(no subject)
Title: The Chinese Room
Pairing: Iker Casillas/Cesc Fabregas
Rating: NC-17 for pre-story character death, abuse, sex.
Summary: AU. Iker is a shut-in writer. Cesc is his robot. ~13,400 words, fill for football100 063. summer. Thanks to yeats for beta work, name ideas, and telling me that you roast a duck, not bake it.
Iker first sees the box outside on a Tuesday. The deliveryman didn't make the effort of lifting it under the porch so it sits, innocuous and huge, on the sidewalk leading up to his house. It's covered in stickers and clean clear packaging tape.
Iker drinks his coffee and looks at it for a while from the window, the sun blazing down on the grass. His feet are cold on the hardwood floors.
He ignores it for a week and a half. Writes a chapter of a book he'll never publish, pays his bills online, eats four cans of Spam and three cans of albacore tuna mixed with rice. He only remembers the box when he's lying on the couch with his hand on his stomach and hears the rumbling clack of thunder-a late summer storm blowing in from the south.
He puts on a pair of shoes and ties them. Pulls on a gray hoodie that's too big for him and smells like the back of closet, covered with three purple letters of a university he didn't attend. Finally, he slides back the deadbolt, turns the two smaller locks with final sounding clicks.
He's immediately hit with the sensory overload of being outside. The smell of cut grass and trees, stronger with the humidity in the air, and the sound of leaves. Parents yelling for their kids to put away their baseball bats and get inside. Their voices sound weird, tinny and shifting with the wind. Iker can see the storm clouds building on the horizon, tall and flashing with lightning. The breeze is slow and warm and lifts his hair.
Iker leaves the door ajar and goes down the porch stairs. He lifts the head of the box up against his thighs and starts dragging.
It's heavier than he was expecting. He heaves it up, one stair at a time, then lets it sit on the stoop when he gets up all five.
The clouds are much closer and darker than they were when he started. The wind is blowing in different directions. Iker gets the box halfway through the door when raindrops start hitting the ground and the bottom of the stairs, heavy and big as quarters. He shoves it with his foot the rest of the way in, then closes and locks the door behind him. The storm starts pelting the windows.
The box looks big and out of place in his foyer, like a coffin made out of cardboard. The labels are blurred and the tape is yellowed, warped from the sun.
Iker goes into the kitchen for a knife, then cuts along the places where the box marks to cut-the two short sides, and one of the longer ones. It makes a little door, and he pulls it open.
The android is lying inside, face up, hands at its sides. Like it was just-sleeping in there the whole time. Iker wonders if the company was going for a Sleeping Beauty effect, because feels more like cracking open Dracula's casket. Like disturbing something dangerous that shouldn't be disturbed.
He lifts up warranties, guarantees, a manual in a clear plastic bag, and tries not to think about it, even though it's staring him straight in the face. That when he was drunk and sad, he ordered something small and thin with dark hair and dark skin. Younger than Iker, pointedly everything-
Iker calls it an android because that's what it is. People have been moving to call them "companions," bleeding heart politicians who want to sound progressive and cutting edge. They're made out of cloned tissue and machinery and people are getting picky because they're getting attached to them, because they want to make themselves feel better about loving something that's programmed to make them believe it loves them back.
He leaves the android in the middle of the floor, pops pills, and goes to bed.
It lies there for two weeks.
When Iker ends up activating it, it's because he's bored. He reads the manual that's in Japanese first and everything else after, about how he can tinker with its settings like he used to tinker with busted Blu-ray players when he was a kid.
"Use the accompanying CD to add features. For a nominal fee, we will create a chip and send it to you."
There are instructions on how to make it happy all the time, or afraid all the time. Subsections on how you can make it think it's your maid or your slave or your cook. You can make it think it's your boyfriend or your son. There's nothing about conflicting programs in the manual, which Iker assumes means that you could make it think it's both. He remembers hearing about the hacked chips you can buy on the internet, that aren't strictly legal but aren't strictly banned either, stuff that makes him feel sick.
"If you choose to leave your unit at its factory default settings, it will develop its own personality over time!"
Iker looks down at the android, at its strong nose and delicate eyelashes. Its skin is tan, like it lived outside and they caught it just to send it to him. Reaching down feels like poking a jellyfish with a stick on the beach-he touches its face, its neck, the dip under the jaw, where they check on TV if someone is alive or dead. He can feel the ridges of its windpipe, the corded tendons on the side, the soft spot in between where its jugular should beat. Its skin is smooth under his fingers. He slides his hand behind and crooks two fingers at the base of its skull, like the instructions said.
A minute goes by, then it rubs its eyes with the back of its hand and tries to turn over, like it's sleeping in bed and doesn't want to be woken up. It opens its eyes and sees the wall of the box right in front of its face and in that moment, it seems afraid. Like this is not where it's supposed to be, and Iker did something wrong. Then it looks up at Iker, and when it sees him for the first time, all the fear and tension and everything else are gone.
It smiles.
"Hi," it says. It tries to sit up, then looks down at the packaging still covering it. It grins at him kind of sheepishly. "What's your name?"
Iker stares at it for a second, then reaches forward and turns it off.
He activates it again the next morning, when he's had six hours of sleep and coffee's on the pot. He presses with his fingers and takes the manual and goes back to the kitchen, not wanting to watch it crawl of the box like a corpse from the grave.
He hears it in the front room, struggling for a while with the styrofoam and bubble wrap. It seems to take a few minutes to find the kitchen. Iker can hear its shoes on the floor, hesitant steps around the front room.
The coffee bubbles and percolates. Iker opens the cabinet and pushes things around for a mug. He hears its sneakers scuff on the tile behind him. It's at least a minute before it speaks.
"What should I call you?" it asks, which is a very different question than "What's your name?".
"Iker," he says, pouring his coffee. He stirs it, even though doesn't mix anything in any more. It's just habit.
"What should you call me?"
Iker leans on the counter and ignores it a while, skimming the manual and drinking his coffee. The manual encourages that he choose a name early. That it will help the unit bond to him easier, that it will make the transition more comfortable, that if he needs help, the unit has a list of names stored-
"Choose a name," he says, tossing the manual lightly on the table. He opens the fridge and looks for something for eat.
It shifts behind him with something like uncertainty. "I-"
"List the names you know," Iker says. "And choose one."
There's a pause.
"...Alex." It checks Iker's face, but Iker is drinking coffee and reading the back of a package of microwavable quiche, and doesn't say anything. It continues. "Blake. Carlos. Daniel, Evan, Frank-"
Iker watches it ramble while his breakfast heats up. It looks like a kid who has the times tables memorized, but is miserable and embarrassed about being up front to recite them.
"Geoff, Henry, Ian, Jake-"
"Choose one," Iker interrupts. He's starting to get impatient. The microwave beeps.
It looks at him helplessly. When it starts talking again, it almost sounds desperate. "Lance, Michael, Neil-"
Iker takes his food and leaves the kitchen.
Later, when he finishes breakfast, he brings his plate and mug into the kitchen sink. He rinses them off. It's still standing at the counter right where he left it, looking at its shoes. They’re cheap looking sneakers, thin leather, made to look functional.
He turns to leave and it says, "Cesc."
"Cesc?" Stopping and turning around feels like an effort.
It looks up at him with big eyes, like it's nervous or hoping for approval.
"Fine," Iker says. He means to go write but decides to lie down on the couch first, just for a little while.
He wakes up with a blanket covering him from chest to ankle. It's warm and comfortable, tucked in around his shoulders.
For the most part, Cesc avoids him. He seems to have picked up that Iker doesn't want to know he's there. He cleans a lot, which Iker figures is his default setting or something. He busies himself with organizing things in the background, scrubbing the kitchen, straightening up the living room. Iker comes out one morning to find the couch cleaned, the entertainment center dusted, the bookshelf organized by size. The carpet is a darker, richer shade of green, vacuum lines marked up and down the floor.
One day, Cesc breaks a plate. Iker comes in the kitchen and Cesc has suds up to his elbows, looking down at the shards with his hands and mouth open.
Iker ignores him, going to his haunches to pick up the pieces. He has five in his hand when he cuts his finger. Blood blooms up and Cesc moves forward, touching his back and shoulder and trying to touch his arm.
Iker shoves his leg harder than he means to. Like pushing away a stupid dog rooting in a mess.
He looks at his finger, then pops it in his mouth. "Go do something else."
Cesc takes an obedient step back, but stays with him until Iker leaves the room.
Iker’s schedule doesn’t change much.
He wakes up in the late morning, lies in bed until a little after noon. If he feels like it, he finds something to eat. Usually he stays in his room and types until his stomach or his bladder won’t let him sit there anymore. He showers in the late afternoon, heats up lunch or dinner or whatever in the microwave, goes back to his room and types more. He always feels tired. Around eight, he’ll drink a glass of wine. He pops pills until he goes to sleep.
He’s an insomniac. That’s what he’d tell a doctor, probably, but it’s more habituation than chemical imbalance that has him up until four or five in the morning.
Cesc being there doesn’t mean much except that everything is steadily getting cleaner around him, and that he hears movement outside his room sometimes, instead of the creaks and groans of an empty house.
A few weeks in, if Iker didn’t know better, he’d think that Cesc was bored. When Iker is out of his bedroom, he notices Cesc guessing which room he’ll go into next, like it’s a game. He turns the light on before Iker comes in, ducks out a side door without being seen. Then later, after Iker's left, he turns it off again. The organization of the bookcase shifts from smallest to biggest to biggest to smallest, then goes back again. Some of the books are upside down. Iker fixes them.
One day, he can't find the remote. Which isn't different than normal, really, he's always losing it. But this time, it's especially hard to find it. Finally he tracks Cesc down in the garage, asks if he knows where it is.
Cesc looks up from the box of tools he's cleaning. His clothes are getting dirty, the bright red and white of the shirt he came in going dull.
