counterpoint; chapter four.
Title: Counterpoint
Chapter: 4 of 4
Characters: David Silva / David Villa; Sergio Ramos / Fernando Torres; Steven Gerrard / Xabi Alonso
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Lies.
Notes: AU. Sorry about the delay; this past week was finals week.
Feedback > life. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
The man in the mirror.
Fernando put himself under different types of pressure: pressure to constantly achieve more, learn more, earn more; pressure to keep the mask on, so that he would have less to explain; pressure to re-prove, every day, that he had chosen his solitude and that it hadn't happened the other way around. More daunting than these, though, and more insatiable in its desire to burrow into all the spaces between the worries that Fernando already had, was the pressure to be interesting.
At the beginning, Sergio kept saying that he found Fernando so interesting, and so beautiful, and so intelligent, and all that was left was for Fernando to disappoint him. It was inevitable, having been built up to something so grand, so near-perfect as to almost be a two-dimensional image in Sergio's mind. For a long time, being quiet and solemn constituted being 'interesting'; Sergio seemed to take delight in trying to weasel his way into whatever cracks he thought Fernando's veneer might possess.
But when Sergio left, and came back, and Fernando had to wrestle the veneer back on and hope that it still fit, he worried that Sergio would realise that he wasn't that attractive, or intelligent, or any more interesting than the next person, despite his unorthodix approach to conversation or his forays into 'enigmatic' silences. Sergio cared far too much about the minutiae of Fernando's existence. It was dangerous, exposing.
Fernando understood it. Sergio revelled in the little things and let the big speak for themselves. He liked to turn tiny moments into things worthy of being remembered. He was so willing to offer parts of himself - memories, wishes, fears, opinions - and Fernando found comfort in the absence of space left for his own stories. He enjoyed listening and eating and drinking, spared the task of contributing in return for being an open vessel into which Sergio could pour himself. He enjoyed being that for someone. It was another thing entirely for Sergio to expect an outpouring in the other direction.
"Of course it's important," Sergio had argued when, a few years earlier, Fernando had wrinkled his nose at the prospect of doing something elaborate for his birthday.
"I don't know why you care."
"I don't know why you don't."
"I don't need to do something with friends," Fernando whined. "They know it's my birthday - I have one every year. There's no need to do something special to celebrate my getting older."
"Yeah, because twenty-three is so old."
"Look, I just. . . can't be bothered."
"What are you scared of?"
"What?"
"Are you scared that people won't show? That it'll be boring? That you'll have nothing to say to them?"
Fernando was scared of all of those things, but - "You're too different from me."
Sergio had smiled. "But I'm not. I get those things. I do. I just want to bring you out of your shell."
"I don't want to come out."
"Well, then, I guess one of us loses either way."
He didn't know what he wanted from Sergio. He didn't know if he wanted hyper-engagement or a healthy detachment. He didn't know if he wanted him here or gone.
The moments when Fernando wanted to reach out a hand and touch Sergio on the shoulder or lightly brush his cheek were the ones when Fernando felt like he might have loved something. But Sergio seemed to find magic elsewhere. Sergio concerned himself with the moments of nothingness, almost seeking to document it all. It was either that or let those moments go by, not unobserved - because Fernando observed everything - but in danger of being forgotten. He was so determined to solidify the moments that he and Fernando spent together that he would interrupt them to take photos of the two of them, so that he could always look back on those instants that he had ruined with his camera. The desire to reach out and touch Fernando wasn't something that filled Sergio with a hot, trembling hesitation. That was the easy part for him.
There were glorious little moments when Sergio was childlike in his beauty, flushed or quiet - something pure, an emotion that hadn't been consciously put on. But Fernando could never do it, could never openly adore it, for fear that Sergio would turn it into something bigger than it was: a small, innocent curiosity, not a full-bodied love.
But what was it, if it wasn't love? What were these fragments of happiness, the beating in his stomach, the easing of breath, the emptying of his head? Did this warm emptiness get cancelled out by the times when Sergio would become too much? Was it worth giving up for a colder kind of peace?
He woke early one morning, listening to Sergio - who always woke earlier - bustling around in the kitchen. He checked his emails and found the usual pollution of spam, a message from Unicef thanking him for his decision to sponsor two Bangladeshi children, and another notice for the job at the advertising firm where Sergio worked - an offer that Fernando still refused to take. He had his routine, his comfort, his space - he was quietly frightened of shaking it all up.
Sergio, almost alone of everyone Fernando knew, didn't seem to be defined by his job. He didn't have jingle-writer written all over his face, the way Fernando must have reeked of stay-at-home-reviewer-of-literature. Sergio's boss, judging by what Sergio said about him, seemed to leak marketing strategies and did nothing if it wasn't effective and efficient. Fernando hoped that Sergio's admiration of him didn't mean that he was aspiring toward the same. He didn't think he could handle a man whose life revolved around catchy couplets about English Breakfast tea or carpet cleaner.
He pulled a sweatshirt over his head, listening to Sergio cursing at the toaster. He brushed his teeth, his eyes flicking toward Sergio's toothbrush in the stand. He heard Sergio turn the television on only to turn it off when one of his worse jingles (in Fernando's opinion, and that of the rest of the television-watching world) began playing. He made the bed and saw a photo on the bedside table - one that Fernando had taken, of Sergio laughing so hard that he didn't realise a camera was anywhere near him (he would otherwise have done something about his hair).
Today, Fernando wanted Sergio here. He wanted to detachedly observe his hyper-engagement. He wanted to laugh at him laughing. He wanted to be thankful that, while Sergio didn't value what Fernando valued, he chose small moments of happiness, even if they were the wrong ones to choose. He wanted to let Sergio find him interesting. He wanted to let himself be scrutinised without understanding what there was to love. He wanted to pretend that it was okay for Sergio to love him.
