when they’re coming, Javi knows, so why not come with your best friend, the one person who doesn’t care what you look like?
And he thinks-he thinks he’s going to say all of this to Fernando, because Fernando’s who he tells everything to, but then Fernando says, “Hey, Javi?”
“Yeah?” Javi says.
“I win.”
And Javi doesn’t know what that means, not at all, not until he sits up and sees how close to the water they actually are, not until he sees a small wave wash up on shore, running over Fernando’s feet and legs before pulling away, back to the ocean.
“Man,” Javi says. “I was close.”
“Next time,” Fernando says. “Your turban fell off.”
Javi gets up and brushes the sand off of his shorts, picks up his t-shirt and wraps it around his head again. Fernando laughs at him as he stands up, too.
“Jealousy is very unbecoming on you, Fer,” Javi says.
“Yeah,” Fernando agrees, and he reaches out, grabs Javi’s wrist. His hand is wet and the sand on his fingers is coarse and rough against Javi’s skin. “Are we on the same page?”
“I don’t know,” Javi says. “What page are you on?”
Fernando laughs again and something flares up in Javi’s chest, something like pride over the fact that he can make Fernando laugh, even though Fernando’s easy and everyone can make him laugh.
“I don’t know,” Fernando says, and then he leans in, kisses Javi right there on the empty beach, and Javi kisses back-kisses his best friend-and it’s better than Javi ever could have imagined, only he didn’t imagine it at all and he doesn’t know why.
Fernando pulls back and looks at Javi, looks at Javi like maybe Javi’s going to be mad at him or something, but Javi’s not, not at all, and he waits for Fernando to say something. Fernando doesn’t say anything, though, and Javi doesn’t say anything, and Javi thinks that maybe he should say something, maybe he’s the one who’s supposed to talk first, and he hates the fact that he doesn’t know what to say.
“Yes,” is what he settles on. “Yes, I am on that page.”
Fernando laughs again-all the time, always laughing when they’re not playing a match-and grabs the shirt-turban off of Javi’s head. He runs with it into the water, high knees and awkward arms, and Javi thinks he looks ridiculous. He doesn’t say that, though. Instead, he says, “Surrender now, or prepare to die!” and races in after him with even higher knees, his arms flailing as the cold water hits his skin.
Title: To Say and To Mean
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Cristiano Ronaldo/Kaká
Word Count: 930
Summary: They’re at Kaka’s house, sitting on the couch, and everything’s quiet except for the tv, loud and blasting the evening news. They hung out all day, no practice or anything, and that’s pretty-pretty ideal for Cristiano, to just sit in Kaka’s empty house and do nothing with him.
They’re at Kaká’s house, sitting on the couch, and everything’s quiet except for the tv, loud and blasting the evening news. They hung out all day, no practice or anything, and that’s pretty-pretty ideal for Cristiano, to just sit in Kaká’s empty house and do nothing with him.
“You should get a dog,” Cristiano says, and he suggests it because that’s what he did when he was lonely, by himself in his big house, and while it didn’t really do anything, didn’t fix the problem, it did ease the pain in his chest to the point where it became bearable, something he could live with.
“No,” Kaká says, even though Cristiano can tell that he wants one. “I’m always busy, not home nearly enough to take care of another living thing. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.” He smiles and shrugs and there’s hair in his eyes that Cristiano wants to brush aside.
And Cristiano thinks about that now, thinks about that even though the newscasters are talking about natural disasters and house fires, things Cristiano should care about-and he does, he does care about them, but it’s hard to focus when he’s sharing a couch with Kaká, Kaká’s arm pressing against his own, shifting every time he takes a breath.
Cristiano tries to be perfect-he does, he really does, wants nothing more to be perfect on the pitch and off it, in the bed and out of it, in person and on the phone and though his bank account. He tries so hard, and maybe that’s where he fails, but here he’s sitting next to Kaká, the most perfect person in the entire world, and the sad part is that Kaká doesn’t even know how perfect Cristiano thinks he is, will never know because Cristiano can never tell him.
