drop our anchors in a storm [iker/cesc]
title | drop our anchors in a storm
fandom/pairing | football ; iker casillas/cesc fabregas; secondary sergio ramos/fernando torres
rating | pg-13.
[chapter] word count | ~7k
summary | “So you, like, kill people,” Cesc says, breaking the silence that has filled the car for nearly an hour. iker, fernando, and sergio kill people for a living. cesc hitchhikes. iker finds someone to save.
notes | lmfao omg idk I FINISHED SOMETHING????? this is really terrible and i'm basically just posting it so i can remind myself that i know how to write words. OOOPS. UM, YEAH IDK HERE IT IS. (ps yes i will write more of all i need one day, i promise!!)
Everybody wants to save the world, but no one wants to die.
(My Chemical Romance)
There’s a problem with picking a kid up from the side of the road, and it isn’t the fear that the kid’s family is going to miss him or that they’re going to lose him or that he’s going to accidentally get killed out there - because, to be honest, none of these things really matter in the long run, not a bit. No, the problem (if you ask Iker - except no one asked Iker, because if anyone had asked Iker in the first place the answer would have been “fuck no”) is that this kid doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, and he talks too much, and he’s going to get all of them killed if he doesn’t learn how to sit still for more than two seconds at a time.
“You’re such a grandpa,” Sergio says fondly, ruffling his hair, and Iker frowns. He isn’t. He knows how to have fun, and he laughs, and he smiles. But he glares, too; he glances in the rearview mirror and glares at this kid and his dirty fingernails and his knotted, too-long hair, hair that lies limply in his face.
“What’s your name, anyway?” he asks the kid gruffly, and he looks up at the reflection of Iker’s eyes in the mirror. He looks ridiculously at-home in the backseat, sprawled out with his feet on Sergio’s lap, and it’s strange considering he’s been in the car for less than ten minutes.
“Francesc,” he answers primly, with a coy little smile to match. Iker makes a face.
“Francesc?” he asks, and he’s being rude, it isn’t his fault that his name is long and doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue, but - but maybe in the back of his mind, Iker is hoping that the ruder he is, the more quickly this kid will just vanish altogether.
The boy seems nonplussed, though, and shrugs. “You can call me Cesc,” he says, and Sergio repeats it before Iker has a chance to: “Cesc.”
Sergio looks at the kid appraisingly and grins. “Cesc,” he says again, slower this time. “I like it.”
Cesc grins and glances up at Iker’s eyes again, looking for approval. Iker gives him none, simply looks back at the road and drives on.
Cesc, he thinks, and he tries not to let his lips curl backward, tries not to roll his eyes.
What happens is: they drop Iker off at the place. They don’t give it a name, because names make things complicated, but Iker leaves the car and brings his gun and doesn’t smile and doesn’t say goodbye, and Sergio and Fernando drive off looking for a way to kill the time (instead of the other things they could be killing). There’s an awkward, heavy thickness in the car, and it isn’t the heat or the broken air conditioning or the fact that this car is basically going to fucking collapse in the middle of the road one of these days; mostly it’s because Sergio looks at Fernando and sees dimples and cheekbones and a strong back and thighs and chest instead of just Fernando.
The worst part is Fernando doesn’t even notice - he doesn’t seem to feel the heat or the pressure or the fact that it’s so fucking awkward, the fact that Sergio can’t stop glancing at Nando instead of at the road. He reclines back with his bare feet on the dashboard, tapping his hands against his ripped jeans and talking about whatever shit he’s talking about - Sergio doesn’t even really hear him, he’s so distracted by trying not to want him, and he barely understands Nando when he tells him, loudly, that they’ve passed their exit.
“What?” Sergio asks, distracted, and Nando says, simply: “The exit. We passed it.”
“What?!” he asks again. “Fuck!”
He makes a sharp turn and nearly u-turns in the middle of the highway (before Nando explains, calmly, with an annoying (charming) tone of amusement, “I don’t think highways work that way, Sese”) before turning onto the nearest exit.
He’s curled up in an abandoned booth, way in the back of the diner. Sergio notices him immediately; Nando is too overcome by hunger to even give him a second glance, but Cesc notices both of them, looks at them with wide, curious eyes. It’s obvious that this town doesn’t get a lot of wanderers, not to mention those wearing leather jackets and ripped jeans and dirty boots and headbands and cocky, self-assured smiles. Their waitress fawns over Nando’s hair and smile, flirts with him, leans over the table so that he gets a good view down her shirt, but Nando - oblivious as always - points at about fifty items on the menu, orders enough for himself and Sergio and everyone else in the diner, and then sends her on her way with an easy “aaaaaaand that’ll be all!”
Sergio watches the boy in the corner, watches as he eats from a bag of sour skittles and drinks glass after glass of water. They invite him to the table.
By the time Cesc finishes his skittles, he’s already in.
“So you, like, kill people,” Cesc says, breaking the silence that has filled the car for nearly an hour. Sergio stiffens, Nando clears his throat and glances over at Iker. You’re the oldest, the glance says, You think of something. He sighs. If he had it his way, Cesc wouldn’t be here at all.
“No, we don’t,” he replies simply, and then he crosses his arms as if to punctuate his statement. Cesc lets out a gentle, childish laugh.
“Well, no, I wasn’t asking. You kill people.” He leans over and touches the skin by Iker’s ear, and Iker pulls away as if he’s been burned. “You have some blood, right there.”
Iker frowns and tries to rub his ear as inconspicuously as possible. Cesc notices.
“So,” he continues, “is it like, contract-killing? Do you get paid? Are you part of a gang? Or the mafia? Or have I just hooked myself up with some, like, psychos, like in that one movie where they pick up a hitchhiker and he kills them except the other way around?”
Fernando makes a small noise, and when Iker glances at him, he sees that he’s struggling to stop himself from bursting into laughter. Iker makes a face at him and then turns back around to look at Cesc. Cesc looks extremely pleased with himself.
“How old are you?”
Cesc looks down, looks suddenly embarrassed. He plays with a stray thread on the sleeve of his sweater, one of those ridiculous shirts with holes already cut in the ends of the sleeves for kids to slip their thumbs through; Iker hates the shirt, hates him, hates the fact that Sergio and Fernando are constantly Saving Things (and now People) and hates that he’s constantly Killing Things (and, always, People).
“Nineteen,” he says, and then, “so anyway,” and launches into a conversation about his sister and how her favorite color was always purple, and how she used to wear only purple for an entire year before she changed her mind and decided her favorite color was blue, and how -
His voice is relentless and incessant and it kind of kills Iker, a little bit. It’s grating in the worst possible way and what’s worse is the way Sergio and Fernando just let it happen, the way Sergio hms and oh, really?s and the way Fernando asks him questions, prompting more information, more detail. Iker slips his eyes shut and leans back in his chair, the repetitive up-and-down flow of Cesc’s words bouncing from ear to ear playing in his head like a metronome.
“Where’d you say your house was?” Iker asks one afternoon when Sergio and Nando are out “working” and Cesc is talking nonstop again, this time about the first time he was in school and how he was so nervous and embarrassed about reading a speech in front of the class that he blushed so deeply that everyone called him “Red” for the rest of the day. It isn’t that the story annoys him - it doesn’t really, that’s the thing. It’s that he thinks if Cesc keeps talking to him, he’s going to hate him less. And hating him less - or not hating him at all - isn’t an option.
So instead he cuts him off mid-sentence. It’s easier that way.
Cesc blinks at him. “I didn’t.”
Iker pauses, waiting for Cesc to follow up with … something. Anything. He doesn’t. This almost doesn’t surprise Iker.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Iker rubs his eyes. It’s hot; this isn’t surprising either, but it’s the type of heat that sticks on the surface of his skin like an extra layer, like a thick sweater. The heat makes him lightheaded, uneasy, sick. Cesc makes him lightheaded, uneasy, sick. Once, Iker wasn’t so terrible; he’s sure he wasn’t always so terrible.
(He has a clear memory of swinging his brother in his arms, like a rag doll, until he screamed out happily, laughing, red-faced and breathless. He thinks of this sometimes, when he washes the blood from his hands and wonders if he’s human at all.)
“Well,” he says again, “where is it? Are we even anywhere near?”
Cesc rubs his neck and turns around, looking around the empty parking lot. “Go somewhere fun,” Sergio had insisted, with Nando pulling at his elbow. “Take him to a park or something,” he’d said, as if Cesc was a puppy or an overactive child in need of entertaining. Iker had, instead, driven them to a McDonald’s, bought each of them a hamburger and fries and soda, and ate in the car in the parking lot, blasting the A/C. Except they were running out of gas, and Iker didn’t have the time or energy or money to buy more just yet, so he suggested they get some “fresh air.”
Except they haven’t yet felt this so-called fresh air.