"I hid it," he says. Then he smiles, proud and shy at the same time. Like he's waiting for Iker's praise or something.
"Why did you hide it?"
Cesc's smile falters a little. "Because you like looking for it."
"Where did you hide it?"
"On top of the refrigerator."
Later, Iker is watching the news and Cesc comes up to the couch. Iker can smell dirt and WD-40 on him.
"I won't hide the remote again," he says, quiet.
Iker waits until a commercial, then waves him off.
A few weeks later, Iker is writing, and for the first time, Cesc crosses the threshold of his room. He always seems desperate to get in here-to clean, Iker thinks-but he won’t come in when Iker’s there too. Today, though, he stands there in the middle of the carpet, patient, until Iker looks at him.
"Can I go outside the house?" he asks.
Iker turns back to his computer. He starts typing again. "Go where?"
"Outside the house."
Iker turns in his chair, annoyed that Cesc is being a smartass. He decides to give him one more chance. "Where. Outside the house."
Cesc shifts from one foot to another, looks as confused and embarrassed as he did when Iker asked him to choose a name. "Out of the door that slides," he says carefully. "Where the grass is. Outside the house."
Iker realizes Cesc means the backyard. And that he doesn’t know anything else exists beyond the fence. He pushes up his reading glasses.
"Whatever."
Cesc looks at him, unsure.
"Yes," Iker says, annoyed.
Cesc leaves.
On the second Friday of the month, Iker's mom calls. She always calls on Fridays, usually sometime in the late afternoon, when she knows he's probably awake and sober. Iker almost always answers, because he knows she's at the point in her life where she doesn't have much to do except play Mahjong and worry about him.
"Hi mom."
"Iker, how are you?"
Iker closes his bedroom door and sits down. He hasn't seen Cesc yet today. "All right. How are you?"
"I'm well." She was always particular about that. "Good" versus "well." She used to teach kindergarten, before him and Unai were born.
"Good." He lies back on his comforter. "Did Dad decide about the tickets?"
"No," his mom huffs. "I told him, 'José, we saved all this money so we could do nice things when we retire, when is the last time we have been to the beach?'"
Iker rubs his eye. "He'll come around."
"Yes, but before the summer is over? It's already August!" His mom has a tendency to make a big deal out of things, even when she knows they’ll turn out okay. Iker gets up and walks, because the tone makes him restless. "Anyways, Iker. What did you do this week?"
Iker straightens papers on his desk, then looks out the window. Cesc is sitting back on his heels in the wet dirt in the flowerbed. He’s picking weeds. "I got a roommate."
"A roommate! What’s her name?"
Cesc is just kneeling there, patiently working at the garden. He's clearly been at it all morning, and he's barely cleared a fifth of it. His fingers are bloody from the stalks. "His name is Cesc."
"Cesc," she repeats, happy. She seems to finally be accepting that Iker is twenty-six and living with boys as well as girls isn't just a phase, or something he does because dating girls takes too much effort. "Well. Is Cesc nice?"
Iker watches Cesc cup something small and green in his hand. It inches across his palm. He examines it at eye level, then carefully sets it down safely on the clean side of the garden. "…Yeah. He’s nice."
Cesc starts spending hours in the backyard every day. He gets the weeds cleaned out in a week, sets them in a neat dry bushel by the gate. Iker sees him digging holes in the dark dirt in the flowerbed, or picking dead bark off the orange tree. He gradually seems to realize that things will grow if they’re watered. He waters anything that has a flower on it, even dandelions and thistles. Sometimes, Iker sees him sitting by the birdbath. He doesn’t seem to understand the birds won’t come if he sits right next to it.
Iker doesn’t care if he’s out there. It keeps him out of his hair.
Cesc’s skin keeps clean on its own, like dirt won't stick to it, but his clothes are getting grungier and grungier. One day, Iker has a splitting headache, and he can't write. He sits in front of his computer for an hour. Cesc passes his door, doing whatever he does during the day. Iker can smell him from here.
"You need to clean up."
Cesc pauses obediently in the hallway. He looks down at himself, like he isn't sure which part of him Iker means.
Iker ignores him, rubbing his temples, until he goes away.
Later that afternoon, he's rinsing out his mug and he sees Cesc in the shadow of the porch. He's stuck there, just out of reach of the sun, the hose stretched as far as it will go. He's holding it above his head, already soaking wet, then he carefully sets it down in the mud. One arm weakly rubs at a stain on his shirt, the other is clutched around his chest.
Iker knows the water is icy cold. Cesc is hunched up. Iker can see his nipples through his shirt, the soft outline of his cock in his shorts.
After a moment, Cesc reluctantly picks the hose up again. Iker watches.
The next morning, Iker emerges before eleven and finds Cesc trying to make him coffee. He goes through the motions of brewing slowly, with a lot of concentration, a determined look on his face-Iker realizes he’s been watching him in the afternoons, covertly, to learn how to do things. He moves carefully in the kitchen, step by step, until he seems to forget what to do. He pauses, shakes his hands with his bony wrists and skinny fingers, eyes searching and mouth open, before he remembers. Grinds in the filter.
When it’s finished, Cesc stirs it with a spoon, grins wide and happy when Iker drinks from the mug. His shirt is stiff from the minerals in the outside water, hair matted and flat on the top. He looks at Iker with admiration that seems impossible to kill.
Iker gets drunk one night, close to shit-faced, and decides he's going to fuck Cesc. He wouldn't even have to fuck him. He could just jerk off on him. He could jerk off on him and then erase his memory too. Cesc wouldn't even remember. And he's a fucking android. This is what people do with androids. People do worse things with androids.
He sets the bottle down on his desk and feels his way down the hallway. He finds Cesc on the floor in the spare bedroom, looking at pictures in a coffee table book about the Grand Canyon.
"Stand up. Take off your shirt."
Cesc closes the book with a dull thump and stands up. He tugs his shirt over his head.
"Lie down on your back."
Cesc lies on his back and looks at Iker, wide-eyed, waiting for instructions. Iker feels a tug in his chest. He hates it.
"Cover your eyes."
Cesc covers his eyes. He doesn't peek through his fingers. His chest is smooth, his stomach flat. Iker's hard. His thumb hovers at the button of his jeans.
Cesc shifts slightly on the bed. He briefly bites his lower lip. It should be the thing that pushes Iker over the edge, that makes him kneel over Cesc's chest and feed his cock into his mouth. Instead, it stops him cold. It's childlike. Cesc is confused. He's wondering why he's not included. If he can look yet.
Iker rubs his face with his hand. "Fuck." He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. "Fuck."
Cesc still isn't peeking.
"Get up. Get dressed."
Cesc pulls his shirt back over his head. His hair looks worse for wear. He sits on the edge of the bed, like he isn't sure if he's going to be scolded. Iker bends down and puts the book back in his lap.
He pops more pills and goes to bed.
He wakes up with a horrible hangover the next morning, and an aching feeling in his chest. Cesc edges around him all day, quieter, like he knows. When Iker finally sits down, defeated, Cesc sits in front of him. Iker’s too tired to push him away. Cesc reaches up and gently rubs his temples.
It’s pouring one afternoon, rushing through the gutters and hammering the roof. Iker is making tea. He hasn’t seen Cesc yet today, but that isn’t unusual. He’s rinsing off a plate when he notices a figure in the backyard, blurry in the sheets of rain. He squints at it, then drops the plate with a clatter in the sink. He grabs his shoes.
It’s coming down so hard that it’s hard to hear anything. Water is already soaking through his sneakers. Cesc is hunched over the flower bed, his arms half spread.
"What are you doing?!"
"It will hit my plants," Cesc yells over the rain.
Iker looks at the flowerbed. A few tiny buds are breaking the surface. "Get inside."
He’s expecting an argument, but Cesc immediately trots towards the house. Iker stops him before he opens the door. Their muddy shoes stay on the porch.
"Stay on the mat," Iker orders when they get in. "You’ll drip everywhere."
Cesc stays put, sodden in his socks. His teeth are chattering, his face is white.
Iker gets an old blanket and a towel from the closet in the hallway, then goes into the kitchen. He pours Cesc a cup of coffee from the pot. Mixes milk and three spoonfuls of sugar in it.
He comes back and wraps the blanket around Cesc’s body, and the towel around his shoulders. He gives him the coffee-Cesc immediately clamps his palms around the mug.
"Drink that and sit there, until you’re dry."
Iker goes to clean out the fridge. Cesc organized it, but didn’t know to look at expiration dates.
When he finishes, a carton of tofu and some brussels sprouts in the trash, he looks over. Cesc is still sitting there, small in the blanket, staring out in the rain at where the garden would be.
"It’s good for them," Iker says.
Cesc looks at him.
"The rain is good for the plants."
Iker goes in his room and writes, then sleeps for a while. It’s dark when he comes out, and Cesc is still sitting by the door. He only drank a bit of the coffee-Iker knew he wouldn’t like it. He comes over and feels Cesc’s hair. It’s still a little damp by the roots, but. He realizes Cesc would have sat there all night, until it was bone dry.
"You’re dry enough."
Cesc stands up, legs a little wobbly from sitting on them for so long. He doesn’t have the instinct to fix his hair. Iker flattens it for him.
"It is good for them," he repeats, in a voice that sounds more like a promise than the throwaway comment it was before.
Cesc pulls the blanket around him tighter. He nods.
Iker wakes up at nine in the morning and can’t go back to sleep. He had dreams that he can't remember, and woke up sweaty and shaken.
He sees his living room in morning light for the first time in a couple years. Everything seems brighter. Cesc says hello and smiles at him. He's probably been up for a couple hours already.
Iker makes himself a bowl of cereal and eats it on the couch, zoning out at the black TV screen, thinking about nothing. When the milk and cereal are gone, he realizes that Cesc has been quiet for a while. Long enough for Iker to get suspicious.
