(no subject)
title: caught
pairing: leo messi/david villa
words: ~4500
rating: r
summary: footballkink2 prompt: messi/villa. rumors start up when they're photographed, you know, like the whole ibra/pique debacle... here
Leo wakes up and sees the following on his phone:
Four missed calls from his brother Rodrigo, two with voicemails.
One text from Rodrigo: Call me as SOON as you wake up.
Three missed calls from the offices of FC Barcelona, and three voicemails.
One text from Gerard Pique: Haha!
One missed call from his mother. Voicemail.
One missed call from David Villa. No voicemail.
It’s hard to make sense of, especially right as he wakes up. He pulls himself out of bed to brush his teeth and grab something to eat before he calls his brother back.
“Don’t you have practice in like an hour?” is the first thing Rodrigo says when he picks up, and Leo thinks it’s too early in the morning for that.
“Why is everyone bothering me,” he mutters, scooping a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth. It burns his tongue and he hisses.
Rodrigo clears his throat. “Look, I need to give you a heads up about something,” he says, his tone careful. Leo blows on his cereal to cool it off, grunts at him to continue.
“You’re on the cover of Marca,” Rodrigo says, and Leo’s confused because he’s always on the cover of Marca.
“I’m always on the cover of Marca,” he says with his mouth full. He presses the phone between his shoulder and ear and starts peeling a banana.
“Wow, cocky much?” Rodrigo says, and it’s times like these Leo regrets having his brother as his manager.
“Rodrigo,” he says, his voice a warning.
Rodrigo clears his throat, says, “Look, it’s kind of… a weird picture, okay?” Leo waits. “It’s with Villa.”
Leo slides off his barstool and deposits his empty bowl in the sink with a clatter. He huffs out a breath of air in annoyance. “Rodrigo, we’re on the cover of Marca all the time, so I don’t know why you’re bothering me and I need to get ready for practice-“
“Will you just go on the website and look at it and call me back? Do it now. Okay? Call me right back!”
Leo hits end call and throws his phone on the couch in annoyance, but he goes to his computer to look anyway.
When the picture loads, Leo blinks in surprise. It’s not a photo of them on the pitch like he’d been expecting; after looking for a little while, Leo thinks it’s taken outside the restaurant where they had a team lunch the week before. They’re partially concealed by a bush, but the angle makes it look like Villa’s hand is on his face, and he’s leaning in-
The headline says, “Caught!”
Leo clicks the link and it takes him to a gallery of pictures of him and Villa, mostly celebrating goals, always pushed close together, and he sighs.
He calls Rodrigo back.
“Okay, I looked,” he says.
“Bro, you know I don’t care what you do with your life, I just want you to be prepared because you’re gonna get questions…” Rodrigo starts, and it takes Leo a minute to realize what he’s saying and what he means.
“Wait, Rodrigo, wait,” he says, his tongue tripping over the words as he tries to speak over his brother. “You don’t think- it’s not what it looks like,” he says incredulously.
Rodrigo is quiet.
“Rodrigo,” Leo says, and his voice is rising.
“Leo, you’re my brother,” he says eventually, and Leo can tell that he’s trying so hard to sound sincere that he can only laugh.
“You’re my brother,” he says, “and I’m telling you-“
“It doesn’t matter, okay?” Rodrigo interrupts. Leo can tell he doesn’t believe him. “The important thing is you’re prepared for the questions you will get.” Leo flops back on his bed, stares at the ceiling.
“People don’t actually believe stuff like this, do they?” he asks finally. “I mean, Villa and I aren’t even that close-"
“Leo,” Rodrigo interrupts. “Are you prepared?”
Leo’s not sure he is.
There’s a lot more paparazzi outside the training center than usual, and Leo flips down his sunshade so they can’t get a good shot of him. He pulls his hood over his head when he walks from his car to the door; he can hear them yelling, but he can’t make anything out except his name and Villa’s, and he’s glad for that.
In the locker room, Pique’s the first one to crack.
He’s staring at Leo and when Leo finally turns to him to glare back, Pique cracks up. “Busted!” he crows. “No, wait. Caught!”
Leo rolls his eyes. “It’s a tabloid, give me a break.”
“Marca’s not really a tabloid,” Pique muses. “More of a sports daily, I’d say. Anyway, they have pictures.” He smiles like he’s pulled a trump card.
“A picture. One. And didn’t they have a picture of you and Zlatan like a year ago too?” Leo asks, pulling his training clothes out of his locker. “Are you saying that was real?”
Pique’s face goes sour, but he recovers quickly. “That was different,” he says. “We weren’t kissing.”
“Neither were we.”
“One second later and-"
“And nothing,” Leo says, loudly, and slams his locker shut. Pique looks startled. “It really isn’t what it looked like, okay?” he says, his voice softer.
Pique says, “Okay,” but his smile gives him away.
When Villa comes in he keeps his head down and doesn’t say a word to anyone. He looks angry, but Leo figures his face looks like that a lot of the time; then again, Leo’s never seen it so red.
Leo’s not sure if it’s better or worse to say something to him. When everyone else gets caught up in a faux-fight between Puyol and Pique, something about Puyol’s shin guards, Leo drifts over to where Villa is sitting on a bench pulling his socks on, head still down.
“Hey,” he says quietly. Villa doesn’t look up and Leo can see his jaw working.
Leo says, “I know this is stupid, but don’t worry about it, it’ll blow over soon-"
“You had sauce on your face,” Villa says suddenly, looking up Leo.
“I- what?” Leo stutters. He looks around to see if anyone’s paying attention to them, but they’re not.
“Remember? You had sauce on your face, and you kept missing it, so I-" Villa cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “And now this? I get to be woken up by my mom crying on the phone?”
