(no subject)
prompt from meretricula: iker casillas is so pale because he's a vampire.
pairing: iker/cesc
rating: r
word count: 3000 words.
There are lots of reasons why Iker works at a hospital.
1.) Flexible hours. Extra money for the midnight shift. That's always a plus.
2.) Plenty of blood bags. AB is his favorite.
(It's not that Iker has moral qualms, it's just that it's a lot of effort to get close enough to people to take just a little bit, and living that way would mean he has to go to clubs or bars all the time. It would mean being social. It's not that Iker's anti-social. He just doesn't particularly like socializing much. Not in those settings, anyways.)
The only downside to blood bags is how cold the blood is. It's refrigerated and usually too thick, kind of tacky going down. Iker remembers the first time he tried to microwave it in a mug. It stunk up the break room and dried on the edges, stuck to the ceramic and generally made a mess. He's still looking for ways to warm it. There has to be a way to just warm it up a bit.
3.) Iker doesn't have moral qualms, but then. He does. He doesn't want to kill anybody, but sometimes, he does. Working here is the miracle cure. He imagines it'd be like a chronic smoker being locked in a telephone booth full of smoke all day, or a sex addict working in a syphilis ward. The people here, in his wing at least, are rotten. Dying. None of them are appealing to him. The smell of them repels him, like the smell of rotten bread or rotten sandwich meat would repel him before. He goes home with the smell of them stuck in his nose and is thrown enough off eating to tide him over to the next night.
3.) Sometimes it's hard for him to keep track of time. It's always night and never day. Iker thinks that fucked up his circadian rhythm, his internal counter or clock or whatever. He thinks that actually, biologically, not that much inside of him has really changed. But maybe it has. He doesn't know.
He hardly remembers anything of before, now, and sometimes he doesn't register that time is passing at all. But it helps, being here. Beds are filled, then they're emptied. Things change.
Iker is almost done with the patients on his side of the hall when he notices a flickering blue light in the room on the other side, on the end. It's new. He leaves his side and peeks in.
It isn't an old person. It's a kid. He has hair that sticks up on the top but not the sides, and he's wide awake at three in the morning, sitting up in his bed and watching TV. He doesn't look very sick. He sees that Iker looks surprised, and he grins.
"I'm an insomniac," he says.
"Me too," Iker replies, finally.
"Do you like Alfred Hitchcock Presents?"
Iker lingers. "I haven't seen it."
"You should see it," the kid says sagely.
"That's what's on now?" Iker peers further into the room, the tips of his shoes right on the threshold. Someone's put Halloween decals on the window-a bat with a moon and a black cat in a pumpkin. There's a fleece blanket of a sports team he doesn't know, and a poster from a video game Iker doesn't recognize.
"Well this one's almost over, but then there's another one after that."
Iker's checked up everyone else. It's almost the end of his shift.
"You can come in, you know," the kid says.
Iker steps inside. He sits in the chair.
"Oh, I've seen this one. It's gross." He turns up the volume. "I'm Cesc," he says then, an afterthought.
"I'm Iker."
"You're so pale," Cesc says. The wrapper on his lap crinkles as he sits up.
"I've heard," Iker says, flipping around on the remote.
"Did kids make fun of you at school for it or something?" Cesc asks around his burrito. A piece of lettuce falls out of his mouth and he moves to catch it way too late, his hand cupped and useless.
"No, that was for my ears sticking out."
Cesc looks at him for a long moment, assessing. Then, deadpan: "They do stick out."
"I won't get you Chipotle next time. I'll get you Del Taco."
"You wouldn't get me Del Taco."
"I might."
There are small rapid beeps as Cesc types on his phone, and Iker keeps flipping channels. He's bored. Nothing's on. "Who are you texting?"
"My sister."
"I've never seen her."
"She doesn't visit at two in the morning, duh."
Iker wants to clarify, I've never smelled her in here, I never smell anyone in here but you. But he can't do that. "She doesn't come often?"
"We actually live pretty far away. Like, four hours away," Cesc explains. "I had to come here 'cause it's the best, you know."
He idly taps his thumbs on the screen of his phone. His feet are sticking out from under his blanket. His socks don't match.