Iker finds him in his bedroom. He's taken everything out of the closet, like a kid who got into his parents' room. Sneakers and dress shoes are scattered all over the floor, tissue paper from boxes, magazines, plastic garment bags without their jackets-and Cesc is sitting crosslegged in the middle of it all, holding the box Iker keeps hidden in the back. It's open and Cesc is looking through it, he's touching-
Iker sees red. He grabs him by the collar and drags him to his feet and before Cesc can say anything, he smacks him. Cesc's hand flies to his face. Iker smacks him again, harder.
"You don't go in there!" Cesc is terrified. His mouth moves. His eyes are wet. "Do you understand? You stay the fuck out of there!"
Cesc scurries backwards, tripping over a pair of leather cap toes from a party Iker can hardly remember going to. His palm is pressed flat on his cheek. He hits the wall hard and blindly feels behind him for the door and gets out.
Iker drops to the ground. He scrabbles at the photos on the floor, organizing them, straightening them, trying to fix everything in the box how it was. The pictures in the top left, the worn baseball cap on the right, ticket stubs and luggage tags in the bottom. When he put the lid back on, his hands are shaking.
He sits alone next to it for a while in the mess, leaning on the bed, his head between his hands.
By the time he comes out, it's afternoon. The house is quiet and empty. This is usually when Cesc would be in the backyard, but he isn’t there. The ice machine on the fridge sounds loud and grating when Iker presses the button, zips a handful of crushed cubes in a plastic bag. He wraps it in a paper towel to ease the cold.
He finds Cesc behind the shutters of the closet of the spare bedroom, sitting in the corner and hugging his knees. There's a bruise blooming on the apple of his cheek. Iker feels ugly.
He sits down next to him, and Cesc doesn't flinch when Iker turns his face, presses the ice to his cheek, but he doesn't raise his eyes either.
"I didn't know," Cesc says finally. He chances a glance up at him.
"I know."
One day, out of nowhere, Cesc starts trying to cook. Like he has an impulse to make meals that he can't help. He can only vacuum or clean the windows so many times before he's just wasting electricity and Windex and Iker firmly tells him to stop. Usually he wanders into the kitchen from there, starts taking things out of the cupboards, combining them in a banged-up aluminum mixing bowl he found in the cabinet.
Iker's cupboards are empty-Cesc doesn't seem to realize that just skipping the ingredients he doesn't have won't make edible food. Iker comes in at night to find salad without lettuce, a cookie pan with a mixture of eggs and flour and vanilla dolloped out in neat rows on the stovetop. Cesc portions out tuna casserole without noodles and bread without butter and raw carrots on a dinner plate for him, sets him up a place at the table like you'd see in sitcoms from the '50s.
"Why don't you write a list of ingredients," Iker tells him finally. "And I'll get what you need."
Cesc scuffs his shoe on the floor. "Can I say them to you?"
"...Okay." Iker gets a pad of paper and a pen, leaning on the counter.
"Apples, bananas, confectioners’ sugar, frozen yogurt, jalapeños, mozzarella cheese, pepper jack cheese, rhubarb, tortillas-"
"Slower, Cesc."
"Apples. Bananas. Confectioners’ sugar. Frozen yogurt. Jalapeños."
Cesc’s list requires that Iker go to an actual store. Iker hasn’t been to an actual store in years. The corner mart is closer, and it usually has everything he needs. While he’s there, he picks Cesc up three t-shirts in different colors, and two pairs of jeans. On impulse, he tosses a bag of socks in the cart too.
When he gets home, Cesc is excited. He unpacks bags and stocks cupboards-Iker tells him the shirts and pants are his. Cesc grins and starts changing right in the middle of the kitchen. Iker explains he needs to change in the bathroom, or his room. He puts away the rest of the groceries while Cesc is gone, and throws away Cesc’s old clothes later. They aren’t salvageable, and aren’t something anyone should have to wear.
Cesc starts getting better at cooking. He makes chicken noodle soup from scratch, and apples baked with butter and brown sugar and brie. Sometimes, rarely, Iker comes in and helps make dinner, because he doesn't want to be in his room any more.
One night, he’s dicing tomatoes and thinking about something else, and he slices his finger. The pain registers late-the knife is sharp, and the burn only comes when tomato juice gets into the cut.
Cesc immediately takes his hand and inspects it. Iker lets him. After a moment, Cesc brings his hand up and gently clamps his mouth over Iker's finger, like he saw Iker doing the first week they met.
Iker stays still. Cesc licks once over the cut inside his mouth, tongue soft and wet, then draws back with a single suck. He looks at Iker's finger again-after a moment, blood seams at the cut, then runs over. Cesc takes it back in his mouth again. It's all very clinical, like Cesc thinks this is actually how you fix things. He rubs Iker's wrist reassuringly with his thumb. Iker bends his finger, strokes his tongue. Cesc smiles.
"Do you know how to put a bandaid on?" Iker asks him.
Cesc shakes his head.
Iker leads him into the bathroom and sits him on the toilet seat. The cabinet squeaks when he opens it, the mirror reverberating when the magnet snaps it shut again. Iker turns the rubbing alcohol over briefly on a cotton ball.
"Watch," he says, tilting his hand so Cesc can see. He cleans the cut.
The bandaid tin clanks when he takes out the small size and clips it closed. He puts one half of the adhesive on his skin-"Finger here," he says, using Cesc’s finger to anchor it. Cesc pays close attention. "Wrap it around-" He wraps. "And the lighter square goes over where you’re hurt."
Iker smooths out the other side of the adhesive. Cesc rubs his thumb over the soft pad of the bandaid.
"You know when you’re out in the garden, and your fingers bleed?"
Cesc nods.
"Do this then. It doesn’t matter how many you use."
"Okay."
Iker wakes up at two in the morning. He fell asleep in front of the TV, and there’s an infomercial on for androids. He's on the wrong channel at the wrong time to expect any better, and he knows there's worse out there. But still. Jesus.
Suddenly, he notices Cesc in the arch of the hallway. He's wearing the t-shirt Iker gave him, and the sleep pants Iker got him on another trip. "Can I watch the TV with you?" he asks, sleepy.
Onscreen, a man pushes an android girl's skirt up, even as she struggles and tries to hold it down.
Iker changes the channel. "Go back to bed, Cesc."
Cesc leaves and Iker flips around, passes the football channel. He pauses for a second longer than he usually does before he changes it.
Cesc is out watering things, and Iker’s been looking at the phone for close to an hour now.
Finally, he turns it on and dials.
Someone picks up, but there's a silence on the other end. Then a scuffle, a clunk, and a muffled curse. "Hello?"
"Hey, Sergio." Iker looks up at the ceiling. "It's Iker."
"I just burned a pan of eggs," Sergio says. "Like, I think the smoke alarm might go off."
"Open the window?"
There's more sounds, and the slide of a window.
"Crisis averted," Sergio says. He sounds a little out of breath. "How are you?" Like Iker didn't, just-not return his calls for four months.
"Alright," Iker says.
Sergio grunts. Iker hears him open his fridge, condiments rattling on the door.
"I got an android."
"Cool. What’s his name."
"Cesc."
"Cesc," Sergio repeats. "Okay. Is it short for something?" Cereal pours in a bowl.
"I don't know, he came up with it."
Sergio hums and starts eating.
"How are you?" Iker asks, five minutes late.
"Alright. Piece of shit manager got fired. I was promoted."
"Nice."
Sergio chews. "Yeah, it is." Iker hears him laugh, kind of. A bowl being rinsed out. "I get my own name plaque and everything."
Iker smiles. It fades. He rubs the back of his neck. "…Do you want to come over sometime?"
"Friday," Sergio says. "No, wait, Saturday." The bowl clatters in the sink. "And I’m bringing the dog. Good?"
It feels like something that was clenched in Iker’s chest just, disappears. "Yeah. Good."
Iker was expecting Cesc to be nervous about someone coming over, or at least a bit unsure, but Cesc is completely fine with it. He doesn’t even go on a cleaning rampage like Iker’s old girlfriend used to do-he just straightens the cushions on the couch, and wears his blue shirt. (Iker’s figured out, from how rarely he wears it, that it’s actually his favorite.)
He even goes to get the door when the doorbell rings-then he sees the dog.
It’s a different one than Sergio used to have-Odi, was that one’s name-and Iker wonders if it’s really been that long since he’s seen Sergio. He got a new dog and he didn’t even know.
The dog barks at Cesc in a happy kind of way and Cesc lurches back.
In a second, Iker’s at the door. Cesc stays behind him. He isn't hiding, really, but he isn't coming out either.
"Hey," Sergio says, face breaking into a smile. He hugs Iker, and Iker hugs back. Sergio gives him a squeeze, then peers around him.
"You must be Cesc," he says. "I’m Sergio. This is Fandi."
"It's nice to meet you," Cesc says. His eyes are still fixed on the dog.
"Hey, Iker. Bathroom?" Sergio trails off with his eyebrows up, already walking.
"Yeah."
Sergio leaves Fandi behind. She sits in the middle of the floor, staring straight at Cesc.
"She's a dog," Iker explains.
"No," Cesc replies. Like this is something that can be disputed.
Iker reaches back for his arm and then Cesc really does shift behind him. Iker can feel his fingers at his shirt, like he wants to hold it, but isn't sure if he's allowed.
"Look," Iker says. He pets Fandi's head, and her ears go down. Iker can feel Cesc watching. After a long moment, he offers Iker his hand. Iker covers it with his own and pets her nose. Fandi's tail whacks happily on the floor.
"See?" he asks quietly.
Fandi licks the inside of Cesc's wrist and Cesc startles, but smiles a little.
Sergio comes back in to see Iker's android petting his dog in a really wooden, reserved kind of way and Iker just kind of standing there, supervising.
Iker sees his expression. He rubs his face with his hand. "Do you want a beer?"