When Cesc turns away, Iker can see the prickly heat forming on the back of his neck - it’s red and looks like a rash and Cesc keeps rubbing at it, and Iker wants to say, will you just stop it already? You’re such a child, but he doesn’t, because he isn’t a babysitter. He didn’t even take care of his own little brother, for Christ’s sakes.
(His thoughts turn to Unai again, in that moment, and that same pang of guilt and doubt and sadness rings in his heart, clear as a fucking bell.)
“Well?” Iker insists again, and Cesc makes a low noise, like he’s about to say something, and Iker’s cell phone rings. He grumbles - “we’re not done yet,” he promises Cesc, and Cesc turns around to grin at him - and answers it gruffly: “Yes?”
“Hey, Iker? Uh. Pick us up.”
Iker frowns. “Fernando? Are you okay? You sound like you’re running.”
Fernando laughs and in the background there’s a loud noise - something like gunshots, and then Sergio yelling, move your fat ass, Nando! - before he answers. “Well, Iker. Funny story.” Another noise in the background. “We are running, so, um…”
Iker grumbles and nudges Cesc in his side. Cesc looks at him, eyes wide with concern. Iker has received this phone call too many times; the fear of death doesn’t affect him anymore. Now it’s just a side-effect, just another con to a job with a very, very short list of pros.
“Get in the car,” Iker says to him. As they slide into their seats, Iker hands him the phone. “Tell me the directions Fernando gives you, very clearly. And slowly. And I swear to God, if you fuck this up, I’ll -”
Kill you, Cesc’s steady stare challenges, say it.
A moment passes.
“I’ll drop you on the side of the road,” Iker threatens finally, and it sounds fucking stupid, he knows it.
Cesc grins and rubs his neck again, more out of habit than necessity. Without thinking of it, Iker slaps his hand away.
“And stop rubbing that, it’ll get worse.”
Cesc smiles at him, wider this time. He drops his hand.
Iker becomes Cesc’s unofficial babysitter, and it’s tiring, and he hates it. He hates the way Cesc leans against him, like it’s natural, and the way he slips his arm through Iker’s, and the way he runs his finger down the back of Iker’s neck from the backseat of the car. But most of all, Iker hates the way it does feel natural. The way Cesc has fit into his life like a puzzle piece he didn’t know he was missing but suddenly can’t live without. Like there was a heaviness in his chest that he didn’t realize he didn’t like until someone lifted it slightly.
Sometimes, it isn’t so bad. (Most times. Most times it isn’t so bad.)
Cesc learns early on that he can make Iker do pretty much anything he wants if he tries hard enough. Iker was never really good with kids, with their incessant requests and questions, and Cesc simply needs to whine or ask more than once - that, paired with a frown, paired with puppy dog eyes, is about all he needs to get Iker to do whatever. While Fernando and Sergio go out on jobs, Cesc gets Iker to take him on trips - to the store, to the park. He even sneaks them into the movies.
Iker hates more things than he loves; it’s something he’s learned to do, something he’s picked up along the way - like how to hold a gun and where to hide one without looking conspicuous and how to get rid of fingerprints and how to -
But, like. Cesc loves more things than he hates. Or, loves things, period; Iker is almost completely positive that he doesn’t know how to hate a single thing in the world. Not even things even the calmest people dislike, like traffic or cold air or stains or hunger or waiting or flat tires.
Cesc smiles all the time. Cesc grins and smiles and touches - always gentle, feather-light touches. A finger on Iker’s cheek, an arm around his waist as they wait for Sergio in the store, a flick against his ear as Fernando kicks a pebble around an empty lot.
Iker becomes protective of him. He tells himself it’s in his blood, tells himself that it’s because Cesc is younger, that he needs to be saved.
The truth is, Iker worries that one day Cesc will see the same things Iker has seen - that one day he won’t find traffic amusing, that he won’t giggle as easily. That one day he’ll become Iker: cold and worn and withdrawn.
The truth is, Iker likes him, a little bit. Maybe.
He’s reminded of when Unai would play in the street and he would watch from the window and he’d hate him and his parents a little bit for giving him this responsibility, this responsibility of “Watch Your Brother.” He’s reminded of when Iker would watch him and hate everything and almost leave him at the park or in the yard or out with the kids, just because he could, just because he didn’t want anyone to rely on him. But something would always inevitably happen - a ball rolling into the street, a fight - and out Iker would run, out of his house or off the bench or out of his car, and he’d protect him and pull him away and take him home because that’s what he did for the people he loved.
Somehow this turned into the most extreme - somehow protecting the people he loved wasn’t good enough. Somehow he needed to protect everyone.
So they answer calls. So they get calls, visit the houses of those who have done wrong and eluded the police.
And the rest, well.
Iker washes his hands every night, goes on jogs or walks until he’s so exhausted that he can’t do anything but sleep. His mind never stops moving. He never stops imagining the look on the faces of those that he kills.
He tells himself that they deserve it, and most nights, that helps.
(He remembers:
“We found your son’s body.”
Iker had never been particularly hopeful - he always knew the likelihood of them finding him alive was slim. Boys who go missing from the park on sunny, bright days, hand-in-hand with strangers, rarely come back. He supposes maybe he should feel lucky that they found his body at all, that this is the same as the ending of a particularly long and painful movie. All he needs, he thinks, is for the credits to roll. For things to come to an end, so he can move on.
His mother lets out a small cry and buries her face in her husband’s chest. Iker suddenly remembers that his parents are there - much like his entire childhood and adolescence, his parents’ presence has never really been anything worth noting.
“And?” his father asks, sitting straighter.
Put an arm around her, Iker thinks. She’s your wife, put your arm around her.
His arms stay pinned to his sides.
“And - did you find who did it?”
The main police officer looks down at his hands. His partner steps forward, rubs his neck.
“Well,” he says. “The investigation is still ongoing.”
Iker looks at them closely. His parents don’t say anything. His mother sniffles.
“So, no, then,” he spits out, standing up.
The police officers are quiet.
“So you didn’t find the bastard that killed my brother.”
His mother whines. “Iker, stop this.”
Iker shakes his head.
“Never,” he promises, and storms out.)
One afternoon:
“I live near that first diner, the one where Fernando and Sergio found me.”
Iker glances over at Cesc, eyebrow raised. They haven’t been talking, and the sudden confession seems to come out of nowhere.
“I don’t have - my sister left a while ago, and my parents aren’t - well. They’re just.” He kicks at the floor and doesn’t look up. “Well, anyway, I was on my own. There was like, you know, a - bad crowd, I guess? But they liked me. And I like, did stupid shit with them. Like, really stupid shit. Like, we stole and stuff. And we lived in this like, barn thing. Together. Like… three of us. But then two left and it was just me and the other guy, and… And I like, took money. And ran, I guess.”
He looks up at Iker finally.
“It was stupid. I shouldn’t have left. But I just needed to… get out. Of that whole… thing. You know?”
Iker doesn’t say anything, but he steps forward and runs his fingers lightly through Cesc’s hair without even realizing what he’s doing. Cesc leans into his touch before reaching out and wrapping his arms around Iker. He buries his face in Iker’s chest.
“I can’t go back.”
Iker nods. “You don’t have to.”
The small voice in the back of his mind nags at him, tells him not to make such promises, reminds him that he never wanted Cesc to begin with.
He ignores it. He holds him.
It’s late in the evening and the moon and stars are out and the sky is clear and it’s the perfect sort of summer night that the three - four, Iker reminds himself, with a sigh - that the four of them love the most. It’s a rare night off, a night when none of them have any jobs the next day, and so they sit around the car in the middle of a field: Cesc on the roof, Iker resting against the hood, Sergio and Fernando in the back, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, backs against the bumper. They drink and share stories, but nothing too deep, nothing too heavy. When their lives are one murder after another, the only stories they want to hear before they drift into a lazy, alcohol-induced sleep are stories about first loves (never last loves) and embarrassing stories and mildly pornographic jokes. The more laughing the better, Cesc says, and Sergio ruffles his hair and smiles, “I love this kid.”
“Tell me about your family,” Cesc says suddenly, and Iker looks up at him, beer in hand.
He has this… smile on his face. This eager smile, childlike, all dimples and toothy grin and enthusiasm - Iker almost can’t say “no.”
Almost.
“No,” he says, after a few seconds. Cesc doesn’t even frown, his fucking smile doesn’t even falter. He can’t stand looking at it; he turns back to look down at the half-empty bottle in his hands.
“Anything,” Cesc adds gently. “Maybe, like, I dunno, where you grew up? Or, like, your favorite book when you were younger?”
Iker sighs.
“Or… when you started balding?”
Iker snaps his head back around, glaring, and Cesc’s grinning even wider, and he’s having a hard time stopping himself from laughing. Iker doesn’t know why but he grits out, “I’m not fucking balding,” and pulls Cesc down from the roof, down to the floor, and Cesc is finally laughing as Iker pushes him to the floor, pinning him beneath him.