"She's into dance," he says, out of the blue. "She made up this routine. I had a bad day at school and I told her it was bad." He pauses. "I feel bad."
"You could text her right now and tell her it wasn't."
"Yeah, I know," Cesc says. "I dunno."
Iker doesn't know what he has because he won't look at his chart, but he can tell the days when Cesc gets treatment. He's grey and fragile-looking, his hair too combed and the pillows he's propped up on too level. Usually he's sleeping. Iker fixes his blanket and leaves on those days, because who the fuck watches people sleeping.
Sometimes Cesc is still awake though, or Iker being there wakes him up, even though he comes in as quiet as the grave. Cesc never says anything, but he always wants Iker to sit by him. Sometimes Iker thinks Cesc tries to stay awake until he gets there.
For the first time in years, decades, maybe, Iker dreams. He dreams that he has Cesc caught up in his arms, that Cesc's feet are barely touching the ground, and Iker has ripped into his neck with the blunt edges of his teeth. His face is wet with all the blood and he can't get enough. He can't tell if he's fucking him or just biting him but it's all the same, really. At first Iker thinks Cesc is struggling against him, but then it's clear he just wanted to get his arms out. That he wants to wrap them around Iker's neck and hold on to him, hug him really loose and weak even as he's-
Iker wakes up breathing hard. There's come in his pants. He feels sick.
He avoids the room at the end of the hall for a while.
"Hi," Cesc says, like Iker hadn't just spent a week ignoring him, leaving him by himself in this fucking room.
The chair is gone. Cesc seems to notice his confusion.
"One of the other nurses took it. The person next door had visitors, then she forgot to put it back." He scoots over then, painstakingly slow, wincing the slightest bit. He pats the spot next to him on the bed.
Iker pauses at the doorway, like he did on the first day. Then he toes off his shoes and sits next to him.
Cesc smells different closer up. Like half-dirty hair and something spicy. He smells good. He hands Iker the remote.
Cesc is so fucking relaxed near him. His eyes are half-lidded and he's soft all over. Sitting next to him reminds Iker of sitting in a warm bath before, after he came in from the snow or the wind. Iker pulls blankets on when he sleeps just like he remembers that he used to, but it's like there's nothing in his body now that generates heat at all, and with no heat to build off of, nothing happens. But Cesc is warm. He's so fucking warm. He warms the blood in Iker's arm and side and then that blood goes to the rest of his body.
Iker doesn't leave, even after Cesc's fallen asleep and the nighttime broadcast signal has come on the TV. He wonders what Cesc would look like in the sun, not in florescents or in cold blue TV light.
"I'm scared of dying," Cesc says.
Iker looks down at him and Cesc smiles like he didn't just say what he said, puts his head back on Iker's shoulder. He watches the TV even when they both know he isn't really watching.
"I am," he continues. "I know I shouldn't be by now, you know, everyone in the movies isn't. But I still am."
Iker doesn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry." Cesc itches at the corner of his eye. "This is so lame. I think it's just 'cause I don't know what will happen. It's scary. Don't tell anybody?" Cesc asks.
Iker swallows. He's fucking hurting all over. "I won't."
Cesc isn't in his room. All of his shit is still there, but he isn't. Iker asks around-Cesc had an episode, Cesc is in treatment. Cesc will be back in a few days. Cesc will be fine.
Iker sits in his room at the end of his shift anyways, watching Alfred Hitchcock from his chair. He'll need to catch Cesc up.
Iker comes in at four in the morning, later than usual, and Cesc is-he's panting with the pain, his hair matted with sweat. He's kicked the covers off the bed. His mouth is open in a silent scream.
But of course Cesc didn't press the button, didn't press the fucking button to call for him. Iker grabs his chart from the wall and sees what his insurance can and cannot cover and doesn't give a fuck. He jogs down the hallway then runs, opens the glass cabinet with his key, fumbling, fills a syringe with morphine. When he gets back, Cesc's eyes are closed. He's still clutching the sheets. He isn't crying, but there are dried tear tracks on his face. Iker presses the needle through the plastic of his IV bag, pushes the plunger.