"Yeah."
Iker heads for the kitchen.
"Hey, Cesc," Sergio says, following Iker.
Cesc looks up. Fandi pushes her head up in his hand again.
"If you want to take her out back, she'd probably like it. I have an apartment, so she doesn't get to go outside much."
"Okay," Cesc says. Iker hears nails clicking on the floor, the glass door sliding open, then shut.
Sergio sits at the bar in the kitchen. Iker has taken out sandwich parts-bread, mayonnaise, lettuce, a half-eaten slab of salami.
"Does he...?" Sergio asks, tilting his head towards the food.
Iker lays the meat on the cutting board. "No. I mean, maybe. Sometimes I'll catch him eating stuff, but. I don't know." The knife makes dull clacks on the plastic. "He might just be copying me."
"He copies you?"
"I caught him trying to shave yesterday."
Sergio laughs, leaning on an elbow. "What?"
Iker takes out bread and spreads the mayonnaise. "He was doing it dry. Almost nicked his face up." He was half-asleep, wandered into the bathroom at six in the morning to find Cesc in front of the mirror, shaving cream clumsily smeared all over his face. He'd already gotten at a swath under his chin and was going for another, even though the skin under the first was red and irritated. Iker took the razor away, held a cool wet cloth to his neck for ten minutes before going back to bed. Cesc blinked at him mildly through the cream.
"Well it's not like anything would happen anyways, right?" Sergio tries to take a piece of salami. Iker glares at him, and he migrates to the table.
"He bleeds." Iker says, putting the meat, lettuce, and mayo back in the fridge. "He says things hurt him."
He sits at the table and hands Sergio his plate. He can see Cesc outside the window, running around with the dog. He found the red ball the neighborhood kids kicked into Iker's yard a year or so ago. It's faded with age and most of the bounce is baked out of the rubber. It doesn't take Cesc long to figure out that Fandi will chase it when he throws. Every few minutes, Iker can hear the wheezing thump of it on the ground.
"Do you believe it?" Sergio asks.
"I don't know."
Cesc's hands are out and he's crouching, a bit. He fakes Fandi out and leaps to the side then Fandi catches up and jumps on him and Cesc laughs so hard his eyes crinkle up, hugging her head. Iker can't even figure out what game he's trying to play.
Sergio shows him his new tattoo, tells him about his job, and how Rene got married. He isn’t dating anyone, but he’s fucking a few people. He likes one of them a lot. He takes her on dates sometimes.
Iker tells him about the book he finished, and the one he’s working on. About his parents, and that no-one’s really heard from Unai, still.
"Dick," Sergio says, getting up to get another beer.
Iker shrugs, looks at the clock. It’s four. "Do you want to watch the game?"
"It's Barca playing," Sergio says, instead of "You haven't asked to watch a game in years."
Iker’s been paying for the channel all along, even if he hasn’t watched it in a while. One of the commentators is the same, one is different. The older one still has shit opinions about everything. Iker tells Sergio that and Sergio laughs and it’s kind of an ice-breaker-Iker asks questions and Sergio fills him in on what he’s missed, and what he wasn’t missing at all. "Last season was miserable."
The sun starts setting, and Sergio finishes his beer.
"I should go," he says. I have a date goes unspoken. He gets up and stretches, takes the empty bottle to the kitchen.
Iker turns down the volume, then looks out the window at Cesc. He's been sitting in the grass under the orange tree for close to an hour now. Fandi is lying next to him, exhausted, and Cesc is talking to her. Iker finds himself wondering what he's saying.
Sergio comes out and links up her leash, says something to Cesc. Cesc laughs.
Sergio smacks the back of Iker’s head lightly on the way out. "Next week. Derby time."
Iker grunts agreement and closes his eyes.
After a few minutes, Cesc plops down next to him, close. He smells like oranges and dirt. "Can I watch the TV with you?"
Iker doesn't say no, so Cesc stays. After a while, Iker opens his eyes.
The EPL’s on now, Tottenham versus Manchester City. Cesc is staring, riveted, at the screen.
"Do you know what's happening?" Iker asks.
"No," Cesc replies.
Iker explains the rules. Cesc is hyperwarm on his side, like being in the sun all afternoon heated him through. He absorbs information quickly, and only has to ask questions once. Iker feels him tense when anyone gets near the posts. He jumps a little when Tevez finally scores, grinning a huge wide grin.
After the game, a highlights show comes on.
"Why do you watch it?" Cesc asks, resting his head back on the couch. Iker looks at him and Cesc smiles, lolls his head to look back.
For a second, Iker forgets what he was going to say.
"Because you like one of the teams," he says finally.
"I like the red and blue ones," Cesc replies, sitting up with firm resolve.
Iker looks at the screen to see who it is. He laughs and Cesc grins, seeing him, even though he can’t know what’s funny.
A new game starts after the highlights show ends. Iker takes a long breath, relaxes back on the couch. He’s tired from beer and socializing, and he feels comfortable. Before he drifts off, he feels Cesc’s head lean lightly on his shoulder. He doesn’t nudge him off.
When he wakes up, it’s completely dark outside. He rubs his eyes and half sits up, feeling a little thirsty. His shoulder feels light, and he looks at Cesc.
At some point, the game ended and Cesc figured out the remote. He flipped the station and his eyes are locked on the screen, expression horrified.
Iker sits up straighter, wide awake now, and sees the international news channel. They’re doing coverage on a genocide somewhere, and he wonders how long Cesc’s been hearing machine guns, seeing kids with swollen bellies and blowflies on their face. He carefully pries the remote out of his hand and turns the TV off.
Cesc keeps staring at the black screen.
Iker takes his wrist and leads him through the hallway, then to his room. He goes in the bathroom and brushes his teeth and changes, and when he comes out, Cesc is still just standing in the middle of the floor.
Iker gets into bed. "You can lie down," he says.
Cesc does. Iker turns off the lamp. After a little while, Cesc shifts closer to Iker. When he doesn't get into trouble, he scoots even closer.
"Do you know how to sleep?" Iker asks him quietly. It's too dark to see his features, but he can tell that Cesc is looking at him.
"Yes."
Iker wakes up in the middle of the night. His eyes adjust to the dark and he sees Cesc is half curled up near him, eyes still open.
"They killed those people," he says.
Iker moves forward, half-asleep. He folds him in his arms.
"Go to sleep."
Cesc inches closer until their bodies are pressed together.
When Iker wakes up in the morning, Cesc is sleeping soundly, his hand holding on to Iker's shirt.
The orange tree blooms. Cesc tries just bringing the flowers in that have fallen off; Iker tells him where to cut twigs, so it won’t hurt the tree. A few sit in a jar of water in the middle of the table. The house smells good for days.
Holding Cesc is always comfortable. When they get into bed, Cesc lies close until Iker sets the alarm and silences his phone, then cuddles up against his body when Iker wraps his arms around him. When Iker feels too hot, just out of the shower, Cesc feels comfortably cool. And when he's too cold, which is most of the time, Cesc is warm, but not hot. He sleeps with his hands under his chin-sometimes he turns one around, rests his fingers against Iker’s collarbone.
It gets to the point where it’s hard for Iker to fall asleep without him there.
One day, it’s bright and sunny.
"Do you want to go outside?" Cesc asks.
Iker looks up from his toast. Most people would repeat the question with a "please," but Cesc just stands there, looking very hopeful.
Iker finishes his toast and puts his shoes on. He goes to find a sweatshirt but Cesc tugs his sleeve, moves to the door.
"It isn't very cold."
It is cold, but not in a wintry way. Just a morning way. Iker remembers being happy about that when David first moved them out here, that fall and winter never really happen.
The air smells a lot cleaner outside. Cesc shows him the birdbath, which he's washed out and refilled, and a bald spot where some grass is growing. He takes Iker to the orange tree, ruefully nudges a fruit on the ground with his shoe. "These are all falling off. I don't know if we can make food from them."
The flowerbed comes last. It looks completely empty. Iker wonders if some of his buds died.
"There's one plant here," Cesc says, pressing the soil with his finger. He must have replanted. "And here. And here."
He lifts up a leaf on what might be a blackberry bush, looking inside. It occurs to Iker that Cesc is doing all this, coming out here every day, and he doesn’t even know what will happen. He’s taking care of dirt and brambles when he doesn’t even know what a garden in bloom looks like.
"I find these sometimes," Cesc says, grinning and reemerging. He puts a caterpillar in Iker’s hand.
They watch nature shows on Thursday nights. Cesc likes the HD ones, with the rainforests and the frogs leaping in slow motion. Usually he’s asleep before ten, slumped on Iker’s shoulder.
Iker doesn’t know how he sleeps. If he’s actually recharging, or-he thinks it’s something like a computer hibernating. That he pulls inside himself and rests when he’s comfortable, but his body keeps breathing and his heart keeps beating, ready to wake up later.
Iker figures it isn’t that much different than how he sleeps, really. He fixes the blanket up over Cesc’s shoulders.
One morning Iker wakes up and Cesc is lying close to him on the bed, fully dressed. He’s placing gentle kisses on Iker’s lips.
"What are you doing?" Iker asks.
Cesc strokes his cheek with two of his fingers, looking down at Iker’s mouth. "Kissing," he replies.
"Where did you learn that?"
"On TV."
Iker lies there for a few minutes, waking up, then takes Cesc's hand. Each of his fingers is wrapped in clumsy bandaids.
"Did you garden this morning?"
"Yes."
Iker rubs inside his palm, then brings his hand up. He kisses the pad of the bandaid on his ring finger. Cesc blinks slowly, watching.
Iker notches their hips together. He rests Cesc’s hand on his side, then lays his own over Cesc’s. Cesc bends his knee a little over Iker’s thigh.
"Like this when we kiss, okay?"
Cesc nods, his forehead pressed against Iker’s. He kisses Iker again. Iker kisses back.
cont.
