lovelines.

[casi_casi]

Title: Lovelines
Pairing: David Beckham / Iker Casillas
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Lies.
Notes: There may be some factual inaccuracies lurking in this story to annoy adherents to uncompromising realism. My sincere apologies if you're one of them.
Feedback > life. Constructive criticism is always welcome.


Today:

"Iker!" There is no response. "Iker!" David calls out more impatiently. "Have you seen my razor?" All he gets is a grunt in reply. "Iker, I don't have time for a nation-wide search."

"You don't have time for anything," Iker mumbles to himself more than to David, and David responds with a sigh which is a cold repetition of one that he's breathed out countless times before.

Iker's body lies sheathed in a cotton sheet, too light for the brisk coolness that permeated the room after David had gotten up at whatever ungodly hour had made his alarm clock sing, and he'd opened the doors and windows and switched on the lights, making Iker sleepily cover himself up and hide away from it all. His face buried in between the bed's two pillows, Iker winces every time David shuts a drawer or a cupboard, or slashes open a zipper too violently.

"It's four in the morning," he grumbles. "Can you keep it down?"

"What?" David calls from the bathroom, his voice bouncing off the tiles. "Do you know where it is?"

Iker groans yet again and pulls the sheet over his head.

* * * * *

Five years ago; their first morning together:

David smiled as Iker kept his eyes stubbornly shut, despite David's finger tracing over his cheekbones in a quiet 'good morning' that had been too long coming. Iker twisted slightly, David's smile widening as he saw faint lines on Iker's cheek from the pillow. The sun was not yet up; David hadn't slept at all. And he only disturbed Iker now because the Spaniard had started mumbling something in his sleep that David, his Spanish still on the bad side of rusty, couldn't understand. If the sun had been a little higher and the day a little fuller, David might have attributed this to a gentle paranoia on his part. But the dark still lingered, and David was sure that all he felt was the most whole, innocent kind of want.

"Iker?" David whispered. "Let's get coffee."

Iker squirmed and shut his eyes tighter, the effort laughably more than it would have taken to simply open them. "It's so early," he mumbled.

"It's only -" David lifted his head up to look at the alarm clock on Iker's bedside table. "Oh."

"What time is it?"

"Nothing."

"The time is nothing?" Iker finally opened his eyes with a frown, and turned around to look at the clock himself. "Four in the morning. It's four in the morning, David," he groaned. "Will you not let me sleep for even two hours?"

"Shh," David said, hoisting himself up and dragging the sheet off of Iker, who evidently couldn't be bothered to protest, as the air in the room was still muggy from summer and sex. "I want to make breakfast for you."

"Breakfast is for daytime." Iker rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands, before blinking sleepily at David. "Eating is for daytime."

"I'll make an English breakfast," David said, his eyes twinkling as he looked down at his lover. "You'll like it, believe me."

"My mother always told me to avoid English breakfasts."

"She didn't," David replied, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and pulling on a pair of shorts that had been discarded hours before alongside shirts and his house keys.

"She did," Iker said as insistently as he could in his stupor. "She told me to always remember to say my prayers, to be good to my elders, and to avoid anything English. I'm pretty sure that included breakfasts."

David bent back over the bed and leaned over Iker for a second before kissing him softly on the mouth, Iker's eyes gratefully fluttering shut. "Come on," David whispered. "I'll cook; all you have to do is eat."

Iker grunted, reluctantly allowing David's hands to grab his and pull him out of bed. "If I die in the process, it's your head my mother will be after." David merely smiled, and led the way to Iker's kitchen as Iker messily dragged on some light pants with a heavy but not altogether discontented sigh. "She was definitely talking about English men, that much I know."

David couldn't find the ingredients that he needed in Iker's sparse and rather haphazardly arranged fridge and pantry, and his improvisational skills in the kitchen were as wanting as his basic knowledge of how to cook an English breakfast in the first place. He didn't need to tell Iker that he had never cooked one in his life; the bemused smirk on the Spaniard's face as he sat on a stool, watching, leaning languidly against the wall, said it all.

"This is nice, isn't it?" David asked, looking up from a sizzling saucepan with a smile, as Iker chuckled at him. "Well, I think it is."

"Yes, very nice, watching you demolish my possessions in the middle of the night."

"Demolish your - oh," David said dully as he realised that the kitchen towel he'd been holding was now suspended over the stovetop's flame and its corner was alight. "Shit," he muttered, quickly dropping it and stepping on it. "I thought I could smell something," he added sheepishly.

"And there you were, thinking it was the sausages," Iker grinned.

The breakfast turned out black and smelled 'distinctly of cancer', according to Iker, who, with a snigger and a quick apology, declined his share. David merely shrugged, heaped it all onto a black plate ("Going for camouflage?" Iker had asked cheekily) and, satisfied with his morning's work, took it back to the bedroom.

"What are you doing?" Iker asked, following him in and immediately collapsing onto the bed again, the thick smokiness of the cooking mixed with the May warmth inhibiting his lazy fatigue from leaving him quite so readily as it had David. As Iker settled against the headboard, David was pulling open the east-facing curtains with one hand as he dragged a slice of overcooked prosciutto off his plate with the other and dripped it into his mouth.

"The sun," David explained shortly, his voice muffled.

"Oh," Iker said heavily, dragging a sheet over his bare chest before, remembering how hot it was, pulling it off again. "You want to watch the sunrise while eating a home-cooked breakfast in bed with your lover."

David smiled. "Yes. Now you understand me."

Iker laughed again. "Understand you? Never. Humour you?" He patted the space on the bed next to him. "Well, that's a different story."

David settled down next to him, and, slowly but with an innocent sort of satisfaction, he ate the rest of his breakfast as he looked out into the lightening blue of the sky outside, a view blocked only by the trembling leaves of faintly swaying trees. Iker's head lolled onto his shoulder, and David stretched his arm around Iker's body and gently traced his fingers along his upper arm. By the time the sun had risen, and David's plate was bare but for a few bits of charred meat that not even David's iron pit of a stomach could handle, Iker was asleep, his breaths soft and light below David's ear.

* * * * *

Today:

David is poring over a newspaper, and doesn't look up as he hears Iker's feet padding over the floorboards toward the dining room. He smiles, though, and lifts a finger to point to the sports pages that he's taken out especially for the Spaniard. "Good morning," he says, his eyes still on the paper as Iker slumps into a chair. It's a tired, stubborn slump, and David supposes its his duty to remind Iker how good the early hours can be.

"What section are you reading, then?" Iker asks, his voice muffled with broken sleep. David grins as he looks at Iker and holds up the paper's gossip pages. "You sicken me," Iker mutters.