Iker lies down across from him with his shoes on. He fixes his hair, his gown, ties where it came open in a tight bow. He registers what's happening like he isn't really there-Cesc's ragged breathing, the beeps on the monitor gradually slowing down, the lingering smell of fear, so thick in the air he can barely breathe. Finally he has nothing left to fix, and he makes himself look at Cesc's face.
Cesc is looking at Iker. His pupils are blown, beyond panic from the pain. Iker isn't sure how much of this he's even understanding. But the medicine is kicking in. His lungs are slowing. And he won't stop looking at Iker. Adoring. A minute goes by, and he slowly goes limp. His eyes cross a little.
Iker doesn't pull him close. He moves closer himself, inch by inch, until their bodies are touching, until he can very gently guide Cesc's face into his shoulder. He touches the back of his hair and holds him.
He doesn't care if he loses his job. He doesn't care if someone comes in. He'll fucking kill anyone who comes in. He'll kill them.
Going to sleep in the mornings, Iker starts thinking crazy things. He thinks that his bed is big enough for two, just big enough, thinks about how easy it would be to fake Cesc's death and wrap him up in his red and white blanket and rest him in the back of his car with Iker's jacket folded up under his head. Drive him home. (It wouldn't be easy and they'd try to track him down, and he'd have to leave his apartment and his bed. This is a passing thought, and doesn't bother him.)
He thinks about being able to hold Cesc every night. About giving him all the late night TV and morphine he needs, about swabbing the soft skin inside of his arm with cold clear ethyl alcohol and cupping his elbow in his hand and injecting it into him with a needle-more intimate, closer, Cesc holding on to him until his fingers can't hold anymore. Until he feels better, feels nothing at all.
Worst is when Iker thinks-I could make him not die. He doesn't know how, but he could find out. He has the internet. He knows, vaguely, that he could.
He decides that he'll drive for a while. A few towns or states over, to find somewhere. If he wanted to take Cesc there soon. Just to know.
Cesc smiles, but it's small and weak and hard for him to do. Iker wants to tell him that he doesn't have to, but he knows Cesc, knows that it wouldn't even occur to him not to try.
"I feel good today."
Iker pulls up a chair and holds up two choices. "Snickers or Three Musketeers?"
Cesc raises his hand a bit off the bed and points. Iker hands him the Snickers bar.
"My sister visited," Cesc continues. He peels the wrapper down like a banana, smiles around the nouget and the chocolate. He bites off more than he can chew, and struggles with the mouthful for a while. The caramel is making his teeth stick together.
Iker leans his elbow on the mattress, rests his head on his hand. Watches him eat. "She lives far away, right?"
"Yeah," Cesc says finally. "But my mom brought her." He looks down and to the side and swallows, nervous, but then he looks up. Smiles again. "She almost won some kind of-thing. At a dance competition. And she said she stole my bunk bed for her room."
"Are you mad at her?"
"Not really." Cesc peels the wrapper down farther. He's holding the candy up in his fist, right in front of his mouth.
"Did you tell her?" Iker asks.
"No."
Cesc eats for a while.
"I have to go for a few days," Iker says, swiping chocolate crumbs off the sheets. "I'll be back by the weekend, probably."
"Okay."
Cesc takes a bigger bite than the others, then offers the last of it to Iker. Iker shakes his head. Cesc's face falls, the slightest bit.
Iker knows what he's thinking. That Iker won't bite it because Cesc is sick, that he's afraid he might get it even when he knows he can't. That Iker's okay with being close to him in theory, but not that close. Never that close. Iker wants to tell him, I want to kiss you, or more. I want to kiss you everywhere, even in places where you'd be shy to let me kiss. But most of all your mouth. I want to kiss you so fucking bad.
He almost does kiss him, then, but he doesn't. He sets the Three Musketeers bar on Cesc's lap and stands up.
"Do you want this on?" he asks, by the TV.
Cesc carefully pulls the blankets up higher on himself. He starts opening the other candy bar. "Yeah, that's okay."
Iker comes back on Saturday, and Cesc's bed is empty.
Iker lingers in the doorway for a long time.