Pairing: Iker Casillas/Cesc Fabregas
Rating: NC-17 for pre-story character death, abuse, sex.
Summary: AU. Iker is a shut-in writer. Cesc is his robot. ~13,400 words, fill for football100 063. summer. Thanks to yeats for beta work, name ideas, and telling me that you roast a duck, not bake it.
Iker first sees the box outside on a Tuesday. The deliveryman didn't make the effort of lifting it under the porch so it sits, innocuous and huge, on the sidewalk leading up to his house. It's covered in stickers and clean clear packaging tape.
Iker drinks his coffee and looks at it for a while from the window, the sun blazing down on the grass. His feet are cold on the hardwood floors.
He ignores it for a week and a half. Writes a chapter of a book he'll never publish, pays his bills online, eats four cans of Spam and three cans of albacore tuna mixed with rice. He only remembers the box when he's lying on the couch with his hand on his stomach and hears the rumbling clack of thunder-a late summer storm blowing in from the south.
He puts on a pair of shoes and ties them. Pulls on a gray hoodie that's too big for him and smells like the back of closet, covered with three purple letters of a university he didn't attend. Finally, he slides back the deadbolt, turns the two smaller locks with final sounding clicks.
He's immediately hit with the sensory overload of being outside. The smell of cut grass and trees, stronger with the humidity in the air, and the sound of leaves. Parents yelling for their kids to put away their baseball bats and get inside. Their voices sound weird, tinny and shifting with the wind. Iker can see the storm clouds building on the horizon, tall and flashing with lightning. The breeze is slow and warm and lifts his hair.
Iker leaves the door ajar and goes down the porch stairs. He lifts the head of the box up against his thighs and starts dragging.
It's heavier than he was expecting. He heaves it up, one stair at a time, then lets it sit on the stoop when he gets up all five.
The clouds are much closer and darker than they were when he started. The wind is blowing in different directions. Iker gets the box halfway through the door when raindrops start hitting the ground and the bottom of the stairs, heavy and big as quarters. He shoves it with his foot the rest of the way in, then closes and locks the door behind him. The storm starts pelting the windows.
The box looks big and out of place in his foyer, like a coffin made out of cardboard. The labels are blurred and the tape is yellowed, warped from the sun.
Iker goes into the kitchen for a knife, then cuts along the places where the box marks to cut-the two short sides, and one of the longer ones. It makes a little door, and he pulls it open.
The android is lying inside, face up, hands at its sides. Like it was just-sleeping in there the whole time. Iker wonders if the company was going for a Sleeping Beauty effect, because feels more like cracking open Dracula's casket. Like disturbing something dangerous that shouldn't be disturbed.
He lifts up warranties, guarantees, a manual in a clear plastic bag, and tries not to think about it, even though it's staring him straight in the face. That when he was drunk and sad, he ordered something small and thin with dark hair and dark skin. Younger than Iker, pointedly everything-
Iker calls it an android because that's what it is. People have been moving to call them "companions," bleeding heart politicians who want to sound progressive and cutting edge. They're made out of cloned tissue and machinery and people are getting picky because they're getting attached to them, because they want to make themselves feel better about loving something that's programmed to make them believe it loves them back.
He leaves the android in the middle of the floor, pops pills, and goes to bed.
It lies there for two weeks.
When Iker ends up activating it, it's because he's bored. He reads the manual that's in Japanese first and everything else after, about how he can tinker with its settings like he used to tinker with busted Blu-ray players when he was a kid.
"Use the accompanying CD to add features. For a nominal fee, we will create a chip and send it to you."
There are instructions on how to make it happy all the time, or afraid all the time. Subsections on how you can make it think it's your maid or your slave or your cook. You can make it think it's your boyfriend or your son. There's nothing about conflicting programs in the manual, which Iker assumes means that you could make it think it's both. He remembers hearing about the hacked chips you can buy on the internet, that aren't strictly legal but aren't strictly banned either, stuff that makes him feel sick.
"If you choose to leave your unit at its factory default settings, it will develop its own personality over time!"
Iker looks down at the android, at its strong nose and delicate eyelashes. Its skin is tan, like it lived outside and they caught it just to send it to him. Reaching down feels like poking a jellyfish with a stick on the beach-he touches its face, its neck, the dip under the jaw, where they check on TV if someone is alive or dead. He can feel the ridges of its windpipe, the corded tendons on the side, the soft spot in between where its jugular should beat. Its skin is smooth under his fingers. He slides his hand behind and crooks two fingers at the base of its skull, like the instructions said.
A minute goes by, then it rubs its eyes with the back of its hand and tries to turn over, like it's sleeping in bed and doesn't want to be woken up. It opens its eyes and sees the wall of the box right in front of its face and in that moment, it seems afraid. Like this is not where it's supposed to be, and Iker did something wrong. Then it looks up at Iker, and when it sees him for the first time, all the fear and tension and everything else are gone.
It smiles.
"Hi," it says. It tries to sit up, then looks down at the packaging still covering it. It grins at him kind of sheepishly. "What's your name?"
Iker stares at it for a second, then reaches forward and turns it off.
He activates it again the next morning, when he's had six hours of sleep and coffee's on the pot. He presses with his fingers and takes the manual and goes back to the kitchen, not wanting to watch it crawl of the box like a corpse from the grave.
He hears it in the front room, struggling for a while with the styrofoam and bubble wrap. It seems to take a few minutes to find the kitchen. Iker can hear its shoes on the floor, hesitant steps around the front room.
The coffee bubbles and percolates. Iker opens the cabinet and pushes things around for a mug. He hears its sneakers scuff on the tile behind him. It's at least a minute before it speaks.
"What should I call you?" it asks, which is a very different question than "What's your name?".
"Iker," he says, pouring his coffee. He stirs it, even though doesn't mix anything in any more. It's just habit.
"What should you call me?"
Iker leans on the counter and ignores it a while, skimming the manual and drinking his coffee. The manual encourages that he choose a name early. That it will help the unit bond to him easier, that it will make the transition more comfortable, that if he needs help, the unit has a list of names stored-
"Choose a name," he says, tossing the manual lightly on the table. He opens the fridge and looks for something for eat.
It shifts behind him with something like uncertainty. "I-"
"List the names you know," Iker says. "And choose one."
There's a pause.
"...Alex." It checks Iker's face, but Iker is drinking coffee and reading the back of a package of microwavable quiche, and doesn't say anything. It continues. "Blake. Carlos. Daniel, Evan, Frank-"
Iker watches it ramble while his breakfast heats up. It looks like a kid who has the times tables memorized, but is miserable and embarrassed about being up front to recite them.
"Geoff, Henry, Ian, Jake-"
"Choose one," Iker interrupts. He's starting to get impatient. The microwave beeps.
It looks at him helplessly. When it starts talking again, it almost sounds desperate. "Lance, Michael, Neil-"
Iker takes his food and leaves the kitchen.
Later, when he finishes breakfast, he brings his plate and mug into the kitchen sink. He rinses them off. It's still standing at the counter right where he left it, looking at its shoes. They’re cheap looking sneakers, thin leather, made to look functional.
He turns to leave and it says, "Cesc."
"Cesc?" Stopping and turning around feels like an effort.
It looks up at him with big eyes, like it's nervous or hoping for approval.
"Fine," Iker says. He means to go write but decides to lie down on the couch first, just for a little while.
He wakes up with a blanket covering him from chest to ankle. It's warm and comfortable, tucked in around his shoulders.
For the most part, Cesc avoids him. He seems to have picked up that Iker doesn't want to know he's there. He cleans a lot, which Iker figures is his default setting or something. He busies himself with organizing things in the background, scrubbing the kitchen, straightening up the living room. Iker comes out one morning to find the couch cleaned, the entertainment center dusted, the bookshelf organized by size. The carpet is a darker, richer shade of green, vacuum lines marked up and down the floor.
One day, Cesc breaks a plate. Iker comes in the kitchen and Cesc has suds up to his elbows, looking down at the shards with his hands and mouth open.
Iker ignores him, going to his haunches to pick up the pieces. He has five in his hand when he cuts his finger. Blood blooms up and Cesc moves forward, touching his back and shoulder and trying to touch his arm.
Iker shoves his leg harder than he means to. Like pushing away a stupid dog rooting in a mess.
He looks at his finger, then pops it in his mouth. "Go do something else."
Cesc takes an obedient step back, but stays with him until Iker leaves the room.
Iker’s schedule doesn’t change much.
He wakes up in the late morning, lies in bed until a little after noon. If he feels like it, he finds something to eat. Usually he stays in his room and types until his stomach or his bladder won’t let him sit there anymore. He showers in the late afternoon, heats up lunch or dinner or whatever in the microwave, goes back to his room and types more. He always feels tired. Around eight, he’ll drink a glass of wine. He pops pills until he goes to sleep.
He’s an insomniac. That’s what he’d tell a doctor, probably, but it’s more habituation than chemical imbalance that has him up until four or five in the morning.
Cesc being there doesn’t mean much except that everything is steadily getting cleaner around him, and that he hears movement outside his room sometimes, instead of the creaks and groans of an empty house.
A few weeks in, if Iker didn’t know better, he’d think that Cesc was bored. When Iker is out of his bedroom, he notices Cesc guessing which room he’ll go into next, like it’s a game. He turns the light on before Iker comes in, ducks out a side door without being seen. Then later, after Iker's left, he turns it off again. The organization of the bookcase shifts from smallest to biggest to biggest to smallest, then goes back again. Some of the books are upside down. Iker fixes them.
One day, he can't find the remote. Which isn't different than normal, really, he's always losing it. But this time, it's especially hard to find it. Finally he tracks Cesc down in the garage, asks if he knows where it is.
Cesc looks up from the box of tools he's cleaning. His clothes are getting dirty, the bright red and white of the shirt he came in going dull.