For the first time in a long time, he walked into the kitchen smiling.
Sergio was out, walking or window-shopping or some other purposeless pursuit that made Fernando wish he too were doing nothing outside rather than inside. George Eliot was still frightfully dull and entirely unworthy of a series of essays, and though he avoided the radio for fear that it would play songs that reminded him of Sergio, the television played Sergio's work back at him at regular thirteen-minute intervals. Sergio had jammed the toaster and Fernando was left with stale cereal and nothing to distract him from it.
Fuck it, he thought, and dragged a larger sweatshirt over the one he was already wearing.
The streets had been rained on and cars sprayed skidding water on him as he walked. The coffee he bought had smelt better at the kiosk that it tasted in his mouth. Fernando was overly hot in his sweatshirts and with his bad coffee in his hand, and there wasn't much to see beyond grey skies that lurked over the tops of buildings. Perhaps this was all best left to Sergio. All Fernando wanted to do was be at home with an arm wrapped around his waist, listening to someone tell him stories about nothing, and tell him he was wonderful.
But Sergio wasn't out wandering the streets. He was packing a suitcase, hunched over and defeated. When Fernando got home, a surge of something like regret seemed to want to throw itself up. His home was empty again.
Four point plans.
"Someone should tell the Chinese: four point plans are better than five point plans. By the time you get to your fifth point, everyone's either forgotten about the first or they've undone it. You need a sort of symmetry with plans." He smiled. "Number one, you need to have a foundation. Then you need to build on it. Then you need to trick it out - take it from a basic good to a luxury good, from something that people need to something that they want. But fourth, you need to remind them that they needed it all along, that they can't live without it now. It's too late. Who cares that it's overcomplicated and expensive? They need it. They'll remember point one - the very basic problem that you aimed to solve - and they'll see now that you've solved it."
"You're a genius," Sergio had told him.
"A pragmatist, actually," Xabi had replied with nothing more than a mere tone of modesty. "There are too few of us."
Xabi hated what he did for a living. He disguised it well, by spouting his ideas with the cold briskness that suggested a matter-of-fact pride or arrogance. He was good at what he did, and he convinced himself that because he was good at it, and because it was a job that needed to be done, there was no sense in hating it. But the days would roll to an end and all he'd have to show for it were a completed ad treatment and the fear of his inferiors, and he couldn't help but wish he were somewhere else, doing something that people liked, being someone whom people liked.
Xabi had always argued that Steven set too much store by being liked. It was though he didn't care whether he was thought of as unintelligent, or vacuous, or something entirely different to what he actually was, as long as he could make people happy - as long as he was liked. Xabi, by contrast, always argued that he didn't care whether he was liked. He didn't care if people thought he was cold, as long as they understood the sense in what he was saying to them. He couldn't bring himself to entertain the small insecurities of other people by making them smile, or making them feel loved. He wanted to make them think.
"But," Steven had argued once, "everything you do is about being liked. Your work - it's about getting people to like what you're selling them. It's feelings, not thinking. And even you - you're worshipped by everyone you work with because they want to be you. It's all about being liked."
Xabi couldn't remember what he'd said in argument to this. He only remembered feeling quite sad that Steven had had it so wrong, that Steven had given him so much credit. Worship had nothing to do with being liked.
He couldn't help it. A mere three days had passed when he got into his car, told his assistant that he was able to make it, after all, and gone up to the conference room a few doors down from his office to do the presentation that he hadn't trusted his second-in-command with, anyway.
"The most effective way to convince somebody of something is by first telling them what it is you're going to convince them to do, or to believe. You give them the bait, so the whole time you're talking, they're going to be waiting for it to come up again. Then you list all the problems they have that your bait will solve, without mentioning the bait a second time. You then tell them how your bait is going to solve it - again, without mentioning the bait. By this point, they have a vague recollection of the bait but they're too busy thinking about the problems that they need solving, and the potential solutions drifting out there in the stratosphere, that they're in a bit of a state and they need someone to calmly come along and put the bait in front of them. And then, that is exactly what you do."
He had hit a button on the lectern and a projector screen rolled down. He pressed play, and a thirty-second advertisement on washing powder started. He watched the others watching the ad. He liked their frowns of incredulity; he liked knowing that he'd wipe them off.
"In this ad, you see all four steps come into play. First, this stereotypical housewife shows the stereotypical housewives sitting at home that she is about to sell them 'Pink Lady detergent'. We know this because it's written on her t-shirt, the Pink Lady logo is in the corner of the screen, and - let's be honest - not many people have hot pink laundries. Second, the stereotypical housewife points to grass stains, wine stains, mysterious greyish-yellow stains which - let's be honest - are the ones that the stereotypical housewives at home are really concerned about. Third, the fool-proof rhetorical question -" he paused to allow the men to hear the woman speak.
"If only," she appealed widely, "there was a product that could take all of those stains away without the need for bleach!"
"And there you have it," Xabi concluded with a flourish. "The Pink Lady bottle of detergent itself."
"But this is all a bit - forgive me," a young man by the name of Rubén said from the front row, "but it's a pretty unsophisticated ad. It's not going to resonate with many people."
"Perhaps not," says Xabi, giving Rubén a smile as though he hadn't been waiting for some smart-ass to raise that very point. "Or perhaps, if you had bothered to read the hand-out there, you'd see that, in the twelve months after we issued this commercial, Pink Lady jumped up from fifth- to second-best-selling laundry detergent. But - why not? - let's watch another one. A more 'sophisicated' one."
The Unicef ad followed Xabi's four-point plan to perfection.
One: The Unicef logo.
Two: A starving Indian boy by the name of Rahul, aged ten, filmed in close-up to elicit the most sickening type of guilt in the viewing audience.
Three: A voice-over telling the guilty viewing audience that only the generosity of the western world can help private aid to reach boys like Rahul.
Four: The Unicef phone number.