Leo feels bad, because it’s obvious Villa isn’t used to it, not to the extent Leo is. Without thinking about it, Leo reaches out and touches Villa’s hair, and immediately-
“Get a room,” someone yells, and catcalls surround them. Leo drops his hand in shock, and Villa fixes him with a stony glare before he turns back to finish getting dressed.
Pep pulls him aside before practice, but when they’re out of ear shot of the group, he doesn’t say anything. Just looks at Leo.
“What?” Leo asks finally.
Pep hesitates, but he says, “Is this going to be a problem?”
Leo sighs. “It’s just a paper, it’s not the first time-“
“I don’t mean the paper, Leo.”
Leo searches his face and it takes a minute before he realizes, Pep, even Pep thinks-
He says, “Pep, we’re not. Anything. It’s just a rumor.”
Pep raises an eyebrow. He says, “Just don’t let it become a problem, okay?” And Leo can’t argue with Pep, of all people, so he just sighs and nods.
Pep dismisses him to go stretch. He looks around, and the only person free to partner with is…
Villa’s looking at him like it’s his fault, like he made Villa touch his face or he planted a paparazzi in a bush or he printed the photo and wrote the story, and it makes him mad. He stalks over and flops on the ground, lifts a leg for Villa to hold up. Villa won’t even look him in the face.
“I don’t know why you’re mad at me,” Leo hisses, after the silence stretches on past the point of being bearable.
“I’m not mad at you,” he mumbles, but he still doesn’t look at Leo’s face.
“Then stop being such an asshole,” Leo says quietly.
Villa leans down, pushing heavily on his leg and Leo winces, says, “Too hard.”
Next to them, Bojan cracks up. Leo sighs, stares at the clench of Villa’s jaw.
Leo’s tired. It’s been a long week; the press hasn’t let up at all, even though Barcelona and Leo and Villa all issued statements. And their teammates hadn’t made it any easier, teasing them and making them pair off whenever possible, and Villa was still acting like a jackass and it all just made Leo really, really tired.
It’s not something he’s thought often, but when he climbs on the team bus, he thinks he’ll be happy to get out of Barcelona for awhile.
Gaby’s sitting near the middle of the bus in a window seat, and Leo sets his bag in the seat next to him. Gaby’s reading, but he looks up and sees Leo there and he says, “Oh. I think Javier is going to sit here, is that cool?”
Leo looks at him in disbelief, sees the smile creeping across his face, and gets it. He sweeps a glance around the rest of the bus and finds Villa, near the back, already looking at Leo and his face just looks so- mad, and annoyed, and almost as tired as Leo feels. Leo says, “You, too, Gaby?” as he picks up his bag.
“I want you to be happy, Leo,” Gaby says, and Leo’s too frustrated to tell him he’s doing the opposite, just slings his bag back over his shoulder and treks down the aisle to settle in next to Villa.
“This isn’t my fault,” he says as he pulls his headphones out of his bag. Villa just grunts.
In front of them, Dani turns around, sticks his face between the seats. “Lovers’ quarrel?” he asks with a wide grin.
Leo sees Villa’s fist clench and wonders if he should even try to stop him, if he swings for Dani.
It’s not often anymore that they have to share hotels rooms, but when they end up in Eastern Europe for a Champions League game, the hotel isn’t big enough for separate rooms. Leo likes to room with Javier or Gaby, but Pep puts them together and Leo in a room with Bojan, which is fine by him, really. Bojan doesn’t snore and lets Leo pick what to watch, and he isn’t Pique, so, it could be worse.
Except he opens the door to his room and it’s not Bojan there, it’s Villa, and Leo thinks the look on Villa’s face must match the one on his own. He lets the door swing shut behind him and stares down at the key in his hand. “They must have switched it out on us,” he says.
Villa’s standing over his suitcase, and he sighs and goes back to it. “Whatever. I’m over this bullshit,” he says, and Leo hopes it’s true because he’s over Villa’s attitude.
Later, after dinner- where everyone made them sit next to each other- Villa flicks on the TV. Neither of them can understand the language, but they find a comedy from a few years back that they’ve both seen so it doesn’t matter much anyway. Even though they’re not talking, it’s only semi-tense, and Leo’s relieved.
“You know what sucks the most about this whole thing?” Villa says suddenly. Leo looks over at him but he’s still watching the TV.
“What?” Leo asks, because there’s a lot of things he can think of that suck about it- how no one believes them, and how he feels like he’s being laughed at all the time, how he really is being followed all the time, how Villa isn’t really his friend anymore-
“Everyone thinks we’re getting laid right now, and we’re not,” Villa says. He waits a beat and looks over at Leo. “That’s a pretty shit deal for us.”
Leo stares at him blankly and then lets out a bark of surprised laughter. When he hears it, Villa laughs too, and then they’re both cracking up, falling over on their beds, until Leo has tears in his eyes and his mouth starts to hurt.
They stop laughing when someone from next door pounds on the wall. Villa looks at him, a little surprised, and his eyes light up.
Leo asks, “Do you know who’s over there?”
Villa picks up the hotel phone immediately and dials the room next door. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he barely gets the phone back in its cradle before he’s laughing again, so much that he can’t tell Leo what’s so funny for a while.
“It’s Victor and Andres,” he finally manages to get out.
Leo laughs softly. “Perfect.”
Villa reaches back and grabs at his headboard, gives it a shake. “Yeah, this should be enough to keep them up for awhile.” It continues to rattle after he lets go and he looks over at Leo with wide eyes. “Damn. Imagine actually having sex in these beds.”
Leo freezes and then coughs. He thinks the room feels hot suddenly.
Villa clears his throat, and when Leo peeks over, there’s red creeping over his cheeks. Leo smiles to himself, wants to cover his mouth so Villa won’t see.