"I hid it," he says. Then he smiles, proud and shy at the same time. Like he's waiting for Iker's praise or something.
"Why did you hide it?"
Cesc's smile falters a little. "Because you like looking for it."
"Where did you hide it?"
"On top of the refrigerator."
Later, Iker is watching the news and Cesc comes up to the couch. Iker can smell dirt and WD-40 on him.
"I won't hide the remote again," he says, quiet.
Iker waits until a commercial, then waves him off.
A few weeks later, Iker is writing, and for the first time, Cesc crosses the threshold of his room. He always seems desperate to get in here-to clean, Iker thinks-but he won’t come in when Iker’s there too. Today, though, he stands there in the middle of the carpet, patient, until Iker looks at him.
"Can I go outside the house?" he asks.
Iker turns back to his computer. He starts typing again. "Go where?"
"Outside the house."
Iker turns in his chair, annoyed that Cesc is being a smartass. He decides to give him one more chance. "Where. Outside the house."
Cesc shifts from one foot to another, looks as confused and embarrassed as he did when Iker asked him to choose a name. "Out of the door that slides," he says carefully. "Where the grass is. Outside the house."
Iker realizes Cesc means the backyard. And that he doesn’t know anything else exists beyond the fence. He pushes up his reading glasses.
"Whatever."
Cesc looks at him, unsure.
"Yes," Iker says, annoyed.
Cesc leaves.
On the second Friday of the month, Iker's mom calls. She always calls on Fridays, usually sometime in the late afternoon, when she knows he's probably awake and sober. Iker almost always answers, because he knows she's at the point in her life where she doesn't have much to do except play Mahjong and worry about him.
"Hi mom."
"Iker, how are you?"
Iker closes his bedroom door and sits down. He hasn't seen Cesc yet today. "All right. How are you?"
"I'm well." She was always particular about that. "Good" versus "well." She used to teach kindergarten, before him and Unai were born.
"Good." He lies back on his comforter. "Did Dad decide about the tickets?"
"No," his mom huffs. "I told him, 'José, we saved all this money so we could do nice things when we retire, when is the last time we have been to the beach?'"
Iker rubs his eye. "He'll come around."
"Yes, but before the summer is over? It's already August!" His mom has a tendency to make a big deal out of things, even when she knows they’ll turn out okay. Iker gets up and walks, because the tone makes him restless. "Anyways, Iker. What did you do this week?"
Iker straightens papers on his desk, then looks out the window. Cesc is sitting back on his heels in the wet dirt in the flowerbed. He’s picking weeds. "I got a roommate."
"A roommate! What’s her name?"
Cesc is just kneeling there, patiently working at the garden. He's clearly been at it all morning, and he's barely cleared a fifth of it. His fingers are bloody from the stalks. "His name is Cesc."
"Cesc," she repeats, happy. She seems to finally be accepting that Iker is twenty-six and living with boys as well as girls isn't just a phase, or something he does because dating girls takes too much effort. "Well. Is Cesc nice?"
Iker watches Cesc cup something small and green in his hand. It inches across his palm. He examines it at eye level, then carefully sets it down safely on the clean side of the garden. "…Yeah. He’s nice."
Cesc starts spending hours in the backyard every day. He gets the weeds cleaned out in a week, sets them in a neat dry bushel by the gate. Iker sees him digging holes in the dark dirt in the flowerbed, or picking dead bark off the orange tree. He gradually seems to realize that things will grow if they’re watered. He waters anything that has a flower on it, even dandelions and thistles. Sometimes, Iker sees him sitting by the birdbath. He doesn’t seem to understand the birds won’t come if he sits right next to it.
Iker doesn’t care if he’s out there. It keeps him out of his hair.
Cesc’s skin keeps clean on its own, like dirt won't stick to it, but his clothes are getting grungier and grungier. One day, Iker has a splitting headache, and he can't write. He sits in front of his computer for an hour. Cesc passes his door, doing whatever he does during the day. Iker can smell him from here.
"You need to clean up."
Cesc pauses obediently in the hallway. He looks down at himself, like he isn't sure which part of him Iker means.
Iker ignores him, rubbing his temples, until he goes away.
Later that afternoon, he's rinsing out his mug and he sees Cesc in the shadow of the porch. He's stuck there, just out of reach of the sun, the hose stretched as far as it will go. He's holding it above his head, already soaking wet, then he carefully sets it down in the mud. One arm weakly rubs at a stain on his shirt, the other is clutched around his chest.
Iker knows the water is icy cold. Cesc is hunched up. Iker can see his nipples through his shirt, the soft outline of his cock in his shorts.
After a moment, Cesc reluctantly picks the hose up again. Iker watches.
The next morning, Iker emerges before eleven and finds Cesc trying to make him coffee. He goes through the motions of brewing slowly, with a lot of concentration, a determined look on his face-Iker realizes he’s been watching him in the afternoons, covertly, to learn how to do things. He moves carefully in the kitchen, step by step, until he seems to forget what to do. He pauses, shakes his hands with his bony wrists and skinny fingers, eyes searching and mouth open, before he remembers. Grinds in the filter.
When it’s finished, Cesc stirs it with a spoon, grins wide and happy when Iker drinks from the mug. His shirt is stiff from the minerals in the outside water, hair matted and flat on the top. He looks at Iker with admiration that seems impossible to kill.
Iker gets drunk one night, close to shit-faced, and decides he's going to fuck Cesc. He wouldn't even have to fuck him. He could just jerk off on him. He could jerk off on him and then erase his memory too. Cesc wouldn't even remember. And he's a fucking android. This is what people do with androids. People do worse things with androids.
He sets the bottle down on his desk and feels his way down the hallway. He finds Cesc on the floor in the spare bedroom, looking at pictures in a coffee table book about the Grand Canyon.
"Stand up. Take off your shirt."
Cesc closes the book with a dull thump and stands up. He tugs his shirt over his head.
"Lie down on your back."
Cesc lies on his back and looks at Iker, wide-eyed, waiting for instructions. Iker feels a tug in his chest. He hates it.
"Cover your eyes."
Cesc covers his eyes. He doesn't peek through his fingers. His chest is smooth, his stomach flat. Iker's hard. His thumb hovers at the button of his jeans.
Cesc shifts slightly on the bed. He briefly bites his lower lip. It should be the thing that pushes Iker over the edge, that makes him kneel over Cesc's chest and feed his cock into his mouth. Instead, it stops him cold. It's childlike. Cesc is confused. He's wondering why he's not included. If he can look yet.
Iker rubs his face with his hand. "Fuck." He presses the heel of his hand into his eye. "Fuck."
Cesc still isn't peeking.
"Get up. Get dressed."
Cesc pulls his shirt back over his head. His hair looks worse for wear. He sits on the edge of the bed, like he isn't sure if he's going to be scolded. Iker bends down and puts the book back in his lap.
He pops more pills and goes to bed.
He wakes up with a horrible hangover the next morning, and an aching feeling in his chest. Cesc edges around him all day, quieter, like he knows. When Iker finally sits down, defeated, Cesc sits in front of him. Iker’s too tired to push him away. Cesc reaches up and gently rubs his temples.
It’s pouring one afternoon, rushing through the gutters and hammering the roof. Iker is making tea. He hasn’t seen Cesc yet today, but that isn’t unusual. He’s rinsing off a plate when he notices a figure in the backyard, blurry in the sheets of rain. He squints at it, then drops the plate with a clatter in the sink. He grabs his shoes.
It’s coming down so hard that it’s hard to hear anything. Water is already soaking through his sneakers. Cesc is hunched over the flower bed, his arms half spread.
"What are you doing?!"
"It will hit my plants," Cesc yells over the rain.
Iker looks at the flowerbed. A few tiny buds are breaking the surface. "Get inside."
He’s expecting an argument, but Cesc immediately trots towards the house. Iker stops him before he opens the door. Their muddy shoes stay on the porch.
"Stay on the mat," Iker orders when they get in. "You’ll drip everywhere."
Cesc stays put, sodden in his socks. His teeth are chattering, his face is white.
Iker gets an old blanket and a towel from the closet in the hallway, then goes into the kitchen. He pours Cesc a cup of coffee from the pot. Mixes milk and three spoonfuls of sugar in it.
He comes back and wraps the blanket around Cesc’s body, and the towel around his shoulders. He gives him the coffee-Cesc immediately clamps his palms around the mug.
"Drink that and sit there, until you’re dry."
Iker goes to clean out the fridge. Cesc organized it, but didn’t know to look at expiration dates.
When he finishes, a carton of tofu and some brussels sprouts in the trash, he looks over. Cesc is still sitting there, small in the blanket, staring out in the rain at where the garden would be.
"It’s good for them," Iker says.
Cesc looks at him.
"The rain is good for the plants."
Iker goes in his room and writes, then sleeps for a while. It’s dark when he comes out, and Cesc is still sitting by the door. He only drank a bit of the coffee-Iker knew he wouldn’t like it. He comes over and feels Cesc’s hair. It’s still a little damp by the roots, but. He realizes Cesc would have sat there all night, until it was bone dry.
"You’re dry enough."
Cesc stands up, legs a little wobbly from sitting on them for so long. He doesn’t have the instinct to fix his hair. Iker flattens it for him.
"It is good for them," he repeats, in a voice that sounds more like a promise than the throwaway comment it was before.
Cesc pulls the blanket around him tighter. He nods.
Iker wakes up at nine in the morning and can’t go back to sleep. He had dreams that he can't remember, and woke up sweaty and shaken.
He sees his living room in morning light for the first time in a couple years. Everything seems brighter. Cesc says hello and smiles at him. He's probably been up for a couple hours already.
Iker makes himself a bowl of cereal and eats it on the couch, zoning out at the black TV screen, thinking about nothing. When the milk and cereal are gone, he realizes that Cesc has been quiet for a while. Long enough for Iker to get suspicious.