"You're a genius," Rubén remarked, shaking his head in admiration.
Xabi didn't disagree this time. It was always a bit pointless, he found, disagreeing with one's own echo.
The house was mournfully empty after Steven left - beds and chairs and floors that meant little without being slept in, sat and walked on. He thought about what Sergio had said when he'd first mentioned the house - something about lovers forging their own path rather than walking beaten ones, taking the time to create memories rather than being content with the old ones. It had seemed a little fanciful at the time, Xabi remembered, and Sergio had always seemed like the type of person who would rather live out a coming-of-age film with an Oasis soundtrack than just let things happen naturally and dully. But now that he was left alone, Xabi wondered whether his coworker was getting more from being with his lover in the city than Xabi was getting from being without his by the sea.
Steven had brought so much with him. It had been reassuring; it seemed to mean that he had had no intention of leaving. It was like buying a cot before the baby arrives - consolidation, confirmation. Comfort.
And now that Steven and his over-measured belongings and his comfort had gone, Xabi wanted to retreat back to the buildings that set high, overbearing borders around crowded streets; sink into the old life that he'd hated and rewind his mindset back to the time when he'd found happiness in the belief that there had been alternatives down by the sea, by his man.
"But if he broke up with you . . ."
"He didn't 'break up' with me. We had a mutual misunderstanding."
"That's a new one."
"It's just - I don't know. We never even tried." Sergio had sighed and looked up. "Don't you ever feel like you're stuck in a kind of - rut? Like, you take your life as it is right now, and you just let it fester in its own juices? And you never take a risk or try to mix things up?"
"Sergio, I -"
"I've seen you, you know."
"Huh?"
"I've seen you go back to your office, and you slump at your desk, and you sigh - it's all very dramatic, you know that moment in the movie when you realise that the guy isn't happy at all?"
"I'd appreciate your not following me back to my office to psychoanalyse me and fit me into a movie mould."
"I've seen you smile when Steven shows up, and I've seen how your mood just hits rock bottom when you have to cancel lunch with him - you take it out on everyone else."
"I'm sorry?"
"Well, not on me, but -"
"No, I meant that I'm sorry in general -"
"And you're always happier at the end of the day. And I thought that was because you'd accomplished a lot or fired somebody or made a profit or something, but no. You're just like us. You're just happy you get to go home."
"What's your point, Sergio?"
"I just - don't you wish you could get away from it all? Maybe, like, go home a little earlier, or just - fuck it - not come to work at all?"
"Well, we all wish for that, but barring a proletariat uprising -"
"I just - I don't know, I was sick of it, man. So I'm moving in with my boyfriend. You know, this shit doesn't just happen. You have to work on it."
"Well, you do that, then."
"I want to be able to wake up in a different bed, but with the same person, you know? I want to learn more about him, learn how he lives, learn how we can have a life together. I don't want it to just be like, 'Hey, I'll call you and we'll figure out a time and a place and -' . . . I want to always be there. And I want him to want me there."
"Well, you do that, then."
"You never wish you could just escape? Just, like, blow off the fucking finance meeting and have a two-hour lunch with your man, and maybe see a movie, or just stay at home and screw it all?"
"I'm not the kind of person who stays at home and screws it all."
"You're not the kind of couple who does that."
"Damn it, Sergio, can you stop putting us in a box? Have you even spoken to Steven?"
"Once. He was leaving after you'd told him that you couldn't see him that night. He said you looked miserable."
"Huh."
"I said you always look miserable."
"Thanks."
"He agreed."
"Maybe you two should get together."
"I know you don't need to get away from it all. But you can't deny that you want to."
"Want to what?"
"Take some time off. Discover yourself and shit."
"Always so eloquent."
"We don't need you around here. Summer break - the work's already been done, the ads are made."
"There's still editing."
"You have nothing to do with editing." Sergio's eyes softened. "You have no excuse to be here. All those appointments you have written in your diary thing? You could legitimately cross them all out and it wouldn't make a difference."
"I really wish you wouldn't follow me to my office."
"So you should cross them all out and stop turning him away."
"You have no right to be saying this." Xabi's voice was weak.
"Maybe not," Sergio shrugged. "I'm just dangling the carrot."
"Your house."
"For the summer."
"With Steven."
"You see why you hired me?"
"God damn it."
He had been so anxious for it to work. He'd had such high expectations that Steven, in all his innocence, had never had a hope of living up to. He had built up a perfect vision in his mind, based on the Steven that moulded himself to fit into the crevices of Xabi's schedule, and there was no reason to suppose that just because something existed beyond the outline of that image, it too wouldn't be able to fit right next to Xabi.
He came home, to the emptiness and the silence, with no footprints, and the smell of Steven having disappeared so quickly with the rest of him. The calm that Xabi felt was hollow, like being the only person in a movie theatre, nobody there to discuss the film with after the show, when even the people who checked their cell phones every twenty minutes, or sniffled, or rustled bags of potato chips, seemed better company than no company at all.
And Steven had been so much more than just company. He had been, rather, more than Xabi had given him credit for; more than Xabi had allowed him to be. He had been someone capable of surprising him - which, for an advertising executive, was a fairly big deal.
He got away from the emptiness and the silence and decided to head to that darn cliff, to see what he'd missed out on, what experience Steven would have given him - almost to prove to himself that those moments didn't just disappear because you didn't take the chance to live them the first time around, or with the right person.
His footsteps seemed so loud against the ground, and the ground seemed so much closer than it had done before. He was reminded of the echoes that filled Sergio's pristine, shiny-surfaced house, and was struck by the fact that he noticed and was reminded of these things at all, now that it was only him spurring them on - his solitude being bounced back at him.
When he got to the cliff, he stopped, this time not noticing that he couldn't hear his breaths over the crashing of white water against the rocks, and not feeling the force of the wind knock him back a little. He stopped thinking about what lay outside Steven's outline, sitting on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the sea.