They go back to watching the movie, and when the credits roll, Villa looks at his watch and says, “Let’s give them half an hour to get to sleep, yeah?” Leo nods and gets up to rummage through his luggage for pajamas.
He strips off the team’s travelling shirt and folds it carefully before reaching for an old adidas tee to sleep in. Before he slides it over his head, he glances at Villa, and he thinks- he could swear- that Villa’s watching him instead of the TV, but maybe- Maybe.
Leo takes his toothbrush into the bathroom, splashes cold water on his face. Thinks, wouldn’t it be ironic… but doesn’t let himself finish the thought.
When he gets back in the bedroom, Villa’s already changed, into a v-neck and flannel bottoms that look incredibly soft, that Leo would want to touch, if-
He sits back on his own bed, keeps his head buried in a magazine that he isn’t reading.
Villa breaks the silence when he says, “Ready?” and Leo can’t help smiling when he thinks about how pissed Victor and Andres are going to be to get woken up, and like this.
Villa turns over onto his knees, so he’s facing his headboard, and he gives it a push. It thumps against the wall and then ricochets back a few times, and Villa flashes a wide grin at Leo. He pushes the board a few more times and then he starts bouncing on his knees, making the headboard slam back and forth more forcefully. Finally he jumps to his feet and starts jumping on the bed casually, keeping his head ducked, smiling lazily. The headboard slaps against the wall violently.
Leo gets to his own feet and starts bouncing gently, because there’s no sounds yet from the other room so obviously they need to be louder. Villa looks over at him with a wide grin still splitting his face, and he winks. He winks, and Leo wants to laugh, is about to laugh, because he’s trapped in a room with Villa who everyone thinks he’s sleeping with and they’re jumping on the fucking beds like five year olds-and then they hear a huge thump against the wall, and again, so hard that the walls shake and Leo can’t take it, he can’t, he cracks up, just loses it at the thought of Victor punching the walls in a rage, or even better, Andres-
Suddenly Villa’s leapt off his own bed and onto Leo’s, and his hand snakes around Leo’s mouth. Leo almost freezes, except they’re still bouncing gently, the headboard still rattling against the thin walls. Villa’s face is close, so close, and he’s still smiling, when he leans in-
He leans in and he says softly, “I don’t want them to think having sex with me makes you laugh like that.” Leo’s lips twitch into a smile and he can feel Villa’s palm hot against them. He swallows, wonders if Villa can feel his heart pounding, tells himself it’s from all the jumping.
Villa must realize how close they are because he drops his hand and takes a step back, jumps a few times, and then there’s a cracking sound and the bed tilts. Leo freezes with wide eyes, and Villa starts to tip over but catches himself.
Villa jumps off the end of the bed and drops to his knees, peering under the bedskirt. His head pops up a second later. “Yep. Broke the bed.”
Leo sinks to his knees and peers over the edge of the bed, seeing the cracked leg himself. “Oh,” he says. “Well, shit.”
He looks up. Villa’s still kneeling on the floor next to the bed, and his face is so close their noses are almost touching, and he has this soft half-smile on it, and he’s looking at Leo, not at the bed, and Leo thinks, what-
But again Villa seems to snap out of it, looks back down and reaches down to shake the leg, as if that would fix it. “Never took you to be the type of celebrity to trash a hotel room,” he says as he stands up, and he’s smiling but it’s different now, closed off.
“Me?” Leo asks incredulously, after he recovers. “This bed was fine until you decided to leap on over-“
Villa laughs loudly. “Leap, huh? You make me sound so graceful.” Leo knows he’s joking but he blushes anyway.
“Well, we’ll have to explain that in the morning,” Villa says, and he pulls back the covers on his bed. “And also hope Victor doesn’t murder us, I guess.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo mutters, pulling back his own sheets. “You break my bed and make me sleep in it anyway. Worst roommate ever.”
“Whatever,” Villa says, and he’s laughing as he turns the lights out. “You had fun.” It’s quiet for a minute before he says, “I guess it would be more fun to break the bed doing the real thing though.” And Leo can’t see his face now, in the dark, but his tone is- Leo can't tell if he's joking, doesn’t know whether to laugh, or say something, and then too much time passes and it’s just silent.
It’s quiet for a long time before Villa whispers, “Leo?”
Leo thinks about pretending to be asleep, but he doesn’t know why. “What?” he whispers back.
It’s quiet again for long enough that Leo thinks he isn’t going to say anything, but then- “We forgot to give them a grand finale.”
Leo laughs loud enough that there’s more banging from next door, and he falls asleep with a smile on his face.
In the morning, when they’re packing up to leave, Villa says, his voice low and thick with sleep, “I had fun last night.”
Leo looks up, surprised, but Villa keeps his head down as he packs. Leo starts to say something, but Villa continues. “It’s been kind of a shitty week, so. Thanks. For being cool.”
He never looks up, and Leo doesn’t respond. Things change, after that.
It gets easier in that, once they just go with it and stop arguing, their teammates seem to lose interest in teasing them. Like it was only fun when it was making them miserable. When they just pair off without anyone saying anything, no one even gives them a second glance, and Leo stops feeling like he’s being stared at all the time. Which is nice. And it’s easier because it feels like him and Villa are in it together instead of like Villa hates him because this happened.
But that makes it harder too. It’s hard, when he’s talking to Villa and he’s looking at his teeth and thinking about how the front two are crooked, thinking about how they would feel under his own mouth, thinking that if everyone already thinks they’re together anyway, what harm can there be-
He blames Marca, really.
Leo kisses him in the locker room.
He’s been thinking about it for weeks, and then they’re just there, alone in the locker room after practice, and Villa’s talking about watching the Liverpool game that weekend, and he smells like soap, his hair is dripping water and there’s pools gathering around his collarbones, and Leo touches them gently and then he kisses Villa.