Iker finds him in his bedroom. He's taken everything out of the closet, like a kid who got into his parents' room. Sneakers and dress shoes are scattered all over the floor, tissue paper from boxes, magazines, plastic garment bags without their jackets-and Cesc is sitting crosslegged in the middle of it all, holding the box Iker keeps hidden in the back. It's open and Cesc is looking through it, he's touching-
Iker sees red. He grabs him by the collar and drags him to his feet and before Cesc can say anything, he smacks him. Cesc's hand flies to his face. Iker smacks him again, harder.
"You don't go in there!" Cesc is terrified. His mouth moves. His eyes are wet. "Do you understand? You stay the fuck out of there!"
Cesc scurries backwards, tripping over a pair of leather cap toes from a party Iker can hardly remember going to. His palm is pressed flat on his cheek. He hits the wall hard and blindly feels behind him for the door and gets out.
Iker drops to the ground. He scrabbles at the photos on the floor, organizing them, straightening them, trying to fix everything in the box how it was. The pictures in the top left, the worn baseball cap on the right, ticket stubs and luggage tags in the bottom. When he put the lid back on, his hands are shaking.
He sits alone next to it for a while in the mess, leaning on the bed, his head between his hands.
By the time he comes out, it's afternoon. The house is quiet and empty. This is usually when Cesc would be in the backyard, but he isn’t there. The ice machine on the fridge sounds loud and grating when Iker presses the button, zips a handful of crushed cubes in a plastic bag. He wraps it in a paper towel to ease the cold.
He finds Cesc behind the shutters of the closet of the spare bedroom, sitting in the corner and hugging his knees. There's a bruise blooming on the apple of his cheek. Iker feels ugly.
He sits down next to him, and Cesc doesn't flinch when Iker turns his face, presses the ice to his cheek, but he doesn't raise his eyes either.
"I didn't know," Cesc says finally. He chances a glance up at him.
"I know."
One day, out of nowhere, Cesc starts trying to cook. Like he has an impulse to make meals that he can't help. He can only vacuum or clean the windows so many times before he's just wasting electricity and Windex and Iker firmly tells him to stop. Usually he wanders into the kitchen from there, starts taking things out of the cupboards, combining them in a banged-up aluminum mixing bowl he found in the cabinet.
Iker's cupboards are empty-Cesc doesn't seem to realize that just skipping the ingredients he doesn't have won't make edible food. Iker comes in at night to find salad without lettuce, a cookie pan with a mixture of eggs and flour and vanilla dolloped out in neat rows on the stovetop. Cesc portions out tuna casserole without noodles and bread without butter and raw carrots on a dinner plate for him, sets him up a place at the table like you'd see in sitcoms from the '50s.
"Why don't you write a list of ingredients," Iker tells him finally. "And I'll get what you need."
Cesc scuffs his shoe on the floor. "Can I say them to you?"
"...Okay." Iker gets a pad of paper and a pen, leaning on the counter.
"Apples, bananas, confectioners’ sugar, frozen yogurt, jalapeños, mozzarella cheese, pepper jack cheese, rhubarb, tortillas-"
"Slower, Cesc."
"Apples. Bananas. Confectioners’ sugar. Frozen yogurt. Jalapeños."
Cesc’s list requires that Iker go to an actual store. Iker hasn’t been to an actual store in years. The corner mart is closer, and it usually has everything he needs. While he’s there, he picks Cesc up three t-shirts in different colors, and two pairs of jeans. On impulse, he tosses a bag of socks in the cart too.
When he gets home, Cesc is excited. He unpacks bags and stocks cupboards-Iker tells him the shirts and pants are his. Cesc grins and starts changing right in the middle of the kitchen. Iker explains he needs to change in the bathroom, or his room. He puts away the rest of the groceries while Cesc is gone, and throws away Cesc’s old clothes later. They aren’t salvageable, and aren’t something anyone should have to wear.
Cesc starts getting better at cooking. He makes chicken noodle soup from scratch, and apples baked with butter and brown sugar and brie. Sometimes, rarely, Iker comes in and helps make dinner, because he doesn't want to be in his room any more.
One night, he’s dicing tomatoes and thinking about something else, and he slices his finger. The pain registers late-the knife is sharp, and the burn only comes when tomato juice gets into the cut.
Cesc immediately takes his hand and inspects it. Iker lets him. After a moment, Cesc brings his hand up and gently clamps his mouth over Iker's finger, like he saw Iker doing the first week they met.
Iker stays still. Cesc licks once over the cut inside his mouth, tongue soft and wet, then draws back with a single suck. He looks at Iker's finger again-after a moment, blood seams at the cut, then runs over. Cesc takes it back in his mouth again. It's all very clinical, like Cesc thinks this is actually how you fix things. He rubs Iker's wrist reassuringly with his thumb. Iker bends his finger, strokes his tongue. Cesc smiles.
"Do you know how to put a bandaid on?" Iker asks him.
Cesc shakes his head.
Iker leads him into the bathroom and sits him on the toilet seat. The cabinet squeaks when he opens it, the mirror reverberating when the magnet snaps it shut again. Iker turns the rubbing alcohol over briefly on a cotton ball.
"Watch," he says, tilting his hand so Cesc can see. He cleans the cut.
The bandaid tin clanks when he takes out the small size and clips it closed. He puts one half of the adhesive on his skin-"Finger here," he says, using Cesc’s finger to anchor it. Cesc pays close attention. "Wrap it around-" He wraps. "And the lighter square goes over where you’re hurt."
Iker smooths out the other side of the adhesive. Cesc rubs his thumb over the soft pad of the bandaid.
"You know when you’re out in the garden, and your fingers bleed?"
Cesc nods.
"Do this then. It doesn’t matter how many you use."
"Okay."
Iker wakes up at two in the morning. He fell asleep in front of the TV, and there’s an infomercial on for androids. He's on the wrong channel at the wrong time to expect any better, and he knows there's worse out there. But still. Jesus.
Suddenly, he notices Cesc in the arch of the hallway. He's wearing the t-shirt Iker gave him, and the sleep pants Iker got him on another trip. "Can I watch the TV with you?" he asks, sleepy.
Onscreen, a man pushes an android girl's skirt up, even as she struggles and tries to hold it down.
Iker changes the channel. "Go back to bed, Cesc."
Cesc leaves and Iker flips around, passes the football channel. He pauses for a second longer than he usually does before he changes it.
Cesc is out watering things, and Iker’s been looking at the phone for close to an hour now.
Finally, he turns it on and dials.
Someone picks up, but there's a silence on the other end. Then a scuffle, a clunk, and a muffled curse. "Hello?"
"Hey, Sergio." Iker looks up at the ceiling. "It's Iker."
"I just burned a pan of eggs," Sergio says. "Like, I think the smoke alarm might go off."
"Open the window?"
There's more sounds, and the slide of a window.
"Crisis averted," Sergio says. He sounds a little out of breath. "How are you?" Like Iker didn't, just-not return his calls for four months.
"Alright," Iker says.
Sergio grunts. Iker hears him open his fridge, condiments rattling on the door.
"I got an android."
"Cool. What’s his name."
"Cesc."
"Cesc," Sergio repeats. "Okay. Is it short for something?" Cereal pours in a bowl.
"I don't know, he came up with it."
Sergio hums and starts eating.
"How are you?" Iker asks, five minutes late.
"Alright. Piece of shit manager got fired. I was promoted."
"Nice."
Sergio chews. "Yeah, it is." Iker hears him laugh, kind of. A bowl being rinsed out. "I get my own name plaque and everything."
Iker smiles. It fades. He rubs the back of his neck. "…Do you want to come over sometime?"
"Friday," Sergio says. "No, wait, Saturday." The bowl clatters in the sink. "And I’m bringing the dog. Good?"
It feels like something that was clenched in Iker’s chest just, disappears. "Yeah. Good."
Iker was expecting Cesc to be nervous about someone coming over, or at least a bit unsure, but Cesc is completely fine with it. He doesn’t even go on a cleaning rampage like Iker’s old girlfriend used to do-he just straightens the cushions on the couch, and wears his blue shirt. (Iker’s figured out, from how rarely he wears it, that it’s actually his favorite.)
He even goes to get the door when the doorbell rings-then he sees the dog.
It’s a different one than Sergio used to have-Odi, was that one’s name-and Iker wonders if it’s really been that long since he’s seen Sergio. He got a new dog and he didn’t even know.
The dog barks at Cesc in a happy kind of way and Cesc lurches back.
In a second, Iker’s at the door. Cesc stays behind him. He isn't hiding, really, but he isn't coming out either.
"Hey," Sergio says, face breaking into a smile. He hugs Iker, and Iker hugs back. Sergio gives him a squeeze, then peers around him.
"You must be Cesc," he says. "I’m Sergio. This is Fandi."
"It's nice to meet you," Cesc says. His eyes are still fixed on the dog.
"Hey, Iker. Bathroom?" Sergio trails off with his eyebrows up, already walking.
"Yeah."
Sergio leaves Fandi behind. She sits in the middle of the floor, staring straight at Cesc.
"She's a dog," Iker explains.
"No," Cesc replies. Like this is something that can be disputed.
Iker reaches back for his arm and then Cesc really does shift behind him. Iker can feel his fingers at his shirt, like he wants to hold it, but isn't sure if he's allowed.
"Look," Iker says. He pets Fandi's head, and her ears go down. Iker can feel Cesc watching. After a long moment, he offers Iker his hand. Iker covers it with his own and pets her nose. Fandi's tail whacks happily on the floor.
"See?" he asks quietly.
Fandi licks the inside of Cesc's wrist and Cesc startles, but smiles a little.
Sergio comes back in to see Iker's android petting his dog in a really wooden, reserved kind of way and Iker just kind of standing there, supervising.
Iker sees his expression. He rubs his face with his hand. "Do you want a beer?"