He can’t decide if he wants to punch him or fuck him, suddenly, and the uncertainty throws him. His hands are against Cesc’s shoulders, pushing him into the dirt below, and it’s veryvery quiet, and Cesc is breathing heavily, and looking up at him with those big eyes, and his tongue darts out to lick his lips, and he reaches up to rest his hands (small, thin, long fingers) against Iker’s waist, and Iker thinks, Fuck, can’t you just hate something? Can’t you just hate me?
Suddenly, Cesc pulls Iker down to him, kisses him hotly, roughly - it’s all pressure and inexperience and Iker’s heart is racing and Cesc smells like such a fucking boy and Iker’s turned on and he realizes, distantly, that he hasn’t made out with someone in quite a long time. He knows where he wants to take this - he wants to drag him into the car, lock the doors, push him against the backseat like a teenager and slip his hands underneath Cesc’s dirty jeans, make him pant and cry out his name, and he can taste him already, can feel him, and -
It all happens at once, and then Iker thinks, no.
He pulls away and stands up. He’s breathless. Cesc is still laying on his back on the floor, and his chest is rising and falling, breathing harsh and exaggerated.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Iker croaks out, throat suddenly dry. Cesc licks his lips again, looks up at the sky.
Iker walks away, walks around, walks until he can’t anymore.
Cesc glances at Sergio and Fernando before slipping into the car, settling himself. He falls asleep with his fingertips pressed against his lips.
Sergio bumps Fernando’s shoulder with his own, knocking him out of a hazy reverie. He turns to look at Sergio and smiles sleepily.
“Fernando,” Sergio says, lightly, gently. Fernando knows he’s whispering so that Iker and Cesc can’t hear them.
“Sergio,” Fernando replies, bumping Sergio’s shoulder in response.
“Iker and I are going on the next job, and tomorrow we’re going to start driving, and I might not be able to see you before we leave, and -”
Fernando lets out a quiet, breathy laugh. “You’re rambling a little bit, Sergio.”
Sergio nods, forces out a laugh in response. “I know.”
“What’s up?” he asks again, sitting up a little straighter.
“I just - ” He takes a deep breath. He isn’t good at this. He has so many things he wants to say, like, I think I started loving you before you even said a thing, and, I’ve never loved anyone before, no one, but I want to love you and, I can’t help but love you and, if only you gave me a chance, I swear, I swear I’d be good to you, I’d do anything you asked, I’d stop this or continue it forever, I’d never mention it again or I’d mention it every day, I’d do anything, anything.
Instead, he clears his breath and begins with, “If anything happens…”
Fernando frowns. “Don’t talk like that.”
Sergio shakes his head. “No, I just.” Another sigh. “I just need - I need to say -”
Fernando’s hand flies up, grabs Sergio’s upper arm harshly. Sergio stops talking and instead looks at Fernando - his face, his scowl. He looks pissed and his mouth is set in a straight, angry line, but his eyes - his eyes betray him, show that there’s more to him than his quick temper. Sergio thinks that if he could only get the chance to look deep enough, the time to really search those eyes, he feels like he could learn more about Fernando than he could ever tell him -
“Stop,” Fernando says finally, letting go of his arm. “I don’t want to know.”
Fernando gets up, walks away, lies in the car next to Cesc. Cesc curls around him, sighing.
An hour later, Iker comes back to find Sergio in the same position, empty eyes staring blankly at the grass. When he sits next to him, Sergio puts his head on Iker’s shoulder.
The air is thick with silence. A cicada hisses.
Cesc and Fernando are dropped off at the diner before Sergio and Iker leave.
Sergio and Fernando don’t say much - a curt nod and a smile. They hug, and before they pull away, Fernando presses his lips against Sergio’s shoulder. Sergio feels it through his shirt, feels like he’s been branded.
Cesc and Iker stand far away, let Sergio and Fernando have their moment. They’re quiet, and Cesc reaches up on his tip-toes and kisses Iker’s cheek.
Iker frowns, swallows the don’t. do. that. that threatens to rise.
“Be safe, Iker,” Cesc says quietly. Iker looks at him carefully and notices how suddenly bashful he is. Iker sighs and cups Cesc’s cheek in his hand, runs his thumb over his bottom lip.
He hushes Cesc with a soft “shh,,” and then they’re off.
In the car, Iker drives while Sergio dozes (just barely, since the ride isn’t long and Sergio wakes himself up with his own talking). Sergio talks about everything - but unlike Cesc, who talks continuously as if on a loop, without the need for responses or questions, Sergio seems to need reassurance and comments in order to continue. Iker focuses on the road, focuses on “hm” and “oh” and “really”-ing at the right moments, while all the while he’s thinking about the feeling of Cesc’s soft lips against his.
“You’re gone, aren’t you?” Sergio asks, laughing gently.
Iker isn’t listening, so he simply responds: “Yeah?”
Sergio hits the side of his face and Iker jerks the wheel, causing the car to swerve on the empty road. He curses loudly and glares at Sergio.
“What the fuck, Sergio?”
“You haven’t listened to a single word I said.” He laughs. “You’re thinking about Cesc, aren’t you?”
Iker frowns, but he doesn’t say anything.
“He’s cute,” he says after a while. “Not really your type, but. Your type is metal and heavy and loaded with bullets.”
Iker glares at the road. “I don’t have a type.”
“Exactly,” Sergio says. It’s quiet again, and he lets out another breezy laugh. “He makes you smile. It’s weird.”
Without thinking about it, he asks, “What’s weird about it?”
Sergio shrugs. “The fact that it’s not weird at all. Does that make sense?”
Iker sighs. “No.”
“Yeah,” he answers, shaking his head. “That’s kinda why it works.”
Fernando and Cesc split fries.
“You’re in love with Sergio,” Cesc says after a while.
Fernando raises an eyebrow. “Who says?”
Cesc laughs. “Your face says.”
He scowls and looks down at his food.
“It’s okay,” Cesc adds quietly. “’Cause Sergio’s face says, too.”
Fernando looks up at him and half-smiles before deciding better of it. He throws a fry at his forehead and laughs.
(One day, he simply leaves home and never returns.
He has his license but no car, which isn’t helpful, and he has bus fare but no direction, which is even more helpful. He follows the road, hitchhikes to get by. He doesn’t talk much. There’s no need for conversation, not when he knows what he has to do, not when he has an aim and a goal and a job to do.
It’s a hot August afternoon when a tan, long-haired man slows down on a dirt road, looking at him carefully. In the passenger seat is a paler, more freckled man with permanent dimples and permanent smile lines.
“Hey,” the first man calls out. “Need a ride?”
Iker nods, gets in the backseat.
“I’m Sergio,” the man says, and then jerks his thumb at the man in the passenger seat. “This is Fernando.”)
Iker and Sergio are walking back to the car, worn and tired and grumpy and bloodstained, when they get the call.
“Iker,” Fernando pants out, breathing so harshly that Iker can practically hear the air moving through his lungs. “Iker, you guys need to come back, I’m sorry, I didn’t - I left for a second, I was just in the bathroom, and -”
Iker stops walking. Sergio, confused and ahead of him, turns to look at him. “What?”
Iker puts up a finger to quiet him.
“Fernando,” he says carefully, heart already racing. “What’s going on?”
Fernando is quiet. Iker remembers Unai again, suddenly; remembers the policemen in his house, the sense of dread, the feeling of knowing that someone you love is gone. Please, Iker thinks desperately, not him.
“Fernando,” he yells impatiently.
Fernando clears his throat.
“Cesc. He’s gone.”
The drive back to the diner is silent.
Sergio says, “We’ll find him,” and, “That kid’s a fighter, seriously,” and, “It’ll be okay.”
Iker doesn’t reply the entire time. Not until the diner is in sight.
“I’ll kill whoever did this,” he vows finally. “I’ll kill them.”
“He’ll be fine.”
Iker looks at him and Sergio sees the murderous intent in his eyes.
“I’ll kill him or be killed, I don’t fucking care.” He turns off the car and opens the door. “Someone’s going to pay.”
What he doesn’t say is, I’m not losing him, too.
Fernando has notes - witness accounts, descriptions of the car, the beginning digits of the license plate, the general direction that the car was seen driving towards.
“We were in the diner, and we were eating food - he kept ordering so much random shit, seriously, I don’t know how he eats so much - and then I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was gone, so I went outside to look for him and I saw him being dragged into someone’s car, and I thought I had my gun but I didn’t, I gave it to Sergio, and he doesn’t have a gun, and he wasn’t bleeding or anything but he was definitely being dragged, and I tried to chase after it but I didn’t have the car, and -”
“Shut up, Fernando.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry -”
“Stop talking. Just stop talking.”
He apologizes, over and over, as if he’s responsible - and maybe he is, but. Iker blames himself more than anyone. Because this is just another person that he couldn’t save.
(“So,” Sergio starts, as they follow the instructions Iker gave him. “What are you planning on doing? Once you, you know, get to this place. What is this place, anyway?”
Iker shifts in his seat.
“It’s someone’s house.”