Villa freezes for so long that Leo almost does too, but then he presses back, hard, his teeth smashing into Leo’s own. Leo’s hand finds his hair and sinks in and it’s still so wet, there’s water running down Leo’s arm and soaking his own clean tee, but he doesn’t care. Villa’s lips are soft and cold and they’re sliding against Leo’s, and then he’s nipping Leo’s lip, biting down until it almost hurts but in the best way.
Leo’s chest swells, and it feels something like relief, but more, and he kisses Villa’s cheek, his jaw, his throat. Villa’s hands are clenched in his shirt.
And then Villa pulls back, and his eyes are wide and dark. The front of Leo’s clothes are soaked from his chest. Villa swallows and looks away.
“I need to get dressed,” he says, and he stands up. Whatever Leo was feeling before, it’s quickly turning into sinking dread in the pit of his stomach.
Villa puts a hand on his hair and smiles a little bit, leans over and kisses his head. He says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Leo,” and Leo doesn’t know if it’s a promise or a dismissal.
Leo doesn’t see him tomorrow. He doesn’t come to practice for two days; Xavi says he has the flu.
On the third day Leo wakes up to two missed calls from his brother.
He eats an omelet and a banana and calls back when he’s going through his closet, looking for something to wear.
“Morning, sunshine,” his brother answers cheerfully.
“What do you want now?” he asks, even though the truth is he likes talking to his brother and has missed him with the craziness of what’s been going on lately.
Rodrigo laughs. “I hope you feel like a jackass when you find out I’m calling to apologize.”
Leo yawns. He hasn’t even talked to Rodrigo lately, so he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Apologize for what?”
“For that whole Villa thing,” Rodrigo says. Leo pauses. “For not believing you. It just looked so- well, whatever. It obviously wasn’t and you’re my brother and I should have believed you.”
Leo grabs a shirt off a hanger without looking at it and goes back into his room. “Okay,” he says finally. “I don’t- where is this coming from?”
Rodrigo says impatiently, “Do you ever look at the news?" Leo doesn't answer, so he goes on. "There’s pictures of Villa with some woman in AS today. It’s pretty obvious- I mean, it’s clear we all had the wrong idea.”
Leo concentrates on keeping his breathing even. “I just woke up,” is all he can say.
Rodrigo doesn’t say anything for a minute, but Leo barely notices. “Okay,” Rodrigo says finally. “Well, I’m sorry, okay?”
Leo snaps, “Rodrigo, don’t,” and he hangs up before his brother can say anything else.
Leo somehow makes it to training without pulling over to buy AS, but his hands ache from gripping his steering wheel. He hopes Villa doesn’t come to practice again, but there he is when Leo walks in, looking slightly pale, pulling on his training shorts. Leo feels kind of ill himself.
“So it wasn’t true,” Pique says, walking up to Leo and slinging an arm around his shoulder. Leo doesn’t say anything; he opens his locker and pulls out his gear. “Or,” Pique goes on, “Maybe it was true and these new pictures aren’t?” Leo continues to pretend he isn’t there, and he looks around. “Anyone?”
Leo shoves Pique’s arm off his shoulder. “Shut up, Pique, for once,” he mutters.
He seems to realize Leo is serious and backs off a little. He says, “I’m just kidding, Leo. You should be happy this media stuff will die down now.” He looks at Villa, who is studiously not looking at them but obviously listening. “Villa did you a favor.”
Leo can’t help it and he laughs. He looks at Villa, tries to smile, but he can feel that it’s more of an ugly sneer and he doesn’t even care. “Thanks,” he says, and Villa barely glances up at him. “Thanks for the favor.”
Villa shuts his locker quietly and walks out.
When Leo gets home after practice, Villa’s already on his doorstep.
He takes his time walking from the car to the door. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says when he gets close.
Villa stands up and brushes off his pants. “Why not? The press isn’t looking for us anymore.”
Leo unlocks his door and walks inside; he doesn’t invite Villa in, but he doesn’t close the door behind him either. “Right,” he says, tossing his keys into a dish with a clatter. “Thanks to you.”
Villa grabs his arm, hard enough that Leo has to spin to face him. “Exactly,” Villa says forcefully. “Thanks to me.”
Leo looks at him, confused. He yanks his arm away. “I don’t understand,” he says slowly.
Villa doesn’t look at him, but he reaches out to take his arm again, this time softly, by the wrist. He sweeps his thumb over it. “You do.” Leo looks at him and looks at him, and he thinks he might but he doesn’t want to be wrong, so he shakes his head.
“They wouldn’t leave us alone,” he says quietly, so quietly Leo has to lean in to hear it. He looks up, sets his jaw defensively. “I did it before- Before. The pictures. They were before you- but I’m not sorry.”
Leo takes a deep breath. He wants to laugh, but instead he just leans in further, rests his forehead against Villa’s. After a long moment, he says, “But now we have to tell them all again.”
Villa meets his eyes with a soft smile. “No, we don’t,” he murmurs, and his hand comes up to the back of Leo’s neck, tangles in the hair there.
Leo hums his agreement before Villa’s lips find his own, before they stumble up the stairs to his bedroom, before Villa cracks a joke about the sturdiness of his headboard.
They don’t have sex, not then, but Villa holds down his hips and blows him and then links their hands together while he jerks himself off, and Leo’s almost too overwhelmed from that alone. His heart pounds; he can’t believe, can’t believe, can’t believe that he has Marca to thank for this-
Later, when they’re laying in the bed staring at the ceiling, Villa says offhandedly, “We’ll have to be careful.”