All of Cesc's things are gone. There's a hole in the wallpaper, where the sticky tack from his poster lifted off the paint. It smells like cleaner and Cesc's family and salt, but not Cesc.
Iker is very still.
Later, he throws up on the side of the road. He sits on the asphalt behind his car, the occasional semi roaring by and buffeting his body. He thinks about the apartment he found next to the farmer's market, about the yard and the big windows in the living room where Cesc could have sat during the day.
He wonders if Cesc was alone. If he was scared. If he tried to wait.
He sits there until the sun creeps up on him and burns his hand.
Iker looks up things in phonebooks. Drives for about four hours.
It's just past sunset, just light enough to set a tingle on his skin. He doesn't care.
There's a girl pushing her feet on the ground, idling on a swingset in the front yard. She's too old for it, but there's another seat next to it that looks well-worn too, so Iker gets it, maybe. She's about fourteen, and she looks just like Cesc.
She notices him standing there in the mostly dark and blinks.
"Hi," Iker says, careful. He knows she's probably afraid. They are naturally just afraid of him even if they don't know why, which makes sense, really. Cesc was the only person he's ever met who wasn't. "Are you Cesc's sister?"
"Yes," she says, digging her heels into the ground. She slows to a stop.
"I'm Iker. I'm his friend."
She toes the dirt and nods, which means he can come closer, he thinks. Iker sits on the edge of the slide, not on the swing.
He doesn't know how to segue into it, so he doesn't try. "He wanted me to tell you something."
She peers at him through his hair. She has pink and green hairclips, and Cesc's round brown eyes.
"He wanted you to know that he lied about your dance routine. He liked it. He didn't think it was bad."
"Carlota!" someone calls from the house. "Dinner!"
Carlota is still for a long time, then she stands up and comes over and hugs Iker, very lightly.
"I'm sorry," she says. Iker doesn't know why she says that. "Do you want to come in?" she asks.
"Carlota!" the voice repeats.
Iker thinks about it. "No."
"I'll see you again?" she asks.
"Yeah," Iker lies. He might not be lying. He isn't sure.
Carlota smiles and jogs into the house.
Iker gets back in his car and drives to find something to eat.
pairing: iker/cesc
rating: r
word count: 3000 words.
There are lots of reasons why Iker works at a hospital.
1.) Flexible hours. Extra money for the midnight shift. That's always a plus.
2.) Plenty of blood bags. AB is his favorite.
(It's not that Iker has moral qualms, it's just that it's a lot of effort to get close enough to people to take just a little bit, and living that way would mean he has to go to clubs or bars all the time. It would mean being social. It's not that Iker's anti-social. He just doesn't particularly like socializing much. Not in those settings, anyways.)
The only downside to blood bags is how cold the blood is. It's refrigerated and usually too thick, kind of tacky going down. Iker remembers the first time he tried to microwave it in a mug. It stunk up the break room and dried on the edges, stuck to the ceramic and generally made a mess. He's still looking for ways to warm it. There has to be a way to just warm it up a bit.
3.) Iker doesn't have moral qualms, but then. He does. He doesn't want to kill anybody, but sometimes, he does. Working here is the miracle cure. He imagines it'd be like a chronic smoker being locked in a telephone booth full of smoke all day, or a sex addict working in a syphilis ward. The people here, in his wing at least, are rotten. Dying. None of them are appealing to him. The smell of them repels him, like the smell of rotten bread or rotten sandwich meat would repel him before. He goes home with the smell of them stuck in his nose and is thrown enough off eating to tide him over to the next night.
3.) Sometimes it's hard for him to keep track of time. It's always night and never day. Iker thinks that fucked up his circadian rhythm, his internal counter or clock or whatever. He thinks that actually, biologically, not that much inside of him has really changed. But maybe it has. He doesn't know.
He hardly remembers anything of before, now, and sometimes he doesn't register that time is passing at all. But it helps, being here. Beds are filled, then they're emptied. Things change.
Iker is almost done with the patients on his side of the hall when he notices a flickering blue light in the room on the other side, on the end. It's new. He leaves his side and peeks in.