Fernando rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah,” he replies. “But whose?”
Iker sighs. Sergio and Fernando look at each other carefully.
After a long while, Iker says: “The man who killed my brother lives there.”
Fernando turns around to study Iker.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Iker laughs dryly. “Don’t be.”
Fernando frowns and turns back to the road.
“He’ll be dead soon anyway.”)
They drive with no destination - just blankly following the highway in the direction where Fernando saw the car speeding off. The car is silent - no one talks, not even Sergio, and Iker knows he’s making Fernando feel terrible, and he does it on purpose. He tells himself that he won’t forgive Fernando if Cesc is found hurt (or worse, or worse, but he isn’t thinking that far, can’t think that far) but the truth is, he won’t forgive himself.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” he says, and it isn’t until Sergio answers (“It wasn’t your fault, Iker”) that he realizes he said it out loud.
Of course it was, he thinks. Sergio clears his throat. “Do you know where he could be? Maybe it was - a brother? Could it have been a brother, or his dad maybe?”
Iker shakes his head.
“He doesn’t have a brother. He was on his own, he’d run away from home -”
And then he remembers.
His heart speeds up again.
He feels something strangely akin to hope, but he isn’t that naïve - he refuses to let himself be optimistic or hopeful, not yet.
“Look for a barn,” he commands.
(It takes days to get to his house, and when Sergio and Fernando drop him off - “Just leave me and don’t look for me ever again,” he tells them, as he slams the door behind him - he walks with purpose. He thinks maybe he’ll need to slam the door down, or break a window and climb in. He settles on knocking on the door and telling him he has something important to tell him.
His gun is heavy in his hand when he takes it out of his inside coat pocket and points it at the man’s chest.
The man begs a little bit, which is to be expected - “No, no, it wasn’t me, no, please, don’t” - but he doesn’t see pictures of a wife or kids, doesn’t see anything in the house that makes him look redeemable in any way.
So instead Iker says, “Fuck you.”
He has never shot someone before. His hand shakes. He isn’t prepared for the blood or the noise or the sound or the sight.
He cries and rubs his hands on his pants and smears the blood even worse. He stumbles to the kitchen and gets sick. He thinks, I killed someone. I just ended a life. I killed someone.
He splashes water on his face and reminds himself that this man killed someone first. He tells himself that if he were to open a bible, there would be words about tit for tat and an eye for an eye. He chooses to remember these passages instead of turn the other cheek and murder is the gravest of sins.
Sergio and Fernando are waiting for him in the same spot. They open the door for him and he slides in, still half-crying.
After a long while, Fernando asks, “Where to next?”)
This time, it doesn’t take days. It takes two hours.
It’s dark out, and they’re running out of gas, and one of their headlights are out, and they can barely see the other cars (if there are other cars) but they focus on the fields, on the houses and farmland and grassland. Because Iker knows - he just knows that they’re close.
Fernando points at the field. “Is that -?” and Iker slows down, and he says again, “That’s a barn, isn’t it? A few yards away?”
He stops the car. Grabs his gun. Takes off running.
Sergio and Fernando stumble out of the car, run to follow, but Iker yells out “stay where you are” over his shoulder.
His gun is in his hand. It still feels as heavy as the first time.
By the time he gets to the barn, he doesn’t think - doesn’t knock. He kicks the small door down and rushes inside, gun out, breathing heavy. The inside of the barn smells, and there’s water dripping from the roof, and it’s hard to see anything - it’s nearly pitch-black and Iker thinks, maybe I should be quiet. He walks gingerly, afraid to bump into anything, afraid to breathe too loudly. There’s a low noise - like whimpering - in the corner, and Iker thinks, Cesc.
He keeps one hand against the wall, the other on his gun - pointed in the darkness, pointed at nothingness. There’s a small bit of light coming from a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and then someone in the corner - the person who whimpered - moves. He’s seated. He’s tied to the chair. His head is down, and his forehead is bloody.
“Cesc,” Iker whispers.
He sits up. “Iker?” he croaks out, and Iker’s relief takes control again - suddenly he wants to put the gun down, kiss him, run his hands through his hair, hold him close, whisper -
Cesc shakes his head. “No, Iker, don’t - You’re going to get hurt, just -”
Iker runs forward and kneels down, unties the knots. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’m here.”
Cesc rubs his now-free wrists and touches Iker’s cheek. His nose looks broken, and there’s a gash on the side of his forehead, and there’s blood on his face and he has a black eye and he looks terrible, but Iker wants to kiss him just for the mere fact that he’s alive, that his heart is beating and he’s breathing and he’s alive.
Fuck it, he thinks, and he kisses him, again and again, gentle kisses as he fumbles to free him, as he fumbles to help him up.
“I thought you told me not to do that again,” Cesc mumbles, and Iker quiets him with another and another.
There’s a loud noise towards the front of the barn as someone barges in. The light is in Iker’s eyes and he can’t see anything and he’s just naïve and hopeful enough to assume it’s Sergio and Fernando. He stands up, ready to ask for help, and the words are on the tip of his tongue, and he begins to ask, and -
The man - whoever it is, though Iker is now fairly sure it’s the same man who took Cesc - runs at him, knocks him into the wall. The gun falls out of Iker’s hand and he curses himself, curses his stupidity. The man has a knife out, he realizes, once he feels it stab into his shoulder, and Iker cries out, surprised and angry and in pain. He wants this man to die even more than he did before. He wants to kill him with his bare hands - fuck the gun, fuck it all.
He feels the knife slash against his stomach, and all at once Iker remembers that he isn’t indestructible. He’s lucked out, all these years - he’s gone the easy way out: guns drawn in dark alleys, shots from a distance, before the victim can even register that he’s being targeted. One-on-one combat, he notices, isn’t quite as easy. Suddenly Iker remembers that he’s just a human - just a man, and not even one in the prime of his life. He’s weak. He knows he’s weak.
He feels the blood. He feels the sting of his wound as he pushes the man back, away. His movements are desperate and stumbling. This man is going to kill him. He pushes the knife against his chest.
There’s a gunshot. Iker freezes.
The man falls.
Cesc is behind him, gun in hands. He puts it on the floor, puts his hands up, eyes wide. He looks like a child. He looks like he’s scared of himself, what he’s just learned he’s capable of doing. Iker knows his mind is screaming, I think I just ended his life.
“Cesc,” Iker says gently. He wants to hold him in his arms.
Iker falls.
Groping hands, pressed against wounds - Cesc mumbling to himself, “Oh god, oh god, oh god” “Is he dead? Is he dead?” “He almost killed Iker” “Iker almost died” “Oh god, oh god, oh god” - stinging, nearly blinding pain (but not blinding ,not blinding; Iker is fine, he even tells Cesc so -“I’m fine, I promise, it’s fine, I’m fine”). Cesc tries to help Iker up and Iker pushes him away, tells him to stop, tells him to be quiet. Cesc huffs out, “Iker, I’m only trying to help,” and Iker says, “shut up,” and Cesc says, “but,” and Iker grumbles and grabs a fistful of Cesc’s shirt and pulls him down to him.
He kisses him roughly, desperately. Cesc’s lips are chapped and there’s blood on his cheek and everything fucking hurts, but. But Cesc is here, and he’s okay, and he’s here, and he’s warm. Cesc lets out a gentle laugh against Iker’s lips and straddles him, runs his hands down Iker’s chest, pressing forward. He grinds into Iker, and Iker nips at his lower lip, and then Cesc’s fingers brush against his wound, and -
“Christ, Cesc,” he hisses.
Cesc pulls back and grins. “I know, right?”
Iker rolls his eyes. “Cesc. I was just stabbed.”
He frowns, suddenly remembering, and bites his lower lip. “Oops.”
Cesc dips down to kiss the skin above his wound, and Iker doesn’t even bother fighting the grin on his face.
Cesc slips his arm around Iker and pulls him up, forces him to walk back to the car.
“I’m going to hurt you,” Iker mumbles.
Cesc smiles at him. “No, you aren’t.”
In the back of the car, Cesc presses Fernando’s tee shirt against Iker’s wound. No one says much for a very long time as Sergio drives them all in the opposite direction, past the barn, out of the country and into the night.
When they reach a gas station, Sergio and Fernando go for a walk. Cesc watches as Iker leans against him, eyes closed, humming softly. Cesc runs his fingers up and down Iker’s arm soothingly and he stares out the window at the two of them. They yell at each other, and push each other, and then Sergio says something that makes Fernando stop, and then -
They kiss the way they would if the building was burning down, if they had five seconds to live and wanted to make it count. Cesc smiles to himself and looks down at Iker, who’s just stirring awake. Iker blinks up at him, bleary-eyed, and grins.
Moments later, Fernando and Sergio come back, both flushed and grinning and flustered. They don’t offer any explanations, not that Cesc or Iker need any. They’re all quiet again for a few moments.
Finally, Fernando turns to look at them.