"So does Cristiano Ronaldo, apparently," David says, looking back down at the story that he's been reading. "He's been trying to steal your latest love interest. You didn't take to that very kindly, as this very telling photo of you and he - gasp - not looking at each other demonstrates," he adds with a wink, holding up the paper.

"Hrmph," Iker grunts, unimpressed. "I don't know why you're reading that shit. They fucking hate you."

David raises an eyebrow, but Iker doesn't see it, and he decides not to take explicit notice of the slight. "Slept well, then?" he asks, flipping the page to a story about the Spanish royal family.

He hears Iker exhale noisily as he leaves through the sports pages quickly, without really looking at them. "Yeah, all that banging and shouting was like a lullaby," he grumbles, rolling his eyes. "Slept like a baby."

"I said I was sorry," David replies, his smile teasing, as though he's speaking to a child.

"I know you did."

David looks up again, and Iker's frown is one of those stubborn ones that takes a great deal of distraction and often some kind of meal to dissolve. "Come on, Iker," knowing that there's more than a trace of patronising admonition in his tone, but not knowing how to filter it out. "Cheer up!"

"I'm very cheerful. Look how cheerful I am." Iker points to a photo of himself, grinning, on the back page of the paper - though he continues to look surly as he does so. "So cheerful."

"Okay, I get it, you don't want to cheer up," David sighs.

"I didn't say that," Iker argues, maddeningly.

"Well -" David looks up, all traces of bemusement gone, but he stops himself. "Okay. You didn't say that. I'm sorry."

A few minutes - or perhaps seconds, but they feel stretched - roll around for a while, dodging the flipping of newspaper pages to assert how very, oppressively, silent they are. David's eyes read words but inside his mouth form sentences and questions and accusations that he knows not to let slip out. But he's not the type of person who can let bitterness slide - who can allow ugliness to shroud his day without even attempting to break through it just a little. The problem with this strategy, David is too well-intentioned, too hopeful to realise, is that it picks a fight that other people want to avoid. He never points out to himself that perhaps if they don't want to bring something up, it's better left unsaid - better for everyone. In his well intentions and in his hope, he forgets to think about what's best for himself, and forgets that maybe Iker's doing that for him.

"Iker - are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Iker mumbles. "Just read your paper and we'll get breakfast when the cafés open."

"I'm not getting breakfast with you if you're just going to sit there and mope."

"I'm not moping," Iker says wearily. "I'm tired, it's seven o'clock. You know I'm not a morning person."

This, David fails to see, is Iker's attempt at appeasement. This is Iker telling David not to worry, that he'll get over whatever's getting him down, that he doesn't need to be prodded out of it. But David isn't one to let things sit. He's childlike in his impatience, in his need for everything to be better again, quickly and cleanly. And so he goes and ruins it.

"No." David puts down his newspaper and he can see the wariness in Iker's still-puffy eyes but he's too far along in his determination to take any account of it. "This isn't about you being a morning person."

"David, please," Iker says softly. "I don't want to go into this. I'm just tired, I swear -"

"There's something to get into, then," David says, almost triumphantly, ignoring how Iker's eyes close heavily, in frustration and in dread. "Just tell me, Iker."

"There's nothing to tell."

And the last prod is one too many. "Iker! Just tell me!"

"For God's sake, David." Iker glares at him, upset at David's persistence, though David assumes that it's a more deep-seated anger. "You want to know why I'm upset? Because I'm tired, I told you. And you know why I'm tired? Because I had a whole day of training and press conferences yesterday, but you were arriving at five so I had to be up and awake and bright and cheerful because these are the only hours I have with you. And I - I love it - I do, I love losing sleep with you, and I'd rather be tired with you than alone and refreshed."

"Then what's the problem?" David asks insistently, waiting for an accusation that doesn't seem to be coming.

"There is no problem, that's the thing," Iker replies heavily, looking exhausted now on top of his passive fatigue. "There's nothing we can do about it, so there's nothing I can complain about. This is just how it is, how it always is. I'm here whenever you need me, whenever you can make it over, and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else."

"Then why are you angry?"

"David, I'm not -" Iker exhales sharply. "Alright. Alright." He sighs again, slower now. "Do you know how hard it is to play out those hours knowing that you're just going to be leaving again the next morning?" Iker looks wounded as he speaks. "Do you get how - how -" He stops for a few seconds, and in these moments, David wills him not to finish the sentence, knowing that he won't like how it ends. But Iker does, and David doesn't like it. "How pointless it all feels sometimes?"

"So - what, would you rather I didn't come back?" David asks quietly, unable to shake the grip of the hurt that latches around his voice.

"No, of course I -" Iker sighs. "I didn't mean -"

"You said it feels pointless," David throws back, daring Iker to disagree - willing him to.

"I did," Iker tilts his head in a resigned sort of nod. "It does."

David knows that Iker isn't trying to pin the blame on him, but he feels blamed anyway. He looks at him and hates the culpability that turns his cheeks red and makes his voice sound smaller, as though it's struggling to come out, almost as it though it knows that there is nothing to be said.

"I am trying, you know," he says argumentatively. "It's not easy for me either. The flights are long, I get jetlagged, I die in training the next day."

Iker pouts in a shrugging sort of a way. "I guess we should have thought of all that before you left." Of course, what he means is that David should have thought of all that before he'd boldly decided that the two of them could still work with an ocean, a layer cake of timezones and an untidy, secret map between them. And David, in the cold morning silence, wonders if indeed, he should have.

They look at each other for a few messy seconds framed by sad and quick heartbeats, before David, at long last, says the right thing. "I'm sorry." And he is, sorry with the regret that a child feels after throwing a tantrum.

Iker breathes out deeply, wearing the kind of drained disappointment that should never mark a day's opening. "I'm sorry too." He shakes his head dismissively and makes to head back to the bedroom. "I'm going to have a shower. The café a couple of blocks down, the one with the macaroons - it'll be opening in twenty minutes."

David watches him walk toward the staircase. "Okay," he says, sounding and feeling quite small.

* * * * *

Six years ago; their first fight:

Fingers traced lazily over skin, and the absence of light was weakened by the closeness of mouths, and whispers of night-time courage, and smells that became richer and warmer in the blackness that a sleeping moon could not penetrate. Dinner, as they'd known it would, had turned into David's hand finding Iker's, and chairs being discarded, and buttons being picked apart as shirts trailed over floorboards. They had held each other, hands down trousers and lips pressed together, crashing against the walls heading up to Iker's bedroom, and the bed had been their safety net, catching them just as they began to lose control of their bodies, and they found themselves rapidly heading into rapture.

It had been long and hard and wonderful, and the heat of the night dragged every drop of fluid out of them until they were lying dazed, David's head on Iker's sweat-ridden chest. Their bodies sank into the sheets, damp, and cooling so languidly, and the silence was broken only when David lifted his head up to kiss Iker, long and slow, and to say, hoarsely and quietly, "Amazing".