A century in a moment passed, and Xabi felt weak. He went to sit down by Steven, and could have sobbed when Steven lay a hand on his.
All our yesterdays.
Villa shushed Sergio as they tiptoed past Villa's father's slumbering form on the sofa.
"It's all worked out kind of perfectly," Sergio sighed as though he were speaking about something far from perfect. "He just gave me a call; apparently they can't hack it out there - all that peace and quiet - and they just want to get back to work. He does, anyway."
"A workaholic, huh?" Villa replied, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
"That's why I love him. But, yeah - the house is free now, so it doesn't matter that I . . ."
Villa smiled, trying not to look too pitying. "When are you heading back?"
"Well, he'll be out - they'll both be out of there by this evening, so I was thinking of - I don't know - maybe seeing a movie or something, have some dinner, before going back down."
Villa's fingers leafed through the papers that littered the desk in his parents' bedroom, as snores from the living room that Villa called home - out loud, at least - peeked in through the gaps in the door. "I guess, now you know."
"Now I know."
"I'm sorry, man." Villa folded his arms, not quite knowing what else there was to do.
"Oh, can we not talk about it anymore?" Sergio leaned back against the headboard of the bed, closing his eyes. "Let's talk about you."
"Let's not."
"You've got to have cheerier stories than me."
"I don't, Sergio, fuck."
"What happened? I thought things were fine?"
"Things are fine," Villa said irritably. "It's just - I don't know. He lost his job, so he's been miserable, and he can't pay his rent, and -"
"Well -"
"I don't want to hear it, Sergio."
"But -"
"I don't want to fucking hear it! I know, if I had a job then he wouldn't be behind on rent payment, yada yada yada!"
"I'm not telling you off," Sergio rolled his eyes. "It's true, though. You should be helping him out."
"You can see yourself out, yeah?" Villa made to leave.
"No, listen, listen," Sergio sat up, looking earnest. "He lost his job?"
"Well, I don't know what conversation you've been having, but -"
"There's a job opening at the agency." Villa stared. "For writers - they need writers to work on drafting treatments for the clients. It's not a big job and it doesn't pay a shitload, but it's good, steady work. You know, challenging. Mentally simulating."
"Stimulating."
"Well, aren't you a brain?"
A schedule as monochrome as Silva's presented few challenges. Villa had it memorised within the first month. The first time he'd showed up before he was supposed to - his watch had stopped without his realising it, and he'd found himself in the apartment with two and a half hours to kill - he realised that it was perhaps not an unhappy accident. There was a world of Silva to discover in those stolen minutes before the man slumped home from work. That evening, Villa discovered an old passport, which revealed that Silva had once been to Berlin and never anywhere else. He found the photos from Silva's high school prom and subsequently wished that he could erase that picture of gawkiness from his mind. He found receipts and bills, discarded ideas for short stories, rejection letters from potential employers. He left fifteen minutes before Silva was to arrive, and turned up again as though nothing had changed.
After he ushered Sergio out of his parents' house, and Sergio mumbled something about going to see the new Michael Bay movie, Villa made a beeline for the apartment. He knew what he was looking for. This wasn't like the other days, when he simply lifted up folder covers and opened doors leisurely, wondering what he would find. This was a day for rummaging, and for hoping that he didn't disturb things too much in the process.
He found what he was looking for - a dog-eared, green manila folder, the inside of which was filled with print-outs and cut-outs, sticky notes on them showing that they were from various bulletins and newsletters, faculty magazines and such.
He checked his watch - he had twenty minutes. Yeah, it was enough.
He sat down on the bed which saw so little sitting, and leafed through the work that, once, Silva must have been so proud of. And understandably - the man had a natural talent for it. Villa didn't know much about writing, but he understood that 'A+' and 'feature writer' were generally things worthy of more than merely being locked away in an old folder that looked like it had been wet at some point. He understood that, once, Silva had wanted more, and been capable of more.
He checked his watch again - a mere five minutes. More rummaging, until he found item number two: a résumé - outdated by a year, but nothing had changed much in that year. He scrambled up, rushed out of the apartment, and headed to the post office with his right hand dialling Sergio's number on the phone.
"Get out, just get out."
It was a poor start to the morning.
Silva had woken up at six o'clock sharp, his shrill alarm trilling as though it still had a purpose, Silva having forgotten to turn it off. He stretched and yawned before realising that he didn't have to be up that early, and he was slouching back under the covers when he noticed Villa noticing him and smiling, and his comment about silver linings wasn't what Silva had wanted to hear.
Villa still had sleep in his eyes and he stumbled down the stairs, waving a callous hand at the landlord, who shook his head with the same disapproval that Villa seemed to elicit in everyone, whether they knew him well or not. The cafés were closed, and a kiosk selling coffee by the main street looked about as hygienic as Villa's father's toilet if Villa's mother wasn't around to do the housework.
He was trying to ignore how uncomfortable the park bench was against his back, and how loudly his stomach churned, and how blinding the sun was in its early morning flatness, when a small dog ran up to him and peed on his leg.
It was a poor morning all around.
"How's the boyfriend?" Villa's dad asked when he came home, stinking of urine and frowning at his trouser leg as though it had personally failed him.
"Still loves me."
"Even though you smell like piss?"
"Well, I try to cover it up as well as I can, but sometimes cologne just isn't enough, and he's just had to get used to it."
"You're a smart-ass."
"I learnt from the best," Villa shrugged, pulling off his trousers and heading for the bathroom.
"You talk to him this way?"
"Much worse."
"Poor guy."
"Well, yeah, unemployment does that to a man."
"You'd know."
"I learnt from the best." Villa ran some bathwater and soaked his trousers under it.
"He must love you a lot."
Villa paused, staring at the bathroom tiles. "I don't think he realises how much."