Leo says, “I’ll try not to get anymore sauce on my face.” Villa laughs, presses his face into Leo’s stomach to muffle it. Leo runs a hand through his hair and says quietly, “Wouldn’t want to get caught.”
pairing: leo messi/david villa
words: ~4500
rating: r
summary: footballkink2 prompt: messi/villa. rumors start up when they're photographed, you know, like the whole ibra/pique debacle... here
Leo wakes up and sees the following on his phone:
Four missed calls from his brother Rodrigo, two with voicemails.
One text from Rodrigo: Call me as SOON as you wake up.
Three missed calls from the offices of FC Barcelona, and three voicemails.
One text from Gerard Pique: Haha!
One missed call from his mother. Voicemail.
One missed call from David Villa. No voicemail.
It’s hard to make sense of, especially right as he wakes up. He pulls himself out of bed to brush his teeth and grab something to eat before he calls his brother back.
“Don’t you have practice in like an hour?” is the first thing Rodrigo says when he picks up, and Leo thinks it’s too early in the morning for that.
“Why is everyone bothering me,” he mutters, scooping a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth. It burns his tongue and he hisses.
Rodrigo clears his throat. “Look, I need to give you a heads up about something,” he says, his tone careful. Leo blows on his cereal to cool it off, grunts at him to continue.
“You’re on the cover of Marca,” Rodrigo says, and Leo’s confused because he’s always on the cover of Marca.
“I’m always on the cover of Marca,” he says with his mouth full. He presses the phone between his shoulder and ear and starts peeling a banana.
“Wow, cocky much?” Rodrigo says, and it’s times like these Leo regrets having his brother as his manager.
“Rodrigo,” he says, his voice a warning.
Rodrigo clears his throat, says, “Look, it’s kind of… a weird picture, okay?” Leo waits. “It’s with Villa.”
Leo slides off his barstool and deposits his empty bowl in the sink with a clatter. He huffs out a breath of air in annoyance. “Rodrigo, we’re on the cover of Marca all the time, so I don’t know why you’re bothering me and I need to get ready for practice-“
“Will you just go on the website and look at it and call me back? Do it now. Okay? Call me right back!”
Leo hits end call and throws his phone on the couch in annoyance, but he goes to his computer to look anyway.
When the picture loads, Leo blinks in surprise. It’s not a photo of them on the pitch like he’d been expecting; after looking for a little while, Leo thinks it’s taken outside the restaurant where they had a team lunch the week before. They’re partially concealed by a bush, but the angle makes it look like Villa’s hand is on his face, and he’s leaning in-
The headline says, “Caught!”
Leo clicks the link and it takes him to a gallery of pictures of him and Villa, mostly celebrating goals, always pushed close together, and he sighs.
He calls Rodrigo back.
“Okay, I looked,” he says.
“Bro, you know I don’t care what you do with your life, I just want you to be prepared because you’re gonna get questions…” Rodrigo starts, and it takes Leo a minute to realize what he’s saying and what he means.
“Wait, Rodrigo, wait,” he says, his tongue tripping over the words as he tries to speak over his brother. “You don’t think- it’s not what it looks like,” he says incredulously.
Rodrigo is quiet.
“Rodrigo,” Leo says, and his voice is rising.
“Leo, you’re my brother,” he says eventually, and Leo can tell that he’s trying so hard to sound sincere that he can only laugh.
“You’re my brother,” he says, “and I’m telling you-“
“It doesn’t matter, okay?” Rodrigo interrupts. Leo can tell he doesn’t believe him. “The important thing is you’re prepared for the questions you will get.” Leo flops back on his bed, stares at the ceiling.
“People don’t actually believe stuff like this, do they?” he asks finally. “I mean, Villa and I aren’t even that close-"
“Leo,” Rodrigo interrupts. “Are you prepared?”
Leo’s not sure he is.
There’s a lot more paparazzi outside the training center than usual, and Leo flips down his sunshade so they can’t get a good shot of him. He pulls his hood over his head when he walks from his car to the door; he can hear them yelling, but he can’t make anything out except his name and Villa’s, and he’s glad for that.
In the locker room, Pique’s the first one to crack.
He’s staring at Leo and when Leo finally turns to him to glare back, Pique cracks up. “Busted!” he crows. “No, wait. Caught!”
Leo rolls his eyes. “It’s a tabloid, give me a break.”
“Marca’s not really a tabloid,” Pique muses. “More of a sports daily, I’d say. Anyway, they have pictures.” He smiles like he’s pulled a trump card.
“A picture. One. And didn’t they have a picture of you and Zlatan like a year ago too?” Leo asks, pulling his training clothes out of his locker. “Are you saying that was real?”
Pique’s face goes sour, but he recovers quickly. “That was different,” he says. “We weren’t kissing.”
“Neither were we.”
“One second later and-"
“And nothing,” Leo says, loudly, and slams his locker shut. Pique looks startled. “It really isn’t what it looked like, okay?” he says, his voice softer.
Pique says, “Okay,” but his smile gives him away.
When Villa comes in he keeps his head down and doesn’t say a word to anyone. He looks angry, but Leo figures his face looks like that a lot of the time; then again, Leo’s never seen it so red.
Leo’s not sure if it’s better or worse to say something to him. When everyone else gets caught up in a faux-fight between Puyol and Pique, something about Puyol’s shin guards, Leo drifts over to where Villa is sitting on a bench pulling his socks on, head still down.
“Hey,” he says quietly. Villa doesn’t look up and Leo can see his jaw working.
Leo says, “I know this is stupid, but don’t worry about it, it’ll blow over soon-"
“You had sauce on your face,” Villa says suddenly, looking up Leo.
“I- what?” Leo stutters. He looks around to see if anyone’s paying attention to them, but they’re not.
“Remember? You had sauce on your face, and you kept missing it, so I-" Villa cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “And now this? I get to be woken up by my mom crying on the phone?”