Kaká leans into Cristiano’s side a little more to get his attention and says, “What’re you thinking about?” And that gets Cristiano going again because he can tell that Kaká wants to know-really, genuinely wants to know-and no one else in the world has ever asked Cristiano that and really cared, not in the way Kaká does.
“Nothing,” he says, because he can’t tell Kaká any of this. “The news.”
Kaká smiles, and there it is again-his smile. Cristiano loves his smile, wants to touch Kaká’s lips with the pads of his fingers and with his own mouth, and maybe that’s what’s keeping him from being perfect, knowing that no matter how hard he works, everything he wants will still always be unattainable, just slightly out of reach.
“No, you’re not,” Kaká says. He lets his knees fall farther apart, to the point where one of them is touching Cristiano’s thigh.
“No,” Cristiano says, “I’m not,” and it comes out so sad-sadder than he ever meant it to, only the words changed themselves as soon as they hit the air.
“I worry about you,” Kaká says, and the way he looks at Cristiano would make Cristiano uncomfortable if it were anybody in the world but Kaká.
“You don’t need to,” Cristiano says to him.
“I know,” Kaká says. “But I do anyways.”
There’s a commercial on for a kid’s show-some cartoon that Cristiano figures he should probably know but doesn’t-and the music is loud and annoying as Kaká grabs Cristiano’s wrist.
“I pray for you all the time," Kaká says, and it’s almost too much for Cristiano because there’s two ways to take that, and the way that Cristiano wants Kaká to have meant it-I pray for you, I pray to have you, because I want you, I love you-there’s no way Kaká could ever mean something like that, not if he’s saying it to Cristiano.
So Cristiano says, “Thank you,” and he means it. He means Thank you and You’re perfect and I want to map out the contours of your body, trace your skin with my tongue until you’re as familiar to me as I am to myself, but that’s all he says, just those two words, just Thank you.
Kaká lets go of his wrist and smiles, smiles so sadly, and Cristiano wants to know what he’s done wrong. But then Kaká smiles for real-small but unrestrained-and says, “You’re welcome.” His leg is still resting against Cristiano’s own.
“I should probably go,” Cristiano says, and he moves to stand up. Normally-normally he’s fine, but being this close to Kaká is just suddenly too much for him, too much for him with the added pressure of the media and of second place and of not quite enough, and all Cristiano wants to do is to touch Kaká or to kiss Kaká, or to just sit with Kaká knowing that Kaká is his and he is Kaká’s and that they are together, just the two of them, alone in Kaká’s empty house.
“Oh,” Kaká says, and his eyebrows disappear under the hair that covers his forehead. “You can sleep here, if you want.”
And Cristiano does, he does want, but he can’t and so he shrugs and says, “Someone’s got to feed the dogs.”
Kaká walks with Cristiano to the door and doesn’t say anything, not until Cristiano’s about to get into his car.
“Everything will be okay,” he says, although he can’t possibly know what has Cristiano feeling down. “God has a plan for everyone and everything.”
“Thank you,” Cristiano says again.
“You’re welcome,” Kaká says, and the words hang heavily in the air.
Cristiano wonders what he really means by them.
Title: Family Feud
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leo Messi, gen
Word Count: 901
Summary: Mafia!AU. After dinner, Don Guardiola calls Leo into his office and no one says anything because getting called into the Godfather’s office is serious and rarely results in anything good.
They drag Puyi into the garage, and the second they’re inside, Victor’s yelling for them to lay him out on the couch. Leo watches as Victor tries to staunch the blood at Puyi’s shoulder, at his side, watches the way Puyi bites down on his shirtsleeve to stop from screaming as Victor digs out the bullet with a blunt knife, and he wants to look away because he’s not-he’s not ever going to be ready for this, but he makes himself watch because he doesn’t know what else to do.