"Yeah."
Iker heads for the kitchen.
"Hey, Cesc," Sergio says, following Iker.
Cesc looks up. Fandi pushes her head up in his hand again.
"If you want to take her out back, she'd probably like it. I have an apartment, so she doesn't get to go outside much."
"Okay," Cesc says. Iker hears nails clicking on the floor, the glass door sliding open, then shut.
Sergio sits at the bar in the kitchen. Iker has taken out sandwich parts-bread, mayonnaise, lettuce, a half-eaten slab of salami.
"Does he...?" Sergio asks, tilting his head towards the food.
Iker lays the meat on the cutting board. "No. I mean, maybe. Sometimes I'll catch him eating stuff, but. I don't know." The knife makes dull clacks on the plastic. "He might just be copying me."
"He copies you?"
"I caught him trying to shave yesterday."
Sergio laughs, leaning on an elbow. "What?"
Iker takes out bread and spreads the mayonnaise. "He was doing it dry. Almost nicked his face up." He was half-asleep, wandered into the bathroom at six in the morning to find Cesc in front of the mirror, shaving cream clumsily smeared all over his face. He'd already gotten at a swath under his chin and was going for another, even though the skin under the first was red and irritated. Iker took the razor away, held a cool wet cloth to his neck for ten minutes before going back to bed. Cesc blinked at him mildly through the cream.
"Well it's not like anything would happen anyways, right?" Sergio tries to take a piece of salami. Iker glares at him, and he migrates to the table.
"He bleeds." Iker says, putting the meat, lettuce, and mayo back in the fridge. "He says things hurt him."
He sits at the table and hands Sergio his plate. He can see Cesc outside the window, running around with the dog. He found the red ball the neighborhood kids kicked into Iker's yard a year or so ago. It's faded with age and most of the bounce is baked out of the rubber. It doesn't take Cesc long to figure out that Fandi will chase it when he throws. Every few minutes, Iker can hear the wheezing thump of it on the ground.
"Do you believe it?" Sergio asks.
"I don't know."
Cesc's hands are out and he's crouching, a bit. He fakes Fandi out and leaps to the side then Fandi catches up and jumps on him and Cesc laughs so hard his eyes crinkle up, hugging her head. Iker can't even figure out what game he's trying to play.
Sergio shows him his new tattoo, tells him about his job, and how Rene got married. He isn’t dating anyone, but he’s fucking a few people. He likes one of them a lot. He takes her on dates sometimes.
Iker tells him about the book he finished, and the one he’s working on. About his parents, and that no-one’s really heard from Unai, still.
"Dick," Sergio says, getting up to get another beer.
Iker shrugs, looks at the clock. It’s four. "Do you want to watch the game?"
"It's Barca playing," Sergio says, instead of "You haven't asked to watch a game in years."
Iker’s been paying for the channel all along, even if he hasn’t watched it in a while. One of the commentators is the same, one is different. The older one still has shit opinions about everything. Iker tells Sergio that and Sergio laughs and it’s kind of an ice-breaker-Iker asks questions and Sergio fills him in on what he’s missed, and what he wasn’t missing at all. "Last season was miserable."
The sun starts setting, and Sergio finishes his beer.
"I should go," he says. I have a date goes unspoken. He gets up and stretches, takes the empty bottle to the kitchen.
Iker turns down the volume, then looks out the window at Cesc. He's been sitting in the grass under the orange tree for close to an hour now. Fandi is lying next to him, exhausted, and Cesc is talking to her. Iker finds himself wondering what he's saying.
Sergio comes out and links up her leash, says something to Cesc. Cesc laughs.
Sergio smacks the back of Iker’s head lightly on the way out. "Next week. Derby time."
Iker grunts agreement and closes his eyes.
After a few minutes, Cesc plops down next to him, close. He smells like oranges and dirt. "Can I watch the TV with you?"
Iker doesn't say no, so Cesc stays. After a while, Iker opens his eyes.
The EPL’s on now, Tottenham versus Manchester City. Cesc is staring, riveted, at the screen.
"Do you know what's happening?" Iker asks.
"No," Cesc replies.
Iker explains the rules. Cesc is hyperwarm on his side, like being in the sun all afternoon heated him through. He absorbs information quickly, and only has to ask questions once. Iker feels him tense when anyone gets near the posts. He jumps a little when Tevez finally scores, grinning a huge wide grin.
After the game, a highlights show comes on.
"Why do you watch it?" Cesc asks, resting his head back on the couch. Iker looks at him and Cesc smiles, lolls his head to look back.
For a second, Iker forgets what he was going to say.
"Because you like one of the teams," he says finally.
"I like the red and blue ones," Cesc replies, sitting up with firm resolve.
Iker looks at the screen to see who it is. He laughs and Cesc grins, seeing him, even though he can’t know what’s funny.
A new game starts after the highlights show ends. Iker takes a long breath, relaxes back on the couch. He’s tired from beer and socializing, and he feels comfortable. Before he drifts off, he feels Cesc’s head lean lightly on his shoulder. He doesn’t nudge him off.
When he wakes up, it’s completely dark outside. He rubs his eyes and half sits up, feeling a little thirsty. His shoulder feels light, and he looks at Cesc.
At some point, the game ended and Cesc figured out the remote. He flipped the station and his eyes are locked on the screen, expression horrified.
Iker sits up straighter, wide awake now, and sees the international news channel. They’re doing coverage on a genocide somewhere, and he wonders how long Cesc’s been hearing machine guns, seeing kids with swollen bellies and blowflies on their face. He carefully pries the remote out of his hand and turns the TV off.
Cesc keeps staring at the black screen.
Iker takes his wrist and leads him through the hallway, then to his room. He goes in the bathroom and brushes his teeth and changes, and when he comes out, Cesc is still just standing in the middle of the floor.
Iker gets into bed. "You can lie down," he says.
Cesc does. Iker turns off the lamp. After a little while, Cesc shifts closer to Iker. When he doesn't get into trouble, he scoots even closer.
"Do you know how to sleep?" Iker asks him quietly. It's too dark to see his features, but he can tell that Cesc is looking at him.
"Yes."
Iker wakes up in the middle of the night. His eyes adjust to the dark and he sees Cesc is half curled up near him, eyes still open.
"They killed those people," he says.
Iker moves forward, half-asleep. He folds him in his arms.
"Go to sleep."
Cesc inches closer until their bodies are pressed together.
When Iker wakes up in the morning, Cesc is sleeping soundly, his hand holding on to Iker's shirt.
The orange tree blooms. Cesc tries just bringing the flowers in that have fallen off; Iker tells him where to cut twigs, so it won’t hurt the tree. A few sit in a jar of water in the middle of the table. The house smells good for days.
Holding Cesc is always comfortable. When they get into bed, Cesc lies close until Iker sets the alarm and silences his phone, then cuddles up against his body when Iker wraps his arms around him. When Iker feels too hot, just out of the shower, Cesc feels comfortably cool. And when he's too cold, which is most of the time, Cesc is warm, but not hot. He sleeps with his hands under his chin-sometimes he turns one around, rests his fingers against Iker’s collarbone.
It gets to the point where it’s hard for Iker to fall asleep without him there.
One day, it’s bright and sunny.
"Do you want to go outside?" Cesc asks.
Iker looks up from his toast. Most people would repeat the question with a "please," but Cesc just stands there, looking very hopeful.
Iker finishes his toast and puts his shoes on. He goes to find a sweatshirt but Cesc tugs his sleeve, moves to the door.
"It isn't very cold."
It is cold, but not in a wintry way. Just a morning way. Iker remembers being happy about that when David first moved them out here, that fall and winter never really happen.
The air smells a lot cleaner outside. Cesc shows him the birdbath, which he's washed out and refilled, and a bald spot where some grass is growing. He takes Iker to the orange tree, ruefully nudges a fruit on the ground with his shoe. "These are all falling off. I don't know if we can make food from them."
The flowerbed comes last. It looks completely empty. Iker wonders if some of his buds died.
"There's one plant here," Cesc says, pressing the soil with his finger. He must have replanted. "And here. And here."
He lifts up a leaf on what might be a blackberry bush, looking inside. It occurs to Iker that Cesc is doing all this, coming out here every day, and he doesn’t even know what will happen. He’s taking care of dirt and brambles when he doesn’t even know what a garden in bloom looks like.
"I find these sometimes," Cesc says, grinning and reemerging. He puts a caterpillar in Iker’s hand.
They watch nature shows on Thursday nights. Cesc likes the HD ones, with the rainforests and the frogs leaping in slow motion. Usually he’s asleep before ten, slumped on Iker’s shoulder.
Iker doesn’t know how he sleeps. If he’s actually recharging, or-he thinks it’s something like a computer hibernating. That he pulls inside himself and rests when he’s comfortable, but his body keeps breathing and his heart keeps beating, ready to wake up later.
Iker figures it isn’t that much different than how he sleeps, really. He fixes the blanket up over Cesc’s shoulders.
One morning Iker wakes up and Cesc is lying close to him on the bed, fully dressed. He’s placing gentle kisses on Iker’s lips.
"What are you doing?" Iker asks.
Cesc strokes his cheek with two of his fingers, looking down at Iker’s mouth. "Kissing," he replies.
"Where did you learn that?"
"On TV."
Iker lies there for a few minutes, waking up, then takes Cesc's hand. Each of his fingers is wrapped in clumsy bandaids.
"Did you garden this morning?"
"Yes."
Iker rubs inside his palm, then brings his hand up. He kisses the pad of the bandaid on his ring finger. Cesc blinks slowly, watching.
Iker notches their hips together. He rests Cesc’s hand on his side, then lays his own over Cesc’s. Cesc bends his knee a little over Iker’s thigh.
"Like this when we kiss, okay?"
Cesc nods, his forehead pressed against Iker’s. He kisses Iker again. Iker kisses back.
cont.