“So,” he says quietly. “Where to?”
fandom/pairing | football ; iker casillas/cesc fabregas; secondary sergio ramos/fernando torres
rating | pg-13.
[chapter] word count | ~7k
summary | “So you, like, kill people,” Cesc says, breaking the silence that has filled the car for nearly an hour. iker, fernando, and sergio kill people for a living. cesc hitchhikes. iker finds someone to save.
notes | lmfao omg idk I FINISHED SOMETHING????? this is really terrible and i'm basically just posting it so i can remind myself that i know how to write words. OOOPS. UM, YEAH IDK HERE IT IS. (ps yes i will write more of all i need one day, i promise!!)
Everybody wants to save the world, but no one wants to die.
(My Chemical Romance)
There’s a problem with picking a kid up from the side of the road, and it isn’t the fear that the kid’s family is going to miss him or that they’re going to lose him or that he’s going to accidentally get killed out there - because, to be honest, none of these things really matter in the long run, not a bit. No, the problem (if you ask Iker - except no one asked Iker, because if anyone had asked Iker in the first place the answer would have been “fuck no”) is that this kid doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, and he talks too much, and he’s going to get all of them killed if he doesn’t learn how to sit still for more than two seconds at a time.
“You’re such a grandpa,” Sergio says fondly, ruffling his hair, and Iker frowns. He isn’t. He knows how to have fun, and he laughs, and he smiles. But he glares, too; he glances in the rearview mirror and glares at this kid and his dirty fingernails and his knotted, too-long hair, hair that lies limply in his face.
“What’s your name, anyway?” he asks the kid gruffly, and he looks up at the reflection of Iker’s eyes in the mirror. He looks ridiculously at-home in the backseat, sprawled out with his feet on Sergio’s lap, and it’s strange considering he’s been in the car for less than ten minutes.
“Francesc,” he answers primly, with a coy little smile to match. Iker makes a face.
“Francesc?” he asks, and he’s being rude, it isn’t his fault that his name is long and doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue, but - but maybe in the back of his mind, Iker is hoping that the ruder he is, the more quickly this kid will just vanish altogether.
The boy seems nonplussed, though, and shrugs. “You can call me Cesc,” he says, and Sergio repeats it before Iker has a chance to: “Cesc.”
Sergio looks at the kid appraisingly and grins. “Cesc,” he says again, slower this time. “I like it.”
Cesc grins and glances up at Iker’s eyes again, looking for approval. Iker gives him none, simply looks back at the road and drives on.
Cesc, he thinks, and he tries not to let his lips curl backward, tries not to roll his eyes.
What happens is: they drop Iker off at the place. They don’t give it a name, because names make things complicated, but Iker leaves the car and brings his gun and doesn’t smile and doesn’t say goodbye, and Sergio and Fernando drive off looking for a way to kill the time (instead of the other things they could be killing). There’s an awkward, heavy thickness in the car, and it isn’t the heat or the broken air conditioning or the fact that this car is basically going to fucking collapse in the middle of the road one of these days; mostly it’s because Sergio looks at Fernando and sees dimples and cheekbones and a strong back and thighs and chest instead of just Fernando.
The worst part is Fernando doesn’t even notice - he doesn’t seem to feel the heat or the pressure or the fact that it’s so fucking awkward, the fact that Sergio can’t stop glancing at Nando instead of at the road. He reclines back with his bare feet on the dashboard, tapping his hands against his ripped jeans and talking about whatever shit he’s talking about - Sergio doesn’t even really hear him, he’s so distracted by trying not to want him, and he barely understands Nando when he tells him, loudly, that they’ve passed their exit.
“What?” Sergio asks, distracted, and Nando says, simply: “The exit. We passed it.”
“What?!” he asks again. “Fuck!”
He makes a sharp turn and nearly u-turns in the middle of the highway (before Nando explains, calmly, with an annoying (charming) tone of amusement, “I don’t think highways work that way, Sese”) before turning onto the nearest exit.
He’s curled up in an abandoned booth, way in the back of the diner. Sergio notices him immediately; Nando is too overcome by hunger to even give him a second glance, but Cesc notices both of them, looks at them with wide, curious eyes. It’s obvious that this town doesn’t get a lot of wanderers, not to mention those wearing leather jackets and ripped jeans and dirty boots and headbands and cocky, self-assured smiles. Their waitress fawns over Nando’s hair and smile, flirts with him, leans over the table so that he gets a good view down her shirt, but Nando - oblivious as always - points at about fifty items on the menu, orders enough for himself and Sergio and everyone else in the diner, and then sends her on her way with an easy “aaaaaaand that’ll be all!”
Sergio watches the boy in the corner, watches as he eats from a bag of sour skittles and drinks glass after glass of water. They invite him to the table.
By the time Cesc finishes his skittles, he’s already in.
“So you, like, kill people,” Cesc says, breaking the silence that has filled the car for nearly an hour. Sergio stiffens, Nando clears his throat and glances over at Iker. You’re the oldest, the glance says, You think of something. He sighs. If he had it his way, Cesc wouldn’t be here at all.
“No, we don’t,” he replies simply, and then he crosses his arms as if to punctuate his statement. Cesc lets out a gentle, childish laugh.
“Well, no, I wasn’t asking. You kill people.” He leans over and touches the skin by Iker’s ear, and Iker pulls away as if he’s been burned. “You have some blood, right there.”
Iker frowns and tries to rub his ear as inconspicuously as possible. Cesc notices.
“So,” he continues, “is it like, contract-killing? Do you get paid? Are you part of a gang? Or the mafia? Or have I just hooked myself up with some, like, psychos, like in that one movie where they pick up a hitchhiker and he kills them except the other way around?”
Fernando makes a small noise, and when Iker glances at him, he sees that he’s struggling to stop himself from bursting into laughter. Iker makes a face at him and then turns back around to look at Cesc. Cesc looks extremely pleased with himself.
“How old are you?”
Cesc looks down, looks suddenly embarrassed. He plays with a stray thread on the sleeve of his sweater, one of those ridiculous shirts with holes already cut in the ends of the sleeves for kids to slip their thumbs through; Iker hates the shirt, hates him, hates the fact that Sergio and Fernando are constantly Saving Things (and now People) and hates that he’s constantly Killing Things (and, always, People).
“Nineteen,” he says, and then, “so anyway,” and launches into a conversation about his sister and how her favorite color was always purple, and how she used to wear only purple for an entire year before she changed her mind and decided her favorite color was blue, and how -
His voice is relentless and incessant and it kind of kills Iker, a little bit. It’s grating in the worst possible way and what’s worse is the way Sergio and Fernando just let it happen, the way Sergio hms and oh, really?s and the way Fernando asks him questions, prompting more information, more detail. Iker slips his eyes shut and leans back in his chair, the repetitive up-and-down flow of Cesc’s words bouncing from ear to ear playing in his head like a metronome.
“Where’d you say your house was?” Iker asks one afternoon when Sergio and Nando are out “working” and Cesc is talking nonstop again, this time about the first time he was in school and how he was so nervous and embarrassed about reading a speech in front of the class that he blushed so deeply that everyone called him “Red” for the rest of the day. It isn’t that the story annoys him - it doesn’t really, that’s the thing. It’s that he thinks if Cesc keeps talking to him, he’s going to hate him less. And hating him less - or not hating him at all - isn’t an option.
So instead he cuts him off mid-sentence. It’s easier that way.
Cesc blinks at him. “I didn’t.”
Iker pauses, waiting for Cesc to follow up with … something. Anything. He doesn’t. This almost doesn’t surprise Iker.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
Iker rubs his eyes. It’s hot; this isn’t surprising either, but it’s the type of heat that sticks on the surface of his skin like an extra layer, like a thick sweater. The heat makes him lightheaded, uneasy, sick. Cesc makes him lightheaded, uneasy, sick. Once, Iker wasn’t so terrible; he’s sure he wasn’t always so terrible.
(He has a clear memory of swinging his brother in his arms, like a rag doll, until he screamed out happily, laughing, red-faced and breathless. He thinks of this sometimes, when he washes the blood from his hands and wonders if he’s human at all.)
“Well,” he says again, “where is it? Are we even anywhere near?”
Cesc rubs his neck and turns around, looking around the empty parking lot. “Go somewhere fun,” Sergio had insisted, with Nando pulling at his elbow. “Take him to a park or something,” he’d said, as if Cesc was a puppy or an overactive child in need of entertaining. Iker had, instead, driven them to a McDonald’s, bought each of them a hamburger and fries and soda, and ate in the car in the parking lot, blasting the A/C. Except they were running out of gas, and Iker didn’t have the time or energy or money to buy more just yet, so he suggested they get some “fresh air.”
Except they haven’t yet felt this so-called fresh air.
When Cesc turns away, Iker can see the prickly heat forming on the back of his neck - it’s red and looks like a rash and Cesc keeps rubbing at it, and Iker wants to say, will you just stop it already? You’re such a child, but he doesn’t, because he isn’t a babysitter. He didn’t even take care of his own little brother, for Christ’s sakes.