Iker smiled. "We are." He twisted his head around somewhat awkwardly on the pillow, to look at David directly. "I'd suggest that we go again, but I think you've sucked me dry." David merely smiled back, closing his eyes allowing his head to loll onto Iker's shoulder. "Stay," Iker added softly.

He wasn't sure when David had frozen, but the moments that it took Iker to realise that David's smile had faded and that his fingers had stopped tracing his skin did little to dull his blunt, retaliatory disappointment.

"Are you serious?"

David winced, and Iker closed his eyes in short disbelief. "I just - I should get home. Eventually."

"You'll get home tomorrow."

David curled himself up into something vaguely resembling a sitting position. "You know what I mean."

Iker stared at him. "No, I don't. Look, David, just -" He reached out a hand to grab the wrist that had begun to shrink away. "Just stay one night. I want to - I want you to lie with me."

"I am - I -" David spluttered and didn't seem able to stop himself from looking down at his own body, a body that certainly wasn't lying anymore. He sighed and allowed his fingers to meet Iker's around his forearm, though the latter lost their grip as David continued talking. "It's just a bit - much. Staying. I don't want - we don't need that."

"Oh, I see," Iker seethed softly. "You want me, but you don't want anything that comes with me."

"Iker -"

"You don't want the house, the bed - any of the attachment," Iker persisted, seeing the soft and embarrassed apology that betrayed David's silent gutlessness.

"No, I -"

"What did you have in mind, David? What exactly did you want this to be? Because when you turn up and eat my food and have sex with me and use my shower, and then decide that you don't want -" He stopped himself abruptly, not wanting to tread over the same accusations again, able to see that David wasn't up for refuting any of them, for letting Iker's hurt rest a little easier. "Don't you want this to be - real?"

The heaviness that sat on David's shoulder and rolled out with his words should have been a warning to Iker, but Iker, like David, had his hope, his naïve belief that they could make this perfect. "But it isn't real," David said gently.

Iker didn't really hear himself telling David that if he wanted to leave, fine, he should leave. He saw David drag his clothes back on and ignored his faint apology. He was determined to have nothing to do with him anymore - determined not to see him outside of work, not to talk to him outside of 'Fine, thank you' and 'Fuck you, David'. His determination would last but a week.

* * * * *

Today:

Dressed since before the sun had risen onto Iker's hidden, sheet-sheathed body, David sits on the bed that Iker hadn't laboured to make. He taps his foot impatiently, listening to the pounding of the shower weave in and out of sharp loudness as Iker moves beneath the water. Words fly through his restless mind - suggestions and consolations that he knows he won't say, because he's not the one who's been a jerk all morning, he's not the one who's been a jerk at all. As soon as the water switches off, they all abandon him and he's left with only his blindly determined desire to fix things and no idea how.

He stands up as soon as Iker opens the ensuite door, wearing only jeans which have gotten wet around his feet, rubbing his towel roughly over his damp hair. He raises his eyebrows.

David opens his mouth to speak, but he's forgotten that he'd planned to say nothing and is surprised when the words don't come to him.

Iker tosses the towel over the post at the end of the bed, smiling wryly. "You're so hard to take seriously."

David purses his lips. "I don't think that's a compliment."

"You're right, it's not," Iker says matter-of-factly, reaching for the shirt that he'd laid onto the bed. "But what is our relationship if not open and honest?" He pulls the shirt over his head, the black making him look paler and more tired. "Are you ready to go?"

David nods. "I'm ready when you are."

"Alright," Iker nods. "Let's get rid of you then."

David knows that Iker is joking, but there's a twinge of discomfort that pulls on his fears of being unwanted. He just needs it all to be right again, and he needs it to be said in words that aren't laughing or ironic. As Iker opens the wardrobe to pull out a light jacket, David holds his arm. Iker twists around and lets David kiss him. But David can feel that Iker kisses him back more out of resigned obligation and habit than any real desire.

* * * * *

Six years ago; their first kiss:

"I don't know how to feel," Iker said dully, David almost able to feel how heavily his chin sank into his hands after he spoke.

Three points had been handed to them on a plate by an incompetent referee and an always calm, unchangingly heroic Raúl - one wrongly awarded penalty that separated two distinctly average teams on a cool, still night when the crowds had been dispirited and nobody's heart had been particularly in it.

"Pleased, I guess," David shrugged. He sat beside Iker on the bench - he would later laugh at the inappropriateness of the word 'bench' to describe the Bernabeu's sideline - as they looked out at the pitch, the empty seats of the huge stadium somehow more imposing for their silence after a season of blanketing noise. "Three points are three points."

"That's not how this was supposed to go," Iker complained. "I mean - is this how you imagined the year would end? When you signed for us, did you imagine watching someone else lifting the trophy, while we sat here like schmucks, looking at patchy grass and wondering why we're not better?"

David slid down in his seat a little. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I don't want to feel upset about it. It would feel..." His pause leads Iker to look up and over at him. "Ungrateful."

"Ungrateful?"

"Yeah, you know," David mumbled, dragging fingers distractedly through his hair as he tried to gather his thoughts. "I'm a lucky person; I shouldn't let this get me down."

Iker frowned. "This is your career. This is Real Madrid. It's a pretty big fucking deal, David," he said, getting more animated as he did. "I don't think anyone will mind if you get angry about it."

"No, I mean -" David spoke hurriedly but paused, acutely aware of his lack of Spanish and not wanting to rile Iker up any further. "I am upset at myself, and about how everything ended up," he said carefully. "But I don't want to be upset at the team, or the whole year. Because I... I've loved this year. And this team."

Iker looked at him quite blankly, David feeling his cheeks reddening as he replayed his words over in his head and wondered what exactly he'd been trying to achieve when a simple, "There's always next year" could have sufficed.

"You're strange," Iker said at last, looking back over at the pitch and stretching his arms out in front of him. "How can you have loved this season? It was a shitstorm, is what it was, and now here we are, with nothing but patchy grass to show for it."

"I like the patchy grass," David said quietly.

"What's there to like about it?" Iker said with a laugh. "Real fucking Madrid, we should be doing better than patchy."

"We are," David insisted, not quite knowing what he meant by it. "We're - we have things that are more important than... grass that isn't patchy," he concluded clumsily, his Spanish failing him.

Iker smiled, glancing over at David for only a second. "Alright, then. Tell me what we have. Tell me why you and I should go to bed happy tonight."