"Don't you let him know, now. You'll scare him away."
"Nah, he's in too deep," Villa shook his head, coming back into the living room.
"I mean it, boy."
"You're talking like I'm threatening to tell him that I have syphilis," Villa said, rolling his eyes as he sat down by his father's feet, still in his underwear.
"He's not like the others, is he?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have a different look to you. He's not one of the casual ones. One of the guys you fuck and desert in the morning."
"Well, it's the morning, and I've -"
"I know it looks the same - it looks casual - but I can see that it's not."
"Well, bully for you."
"Don't fuck this up, David."
"Or you'll do what?"
"If it's not casual, you let him know it's not casual. If you love him like he loves you. . . Don't you string him along like a cheap dog toy."
"Let's not talk about dogs."
"And put some pants on."
"I don't -"
". . . What?"
"I don't know if he . . . Maybe he thinks it's just casual. He hasn't done anything - said anything - to indicate -"
"You're a Villa, son. Nobody wants to be 'just casual' with a Villa."
"Well, I guess not," Villa smiled. "Look at us - upstanding gentlemen of the highest order."
"You learnt from the best."
The weekend passed like a bad Indian dinner and Silva emerged, on the other side, with a glower and a (weak) shove on the shoulder. He called Villa an ass and a dick, which Villa thought was anatomically confusing but he decided against making jokes about asexuality. Silva spluttered and stammered when Villa told him to keep it down, and he pounded a fist into the kitchen benchtop when Villa suggested that he stop acting like a petulant teenager.
"What right did you have?"
"You say that like I did something terrible."
"You went through my things, you signed me up for an interview - can you imagine what it's like to get a call in the morning confirming an interview you never knew about? Can you imagine how that interview went?"
"Why did you go? You didn't have to actually go."
"Why did I - why did - You went through my apartment! How did you even get in?"
"To be honest, your security system is lacking. And I - uh - well, I've gotten to know your landlord."
"Oh, man, I'm going to -"
"Calm down."
"No!"
"I only wanted to help out."
"You don't know anything about me, how could you possibly know how to help me out?"
"I know plenty about you."
"Oh, because you've been going through the relics of my life."
"Calm down."
"I don't feel like calming down right now."
"Surely everyone feels like calming down all the time."
"Not people in mosh pits."
". . . Well -"
"Or people in fight clubs."
"I don't think fight clubs actually exist."
"No, the movie sparked a whole trend across the States. A fight club fad, like the Union Jack dress fad, and the boombox-under-the-girl's-window fad -"
"Union Jack dress?"
"Never mind."
Villa smiled.
"What?"
"You've calmed down already."
". . . What are you even doing?"
"What do you mean?"
"What is this?" Silva looked weak. "You walk in to my life like you have a right to be here. You eat my food, sleep in my bed, send in my job applications. . . We - we say horrible, horrible things to each other, but we act like that's okay, because we're just being honest, and people are honest when they're -"
"When they're?"
"I don't know. That - that line's gone. You know? That line of - of civility. Like when you're with your friends, you don't honestly tell them that their knuckle-cracking makes you want to whack them over the head, or that you never liked the vomit-coloured jacket they like so much, or that you hate their passive-aggressiveness, or that you wish they were nicer in the mornings, or that sometimes you just can't stand the sound of their voice."
"Look, it was only that one time, when you had a cold, and your voice was really nasal -"
"I mean, it's only in families that people say that kind of shit. Or very, very, very close friends. Or - or -"
"Or us."
"You get to me like nobody else does. You've let yourself get to me where nobody else is allowed to."
"Well, maybe if you didn't talk to me the way my dad does -"
"That's my point! Where the hell did we get so close that we could be that honest, that cruel, but have it all be okay in a matter of minutes? When did those fights stop changing anything? They're like - like hellos and goodbyes and would-you-like-a-cup-of-teas. They're there, and they matter, but not more than anything else. How the fuck did that happen?"
"When you decided that you love me, I guess."
"I never -"
"Well, when the fact that you love me decided that it was here to stay, whether you like it or not."
"You've got some nerve."
"Tell me I'm a liar."
"You think this is a good thing?"
"I think it's a very good thing."
"I think it's terrifying."
"Ain't love grand."
"Funny way to measure progress."
"I love you too, you know."
"I know, God help me."
"That's why I make you madder than anyone else."
"Are congratulations in order?"
"No. I just want to have sex with you now."
"I'm still mad at you."
"Ah, but you were doing so well with the calming down!"
"I need a job. You need a job. Iker'll kick us out in a week if we don't get jobs."
"Well, we've seen that I can job-hunt for you."
"But not for yourself?"
"Hey, maybe you can pay me to find jobs for you."
"And I'll eat my limbs for dinner?"
"You are tasty."
"I hate you sometimes."
"Ain't love grand."
Chapter: 4 of 4
Characters: David Silva / David Villa; Sergio Ramos / Fernando Torres; Steven Gerrard / Xabi Alonso
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Lies.
Notes: AU. Sorry about the delay; this past week was finals week.
Feedback > life. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
| Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
The man in the mirror.
Fernando put himself under different types of pressure: pressure to constantly achieve more, learn more, earn more; pressure to keep the mask on, so that he would have less to explain; pressure to re-prove, every day, that he had chosen his solitude and that it hadn't happened the other way around. More daunting than these, though, and more insatiable in its desire to burrow into all the spaces between the worries that Fernando already had, was the pressure to be interesting.
At the beginning, Sergio kept saying that he found Fernando so interesting, and so beautiful, and so intelligent, and all that was left was for Fernando to disappoint him. It was inevitable, having been built up to something so grand, so near-perfect as to almost be a two-dimensional image in Sergio's mind. For a long time, being quiet and solemn constituted being 'interesting'; Sergio seemed to take delight in trying to weasel his way into whatever cracks he thought Fernando's veneer might possess.