(His thoughts turn to Unai again, in that moment, and that same pang of guilt and doubt and sadness rings in his heart, clear as a fucking bell.)
“Well?” Iker insists again, and Cesc makes a low noise, like he’s about to say something, and Iker’s cell phone rings. He grumbles - “we’re not done yet,” he promises Cesc, and Cesc turns around to grin at him - and answers it gruffly: “Yes?”
“Hey, Iker? Uh. Pick us up.”
Iker frowns. “Fernando? Are you okay? You sound like you’re running.”
Fernando laughs and in the background there’s a loud noise - something like gunshots, and then Sergio yelling, move your fat ass, Nando! - before he answers. “Well, Iker. Funny story.” Another noise in the background. “We are running, so, um…”
Iker grumbles and nudges Cesc in his side. Cesc looks at him, eyes wide with concern. Iker has received this phone call too many times; the fear of death doesn’t affect him anymore. Now it’s just a side-effect, just another con to a job with a very, very short list of pros.
“Get in the car,” Iker says to him. As they slide into their seats, Iker hands him the phone. “Tell me the directions Fernando gives you, very clearly. And slowly. And I swear to God, if you fuck this up, I’ll -”
Kill you, Cesc’s steady stare challenges, say it.
A moment passes.
“I’ll drop you on the side of the road,” Iker threatens finally, and it sounds fucking stupid, he knows it.
Cesc grins and rubs his neck again, more out of habit than necessity. Without thinking of it, Iker slaps his hand away.
“And stop rubbing that, it’ll get worse.”
Cesc smiles at him, wider this time. He drops his hand.
Iker becomes Cesc’s unofficial babysitter, and it’s tiring, and he hates it. He hates the way Cesc leans against him, like it’s natural, and the way he slips his arm through Iker’s, and the way he runs his finger down the back of Iker’s neck from the backseat of the car. But most of all, Iker hates the way it does feel natural. The way Cesc has fit into his life like a puzzle piece he didn’t know he was missing but suddenly can’t live without. Like there was a heaviness in his chest that he didn’t realize he didn’t like until someone lifted it slightly.
Sometimes, it isn’t so bad. (Most times. Most times it isn’t so bad.)
Cesc learns early on that he can make Iker do pretty much anything he wants if he tries hard enough. Iker was never really good with kids, with their incessant requests and questions, and Cesc simply needs to whine or ask more than once - that, paired with a frown, paired with puppy dog eyes, is about all he needs to get Iker to do whatever. While Fernando and Sergio go out on jobs, Cesc gets Iker to take him on trips - to the store, to the park. He even sneaks them into the movies.
Iker hates more things than he loves; it’s something he’s learned to do, something he’s picked up along the way - like how to hold a gun and where to hide one without looking conspicuous and how to get rid of fingerprints and how to -
But, like. Cesc loves more things than he hates. Or, loves things, period; Iker is almost completely positive that he doesn’t know how to hate a single thing in the world. Not even things even the calmest people dislike, like traffic or cold air or stains or hunger or waiting or flat tires.
Cesc smiles all the time. Cesc grins and smiles and touches - always gentle, feather-light touches. A finger on Iker’s cheek, an arm around his waist as they wait for Sergio in the store, a flick against his ear as Fernando kicks a pebble around an empty lot.
Iker becomes protective of him. He tells himself it’s in his blood, tells himself that it’s because Cesc is younger, that he needs to be saved.
The truth is, Iker worries that one day Cesc will see the same things Iker has seen - that one day he won’t find traffic amusing, that he won’t giggle as easily. That one day he’ll become Iker: cold and worn and withdrawn.
The truth is, Iker likes him, a little bit. Maybe.
He’s reminded of when Unai would play in the street and he would watch from the window and he’d hate him and his parents a little bit for giving him this responsibility, this responsibility of “Watch Your Brother.” He’s reminded of when Iker would watch him and hate everything and almost leave him at the park or in the yard or out with the kids, just because he could, just because he didn’t want anyone to rely on him. But something would always inevitably happen - a ball rolling into the street, a fight - and out Iker would run, out of his house or off the bench or out of his car, and he’d protect him and pull him away and take him home because that’s what he did for the people he loved.
Somehow this turned into the most extreme - somehow protecting the people he loved wasn’t good enough. Somehow he needed to protect everyone.
So they answer calls. So they get calls, visit the houses of those who have done wrong and eluded the police.
And the rest, well.
Iker washes his hands every night, goes on jogs or walks until he’s so exhausted that he can’t do anything but sleep. His mind never stops moving. He never stops imagining the look on the faces of those that he kills.
He tells himself that they deserve it, and most nights, that helps.
(He remembers:
“We found your son’s body.”
Iker had never been particularly hopeful - he always knew the likelihood of them finding him alive was slim. Boys who go missing from the park on sunny, bright days, hand-in-hand with strangers, rarely come back. He supposes maybe he should feel lucky that they found his body at all, that this is the same as the ending of a particularly long and painful movie. All he needs, he thinks, is for the credits to roll. For things to come to an end, so he can move on.
His mother lets out a small cry and buries her face in her husband’s chest. Iker suddenly remembers that his parents are there - much like his entire childhood and adolescence, his parents’ presence has never really been anything worth noting.
“And?” his father asks, sitting straighter.
Put an arm around her, Iker thinks. She’s your wife, put your arm around her.
His arms stay pinned to his sides.
“And - did you find who did it?”
The main police officer looks down at his hands. His partner steps forward, rubs his neck.
“Well,” he says. “The investigation is still ongoing.”
Iker looks at them closely. His parents don’t say anything. His mother sniffles.
“So, no, then,” he spits out, standing up.
The police officers are quiet.
“So you didn’t find the bastard that killed my brother.”
His mother whines. “Iker, stop this.”
Iker shakes his head.
“Never,” he promises, and storms out.)
One afternoon:
“I live near that first diner, the one where Fernando and Sergio found me.”
Iker glances over at Cesc, eyebrow raised. They haven’t been talking, and the sudden confession seems to come out of nowhere.
“I don’t have - my sister left a while ago, and my parents aren’t - well. They’re just.” He kicks at the floor and doesn’t look up. “Well, anyway, I was on my own. There was like, you know, a - bad crowd, I guess? But they liked me. And I like, did stupid shit with them. Like, really stupid shit. Like, we stole and stuff. And we lived in this like, barn thing. Together. Like… three of us. But then two left and it was just me and the other guy, and… And I like, took money. And ran, I guess.”
He looks up at Iker finally.
“It was stupid. I shouldn’t have left. But I just needed to… get out. Of that whole… thing. You know?”
Iker doesn’t say anything, but he steps forward and runs his fingers lightly through Cesc’s hair without even realizing what he’s doing. Cesc leans into his touch before reaching out and wrapping his arms around Iker. He buries his face in Iker’s chest.
“I can’t go back.”
Iker nods. “You don’t have to.”
The small voice in the back of his mind nags at him, tells him not to make such promises, reminds him that he never wanted Cesc to begin with.
He ignores it. He holds him.
It’s late in the evening and the moon and stars are out and the sky is clear and it’s the perfect sort of summer night that the three - four, Iker reminds himself, with a sigh - that the four of them love the most. It’s a rare night off, a night when none of them have any jobs the next day, and so they sit around the car in the middle of a field: Cesc on the roof, Iker resting against the hood, Sergio and Fernando in the back, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, backs against the bumper. They drink and share stories, but nothing too deep, nothing too heavy. When their lives are one murder after another, the only stories they want to hear before they drift into a lazy, alcohol-induced sleep are stories about first loves (never last loves) and embarrassing stories and mildly pornographic jokes. The more laughing the better, Cesc says, and Sergio ruffles his hair and smiles, “I love this kid.”
“Tell me about your family,” Cesc says suddenly, and Iker looks up at him, beer in hand.
He has this… smile on his face. This eager smile, childlike, all dimples and toothy grin and enthusiasm - Iker almost can’t say “no.”
Almost.
“No,” he says, after a few seconds. Cesc doesn’t even frown, his fucking smile doesn’t even falter. He can’t stand looking at it; he turns back to look down at the half-empty bottle in his hands.
“Anything,” Cesc adds gently. “Maybe, like, I dunno, where you grew up? Or, like, your favorite book when you were younger?”
Iker sighs.
“Or… when you started balding?”
Iker snaps his head back around, glaring, and Cesc’s grinning even wider, and he’s having a hard time stopping himself from laughing. Iker doesn’t know why but he grits out, “I’m not fucking balding,” and pulls Cesc down from the roof, down to the floor, and Cesc is finally laughing as Iker pushes him to the floor, pinning him beneath him.