David hesitated, feeling a little warmer as his silence joined the blankness into which Iker sat staring. "Uh. Well, we're not poor, or hungry. We have good families. We have nice houses, and nice clothes." He chanced a look over at Iker, who wore a bemused smile. "We have nice bones. We have the shirt of the best football club in the world on our backs. We have good teammates." He spoke slowly, wanting to say it right. "We have each other. Well, you have me."

He threw another glance at Iker, who looked back at him a little strangely. "We should get out of here," he said quietly, forcing his lips into a smile that David could see he didn't quite mean, "before the ground curator shows up to tend to his patchy grass." But he didn't stand up.

The first time David kissed Iker was not a meeting of lips. Iker's sat stiff, tight, uninviting - upset. David needed to kiss him, and as moments of silence wrapped around them, it was almost as though they pulled him closer to Iker, and he was soon pressing a soft, long kiss to Iker's neck. It was childish, in a way, how David's mouth had sought out the warmest part of Iker, a perfect curve that thudded with heat and comfort. And it was perhaps childish, too, how Iker lifted David's jaw and frowned at him for a moment before kissing him on the mouth. David's eys closed and he didn't notice his hands reaching up to cradle Iker's back as they leaned into each other, pulling him closer, not really thinking or feeling but letting himself fall into it.

Iker was the first to pull away, quickly and with deeply reddened cheeks. But as he cast his eyes over David's, the trepidation in his expression was more a hope for understanding - for an okay - than an apology, or regret. It was embarrassment over an adolescent type of embrace that David comforted with a smile. Iker, still blushing, smiled back before wringing his hands nervously and standing up.

"We should get out of here," Iker said again.

David sat for a few moments longer before getting up and letting Iker lead the way off the stage of the stadium. Their footsteps echoed off the enveloping walls of the tunnel and David was looking at Iker's feet as he walked behind him, dully reciting the 'thud, thud, thud' in his head with each step, wanting so much to make them stop and turn around. He lost himself for a moment, wondering in a daydreamish sort of way what he'd then do, if he stopped Iker. Despite the shouts of supporters and managers having died more than an hour earlier, he didn't realise when Iker's steps left his on their own, and he walked into the Spaniard, who stood in the middle of the tunnel, facing him.

"Oh - sorry," David mumbled with a bashful smile, before looking up and seeing that Iker's cheeks were still red and that he was looking at him with an apologetic kind of tenderness.

"You do have me."

"What?" David frowned.

"What you said before," Iker explained, jerking his head awkwardly back at the entrance to the ground that they'd, at long last, abandoned until next season would welcome them back. "You're right, you do - have me."

"I - I'm glad," David replied, somewhat taken aback, but smiling, as ever.

Iker nodded, and David could see that he was about to turn around again, but instead, he hesitated for a moment, before his hands reached up to cup David's face and he kissed him again, soft and long, more deeply now in the absence of light and of sound. David didn't feel Iker's fingers against his, Iker's torso against his, Iker's lips against his. He felt only an immeasurable, sighing joy and comfort into which he allowed himself to sink, as Iker held him along the way.

* * * * *

Today:

It's a relief when David begins to let himself relax into the easy laughter that Iker's jokes and constant commentary invite. He's been working hard at it, keen to push them both around the ugliness of his morning mood, and finally, David catches on, and the terseness of the words that still replay in Iker's head thaws a little.

'One hundred surefire summer hits,' a voice on the radio announces before blasting a trancey beat that Iker hurriedly switches off.

"Yeah, more like one hundred surefire ways to cause an aneurysm," he protests to nobody in particular, before looking across at David. "Let me guess," he smiles. "You like it?"

David shrugs, allowing himself a small smile. "It's big in America," he points out.

"So is Gossip Girl, that doesn't make it a good thing."

"What, have you seen it, then?"

"What?"

"How else would you know?"

"I can -" Iker struggles. "I can tell from the ads, thank you very much. And - woah, check that out." He points as he drives down streets that haven't yet woken up. A man in a business suit sleeps on a bench in the park. He'd look cold if it weren't for the very deep sleepiness that seems to envelop him. "What do you think his wife found?"

"Well, if he wasn't allowed in the house at all," David theorises, "I'm guessing there was a lipstick stain on a shirt, or maybe some underwear in a drawer."

"Underwear?" Iker looks across at David skeptically. "Really? Men haven't learnt better?"

"Men are idiots."

"You're living proof."

"Shut up," David mutters as he slaps Iker lazily with the back of his hand, though Iker could almost sing at the sound of his light chuckle.

The drive is quick and they fumble their way into the still-sleepy interior of the only café on the street that has opened. Iker freezes, and David looks back at him, confused.

"There's a -" Iker lowers his voice and points to the far corner. "That old lady."

"Oh, come on," David laughs, "you've eaten out with me plenty of times before. What's one old lady from another?"

Iker squirms. "A breakfast date at this hour? It's a little... you know." David merely stares at him incredulously. "It's intimate."

"You're scared of being found out by an old lady?" David grins. "You do know that if she goes home and tells her impatient daughter and judgemental son-in-law and bullying grandchildren that she saw Iker Casillas and David Beckham exchanging loving glances over breakfast, they'll just think she's senile?"

Iker scowls at him, but lets him lead him to a table - well away from the unwanted company who remains fixated by the toast she's buttering. "You've learnt too much Spanish in your time with me," he mutters, smiling grudgingly.

Teasing and bemusement accompanies the swapping of their coffees (as David finds his too strong) and Iker shakes his head as David hungrily downs a plate of churros ("You'll have no teeth left; no wonder you British people -" "Oi, don't start on the British teeth thing, again!").

But soon enough, they run of politeness and their coffees are drunk in a not unfamiliar but nevertheless vaguely uneasy silence. Conversation topics exhausted - since there's only so many taunts one can think up in the early morning - and fatigue settling in again, they sink into the realisation of their impending goodbye. It never gets easier.

Iker smiles across at David as he brushes crumbs off his jumper. David smiles back, looking slightly puzzled. Wordless, unfeeling, routine - perhaps they aren't short of politeness after all.

"I've already called for a car," David argues when Iker offers to drive him to the airport.

Iker doesn't move after David's picked his jacket up from over the back of his chair. "Fuck that car," he says firmly. "I'm taking you myself." He hates the way David continues to look amused and incredulous when the time for that has passed, when Iker has moved on to last-minute gestures of earnestness, but he supposes there's little he can do about it.

* * * * *

Four years ago; their first date:

"Oh, God, they have flowers here," Iker muttered, pointing to small bouquets of tiny, clustered blue flowers mushrooming over the tops of the vases that centred each table. "I can't eat at a place with flowers."