But when Sergio left, and came back, and Fernando had to wrestle the veneer back on and hope that it still fit, he worried that Sergio would realise that he wasn't that attractive, or intelligent, or any more interesting than the next person, despite his unorthodix approach to conversation or his forays into 'enigmatic' silences. Sergio cared far too much about the minutiae of Fernando's existence. It was dangerous, exposing.
Fernando understood it. Sergio revelled in the little things and let the big speak for themselves. He liked to turn tiny moments into things worthy of being remembered. He was so willing to offer parts of himself - memories, wishes, fears, opinions - and Fernando found comfort in the absence of space left for his own stories. He enjoyed listening and eating and drinking, spared the task of contributing in return for being an open vessel into which Sergio could pour himself. He enjoyed being that for someone. It was another thing entirely for Sergio to expect an outpouring in the other direction.
"Of course it's important," Sergio had argued when, a few years earlier, Fernando had wrinkled his nose at the prospect of doing something elaborate for his birthday.
"I don't know why you care."
"I don't know why you don't."
"I don't need to do something with friends," Fernando whined. "They know it's my birthday - I have one every year. There's no need to do something special to celebrate my getting older."
"Yeah, because twenty-three is so old."
"Look, I just. . . can't be bothered."
"What are you scared of?"
"What?"
"Are you scared that people won't show? That it'll be boring? That you'll have nothing to say to them?"
Fernando was scared of all of those things, but - "You're too different from me."
Sergio had smiled. "But I'm not. I get those things. I do. I just want to bring you out of your shell."
"I don't want to come out."
"Well, then, I guess one of us loses either way."
He didn't know what he wanted from Sergio. He didn't know if he wanted hyper-engagement or a healthy detachment. He didn't know if he wanted him here or gone.
The moments when Fernando wanted to reach out a hand and touch Sergio on the shoulder or lightly brush his cheek were the ones when Fernando felt like he might have loved something. But Sergio seemed to find magic elsewhere. Sergio concerned himself with the moments of nothingness, almost seeking to document it all. It was either that or let those moments go by, not unobserved - because Fernando observed everything - but in danger of being forgotten. He was so determined to solidify the moments that he and Fernando spent together that he would interrupt them to take photos of the two of them, so that he could always look back on those instants that he had ruined with his camera. The desire to reach out and touch Fernando wasn't something that filled Sergio with a hot, trembling hesitation. That was the easy part for him.
There were glorious little moments when Sergio was childlike in his beauty, flushed or quiet - something pure, an emotion that hadn't been consciously put on. But Fernando could never do it, could never openly adore it, for fear that Sergio would turn it into something bigger than it was: a small, innocent curiosity, not a full-bodied love.
But what was it, if it wasn't love? What were these fragments of happiness, the beating in his stomach, the easing of breath, the emptying of his head? Did this warm emptiness get cancelled out by the times when Sergio would become too much? Was it worth giving up for a colder kind of peace?
He woke early one morning, listening to Sergio - who always woke earlier - bustling around in the kitchen. He checked his emails and found the usual pollution of spam, a message from Unicef thanking him for his decision to sponsor two Bangladeshi children, and another notice for the job at the advertising firm where Sergio worked - an offer that Fernando still refused to take. He had his routine, his comfort, his space - he was quietly frightened of shaking it all up.
Sergio, almost alone of everyone Fernando knew, didn't seem to be defined by his job. He didn't have jingle-writer written all over his face, the way Fernando must have reeked of stay-at-home-reviewer-of-literature. Sergio's boss, judging by what Sergio said about him, seemed to leak marketing strategies and did nothing if it wasn't effective and efficient. Fernando hoped that Sergio's admiration of him didn't mean that he was aspiring toward the same. He didn't think he could handle a man whose life revolved around catchy couplets about English Breakfast tea or carpet cleaner.
He pulled a sweatshirt over his head, listening to Sergio cursing at the toaster. He brushed his teeth, his eyes flicking toward Sergio's toothbrush in the stand. He heard Sergio turn the television on only to turn it off when one of his worse jingles (in Fernando's opinion, and that of the rest of the television-watching world) began playing. He made the bed and saw a photo on the bedside table - one that Fernando had taken, of Sergio laughing so hard that he didn't realise a camera was anywhere near him (he would otherwise have done something about his hair).
Today, Fernando wanted Sergio here. He wanted to detachedly observe his hyper-engagement. He wanted to laugh at him laughing. He wanted to be thankful that, while Sergio didn't value what Fernando valued, he chose small moments of happiness, even if they were the wrong ones to choose. He wanted to let Sergio find him interesting. He wanted to let himself be scrutinised without understanding what there was to love. He wanted to pretend that it was okay for Sergio to love him.
For the first time in a long time, he walked into the kitchen smiling.
Sergio was out, walking or window-shopping or some other purposeless pursuit that made Fernando wish he too were doing nothing outside rather than inside. George Eliot was still frightfully dull and entirely unworthy of a series of essays, and though he avoided the radio for fear that it would play songs that reminded him of Sergio, the television played Sergio's work back at him at regular thirteen-minute intervals. Sergio had jammed the toaster and Fernando was left with stale cereal and nothing to distract him from it.
Fuck it, he thought, and dragged a larger sweatshirt over the one he was already wearing.
The streets had been rained on and cars sprayed skidding water on him as he walked. The coffee he bought had smelt better at the kiosk that it tasted in his mouth. Fernando was overly hot in his sweatshirts and with his bad coffee in his hand, and there wasn't much to see beyond grey skies that lurked over the tops of buildings. Perhaps this was all best left to Sergio. All Fernando wanted to do was be at home with an arm wrapped around his waist, listening to someone tell him stories about nothing, and tell him he was wonderful.