There’s blood all down the front of his shirt. Leo thinks that he’ll have to do laundry tonight.
After dinner, Don Guardiola calls Leo into his office and no one says anything because getting called into the Godfather’s office is serious and rarely results in anything good. Xavi answers when Leo knocks on the door, and of course Xavi’s there, he’s consigliere, what else was Leo expecting?
“I was just leaving,” Xavi says. “The Godfather will see you now.” And he sounds so different up here, up in the Don’s office, than he did a few years ago, hanging out behind the house with Andrés. Leo wonders if maybe sometimes he misses it, being one of the guys. It’s an honor-of course it’s an honor-to be consigliere, but Xavi barely has the time to see Andrés anymore, barely has the time to see Victor or Gerard or Leo anymore.
When Xavi leaves, it’s just Leo and Don Guardiola-Leo and the head of the family-alone together in the room.
“Xavi told me about what happened earlier today,” the Godfather says. “You shouldn’t have been in Madrid territory to begin with.” He’s got a pen in his hand and papers spread out all over his desk, and he doesn’t look up at Leo as he speaks, but Leo nods anyways. He doesn’t say anything back because nothing was asked of him.
Don Guardiola looks up. Leo tries his hardest not to fidget.
“Well?” he asks. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, sir,” Leo says, and he wonders why he, out of all the people that were there that afternoon, got called upstairs.
“What’s that on the side of your face?” Don Guardiola asks, and Leo’s hand flies up. There’s still dried blood caked in the hair at his temple, and he can’t believe he missed it.
“It’s nothing,” Leo says. “A book was thrown at me.”
“And what happened to the merengue that did that to you?” he asks, and Leo feels like this is a test, only he doesn’t know what for.
“Nothing,” Leo says, and his picks his words carefully. The last thing he wants is to upset the Godfather, and Leo knows that what he’s about to say is not going to make him happy. He thinks of Canales and how he looked, afraid and alone in the back of the warehouse as Leo accidentally stumbled upon him. “He was just a kid.”
Don Guardiola looks at him for a while. It makes Leo feel uncomfortable, like the Godfather can read him like a book. Maybe he can, Leo doesn’t know.
“And how old are you, Leo?” he asks.
“Twenty-three, sir,” Leo says, and Don Guardiola laughs a little and then puts his head in his hands, rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms. Leo thinks this must not be how he always acts, not judging by of the stories that Cesc and Gerard had told him.
“Leo,” he says. “Leo, you’re just a kid.” He pauses for a minute then and looks up. “Do you want to leave the family? Would you rather-”
“No,” Leo says, and then he blushes and looks down when he realizes that he just cut the Godfather off. “I mean, no, sir. I owe this family a lot.” He thinks of when he was younger, when his family didn’t have the money to pay for his medical bills and Don Valenti Guardiola stepped in to help, just months before his heart attack.
“You don’t owe this family anything, Leo,” the Godfather says, and Leo-Leo doesn’t get it. Does Don Guardiola want him gone? Because there are a lot of other ways-ugly ways-that the Don can get rid of people.
“I owe this family everything,” Leo says, and Don Guardiola smiles. It reminds Leo of his own father and he has to shake that thought out of his head. This is the Godfather; this is Josep Guardiola, and Leo has no right to be thinking of him like that.
Besides, he barely remembers his own father.
“Okay,” Don Guardiola says. “Alright.” He goes back to his paperwork and Leo understands that he’s dismissed, closes the door quietly behind him as he leaves. His hands shake like mad.
Through the hall window, Leo can see Jeffren and Bojan playing football barefoot with the new guy, Ibrahim. He wants to go out and play with them, and he wants to go visit Puyi to see how he’s doing, and he wants to go to Gerard and Cesc’s room and play mus like they did when they were young, before they understood anything about the family or the blood feud or what it meant to grow up.
Instead, Leo lies in his bed and stares at the ceiling for a long time; he falls asleep still in his jeans.