He can’t decide if he wants to punch him or fuck him, suddenly, and the uncertainty throws him. His hands are against Cesc’s shoulders, pushing him into the dirt below, and it’s veryvery quiet, and Cesc is breathing heavily, and looking up at him with those big eyes, and his tongue darts out to lick his lips, and he reaches up to rest his hands (small, thin, long fingers) against Iker’s waist, and Iker thinks, Fuck, can’t you just hate something? Can’t you just hate me?
Suddenly, Cesc pulls Iker down to him, kisses him hotly, roughly - it’s all pressure and inexperience and Iker’s heart is racing and Cesc smells like such a fucking boy and Iker’s turned on and he realizes, distantly, that he hasn’t made out with someone in quite a long time. He knows where he wants to take this - he wants to drag him into the car, lock the doors, push him against the backseat like a teenager and slip his hands underneath Cesc’s dirty jeans, make him pant and cry out his name, and he can taste him already, can feel him, and -
It all happens at once, and then Iker thinks, no.
He pulls away and stands up. He’s breathless. Cesc is still laying on his back on the floor, and his chest is rising and falling, breathing harsh and exaggerated.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Iker croaks out, throat suddenly dry. Cesc licks his lips again, looks up at the sky.
Iker walks away, walks around, walks until he can’t anymore.
Cesc glances at Sergio and Fernando before slipping into the car, settling himself. He falls asleep with his fingertips pressed against his lips.
Sergio bumps Fernando’s shoulder with his own, knocking him out of a hazy reverie. He turns to look at Sergio and smiles sleepily.
“Fernando,” Sergio says, lightly, gently. Fernando knows he’s whispering so that Iker and Cesc can’t hear them.
“Sergio,” Fernando replies, bumping Sergio’s shoulder in response.
“Iker and I are going on the next job, and tomorrow we’re going to start driving, and I might not be able to see you before we leave, and -”
Fernando lets out a quiet, breathy laugh. “You’re rambling a little bit, Sergio.”
Sergio nods, forces out a laugh in response. “I know.”
“What’s up?” he asks again, sitting up a little straighter.
“I just - ” He takes a deep breath. He isn’t good at this. He has so many things he wants to say, like, I think I started loving you before you even said a thing, and, I’ve never loved anyone before, no one, but I want to love you and, I can’t help but love you and, if only you gave me a chance, I swear, I swear I’d be good to you, I’d do anything you asked, I’d stop this or continue it forever, I’d never mention it again or I’d mention it every day, I’d do anything, anything.
Instead, he clears his breath and begins with, “If anything happens…”
Fernando frowns. “Don’t talk like that.”
Sergio shakes his head. “No, I just.” Another sigh. “I just need - I need to say -”
Fernando’s hand flies up, grabs Sergio’s upper arm harshly. Sergio stops talking and instead looks at Fernando - his face, his scowl. He looks pissed and his mouth is set in a straight, angry line, but his eyes - his eyes betray him, show that there’s more to him than his quick temper. Sergio thinks that if he could only get the chance to look deep enough, the time to really search those eyes, he feels like he could learn more about Fernando than he could ever tell him -
“Stop,” Fernando says finally, letting go of his arm. “I don’t want to know.”
Fernando gets up, walks away, lies in the car next to Cesc. Cesc curls around him, sighing.
An hour later, Iker comes back to find Sergio in the same position, empty eyes staring blankly at the grass. When he sits next to him, Sergio puts his head on Iker’s shoulder.
The air is thick with silence. A cicada hisses.
Cesc and Fernando are dropped off at the diner before Sergio and Iker leave.
Sergio and Fernando don’t say much - a curt nod and a smile. They hug, and before they pull away, Fernando presses his lips against Sergio’s shoulder. Sergio feels it through his shirt, feels like he’s been branded.
Cesc and Iker stand far away, let Sergio and Fernando have their moment. They’re quiet, and Cesc reaches up on his tip-toes and kisses Iker’s cheek.
Iker frowns, swallows the don’t. do. that. that threatens to rise.
“Be safe, Iker,” Cesc says quietly. Iker looks at him carefully and notices how suddenly bashful he is. Iker sighs and cups Cesc’s cheek in his hand, runs his thumb over his bottom lip.
He hushes Cesc with a soft “shh,,” and then they’re off.
In the car, Iker drives while Sergio dozes (just barely, since the ride isn’t long and Sergio wakes himself up with his own talking). Sergio talks about everything - but unlike Cesc, who talks continuously as if on a loop, without the need for responses or questions, Sergio seems to need reassurance and comments in order to continue. Iker focuses on the road, focuses on “hm” and “oh” and “really”-ing at the right moments, while all the while he’s thinking about the feeling of Cesc’s soft lips against his.
“You’re gone, aren’t you?” Sergio asks, laughing gently.
Iker isn’t listening, so he simply responds: “Yeah?”
Sergio hits the side of his face and Iker jerks the wheel, causing the car to swerve on the empty road. He curses loudly and glares at Sergio.
“What the fuck, Sergio?”
“You haven’t listened to a single word I said.” He laughs. “You’re thinking about Cesc, aren’t you?”
Iker frowns, but he doesn’t say anything.
“He’s cute,” he says after a while. “Not really your type, but. Your type is metal and heavy and loaded with bullets.”
Iker glares at the road. “I don’t have a type.”
“Exactly,” Sergio says. It’s quiet again, and he lets out another breezy laugh. “He makes you smile. It’s weird.”
Without thinking about it, he asks, “What’s weird about it?”
Sergio shrugs. “The fact that it’s not weird at all. Does that make sense?”
Iker sighs. “No.”
“Yeah,” he answers, shaking his head. “That’s kinda why it works.”
Fernando and Cesc split fries.
“You’re in love with Sergio,” Cesc says after a while.
Fernando raises an eyebrow. “Who says?”
Cesc laughs. “Your face says.”
He scowls and looks down at his food.
“It’s okay,” Cesc adds quietly. “’Cause Sergio’s face says, too.”
Fernando looks up at him and half-smiles before deciding better of it. He throws a fry at his forehead and laughs.
(One day, he simply leaves home and never returns.
He has his license but no car, which isn’t helpful, and he has bus fare but no direction, which is even more helpful. He follows the road, hitchhikes to get by. He doesn’t talk much. There’s no need for conversation, not when he knows what he has to do, not when he has an aim and a goal and a job to do.
It’s a hot August afternoon when a tan, long-haired man slows down on a dirt road, looking at him carefully. In the passenger seat is a paler, more freckled man with permanent dimples and permanent smile lines.
“Hey,” the first man calls out. “Need a ride?”
Iker nods, gets in the backseat.
“I’m Sergio,” the man says, and then jerks his thumb at the man in the passenger seat. “This is Fernando.”)
Iker and Sergio are walking back to the car, worn and tired and grumpy and bloodstained, when they get the call.
“Iker,” Fernando pants out, breathing so harshly that Iker can practically hear the air moving through his lungs. “Iker, you guys need to come back, I’m sorry, I didn’t - I left for a second, I was just in the bathroom, and -”
Iker stops walking. Sergio, confused and ahead of him, turns to look at him. “What?”
Iker puts up a finger to quiet him.
“Fernando,” he says carefully, heart already racing. “What’s going on?”
Fernando is quiet. Iker remembers Unai again, suddenly; remembers the policemen in his house, the sense of dread, the feeling of knowing that someone you love is gone. Please, Iker thinks desperately, not him.
“Fernando,” he yells impatiently.
Fernando clears his throat.
“Cesc. He’s gone.”
The drive back to the diner is silent.
Sergio says, “We’ll find him,” and, “That kid’s a fighter, seriously,” and, “It’ll be okay.”
Iker doesn’t reply the entire time. Not until the diner is in sight.
“I’ll kill whoever did this,” he vows finally. “I’ll kill them.”
“He’ll be fine.”
Iker looks at him and Sergio sees the murderous intent in his eyes.
“I’ll kill him or be killed, I don’t fucking care.” He turns off the car and opens the door. “Someone’s going to pay.”
What he doesn’t say is, I’m not losing him, too.
Fernando has notes - witness accounts, descriptions of the car, the beginning digits of the license plate, the general direction that the car was seen driving towards.
“We were in the diner, and we were eating food - he kept ordering so much random shit, seriously, I don’t know how he eats so much - and then I went to the bathroom and when I came back he was gone, so I went outside to look for him and I saw him being dragged into someone’s car, and I thought I had my gun but I didn’t, I gave it to Sergio, and he doesn’t have a gun, and he wasn’t bleeding or anything but he was definitely being dragged, and I tried to chase after it but I didn’t have the car, and -”
“Shut up, Fernando.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry -”
“Stop talking. Just stop talking.”
He apologizes, over and over, as if he’s responsible - and maybe he is, but. Iker blames himself more than anyone. Because this is just another person that he couldn’t save.
(“So,” Sergio starts, as they follow the instructions Iker gave him. “What are you planning on doing? Once you, you know, get to this place. What is this place, anyway?”
Iker shifts in his seat.
“It’s someone’s house.”
