it was a dark dream, darlin' it's over
espejos de sol y sal
1.
Francesc Fàbregas Soler, as Joaquín finds out, isn't as nice as people would have you think he is.
Maybe it's from too many years of being too young. Of being tough or being destroyed, because Cesc is both deliberately and accidentally charming, but you can't win everyone over and Joaquín knows this. He also knows that no one that accomplished at nineteen can be genuinely selfless or kind. Inherently good-hearted, sure, but success is unforgiving. It wrenches and robs, pulls and grabs and takes, takes, takes. Joaquín figured this out when he was twenty-one. Cesc learned when he left Barcelona.
They do share something after all.
2.
"Flamenco is dying. Our ships are sinking."
Joaquín turns his head and blows a short stream of smoke out towards the Weiße Elster river. It is the middle of June in Leipzig, and they are sitting outside the restaurant, poorly shaded by an umbrella. A desert heat has stormed the city, white and blinding and heavy. Even the river moves sluggish and ill, its surface too smooth. Cesc shifts in his seat. His hair sticks to his forehead, his neck. Tourists buzz slowly around the square like sated bees. It doesn't seem worth the effort to speak, but there Joaquín is, across the table and talking, the edge of his face lit into a burning brilliance by the sun. It suits him, this weather, saturates the colors of his face into a vital sort of boldness.
"Fucking globalization," he finishes. Cesc takes a sip of his Coke. The ice cubes have melted and it's disgusting. Even the drops of condensation on his glass feel stale and dirty.
"We have a game tomorrow."
(Cesc doesn't say what he thinks. Doesn't say that he's used to English music and English shows, Girls Aloud and Hollyoaks, that if you mentioned flamenco to Londoners, they would smile out of condescending curiosity and picture lovely countryside Spaniards in straw hats and bright clothing from Franco's rule. He doesn't say, developed regions don't depend on shipping industries anymore.
He doesn't say, do you know what people think of you, you and your gypsy blood, your parties and your money? Do you know what they say?)
Joaquín's mouth twitches. He blows the smoke at Cesc this time before grinding out his cigarette in the ring of water Cesc's glass left behind on the metal table. It hisses and briefly flares orange before dying.
3.
There's no real reason for it. There's no real reason why Cesc spends so much time with Joaquín, why they kiss, why they fuck in empty hotel rooms in the middle of the day. If asked, Cesc could give a multitude of explanations, none of them complete truths. I'm nineteen, he could say. I'm a horny teenager, and girlfriends aren't allowed in.
Or even: It's how absolutely careless Joaquín is, and how absolutely careless he makes you. You drift around him a little too often and he'll pull you in, and it's like you're helpless. He'll suck the will out of you without even trying, just by being himself.
Or maybe: No, no. It's his laugh that does people in. When he throws his head back, teeth showing, white and sharp, the line of his neck and jaw dog - no - wolf-like. He doesn't laugh politely; it's rude and loud and full as if it has traveled all the way up from his abdomen before spilling out from his mouth into the air.
Or, most truthfully: It's a challenge. A childish dare.
4.
"What does it feel like to never stop underachieving?"
Joaquín thrusts harder and Cesc silences, bites his lip enough to draw blood. There's a thin half-curve of red-brown on the pillow the next morning, stiff and daring in the sunlight, a constant taunt. He keeps it there, wants Cesc to see it, wants to remind him of where he was last night, body shifting beneath Joaquín's own: naked and submissive, powerless except for his words, words, only words, and they hardly speak the same language anymore. Without syntax, syllables and stresses are nothing but movements of a tongue, the futile attempt of an abused muscle to mimic the heart.
He finds Cesc sitting on the couch watching television and getting toast crumbs mercilessly all over the carpet.
"You're losing that Catalan accent," Joaquín tells him.
"Fuck you." Cesc doesn't even bat an eye, just keeps on crunching. Joaquín shrugs and sits next to him, grabbing a piece of toast out of Cesc's hand.
"Well, you could try."
(What Joaquín wants to tell him: Despite everything, it is still Spain, that flag, the red and yellow - blood and gold, wine and dandelions, passion and glory. Joaquín is still Spain. That's the difference.
"I'll never go to England," he tells Cesc in Berlin, as they walk next to the last remnants of the Berlin Wall on the Mühlen-strasse in search of a decent club. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard.
Cesc shrugs, cuts his eyes towards him briefly. "I don't think you'd like it there."
"Too boring?"
"No, too much work." He grins, then, shoves Joaquín with his shoulder. "Besides, Spanish girls are prettier.")
5.
Hannover is the last city they visit in Germany.
Afterwards, Cesc's face is in all the newspapers and on all the television screens. He refuses to talk about it out of a mixture of stubborness and humiliation. Joaquín, if he were that sort of person, would tell him: No one would ever tease you for that, not you, not everything you are.
But he's not, he doesn't.