Leo feels bad, because it’s obvious Villa isn’t used to it, not to the extent Leo is. Without thinking about it, Leo reaches out and touches Villa’s hair, and immediately-
“Get a room,” someone yells, and catcalls surround them. Leo drops his hand in shock, and Villa fixes him with a stony glare before he turns back to finish getting dressed.
Pep pulls him aside before practice, but when they’re out of ear shot of the group, he doesn’t say anything. Just looks at Leo.
“What?” Leo asks finally.
Pep hesitates, but he says, “Is this going to be a problem?”
Leo sighs. “It’s just a paper, it’s not the first time-“
“I don’t mean the paper, Leo.”
Leo searches his face and it takes a minute before he realizes, Pep, even Pep thinks-
He says, “Pep, we’re not. Anything. It’s just a rumor.”
Pep raises an eyebrow. He says, “Just don’t let it become a problem, okay?” And Leo can’t argue with Pep, of all people, so he just sighs and nods.
Pep dismisses him to go stretch. He looks around, and the only person free to partner with is…
Villa’s looking at him like it’s his fault, like he made Villa touch his face or he planted a paparazzi in a bush or he printed the photo and wrote the story, and it makes him mad. He stalks over and flops on the ground, lifts a leg for Villa to hold up. Villa won’t even look him in the face.
“I don’t know why you’re mad at me,” Leo hisses, after the silence stretches on past the point of being bearable.
“I’m not mad at you,” he mumbles, but he still doesn’t look at Leo’s face.
“Then stop being such an asshole,” Leo says quietly.
Villa leans down, pushing heavily on his leg and Leo winces, says, “Too hard.”
Next to them, Bojan cracks up. Leo sighs, stares at the clench of Villa’s jaw.
Leo’s tired. It’s been a long week; the press hasn’t let up at all, even though Barcelona and Leo and Villa all issued statements. And their teammates hadn’t made it any easier, teasing them and making them pair off whenever possible, and Villa was still acting like a jackass and it all just made Leo really, really tired.
It’s not something he’s thought often, but when he climbs on the team bus, he thinks he’ll be happy to get out of Barcelona for awhile.
Gaby’s sitting near the middle of the bus in a window seat, and Leo sets his bag in the seat next to him. Gaby’s reading, but he looks up and sees Leo there and he says, “Oh. I think Javier is going to sit here, is that cool?”
Leo looks at him in disbelief, sees the smile creeping across his face, and gets it. He sweeps a glance around the rest of the bus and finds Villa, near the back, already looking at Leo and his face just looks so- mad, and annoyed, and almost as tired as Leo feels. Leo says, “You, too, Gaby?” as he picks up his bag.
“I want you to be happy, Leo,” Gaby says, and Leo’s too frustrated to tell him he’s doing the opposite, just slings his bag back over his shoulder and treks down the aisle to settle in next to Villa.
“This isn’t my fault,” he says as he pulls his headphones out of his bag. Villa just grunts.
In front of them, Dani turns around, sticks his face between the seats. “Lovers’ quarrel?” he asks with a wide grin.
Leo sees Villa’s fist clench and wonders if he should even try to stop him, if he swings for Dani.
It’s not often anymore that they have to share hotels rooms, but when they end up in Eastern Europe for a Champions League game, the hotel isn’t big enough for separate rooms. Leo likes to room with Javier or Gaby, but Pep puts them together and Leo in a room with Bojan, which is fine by him, really. Bojan doesn’t snore and lets Leo pick what to watch, and he isn’t Pique, so, it could be worse.
Except he opens the door to his room and it’s not Bojan there, it’s Villa, and Leo thinks the look on Villa’s face must match the one on his own. He lets the door swing shut behind him and stares down at the key in his hand. “They must have switched it out on us,” he says.
Villa’s standing over his suitcase, and he sighs and goes back to it. “Whatever. I’m over this bullshit,” he says, and Leo hopes it’s true because he’s over Villa’s attitude.
Later, after dinner- where everyone made them sit next to each other- Villa flicks on the TV. Neither of them can understand the language, but they find a comedy from a few years back that they’ve both seen so it doesn’t matter much anyway. Even though they’re not talking, it’s only semi-tense, and Leo’s relieved.
“You know what sucks the most about this whole thing?” Villa says suddenly. Leo looks over at him but he’s still watching the TV.
“What?” Leo asks, because there’s a lot of things he can think of that suck about it- how no one believes them, and how he feels like he’s being laughed at all the time, how he really is being followed all the time, how Villa isn’t really his friend anymore-
“Everyone thinks we’re getting laid right now, and we’re not,” Villa says. He waits a beat and looks over at Leo. “That’s a pretty shit deal for us.”
Leo stares at him blankly and then lets out a bark of surprised laughter. When he hears it, Villa laughs too, and then they’re both cracking up, falling over on their beds, until Leo has tears in his eyes and his mouth starts to hurt.
They stop laughing when someone from next door pounds on the wall. Villa looks at him, a little surprised, and his eyes light up.
Leo asks, “Do you know who’s over there?”
Villa picks up the hotel phone immediately and dials the room next door. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he barely gets the phone back in its cradle before he’s laughing again, so much that he can’t tell Leo what’s so funny for a while.
“It’s Victor and Andres,” he finally manages to get out.
Leo laughs softly. “Perfect.”
Villa reaches back and grabs at his headboard, gives it a shake. “Yeah, this should be enough to keep them up for awhile.” It continues to rattle after he lets go and he looks over at Leo with wide eyes. “Damn. Imagine actually having sex in these beds.”
Leo freezes and then coughs. He thinks the room feels hot suddenly.
Villa clears his throat, and when Leo peeks over, there’s red creeping over his cheeks. Leo smiles to himself, wants to cover his mouth so Villa won’t see.