Fernando rolls his eyes. “Well, yeah,” he replies. “But whose?”
Iker sighs. Sergio and Fernando look at each other carefully.
After a long while, Iker says: “The man who killed my brother lives there.”
Fernando turns around to study Iker.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Iker laughs dryly. “Don’t be.”
Fernando frowns and turns back to the road.
“He’ll be dead soon anyway.”)
They drive with no destination - just blankly following the highway in the direction where Fernando saw the car speeding off. The car is silent - no one talks, not even Sergio, and Iker knows he’s making Fernando feel terrible, and he does it on purpose. He tells himself that he won’t forgive Fernando if Cesc is found hurt (or worse, or worse, but he isn’t thinking that far, can’t think that far) but the truth is, he won’t forgive himself.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” he says, and it isn’t until Sergio answers (“It wasn’t your fault, Iker”) that he realizes he said it out loud.
Of course it was, he thinks. Sergio clears his throat. “Do you know where he could be? Maybe it was - a brother? Could it have been a brother, or his dad maybe?”
Iker shakes his head.
“He doesn’t have a brother. He was on his own, he’d run away from home -”
And then he remembers.
His heart speeds up again.
He feels something strangely akin to hope, but he isn’t that naïve - he refuses to let himself be optimistic or hopeful, not yet.
“Look for a barn,” he commands.
(It takes days to get to his house, and when Sergio and Fernando drop him off - “Just leave me and don’t look for me ever again,” he tells them, as he slams the door behind him - he walks with purpose. He thinks maybe he’ll need to slam the door down, or break a window and climb in. He settles on knocking on the door and telling him he has something important to tell him.
His gun is heavy in his hand when he takes it out of his inside coat pocket and points it at the man’s chest.
The man begs a little bit, which is to be expected - “No, no, it wasn’t me, no, please, don’t” - but he doesn’t see pictures of a wife or kids, doesn’t see anything in the house that makes him look redeemable in any way.
So instead Iker says, “Fuck you.”
He has never shot someone before. His hand shakes. He isn’t prepared for the blood or the noise or the sound or the sight.
He cries and rubs his hands on his pants and smears the blood even worse. He stumbles to the kitchen and gets sick. He thinks, I killed someone. I just ended a life. I killed someone.
He splashes water on his face and reminds himself that this man killed someone first. He tells himself that if he were to open a bible, there would be words about tit for tat and an eye for an eye. He chooses to remember these passages instead of turn the other cheek and murder is the gravest of sins.
Sergio and Fernando are waiting for him in the same spot. They open the door for him and he slides in, still half-crying.
After a long while, Fernando asks, “Where to next?”)
This time, it doesn’t take days. It takes two hours.
It’s dark out, and they’re running out of gas, and one of their headlights are out, and they can barely see the other cars (if there are other cars) but they focus on the fields, on the houses and farmland and grassland. Because Iker knows - he just knows that they’re close.
Fernando points at the field. “Is that -?” and Iker slows down, and he says again, “That’s a barn, isn’t it? A few yards away?”
He stops the car. Grabs his gun. Takes off running.
Sergio and Fernando stumble out of the car, run to follow, but Iker yells out “stay where you are” over his shoulder.
His gun is in his hand. It still feels as heavy as the first time.
By the time he gets to the barn, he doesn’t think - doesn’t knock. He kicks the small door down and rushes inside, gun out, breathing heavy. The inside of the barn smells, and there’s water dripping from the roof, and it’s hard to see anything - it’s nearly pitch-black and Iker thinks, maybe I should be quiet. He walks gingerly, afraid to bump into anything, afraid to breathe too loudly. There’s a low noise - like whimpering - in the corner, and Iker thinks, Cesc.
He keeps one hand against the wall, the other on his gun - pointed in the darkness, pointed at nothingness. There’s a small bit of light coming from a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and then someone in the corner - the person who whimpered - moves. He’s seated. He’s tied to the chair. His head is down, and his forehead is bloody.
“Cesc,” Iker whispers.
He sits up. “Iker?” he croaks out, and Iker’s relief takes control again - suddenly he wants to put the gun down, kiss him, run his hands through his hair, hold him close, whisper -
Cesc shakes his head. “No, Iker, don’t - You’re going to get hurt, just -”
Iker runs forward and kneels down, unties the knots. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I’m here.”
Cesc rubs his now-free wrists and touches Iker’s cheek. His nose looks broken, and there’s a gash on the side of his forehead, and there’s blood on his face and he has a black eye and he looks terrible, but Iker wants to kiss him just for the mere fact that he’s alive, that his heart is beating and he’s breathing and he’s alive.
Fuck it, he thinks, and he kisses him, again and again, gentle kisses as he fumbles to free him, as he fumbles to help him up.
“I thought you told me not to do that again,” Cesc mumbles, and Iker quiets him with another and another.
There’s a loud noise towards the front of the barn as someone barges in. The light is in Iker’s eyes and he can’t see anything and he’s just naïve and hopeful enough to assume it’s Sergio and Fernando. He stands up, ready to ask for help, and the words are on the tip of his tongue, and he begins to ask, and -
The man - whoever it is, though Iker is now fairly sure it’s the same man who took Cesc - runs at him, knocks him into the wall. The gun falls out of Iker’s hand and he curses himself, curses his stupidity. The man has a knife out, he realizes, once he feels it stab into his shoulder, and Iker cries out, surprised and angry and in pain. He wants this man to die even more than he did before. He wants to kill him with his bare hands - fuck the gun, fuck it all.
He feels the knife slash against his stomach, and all at once Iker remembers that he isn’t indestructible. He’s lucked out, all these years - he’s gone the easy way out: guns drawn in dark alleys, shots from a distance, before the victim can even register that he’s being targeted. One-on-one combat, he notices, isn’t quite as easy. Suddenly Iker remembers that he’s just a human - just a man, and not even one in the prime of his life. He’s weak. He knows he’s weak.
He feels the blood. He feels the sting of his wound as he pushes the man back, away. His movements are desperate and stumbling. This man is going to kill him. He pushes the knife against his chest.
There’s a gunshot. Iker freezes.
The man falls.
Cesc is behind him, gun in hands. He puts it on the floor, puts his hands up, eyes wide. He looks like a child. He looks like he’s scared of himself, what he’s just learned he’s capable of doing. Iker knows his mind is screaming, I think I just ended his life.
“Cesc,” Iker says gently. He wants to hold him in his arms.
Iker falls.
Groping hands, pressed against wounds - Cesc mumbling to himself, “Oh god, oh god, oh god” “Is he dead? Is he dead?” “He almost killed Iker” “Iker almost died” “Oh god, oh god, oh god” - stinging, nearly blinding pain (but not blinding ,not blinding; Iker is fine, he even tells Cesc so -“I’m fine, I promise, it’s fine, I’m fine”). Cesc tries to help Iker up and Iker pushes him away, tells him to stop, tells him to be quiet. Cesc huffs out, “Iker, I’m only trying to help,” and Iker says, “shut up,” and Cesc says, “but,” and Iker grumbles and grabs a fistful of Cesc’s shirt and pulls him down to him.
He kisses him roughly, desperately. Cesc’s lips are chapped and there’s blood on his cheek and everything fucking hurts, but. But Cesc is here, and he’s okay, and he’s here, and he’s warm. Cesc lets out a gentle laugh against Iker’s lips and straddles him, runs his hands down Iker’s chest, pressing forward. He grinds into Iker, and Iker nips at his lower lip, and then Cesc’s fingers brush against his wound, and -
“Christ, Cesc,” he hisses.
Cesc pulls back and grins. “I know, right?”
Iker rolls his eyes. “Cesc. I was just stabbed.”
He frowns, suddenly remembering, and bites his lower lip. “Oops.”
Cesc dips down to kiss the skin above his wound, and Iker doesn’t even bother fighting the grin on his face.
Cesc slips his arm around Iker and pulls him up, forces him to walk back to the car.
“I’m going to hurt you,” Iker mumbles.
Cesc smiles at him. “No, you aren’t.”
In the back of the car, Cesc presses Fernando’s tee shirt against Iker’s wound. No one says much for a very long time as Sergio drives them all in the opposite direction, past the barn, out of the country and into the night.
When they reach a gas station, Sergio and Fernando go for a walk. Cesc watches as Iker leans against him, eyes closed, humming softly. Cesc runs his fingers up and down Iker’s arm soothingly and he stares out the window at the two of them. They yell at each other, and push each other, and then Sergio says something that makes Fernando stop, and then -
They kiss the way they would if the building was burning down, if they had five seconds to live and wanted to make it count. Cesc smiles to himself and looks down at Iker, who’s just stirring awake. Iker blinks up at him, bleary-eyed, and grins.
Moments later, Fernando and Sergio come back, both flushed and grinning and flustered. They don’t offer any explanations, not that Cesc or Iker need any. They’re all quiet again for a few moments.
Finally, Fernando turns to look at them.
“So,” he says quietly. “Where to?”