That night, Cesc asks him, Why do you want me? Why me? Joaquín smiles, bares his teeth. Who wouldn't want you, prodigy. He's half-serious. Shut the fuck up, the boy snarls in return, presses his mouth to Joaquín's neck, shoves him backwards over the arm of the couch and straddles him. Shut up, shut up, shut up, mouth sloppy and hands uncharacteristically frantic. It is then that Joaquín realizes Cesc is shaking, literally, his shoulders and the thin line of his jaw; he grabs those wrists and stills him. Calm down, he says. I'm here, he means.
(Things get lost in communication, he knows. Gestures, looks, silences - they're all misinterpreted, ignored, unseen. Most of the time, Joaquín is glad for it, but sometimes, this time, he hopes he is understood. He hopes Cesc hears. He hopes.)
The lights are dim and Cesc's staring at his hands; Joaquín can't see his face at all, so he pulls him toward him until they're lying chest to chest, Joaquín's chin in Cesc's hair, Cesc's face, the sharp bones and thin skin, pressing against his ribs.
Jesus, kid, he says, trying to breathe softly, not every day is going to be like this. You'll get another chance. It's easy to comfort someone else when you've already experienced the worst yourself. After Korea, Joaquín knows the meaning of loss. He doesn't need another definition, and sometimes he wonders if that's cursed him, if it's never going to stop nipping his heels. They fall asleep like that, and when Joaquín wakes up, he's got a blanket over him, but Cesc is gone.
No, Cesc has never been that kind.
He's cruel in the worst way - he makes people care about him, he makes people love him, even, without trying, without doing anything out of the ordinary, and he never, ever realizes. He doesn't see it. Joaquín eats breakfast alone, and he thinks, I can't be your friend and sleep with you, I can't want you and care about you at the same time. It's one or the other, he understands, and maybe he's wrong, but he can't, he can't --
It's not in Joaquín's nature to be soft, kind to the people he fucks other than his wife. It's not something he wants to mix, sex and maybe love, sex and a nineteen year old boy in London who loves everyone but no one.
6.
Cesc sits next to him on the flight back. Their feet bump, their bags get hopelessly mixed together, Cesc accidentally spills peanuts onto Joaquín's jacket. Finally, he asks, "What are you listening to?"
Joaquín pulls one headphone off. "Camarón de la Isla."
"Flamenco?"
"Yeah."
"Is he as good as everyone says?"
"He's the best."
"What's that song?"
"This one?" Joaquín hums. "Entre la tierra y el cielo no hay mujeres con más sal que las gitanas del Puerto. It's good."
Cesc paused.
"Do you think they'd sell his stuff in England?"
"Yeah, yeah. If you look hard enough."
7.
The afternoon they get back, Joaquín takes Cesc to a port. They walk along the boardwalk in bare feet and watch the ships pull in and out, old, their sides scarred by rust and shells, colors faded but the metal still strong, still immovable, shining through. They sit side by side at the edge of the water and don't talk about football, or plans, or the future.
In that moment, they are, regardless of their respective ages and their sins and what they have or haven't done, only boys, no more; they are just boys, the lines of their arms and backs suddenly innocent and harmless, ankles only ankles and not joints to be insured and protected, feet skimming the surface of the waves.
In that moment, there is no world, no politics or religion, no money or media. They exist outside of culture and context; they could be anyone, this could be any place, any day of any year. This, this silence, is the truest they have ever been to and with each other, the most honest.
Just two boys trying not to let the sea rise above their heads, two boys trying not to drown in each other.
8.
But moments are just that. They pass.
Joaquín says, or, rather, does not say goodbye to Cesc in the passenger seat of his car. ("I'll visit you sometime, whenever." "You'll bring the Pro Evo, of course." "And you the beer." "And I'll fucking crush you this time, I swear." "Just try, Sanchez. Just try.")
It's not Cádiz, it's not London, it's not Barcelona or Valencia. It's not any of these cities, and maybe that's why Joaquín fits his hand around the Cesc's neck, pulls him in and kisses him, sweet and open-mouthed and careful for once. Maybe that's why.
notes: written in a few hours, please forgive the lameness. those who should be blamed for this know who they are. ♥ there are a lot of things mentioned here that i would develop or draw out further if i had 1) the intelligence or 2) the ability to do so, but as it is, not so much.
Camarón de la Isla is a famous flamenco singer and, according to Wikipedia, one of a certain Mr. Sanchez's childhood idols. That is basically the entire reason for the existence of this story. The ships refer to Cadiz's (Joaquin's hometown) dwindling ports and shipping industry.
espejos de sol y sal - mirrors of sun and salt (ie, the surface of an ocean).
Entre la tierra y el cielo no hay mujeres con más sal que las gitanas del Puerto - between the earth and the sky there are no women with more salt than the gypsies of the port.
The above two are both lyrics from one of de la Isla's songs, Bahía de Cádiz.
(Also, SS-ers, I am still slowly rereading all the fucking wonderful writing, so please forgive me if I've somehow ripped off your brilliance. IT IS NOT MY FAULT YOU ARE ALL SO GOOD. :( Oh, and duh, vampiric references are all zauberer_sirin's property.)