They had been together long enough to see two winters and summers pass them by. David's Spanish had improved to a point where Iker would rant at him in quick, clipped sentences and expect him to follow - which he certainly pretended to do, quite well. They had learnt things about each other that time, naturally, had led them to discover. Of these, David's favourites were Iker's night-time ritual of saying his prayers (not necessarily because he believed, but because he could feel his mother glaring at him if he didn't), the childlike glee that lined his face when popping open Christmas crackers, and the way he'd bite his lip just before kissing David, almost every single time.

What David hadn't yet experienced in these two years, however, was a date.

"A date?" Iker had looked at him suspiciously, knowing full well that David wasn't joking - because he never joked when it came to novel ideas like dates and theme parks and outdoor cinemas - but clearly hoping that he was. "I think we're a little past dating."

"Come on - it won't be that bad," David had wheedled. "I just - I want to see what it's like, to date Iker Casillas. To do it properly, with wine and a meal and a waiter."

"You want to see me squirm, that's what you want," Iker had replied darkly.

"That too," David had grinned. "Always."

David was generally a fairly methodical type of person. He clung to superstition because there was comfort in its routine. He was the type who simply couldn't sleep when dishes remained unwashed and clothes remained unfolded - as Iker, to his chagrin, had discovered when a dark, early morning had shaken him awake with the crashing of water and plates.

He had therefore also been methodical when it came to choosing the right setting for his first date with Iker. He'd made sure to avoid young crowds with focused, darting eyes that looked for anomalies and would thus refuse to let them - David and Iker - be. He'd decided against places that were too empty, in which every line of conversation would be met by a silently polite audience.

He'd settled, in the end, on an expensive eatery in the centre of the city, usually frequented by wealthy couples who were often so busy that habitual dinners had become a much-needed sanctuary of catch-up conversation, and by crowds of businessmen who pretended to like each other but ended up arguing about stock prices once the first two or three red wines had been downed. It was spacious without being sterile, comfortable without being oppressive. It was perfect, in other words.

After managing to quieten Iker and cajole him into an awaiting seat, David quietly asked a passing waiter to remove the offending flowers.

"Yeah," Iker piped up, "people might think we're on a date!"

The waiter merely frowned, evidently not finding the joke particularly amusing, before carrying the delicate vase away.

David shook his head. "If this were a real date, I'd be waiting for the right moment to announce a bathroom break, and I'd be running back out those doors and into the car before you even started to miss me."

Iker grinned. "Well, aren't I lucky that it took you two years to remember what dating is?"

Iker clearly planned to make the evening as difficult as possible, because the less ideally the date ran, the more David pouted. And the more David pouted, the less Iker did. Call it self-preservation. When David asked for a wine list, Iker made a grand show of asking the waiter exactly which dishes went best with each wine, before settling on a pineapple juice ("I'm not much of a drinker anyway, to be honest"). When his phone rang, he made a grand show of stretching out the conversation while David waited impatiently. When their entrées arrived, Iker ate one bite before demanding another serving, as his soup had too much salt in it - to which David icily pointed out that Iker had salted it himself.

"I swear, if this were a real date, I would be spiking my own wine. You really know how to make your date feel uncomfortable."

Iker smiled. "Well, it was either make you feel uncomfortable or make you feel like a tit for suggesting this in the first place."

"You've already done the second one."

"Exactly, I didn't want to rehash old territory."

"I have - signs, you know," David added. "There are indications. About dating. And you're sending up alarms on all of them."

"Oh?" Iker leans back in his chair, grinning. "Like what?"

"Well," David glanced at the table uncomfortably. "You're eating way too quickly."

"Why does that matter? I did have to wait an extra twenty minutes for the new gazpacho."

"It suggests that you're in a hurry and want to get out of here as soon as you can."

"Well - what if I want to leave quickly so that we can get a room and - you know?"

David scowled. "You haven't checked your cell once since that last phone call."

"Well, that's got to be a good thing, doesn't it?" Iker exclaims.

"No, it suggests you don't have any friends, any pressing business, anything to do once we're done here."

"But what about the call?"

"The call to your father? I mean, to sit here for forty-five minutes and not have any messages?" David raised his eyebrows pointedly. "That's a little worrying, considering your profession. You should be a busy, sought-after guy."

"Considering my profession," Iker argued, "I generally wouldn't be on a date like this in the first place. We should be somewhere more private."

"Well - well -" David struggled.

"How long is this list of 'signs'?" Iker asked.

"Don't you have a list?"

"Not really."

"So, if I were to continually look around at everybody else's tables, you wouldn't think I was bored?"

"No, I'd think you were rude, so it's a good thing neither of us is looking around at other people's tables."

"What if I kept fiddling with my collar?" David asked, lifting a hand to his neck to demonstrate. "Like this. Wouldn't you think I were nervous and therefore inexperienced and therefore probably a bit socially backward?"

"No, I'd think you were either hot or were wearing an uncomfortable shirt."

"Okay," David glared. "Well, what if I kept looking over at the waiters?"

Iker thought for a moment. "Well, yeah, that's a bit odd, considering you've still got plenty of water and wine. I guess I might think you were looking to wrap things up quickly, or that you fancied one of them -"

"Ha!" David looked triumphant for a moment before feeling his disappointment sketch itself across his face.

"What?"

"You've been looking at the waiters all night!" David hissed.

"Oh, come on!" Iker said disbelievingly. "You might have enough to drink but my juice is all out and none of these fucking penguins seem to have noticed. And, as you so astutely pointed out, I'm eating pretty damn quickly and I'm still hungry. I want to know when the mains are arriving."

David snorted, appeased but embarrassed. "Well, that's your story."

"It's a good one."

"I'll give you that," David smiled reluctantly.

"Why do you care about this so much, anyway?" Iker laughed.

"I don't," David argued, unconvincingly.

"You absolutely do! Why all the 'signs'?"

"A lifetime of habit."

"Well, why are you so stressed about this being perfect?"

"I -" David hesitated. "I think I love you," he said, his voice low, his eyes quite still and resting lightly on Iker's face. What David hadn't yet experienced in the two years that had passed, alongside a date, was what it felt like to say those words, or hear them in return.

"Oh," Iker said blankly.

"Oh?" It was as though something heavy dropped to the bottom of David's stomach, which now felt as though it was lurking near the floor. He was glad for the bustling and chatter around them that made bearable their sudden and heavy silence.

"Oh," Iker repeated, the blush creeping up his cheeks hidden by the restaurant's dim lighting. "I mean, well, that's a relief."

David wondered if he dared smile. "It is?"

"Yeah," Iker grinned back. "It is."

* * * * *

Today:

"So, where to, sir?" Iker jokes once David closes the passenger side door.

"Iker," David protests weakly.

"Okay, okay, I guess I'm not the only one who's allowed to be miserable in the mornings," Iker says, taking care to keep his tone airy.