It isn't an old person. It's a kid. He has hair that sticks up on the top but not the sides, and he's wide awake at three in the morning, sitting up in his bed and watching TV. He doesn't look very sick. He sees that Iker looks surprised, and he grins.
"I'm an insomniac," he says.
"Me too," Iker replies, finally.
"Do you like Alfred Hitchcock Presents?"
Iker lingers. "I haven't seen it."
"You should see it," the kid says sagely.
"That's what's on now?" Iker peers further into the room, the tips of his shoes right on the threshold. Someone's put Halloween decals on the window-a bat with a moon and a black cat in a pumpkin. There's a fleece blanket of a sports team he doesn't know, and a poster from a video game Iker doesn't recognize.
"Well this one's almost over, but then there's another one after that."
Iker's checked up everyone else. It's almost the end of his shift.
"You can come in, you know," the kid says.
Iker steps inside. He sits in the chair.
"Oh, I've seen this one. It's gross." He turns up the volume. "I'm Cesc," he says then, an afterthought.
"I'm Iker."
"You're so pale," Cesc says. The wrapper on his lap crinkles as he sits up.
"I've heard," Iker says, flipping around on the remote.
"Did kids make fun of you at school for it or something?" Cesc asks around his burrito. A piece of lettuce falls out of his mouth and he moves to catch it way too late, his hand cupped and useless.
"No, that was for my ears sticking out."
Cesc looks at him for a long moment, assessing. Then, deadpan: "They do stick out."
"I won't get you Chipotle next time. I'll get you Del Taco."
"You wouldn't get me Del Taco."
"I might."
There are small rapid beeps as Cesc types on his phone, and Iker keeps flipping channels. He's bored. Nothing's on. "Who are you texting?"
"My sister."
"I've never seen her."
"She doesn't visit at two in the morning, duh."
Iker wants to clarify, I've never smelled her in here, I never smell anyone in here but you. But he can't do that. "She doesn't come often?"
"We actually live pretty far away. Like, four hours away," Cesc explains. "I had to come here 'cause it's the best, you know."
He idly taps his thumbs on the screen of his phone. His feet are sticking out from under his blanket. His socks don't match.
"She's into dance," he says, out of the blue. "She made up this routine. I had a bad day at school and I told her it was bad." He pauses. "I feel bad."
"You could text her right now and tell her it wasn't."
"Yeah, I know," Cesc says. "I dunno."
Iker doesn't know what he has because he won't look at his chart, but he can tell the days when Cesc gets treatment. He's grey and fragile-looking, his hair too combed and the pillows he's propped up on too level. Usually he's sleeping. Iker fixes his blanket and leaves on those days, because who the fuck watches people sleeping.
Sometimes Cesc is still awake though, or Iker being there wakes him up, even though he comes in as quiet as the grave. Cesc never says anything, but he always wants Iker to sit by him. Sometimes Iker thinks Cesc tries to stay awake until he gets there.
For the first time in years, decades, maybe, Iker dreams. He dreams that he has Cesc caught up in his arms, that Cesc's feet are barely touching the ground, and Iker has ripped into his neck with the blunt edges of his teeth. His face is wet with all the blood and he can't get enough. He can't tell if he's fucking him or just biting him but it's all the same, really. At first Iker thinks Cesc is struggling against him, but then it's clear he just wanted to get his arms out. That he wants to wrap them around Iker's neck and hold on to him, hug him really loose and weak even as he's-
Iker wakes up breathing hard. There's come in his pants. He feels sick.
He avoids the room at the end of the hall for a while.
"Hi," Cesc says, like Iker hadn't just spent a week ignoring him, leaving him by himself in this fucking room.
The chair is gone. Cesc seems to notice his confusion.
"One of the other nurses took it. The person next door had visitors, then she forgot to put it back." He scoots over then, painstakingly slow, wincing the slightest bit. He pats the spot next to him on the bed.
Iker pauses at the doorway, like he did on the first day. Then he toes off his shoes and sits next to him.
Cesc smells different closer up. Like half-dirty hair and something spicy. He smells good. He hands Iker the remote.