But Sergio wasn't out wandering the streets. He was packing a suitcase, hunched over and defeated. When Fernando got home, a surge of something like regret seemed to want to throw itself up. His home was empty again.
Four point plans.
"Someone should tell the Chinese: four point plans are better than five point plans. By the time you get to your fifth point, everyone's either forgotten about the first or they've undone it. You need a sort of symmetry with plans." He smiled. "Number one, you need to have a foundation. Then you need to build on it. Then you need to trick it out - take it from a basic good to a luxury good, from something that people need to something that they want. But fourth, you need to remind them that they needed it all along, that they can't live without it now. It's too late. Who cares that it's overcomplicated and expensive? They need it. They'll remember point one - the very basic problem that you aimed to solve - and they'll see now that you've solved it."
"You're a genius," Sergio had told him.
"A pragmatist, actually," Xabi had replied with nothing more than a mere tone of modesty. "There are too few of us."
Xabi hated what he did for a living. He disguised it well, by spouting his ideas with the cold briskness that suggested a matter-of-fact pride or arrogance. He was good at what he did, and he convinced himself that because he was good at it, and because it was a job that needed to be done, there was no sense in hating it. But the days would roll to an end and all he'd have to show for it were a completed ad treatment and the fear of his inferiors, and he couldn't help but wish he were somewhere else, doing something that people liked, being someone whom people liked.
Xabi had always argued that Steven set too much store by being liked. It was though he didn't care whether he was thought of as unintelligent, or vacuous, or something entirely different to what he actually was, as long as he could make people happy - as long as he was liked. Xabi, by contrast, always argued that he didn't care whether he was liked. He didn't care if people thought he was cold, as long as they understood the sense in what he was saying to them. He couldn't bring himself to entertain the small insecurities of other people by making them smile, or making them feel loved. He wanted to make them think.
"But," Steven had argued once, "everything you do is about being liked. Your work - it's about getting people to like what you're selling them. It's feelings, not thinking. And even you - you're worshipped by everyone you work with because they want to be you. It's all about being liked."
Xabi couldn't remember what he'd said in argument to this. He only remembered feeling quite sad that Steven had had it so wrong, that Steven had given him so much credit. Worship had nothing to do with being liked.
He couldn't help it. A mere three days had passed when he got into his car, told his assistant that he was able to make it, after all, and gone up to the conference room a few doors down from his office to do the presentation that he hadn't trusted his second-in-command with, anyway.
"The most effective way to convince somebody of something is by first telling them what it is you're going to convince them to do, or to believe. You give them the bait, so the whole time you're talking, they're going to be waiting for it to come up again. Then you list all the problems they have that your bait will solve, without mentioning the bait a second time. You then tell them how your bait is going to solve it - again, without mentioning the bait. By this point, they have a vague recollection of the bait but they're too busy thinking about the problems that they need solving, and the potential solutions drifting out there in the stratosphere, that they're in a bit of a state and they need someone to calmly come along and put the bait in front of them. And then, that is exactly what you do."
He had hit a button on the lectern and a projector screen rolled down. He pressed play, and a thirty-second advertisement on washing powder started. He watched the others watching the ad. He liked their frowns of incredulity; he liked knowing that he'd wipe them off.
"In this ad, you see all four steps come into play. First, this stereotypical housewife shows the stereotypical housewives sitting at home that she is about to sell them 'Pink Lady detergent'. We know this because it's written on her t-shirt, the Pink Lady logo is in the corner of the screen, and - let's be honest - not many people have hot pink laundries. Second, the stereotypical housewife points to grass stains, wine stains, mysterious greyish-yellow stains which - let's be honest - are the ones that the stereotypical housewives at home are really concerned about. Third, the fool-proof rhetorical question -" he paused to allow the men to hear the woman speak.
"If only," she appealed widely, "there was a product that could take all of those stains away without the need for bleach!"
"And there you have it," Xabi concluded with a flourish. "The Pink Lady bottle of detergent itself."
"But this is all a bit - forgive me," a young man by the name of Rubén said from the front row, "but it's a pretty unsophisticated ad. It's not going to resonate with many people."
"Perhaps not," says Xabi, giving Rubén a smile as though he hadn't been waiting for some smart-ass to raise that very point. "Or perhaps, if you had bothered to read the hand-out there, you'd see that, in the twelve months after we issued this commercial, Pink Lady jumped up from fifth- to second-best-selling laundry detergent. But - why not? - let's watch another one. A more 'sophisicated' one."
The Unicef ad followed Xabi's four-point plan to perfection.
One: The Unicef logo.
Two: A starving Indian boy by the name of Rahul, aged ten, filmed in close-up to elicit the most sickening type of guilt in the viewing audience.
Three: A voice-over telling the guilty viewing audience that only the generosity of the western world can help private aid to reach boys like Rahul.
Four: The Unicef phone number.
"You're a genius," Rubén remarked, shaking his head in admiration.
Xabi didn't disagree this time. It was always a bit pointless, he found, disagreeing with one's own echo.
The house was mournfully empty after Steven left - beds and chairs and floors that meant little without being slept in, sat and walked on. He thought about what Sergio had said when he'd first mentioned the house - something about lovers forging their own path rather than walking beaten ones, taking the time to create memories rather than being content with the old ones. It had seemed a little fanciful at the time, Xabi remembered, and Sergio had always seemed like the type of person who would rather live out a coming-of-age film with an Oasis soundtrack than just let things happen naturally and dully. But now that he was left alone, Xabi wondered whether his coworker was getting more from being with his lover in the city than Xabi was getting from being without his by the sea.
Steven had brought so much with him. It had been reassuring; it seemed to mean that he had had no intention of leaving. It was like buying a cot before the baby arrives - consolidation, confirmation. Comfort.