"I'm not miserable," David whines again, smiling as though to prove his point, though it's contradicted - Iker feels - by the rolling of the eyes and the huffing breath. "I'm just..."

Iker manages to sail around an entire block and make his way to the main road before he gets impatient. "You know, it's okay to say that you're sad about leaving," he says bluntly.

"I know," David replies in a small voice.

"It doesn't make you the bigger person in this situation," Iker continues, not looking at David as his pitch gets a little higher, "to sit there and pretend that it's all sunshine and daisies, that it's not totally shit that you have to go."

"I'm not - I'm not pretending that -"

"Oh, right," Iker interrupts him sharply. "I forgot. I always think that, you know, because I'm finding this all really hard, that you are too. But you're more used to it than I am."

"It's not that I like it, you know."

"No, I know," Iker says somewhat dismissively. "It just -" He breathes out an embarrassed laugh. "It just makes me feel - stupid, to get so upset about it, when you're so... cool and collected. Adult. Manly."

There is a long silence before Iker feels David's hand on his thigh, and he looks up at him, surprised. David's eyes are soft and it's with concern rather than pity that he looks back at him.

"I think I just hide it a little better," he says gently. "You're a bit more... heart-on-sleeve - than I am."

Iker swallows as he feels something tighten in his throat. "You deal so well," he hears himself complain, like a child. "You don't seem to hate the fact that we see each other for less than twenty-four hours at a time. You don't seem sad to go."

"I don't seem it, but I am." They haven't yet made it to the motorway, which is perhaps why David says what he does: "Pull over, in that little street there."

Iker, for all his semblance of control, of having been able to rein in the emotions that threatened to spill out upon waking, finds himself too weak to argue or ask why, too entirely reduced by the situation, by his own behaviour, by his complete lack of influence over it all.

He pulls the handbrake and David is pulling his seat back, and pulling Iker toward him. Iker's eyes close, tired and surrendering, and he feels David's hands wander through his hair as he settles onto him, looking down at the man who's about to leave him, yet again. They kiss, hungrily but softly, as though willing themselves to taste a little more, to savour it a little further. Iker opens his eyes and smiles sadly down at his lover. David traces a finger along his cheek, and leans forward to kiss him again, his other hand sliding beneath his collar as Iker's reach under David's shirt.

They move slowly, fluidly, not pushing themselves too hard, too fast, too far. They forget about time tapping their watches, about check-in and about the peak-hour traffic that's about to settle into all the spaces between Madrid's buildings. Iker waits until David hands want to travel further down, until zippers need to be undone and breaths need to be snatched and grappled in desperate gasps. He doesn't feel himself get hard, or feel the car heat up. He just lets it happen.

* * * * *

Five years ago; their first fuck:

"You're damn fuckable."

Iker swallowed a messy combination of lettuce and tomato quite abruptly, his eyes darting furtively around the room at his uninterested team-mates. "Uhm - thank you?" he choked out with a forced smile. "Is that a word?"

"I want to fuck you dry," David continued in his hoarse whisper, leaning over his untouched lunch and fixing his eyes on Iker's face. "I want to fuck you through the floor."

"Jesus, your Spanish has come some way over the summer," Iker said in a low voice, blushing deeply and trying in vain to maintain some façade of propriety. "Finish your salad, David."

"I don't want salad."

"Well, you don't have a -"

"I want you."

"Jesus," Iker repeated. "Want to say that any louder?"

David grinned wickedly. "Come on."

The next things Iker saw was the table seemingly flying away from him, walls and doors rushing past as David pulled him by the arm, and the entrance to the locker room swallow them up before David finally let go of Iker's wrist and turned his attention instead to his shorts.

"What are you doing?" Iker hissed. "Everyone's going to notice we're gone -"

"I don't think they'll bother looking for us," David whispered, his fingers ripping down Iker's shorts. He looked up, smiling. "I think they'd rather pretend they don't know what's going on."

His own shorts were by his ankles by the time he drew breath and locked his lips onto Iker's, and Iker scrambled for the wall behind him for some modicum of support before tilting his head away.

"David," Iker said quite calmly. "Think this through."

"I've thought it through," David replied, quite matter-of-factly. His hands traveled around Iker's back now, and down, and Iker jumped a little.

"Oh, no, you don't," Iker gasped. "Listen," he said firmly, gripping David's still clothed shoulders, looking at him with amused resignation. "You want to do this?" He struggled a little as David's fingers continued to pry. Smiling tightly, he breathed, "Do it well."

David spoke with a hunger that . "What do you -"

"Shh," Iker soothed him, and leant in to kiss his jawline, softly at first, before getting more aggressive, sucking and biting until he got to David's lips and they sank open, gratefully. Iker let his hand reach unobtrusively for the base of David's shirt, which he gently pulled over his head, their mouths breaking apart only reluctantly. Iker smiled as David mirrored his gesture. He was about to say something vaguely patronising when David's mouth was on his again. But David's wandering, teasing fingers and his body pushing him up against the sliding metal of locker doors took his mind off his mouth soon enough.

The air was thick with summer and, kicking their feet out of the tangle of clothes on the floor, they both gasped in the musty humidity as sweat made slick messes of their bodies, mouths dry and wet at the same time, their energy dripping into the greedy space that pressed in on them and at once soaring and throbbing to the point where they couldn't get closer, harder. Their backs slammed against the walls as they pulled into each other, the room bounding their erratic, loving violence and tattooing them with bruises that ran rings around the crescents and criss-crossing lines that their fingernails had etched.

"Rubber... And lube," Iker mumbled into David's cheek and through the haze of warmth and lust, he saw David opening someone's locker - Sergio's? - and pulling shiny somethings from the crowd of nothings that tumbled onto the floor with a monolithic, distant sort of a crash.

David's hands where Iker needed them to be was the best kind of heat and the worst, a burn that he loved, that he questioned himself for loving. He took David in as David fingers stayed wrapped around him, and all he felt was sweat and wet and that burning pleasure that made him shudder, that took his body away from him and gave it to David. It was thudding, and every second of that thudding jolted his mouth and eyes open, curled his fingers and snapped his neck, which David sucked and licked just as ravenously, just as painfully perfectly as he pounded his hips and rubbed and tugged. Iker wanted to die, and he would die happy, and he wondered if this is what it felt like to love David.

No one came in as time flew past them. The only intrusions were handles on locker doors that made Iker grit his teeth and bite the lips that he couldn't feel anyway. They fell from standing and sprawling on walls and David took him in on the floor, his legs wide and hugging Iker's back as their lips tried to find each other and weakly fought the heated air between them. By the time a blissfully long and desperately short half-hour had ticked over, David had tightened and they had come together, Iker's arms at last giving up and giving way for him to collapse onto his lover. But David's hands held him up and he still Iker's gaze long enough to tell him, silently and through the sticky remnants of sex that dulled light and sound, that it wasn't over just because it was over.