They go back to watching the movie, and when the credits roll, Villa looks at his watch and says, “Let’s give them half an hour to get to sleep, yeah?” Leo nods and gets up to rummage through his luggage for pajamas.
He strips off the team’s travelling shirt and folds it carefully before reaching for an old adidas tee to sleep in. Before he slides it over his head, he glances at Villa, and he thinks- he could swear- that Villa’s watching him instead of the TV, but maybe- Maybe.
Leo takes his toothbrush into the bathroom, splashes cold water on his face. Thinks, wouldn’t it be ironic… but doesn’t let himself finish the thought.
When he gets back in the bedroom, Villa’s already changed, into a v-neck and flannel bottoms that look incredibly soft, that Leo would want to touch, if-
He sits back on his own bed, keeps his head buried in a magazine that he isn’t reading.
Villa breaks the silence when he says, “Ready?” and Leo can’t help smiling when he thinks about how pissed Victor and Andres are going to be to get woken up, and like this.
Villa turns over onto his knees, so he’s facing his headboard, and he gives it a push. It thumps against the wall and then ricochets back a few times, and Villa flashes a wide grin at Leo. He pushes the board a few more times and then he starts bouncing on his knees, making the headboard slam back and forth more forcefully. Finally he jumps to his feet and starts jumping on the bed casually, keeping his head ducked, smiling lazily. The headboard slaps against the wall violently.
Leo gets to his own feet and starts bouncing gently, because there’s no sounds yet from the other room so obviously they need to be louder. Villa looks over at him with a wide grin still splitting his face, and he winks. He winks, and Leo wants to laugh, is about to laugh, because he’s trapped in a room with Villa who everyone thinks he’s sleeping with and they’re jumping on the fucking beds like five year olds-and then they hear a huge thump against the wall, and again, so hard that the walls shake and Leo can’t take it, he can’t, he cracks up, just loses it at the thought of Victor punching the walls in a rage, or even better, Andres-
Suddenly Villa’s leapt off his own bed and onto Leo’s, and his hand snakes around Leo’s mouth. Leo almost freezes, except they’re still bouncing gently, the headboard still rattling against the thin walls. Villa’s face is close, so close, and he’s still smiling, when he leans in-
He leans in and he says softly, “I don’t want them to think having sex with me makes you laugh like that.” Leo’s lips twitch into a smile and he can feel Villa’s palm hot against them. He swallows, wonders if Villa can feel his heart pounding, tells himself it’s from all the jumping.
Villa must realize how close they are because he drops his hand and takes a step back, jumps a few times, and then there’s a cracking sound and the bed tilts. Leo freezes with wide eyes, and Villa starts to tip over but catches himself.
Villa jumps off the end of the bed and drops to his knees, peering under the bedskirt. His head pops up a second later. “Yep. Broke the bed.”
Leo sinks to his knees and peers over the edge of the bed, seeing the cracked leg himself. “Oh,” he says. “Well, shit.”
He looks up. Villa’s still kneeling on the floor next to the bed, and his face is so close their noses are almost touching, and he has this soft half-smile on it, and he’s looking at Leo, not at the bed, and Leo thinks, what-
But again Villa seems to snap out of it, looks back down and reaches down to shake the leg, as if that would fix it. “Never took you to be the type of celebrity to trash a hotel room,” he says as he stands up, and he’s smiling but it’s different now, closed off.
“Me?” Leo asks incredulously, after he recovers. “This bed was fine until you decided to leap on over-“
Villa laughs loudly. “Leap, huh? You make me sound so graceful.” Leo knows he’s joking but he blushes anyway.
“Well, we’ll have to explain that in the morning,” Villa says, and he pulls back the covers on his bed. “And also hope Victor doesn’t murder us, I guess.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leo mutters, pulling back his own sheets. “You break my bed and make me sleep in it anyway. Worst roommate ever.”
“Whatever,” Villa says, and he’s laughing as he turns the lights out. “You had fun.” It’s quiet for a minute before he says, “I guess it would be more fun to break the bed doing the real thing though.” And Leo can’t see his face now, in the dark, but his tone is- Leo can't tell if he's joking, doesn’t know whether to laugh, or say something, and then too much time passes and it’s just silent.
It’s quiet for a long time before Villa whispers, “Leo?”
Leo thinks about pretending to be asleep, but he doesn’t know why. “What?” he whispers back.
It’s quiet again for long enough that Leo thinks he isn’t going to say anything, but then- “We forgot to give them a grand finale.”
Leo laughs loud enough that there’s more banging from next door, and he falls asleep with a smile on his face.
In the morning, when they’re packing up to leave, Villa says, his voice low and thick with sleep, “I had fun last night.”
Leo looks up, surprised, but Villa keeps his head down as he packs. Leo starts to say something, but Villa continues. “It’s been kind of a shitty week, so. Thanks. For being cool.”
He never looks up, and Leo doesn’t respond. Things change, after that.
It gets easier in that, once they just go with it and stop arguing, their teammates seem to lose interest in teasing them. Like it was only fun when it was making them miserable. When they just pair off without anyone saying anything, no one even gives them a second glance, and Leo stops feeling like he’s being stared at all the time. Which is nice. And it’s easier because it feels like him and Villa are in it together instead of like Villa hates him because this happened.
But that makes it harder too. It’s hard, when he’s talking to Villa and he’s looking at his teeth and thinking about how the front two are crooked, thinking about how they would feel under his own mouth, thinking that if everyone already thinks they’re together anyway, what harm can there be-
He blames Marca, really.
Leo kisses him in the locker room.
He’s been thinking about it for weeks, and then they’re just there, alone in the locker room after practice, and Villa’s talking about watching the Liverpool game that weekend, and he smells like soap, his hair is dripping water and there’s pools gathering around his collarbones, and Leo touches them gently and then he kisses Villa.