Cesc is so fucking relaxed near him. His eyes are half-lidded and he's soft all over. Sitting next to him reminds Iker of sitting in a warm bath before, after he came in from the snow or the wind. Iker pulls blankets on when he sleeps just like he remembers that he used to, but it's like there's nothing in his body now that generates heat at all, and with no heat to build off of, nothing happens. But Cesc is warm. He's so fucking warm. He warms the blood in Iker's arm and side and then that blood goes to the rest of his body.
Iker doesn't leave, even after Cesc's fallen asleep and the nighttime broadcast signal has come on the TV. He wonders what Cesc would look like in the sun, not in florescents or in cold blue TV light.
"I'm scared of dying," Cesc says.
Iker looks down at him and Cesc smiles like he didn't just say what he said, puts his head back on Iker's shoulder. He watches the TV even when they both know he isn't really watching.
"I am," he continues. "I know I shouldn't be by now, you know, everyone in the movies isn't. But I still am."
Iker doesn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry." Cesc itches at the corner of his eye. "This is so lame. I think it's just 'cause I don't know what will happen. It's scary. Don't tell anybody?" Cesc asks.
Iker swallows. He's fucking hurting all over. "I won't."
Cesc isn't in his room. All of his shit is still there, but he isn't. Iker asks around-Cesc had an episode, Cesc is in treatment. Cesc will be back in a few days. Cesc will be fine.
Iker sits in his room at the end of his shift anyways, watching Alfred Hitchcock from his chair. He'll need to catch Cesc up.
Iker comes in at four in the morning, later than usual, and Cesc is-he's panting with the pain, his hair matted with sweat. He's kicked the covers off the bed. His mouth is open in a silent scream.
But of course Cesc didn't press the button, didn't press the fucking button to call for him. Iker grabs his chart from the wall and sees what his insurance can and cannot cover and doesn't give a fuck. He jogs down the hallway then runs, opens the glass cabinet with his key, fumbling, fills a syringe with morphine. When he gets back, Cesc's eyes are closed. He's still clutching the sheets. He isn't crying, but there are dried tear tracks on his face. Iker presses the needle through the plastic of his IV bag, pushes the plunger.
Iker lies down across from him with his shoes on. He fixes his hair, his gown, ties where it came open in a tight bow. He registers what's happening like he isn't really there-Cesc's ragged breathing, the beeps on the monitor gradually slowing down, the lingering smell of fear, so thick in the air he can barely breathe. Finally he has nothing left to fix, and he makes himself look at Cesc's face.
Cesc is looking at Iker. His pupils are blown, beyond panic from the pain. Iker isn't sure how much of this he's even understanding. But the medicine is kicking in. His lungs are slowing. And he won't stop looking at Iker. Adoring. A minute goes by, and he slowly goes limp. His eyes cross a little.
Iker doesn't pull him close. He moves closer himself, inch by inch, until their bodies are touching, until he can very gently guide Cesc's face into his shoulder. He touches the back of his hair and holds him.
He doesn't care if he loses his job. He doesn't care if someone comes in. He'll fucking kill anyone who comes in. He'll kill them.
Going to sleep in the mornings, Iker starts thinking crazy things. He thinks that his bed is big enough for two, just big enough, thinks about how easy it would be to fake Cesc's death and wrap him up in his red and white blanket and rest him in the back of his car with Iker's jacket folded up under his head. Drive him home. (It wouldn't be easy and they'd try to track him down, and he'd have to leave his apartment and his bed. This is a passing thought, and doesn't bother him.)
He thinks about being able to hold Cesc every night. About giving him all the late night TV and morphine he needs, about swabbing the soft skin inside of his arm with cold clear ethyl alcohol and cupping his elbow in his hand and injecting it into him with a needle-more intimate, closer, Cesc holding on to him until his fingers can't hold anymore. Until he feels better, feels nothing at all.
Worst is when Iker thinks-I could make him not die. He doesn't know how, but he could find out. He has the internet. He knows, vaguely, that he could.
He decides that he'll drive for a while. A few towns or states over, to find somewhere. If he wanted to take Cesc there soon. Just to know.
Cesc smiles, but it's small and weak and hard for him to do. Iker wants to tell him that he doesn't have to, but he knows Cesc, knows that it wouldn't even occur to him not to try.