"I've got you now," David whispered into Iker's ear.

"I'm a generous man," Iker muttered back, his languid smile kissing David's temple.

* * * * *

Today:

A brusque kiss on the cheek marks David's final intentions for the morning, but Iker thwarts them and lifts a hand to turn his jaw, kissing him with a frown that doesn't match the tenderness in his lips.

"Wait," he says as David makes to open the door and present himself to the busy street that poured people into the waiting airport. "Let me park - I'll come with you."

David shakes his head and something inside Iker sinks a little. "What's the point? Go; go home, sleep. Thank you," he adds by way of observing niceties, though his face is marked with the familiar resignation that goodbyes always bring out in him. That he should want to hasten the goodbye, though, is a surprise.

But Iker doesn't protest. "You'll call when you land?"

David smiles, weak but warm. "I wouldn't dare not."

They have no words left, having observed ritual thoroughly enough, and David leads his unloaded baggage into the politely staring crowd. Iker joins them from his front seat, his eyes fixed on the back of the man he hates to see go - of the man who always goes.

For a moment, he ignores the honking of the impatient car behind him. But the automatic doors of the airport's international terminal close and shield David's frame with bright reflection, and Iker blinks, and decides that he isn't going to let himself be so callously shut off from him. With an insincere apology in a waved hand to the waiting car that hurriedly takes his spot in the drop-off bay, he drives in the direction in which he knows the parking lot to be.

* * * * *

Three years ago; their break-up:

It was as though the newspapers had a loudness to them; Iker found himself wincing with headaches that were usually brought on by nightclubs and concerts in which he had never belonged. For six long months, they had seemed to scream his loss at him, as though to remind him, over and over again, of exactly how unfriendly, how lonely, football could be. He was surrounded by it, inescapable and constant, the sympathy of his friends and family almost as overbearing as the laughing voice of journalists who relished the breaking apart of a team, of a family, for the sake of entertainment.

It reached a point where the only thing stopping Iker from ripping apart every two-dimensional reproduction of David's face on coloured newspaper was the thought that he wouldn't have the real thing to look at for much longer. Indeed, the sting of a June goodbye carried its own small reprieve.

The streets mocked him further. They bore street corners where he had once seen his shirt sold alongside David's; restaurants at which they'd failed to eat because they had just wanted to get home and into bed and into each other; streetlights that had watched them as they'd driven through the late nights, sleepless and restless, needing each other's silent presence when nerves or regret were their only midnight company. They streets threw memories at him that he didn't need, his head already filled with yesterdays, and with the tomorrows that those streets wouldn't witness.

He arrived at David's, quiet and ready to collapse into his arms, but he stopped himself, remembering that he should get used to the absence of those arms, of that embrace, of David. He clenched his jaw and let himself in.

Though David's attention appeared to have been monopolised by the packed boxes through which he weaved, muttering and counting, his head snapped up as Iker's feet disturbed plastic sheeting, and his smile was one of relief and genuine warmth. He knocked over some packing tape and more plastic as he moved toward Iker, hugged him tightly, and, with an innocent sort of love, breathed "I hoped you'd come" into his neck with a muffled joy.

Iker's eyes remained on the littered contents of David's living room when he pulled away - all the tributes to a four-year bliss shunted between cardboard walls that would take them to a place where they'd have to form the foundations of new memories. The sun poured, unfiltered, into a room that no longer propped up worn-through furniture to get in its way. Iker winced in the light, his tested spirits falling further.

"So, I suppose this is it," he said bluntly.

David looked confused and bemused at the same time. "What's it?"

Iker shrugged clumsily, petulantly. "It was good," he mumbled. "I'll miss it."

"What's it?" David repeated, less lightly this time.

Iker looked at him with childish insolence. "Look - I don't want to make a big deal out of this. I just came to say goodbye, and wish you well, and - and -" He swallowed, and hoped that his voice would emerge stronger on the other side of the pause. "And make sure you call, alright?"

David was frowning now, his lips sitting in a thin line that Iker found unfamiliar, almost foreign in the flesh. "Are you - Are you serious? Of course I'll -" It was his term to take a moment to steady himself, while Iker watched with something of a challenge in his look. "What do you think's going to happen, Iker?" he asked slowly.

Iker's shoulders shrugged their noncommitment. "I don't mind, you know. I mean, I've had half a year to deal with it, I'm not -"

"Deal with what?"

"The... end," Iker admitted uncomfortably, almost as a question. "Of this. And I mean it," he suddenly rushed, "it was good -"

"The 'end'?" David echoed, spitting out the word as though he couldn't quite believe he had to say it. "I'm going to America, I'm not dying."

"But - but -" Iker struggled, seeing that David was genuinely shocked and not at all understanding why. "But it can't be the same, with you gone. I can't show up here and bring you breakfast. You haven't even got a breakfast table anymore," he breathed out with a messy, confused laugh. "I can't drive you to training, I can't see you at training, I can't see you, touch you, be with you -"

"So you think it's the 'end'?" David's voice was soft with an inexplicable hurt. "Because my body's not here, you'd just rather - let me go, and move on, and - and not be here when I get back?"

"Well -" Iker hesitated. "What else did you expect?"

And he hadn't realised at the time, but he'd made David feel useless and cheap, nothing more than a posterboy, a throwaway collectable, a shirt to be worn and then discarded. It only really occured to him when Christmas ticked over amidst a haze of melancholy and regretting drunkenness, and he finally explained to himself why David had failed to contact him at all.

* * * * *

Today:

The familiar walls of magazines, transparent fridges and haphazardly arranged neck pillows stare down at David as he walks through the airport to his departure gate. He has lowered sunglasses onto his face and is thankful that the weather is cool enough to merit the long sleeves that hide his tattooed arms from the people who keep glancing at him, checking to see if it really is the David Beckham.

He takes a detour when the friendly whiff of coffee permeates his path. The ten-minute wait is worth it, as the cappuccino is smooth and hot and strong - much needed as the morning's caffeine has long since ebbed away and left him heavy with tiredness and with something that tugs a little harder.

He glances up at the sign to the VIP lounge, down at the handle that he pulls with his left hand, which clutches his passport and boarding pass, and up again at Iker's feigned frown.

"I already got you one," Iker protests, holding up two cups of coffee.

David's surprise is pushed aside by a pleasure that is too simple, too direct to be masked. He grins as mumbles an apology. As he lifts his arms to embrace Iker, he tosses his newly bought coffee in the trash, and he hears Iker laugh.

"Mine's bigger, anyway," Iker asserts, as he leads the way to a couple of seats in a lonely corner and holds out a cup for David to take.