Villa freezes for so long that Leo almost does too, but then he presses back, hard, his teeth smashing into Leo’s own. Leo’s hand finds his hair and sinks in and it’s still so wet, there’s water running down Leo’s arm and soaking his own clean tee, but he doesn’t care. Villa’s lips are soft and cold and they’re sliding against Leo’s, and then he’s nipping Leo’s lip, biting down until it almost hurts but in the best way.
Leo’s chest swells, and it feels something like relief, but more, and he kisses Villa’s cheek, his jaw, his throat. Villa’s hands are clenched in his shirt.
And then Villa pulls back, and his eyes are wide and dark. The front of Leo’s clothes are soaked from his chest. Villa swallows and looks away.
“I need to get dressed,” he says, and he stands up. Whatever Leo was feeling before, it’s quickly turning into sinking dread in the pit of his stomach.
Villa puts a hand on his hair and smiles a little bit, leans over and kisses his head. He says, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Leo,” and Leo doesn’t know if it’s a promise or a dismissal.
Leo doesn’t see him tomorrow. He doesn’t come to practice for two days; Xavi says he has the flu.
On the third day Leo wakes up to two missed calls from his brother.
He eats an omelet and a banana and calls back when he’s going through his closet, looking for something to wear.
“Morning, sunshine,” his brother answers cheerfully.
“What do you want now?” he asks, even though the truth is he likes talking to his brother and has missed him with the craziness of what’s been going on lately.
Rodrigo laughs. “I hope you feel like a jackass when you find out I’m calling to apologize.”
Leo yawns. He hasn’t even talked to Rodrigo lately, so he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Apologize for what?”
“For that whole Villa thing,” Rodrigo says. Leo pauses. “For not believing you. It just looked so- well, whatever. It obviously wasn’t and you’re my brother and I should have believed you.”
Leo grabs a shirt off a hanger without looking at it and goes back into his room. “Okay,” he says finally. “I don’t- where is this coming from?”
Rodrigo says impatiently, “Do you ever look at the news?" Leo doesn't answer, so he goes on. "There’s pictures of Villa with some woman in AS today. It’s pretty obvious- I mean, it’s clear we all had the wrong idea.”
Leo concentrates on keeping his breathing even. “I just woke up,” is all he can say.
Rodrigo doesn’t say anything for a minute, but Leo barely notices. “Okay,” Rodrigo says finally. “Well, I’m sorry, okay?”
Leo snaps, “Rodrigo, don’t,” and he hangs up before his brother can say anything else.
Leo somehow makes it to training without pulling over to buy AS, but his hands ache from gripping his steering wheel. He hopes Villa doesn’t come to practice again, but there he is when Leo walks in, looking slightly pale, pulling on his training shorts. Leo feels kind of ill himself.
“So it wasn’t true,” Pique says, walking up to Leo and slinging an arm around his shoulder. Leo doesn’t say anything; he opens his locker and pulls out his gear. “Or,” Pique goes on, “Maybe it was true and these new pictures aren’t?” Leo continues to pretend he isn’t there, and he looks around. “Anyone?”
Leo shoves Pique’s arm off his shoulder. “Shut up, Pique, for once,” he mutters.
He seems to realize Leo is serious and backs off a little. He says, “I’m just kidding, Leo. You should be happy this media stuff will die down now.” He looks at Villa, who is studiously not looking at them but obviously listening. “Villa did you a favor.”
Leo can’t help it and he laughs. He looks at Villa, tries to smile, but he can feel that it’s more of an ugly sneer and he doesn’t even care. “Thanks,” he says, and Villa barely glances up at him. “Thanks for the favor.”
Villa shuts his locker quietly and walks out.
When Leo gets home after practice, Villa’s already on his doorstep.
He takes his time walking from the car to the door. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says when he gets close.
Villa stands up and brushes off his pants. “Why not? The press isn’t looking for us anymore.”
Leo unlocks his door and walks inside; he doesn’t invite Villa in, but he doesn’t close the door behind him either. “Right,” he says, tossing his keys into a dish with a clatter. “Thanks to you.”
Villa grabs his arm, hard enough that Leo has to spin to face him. “Exactly,” Villa says forcefully. “Thanks to me.”
Leo looks at him, confused. He yanks his arm away. “I don’t understand,” he says slowly.
Villa doesn’t look at him, but he reaches out to take his arm again, this time softly, by the wrist. He sweeps his thumb over it. “You do.” Leo looks at him and looks at him, and he thinks he might but he doesn’t want to be wrong, so he shakes his head.
“They wouldn’t leave us alone,” he says quietly, so quietly Leo has to lean in to hear it. He looks up, sets his jaw defensively. “I did it before- Before. The pictures. They were before you- but I’m not sorry.”
Leo takes a deep breath. He wants to laugh, but instead he just leans in further, rests his forehead against Villa’s. After a long moment, he says, “But now we have to tell them all again.”
Villa meets his eyes with a soft smile. “No, we don’t,” he murmurs, and his hand comes up to the back of Leo’s neck, tangles in the hair there.
Leo hums his agreement before Villa’s lips find his own, before they stumble up the stairs to his bedroom, before Villa cracks a joke about the sturdiness of his headboard.
They don’t have sex, not then, but Villa holds down his hips and blows him and then links their hands together while he jerks himself off, and Leo’s almost too overwhelmed from that alone. His heart pounds; he can’t believe, can’t believe, can’t believe that he has Marca to thank for this-
Later, when they’re laying in the bed staring at the ceiling, Villa says offhandedly, “We’ll have to be careful.”
Leo says, “I’ll try not to get anymore sauce on my face.” Villa laughs, presses his face into Leo’s stomach to muffle it. Leo runs a hand through his hair and says quietly, “Wouldn’t want to get caught.”