"I feel good today."
Iker pulls up a chair and holds up two choices. "Snickers or Three Musketeers?"
Cesc raises his hand a bit off the bed and points. Iker hands him the Snickers bar.
"My sister visited," Cesc continues. He peels the wrapper down like a banana, smiles around the nouget and the chocolate. He bites off more than he can chew, and struggles with the mouthful for a while. The caramel is making his teeth stick together.
Iker leans his elbow on the mattress, rests his head on his hand. Watches him eat. "She lives far away, right?"
"Yeah," Cesc says finally. "But my mom brought her." He looks down and to the side and swallows, nervous, but then he looks up. Smiles again. "She almost won some kind of-thing. At a dance competition. And she said she stole my bunk bed for her room."
"Are you mad at her?"
"Not really." Cesc peels the wrapper down farther. He's holding the candy up in his fist, right in front of his mouth.
"Did you tell her?" Iker asks.
"No."
Cesc eats for a while.
"I have to go for a few days," Iker says, swiping chocolate crumbs off the sheets. "I'll be back by the weekend, probably."
"Okay."
Cesc takes a bigger bite than the others, then offers the last of it to Iker. Iker shakes his head. Cesc's face falls, the slightest bit.
Iker knows what he's thinking. That Iker won't bite it because Cesc is sick, that he's afraid he might get it even when he knows he can't. That Iker's okay with being close to him in theory, but not that close. Never that close. Iker wants to tell him, I want to kiss you, or more. I want to kiss you everywhere, even in places where you'd be shy to let me kiss. But most of all your mouth. I want to kiss you so fucking bad.
He almost does kiss him, then, but he doesn't. He sets the Three Musketeers bar on Cesc's lap and stands up.
"Do you want this on?" he asks, by the TV.
Cesc carefully pulls the blankets up higher on himself. He starts opening the other candy bar. "Yeah, that's okay."
Iker comes back on Saturday, and Cesc's bed is empty.
Iker lingers in the doorway for a long time.
All of Cesc's things are gone. There's a hole in the wallpaper, where the sticky tack from his poster lifted off the paint. It smells like cleaner and Cesc's family and salt, but not Cesc.
Iker is very still.
Later, he throws up on the side of the road. He sits on the asphalt behind his car, the occasional semi roaring by and buffeting his body. He thinks about the apartment he found next to the farmer's market, about the yard and the big windows in the living room where Cesc could have sat during the day.
He wonders if Cesc was alone. If he was scared. If he tried to wait.
He sits there until the sun creeps up on him and burns his hand.
Iker looks up things in phonebooks. Drives for about four hours.
It's just past sunset, just light enough to set a tingle on his skin. He doesn't care.
There's a girl pushing her feet on the ground, idling on a swingset in the front yard. She's too old for it, but there's another seat next to it that looks well-worn too, so Iker gets it, maybe. She's about fourteen, and she looks just like Cesc.
She notices him standing there in the mostly dark and blinks.
"Hi," Iker says, careful. He knows she's probably afraid. They are naturally just afraid of him even if they don't know why, which makes sense, really. Cesc was the only person he's ever met who wasn't. "Are you Cesc's sister?"
"Yes," she says, digging her heels into the ground. She slows to a stop.
"I'm Iker. I'm his friend."
She toes the dirt and nods, which means he can come closer, he thinks. Iker sits on the edge of the slide, not on the swing.
He doesn't know how to segue into it, so he doesn't try. "He wanted me to tell you something."
She peers at him through his hair. She has pink and green hairclips, and Cesc's round brown eyes.
"He wanted you to know that he lied about your dance routine. He liked it. He didn't think it was bad."
"Carlota!" someone calls from the house. "Dinner!"
Carlota is still for a long time, then she stands up and comes over and hugs Iker, very lightly.
"I'm sorry," she says. Iker doesn't know why she says that. "Do you want to come in?" she asks.
"Carlota!" the voice repeats.
Iker thinks about it. "No."
"I'll see you again?" she asks.
"Yeah," Iker lies. He might not be lying. He isn't sure.
Carlota smiles and jogs into the house.
Iker gets back in his car and drives to find something to eat.