"You keep telling yourself that," David laughs.

They just sit, and it's nice, and that something that was weighing down on David doesn't seem so heavy anymore.

* * * * *

Two years ago; their make-up:

There were three unappealing options that lay in wait for David when he found himself with a week or two's holiday emptiness to fill: revisit the city that gave him so much, revisit the club that gave him so much, revisit the man who gave him so much. Or, alternatively, there was a fourth option, which involved a sentimental combination of all three. Instead, he steered clear of the places where, he feared, Iker would still tell his feet where to walk, and he made the obstinate decision to eschew Madrid altogether. He stayed put, and did not expect any visitors.

He did not count on Iker's restlessness, on his guilt, on the David-shaped figure that had followed him around for half a year, creaking his floorboards, drawing double-takes in glass reflections, and making the solitary laughter of one man in front of a television sitcom sound so much lonelier. David had seen only detachment in the goodbye Iker had given him, and was thus immensely surprised to see that said detachment had failed to last until the new year.

Two or three days after Christmas, when the decorations strewn across neighbouring houses began to look sad as their owners traipsed, fatter and more fatigued, back to work, David frowned down at the screen showing him that Iker was standing by his security gate.

He ushered Iker in wordlessly, casting a needlessly surrepticious glance around the street to make sure nobody was watching (somebody was always watching, but here, unlike in Madrid, Iker was merely an anonymous stranger). Iker, too, said nothing, evidently content to merely blush and nod his head - in thanks, or perhaps in apology. David couldn't quite tell, couldn't quite think. He sat Iker down, and sat himself down opposite him - with a table in between - and allowed Iker to do the thinking while he did the reacting.

"Thanks for letting me in," Iker began nervously. David raised an eyebrow as if to say 'Really? You thought I wouldnt let you in? Give me some credit!' "I, uh..." Iker smiled, ingenuinely. "You look good."

People always seemed to say that when they were trying to make up for lost time, but it always came out accompanied by an ill-matched sense of surprise, or conciliation. It was never very relevant.

"I feel good," David said, not quite lying, but - of course - not quite telling the truth. He was enjoying LA. He liked the familiarity of the sunshine which hadn't deserted him upon leaving Madrid, of a tight-knit and open-minded team around him, of a buzzing and dynamic city of culture that was so much bigger than he was, and, yes, even of the photographers, who reminded him daily that he was still worth caring about. "How are you?" he added, feigning politeness but, wondering whether Iker could see him pulling himself apart inside with curiosity.

The question carried with it little sub-questions like 'Why are you here?' and 'Have you missed me?', and David hoped that Iker would read them all. Whether he did would require more from David, as Iker only said, "I've had better flights than that one, but I'm good."

David couldn't bring himself to try to understand what that meant; the effort needed was too great, the pool of possibilities rippling with too many what-ifs and if-onlys. His eyes flickered sideways as he swallowed, not even trying to disguise awkwardness but, on the contrary, keen to have it on show. "I have Christmas lights to take down, so -"

"Right, right," Iker hurried, standing up. "Of course. Sorry."

David stared at him for a moment before laughing in almost annoyed disbelief. "So, what? You're going to leave?"

"Well, if you need me to," Iker replied stiffly, his cheeks red, his eyes seemingly unable to remain still.

David just waited, looking up at Iker who didn't appear to know what to do. He watched the Spaniard open his mouth, and sigh, and roll his eyes at himself, and he felt something inside of him grow a little lighter with a pitying, selfish kind of relief. Iker looked back at him again, and David sat patiently as something for him to react to began to form: a word, a sentence, taking shape in Iker's mouth, as reservation tore itself free.

"Oh, what the hell," Iker muttered, and David heard himself inhale sharply. "I came for one of two reasons, depending on how you - see it. Because when you're... when you're - in a relationship, it's not just you who decides how things go; it depends on what the other person wants. Right? So it basically came down to two things: a goodbye that's done properly, with - with closure, and all the rest of it; or a - a - a something else."

David would not openly allow himself to leap at the prospect of 'a something else', but the childishness to which his adult mind still clung saw his thoughts carry themselves away, and it was all he could do to stop a smile from meeting his lips - a vain effort to be the composed, rational man that Iker could not turn into a fool.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to spell it out for me," he said somewhat dully - and was proud of himself for it.

"I miss you. And I regret a lot of things," Iker sighed, like a man on his deathbed. "And I'm here because I don't want to miss you or regret things."

David's eyelids fluttered as he blinked, and he looked away as his lips began to feel quite dry, and his tongue quite unsteady. "What do you miss? What do you regret?"

Iker exhaled deeply, as though about to recite a long-rehearsed speech that, he already knew, would win his audience over. "I miss your silly plans that you'd drag me along to carry out. I miss how old you always said I was; now I just feel old, and there's no indulgence in it. I regret... I regret putting words into your mouth. I regret not giving you enough credit."

David closed his eyes, steadying himself, before daring to open them. He felt a bit dizzy. "The last six months have made you wiser, then."

"I hope they haven't done the same to you," Iker smiled. "I miss how much of a kid you were."

David smiled back, but with a sadness that he wondered whether Iker would come to share, because that kid had been tucked away somewhere to make way for someone who resembled the Iker who always talked down to him, and David wasn't sure whether that kid would reappear.

* * * * *

Today:

Iker is sorry that he can't kiss David right there, but the lounge is all loudspeaker announcements and hands being held out to take boarding passes, and David is distracted by the bustle that holds back their goodbye, and he doesn't see it.

Iker notices the cup of coffee that, in all the noise and movement, David has abandoned on the seat next to his, and he picks it up and finishes it off for him, lightly watching his lover straightening up and ignoring the looks of the flight attendants who keep glancing at the two of them with dark, embarrassed eyes.

He is sorry that he can't turn David around and run a finger along his cheek and look at him, long and hard, as it is his right to do. He hopes that somehow, with that intuition that always told him when Iker was about to start whining about hunger or when he needed his lightheaded and naïve enthusiasm humoured and not quelled, that David will feel the determination with which he's looking at him, showing him just how much he wants to kiss him right there.

Seconds pass as seat number are confirmed and, with a smile, David assures the man who takes his bag that there are no electricals in it. These moments strip away the space for warmly poetic, perfect, right goodbyes and lengthened instants of understanding. But, as Iker patiently waits and distantly wonders where that understanding is still there, David - late, and clumsily - turn around and hugs him, and he lingers for a second too long to whisper "Thanks for coming" in Iker's ear. Though it's a weary man's whisper, Iker hears a baldly innocent little kid in the words, and he sinks into an abstract sort of relief.

He smiles before letting go. "Thanks for coming back."