And now that Steven and his over-measured belongings and his comfort had gone, Xabi wanted to retreat back to the buildings that set high, overbearing borders around crowded streets; sink into the old life that he'd hated and rewind his mindset back to the time when he'd found happiness in the belief that there had been alternatives down by the sea, by his man.
"But if he broke up with you . . ."
"He didn't 'break up' with me. We had a mutual misunderstanding."
"That's a new one."
"It's just - I don't know. We never even tried." Sergio had sighed and looked up. "Don't you ever feel like you're stuck in a kind of - rut? Like, you take your life as it is right now, and you just let it fester in its own juices? And you never take a risk or try to mix things up?"
"Sergio, I -"
"I've seen you, you know."
"Huh?"
"I've seen you go back to your office, and you slump at your desk, and you sigh - it's all very dramatic, you know that moment in the movie when you realise that the guy isn't happy at all?"
"I'd appreciate your not following me back to my office to psychoanalyse me and fit me into a movie mould."
"I've seen you smile when Steven shows up, and I've seen how your mood just hits rock bottom when you have to cancel lunch with him - you take it out on everyone else."
"I'm sorry?"
"Well, not on me, but -"
"No, I meant that I'm sorry in general -"
"And you're always happier at the end of the day. And I thought that was because you'd accomplished a lot or fired somebody or made a profit or something, but no. You're just like us. You're just happy you get to go home."
"What's your point, Sergio?"
"I just - don't you wish you could get away from it all? Maybe, like, go home a little earlier, or just - fuck it - not come to work at all?"
"Well, we all wish for that, but barring a proletariat uprising -"
"I just - I don't know, I was sick of it, man. So I'm moving in with my boyfriend. You know, this shit doesn't just happen. You have to work on it."
"Well, you do that, then."
"I want to be able to wake up in a different bed, but with the same person, you know? I want to learn more about him, learn how he lives, learn how we can have a life together. I don't want it to just be like, 'Hey, I'll call you and we'll figure out a time and a place and -' . . . I want to always be there. And I want him to want me there."
"Well, you do that, then."
"You never wish you could just escape? Just, like, blow off the fucking finance meeting and have a two-hour lunch with your man, and maybe see a movie, or just stay at home and screw it all?"
"I'm not the kind of person who stays at home and screws it all."
"You're not the kind of couple who does that."
"Damn it, Sergio, can you stop putting us in a box? Have you even spoken to Steven?"
"Once. He was leaving after you'd told him that you couldn't see him that night. He said you looked miserable."
"Huh."
"I said you always look miserable."
"Thanks."
"He agreed."
"Maybe you two should get together."
"I know you don't need to get away from it all. But you can't deny that you want to."
"Want to what?"
"Take some time off. Discover yourself and shit."
"Always so eloquent."
"We don't need you around here. Summer break - the work's already been done, the ads are made."
"There's still editing."
"You have nothing to do with editing." Sergio's eyes softened. "You have no excuse to be here. All those appointments you have written in your diary thing? You could legitimately cross them all out and it wouldn't make a difference."
"I really wish you wouldn't follow me to my office."
"So you should cross them all out and stop turning him away."
"You have no right to be saying this." Xabi's voice was weak.
"Maybe not," Sergio shrugged. "I'm just dangling the carrot."
"Your house."
"For the summer."
"With Steven."
"You see why you hired me?"
"God damn it."
He had been so anxious for it to work. He'd had such high expectations that Steven, in all his innocence, had never had a hope of living up to. He had built up a perfect vision in his mind, based on the Steven that moulded himself to fit into the crevices of Xabi's schedule, and there was no reason to suppose that just because something existed beyond the outline of that image, it too wouldn't be able to fit right next to Xabi.
He came home, to the emptiness and the silence, with no footprints, and the smell of Steven having disappeared so quickly with the rest of him. The calm that Xabi felt was hollow, like being the only person in a movie theatre, nobody there to discuss the film with after the show, when even the people who checked their cell phones every twenty minutes, or sniffled, or rustled bags of potato chips, seemed better company than no company at all.
And Steven had been so much more than just company. He had been, rather, more than Xabi had given him credit for; more than Xabi had allowed him to be. He had been someone capable of surprising him - which, for an advertising executive, was a fairly big deal.
He got away from the emptiness and the silence and decided to head to that darn cliff, to see what he'd missed out on, what experience Steven would have given him - almost to prove to himself that those moments didn't just disappear because you didn't take the chance to live them the first time around, or with the right person.
His footsteps seemed so loud against the ground, and the ground seemed so much closer than it had done before. He was reminded of the echoes that filled Sergio's pristine, shiny-surfaced house, and was struck by the fact that he noticed and was reminded of these things at all, now that it was only him spurring them on - his solitude being bounced back at him.
When he got to the cliff, he stopped, this time not noticing that he couldn't hear his breaths over the crashing of white water against the rocks, and not feeling the force of the wind knock him back a little. He stopped thinking about what lay outside Steven's outline, sitting on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the sea.
A century in a moment passed, and Xabi felt weak. He went to sit down by Steven, and could have sobbed when Steven lay a hand on his.
All our yesterdays.
Villa shushed Sergio as they tiptoed past Villa's father's slumbering form on the sofa.
"It's all worked out kind of perfectly," Sergio sighed as though he were speaking about something far from perfect. "He just gave me a call; apparently they can't hack it out there - all that peace and quiet - and they just want to get back to work. He does, anyway."
"A workaholic, huh?" Villa replied, shutting the bedroom door behind him.
"That's why I love him. But, yeah - the house is free now, so it doesn't matter that I . . ."
Villa smiled, trying not to look too pitying. "When are you heading back?"
"Well, he'll be out - they'll both be out of there by this evening, so I was thinking of - I don't know - maybe seeing a movie or something, have some dinner, before going back down."
Villa's fingers leafed through the papers that littered the desk in his parents' bedroom, as snores from the living room that Villa called home - out loud, at least - peeked in through the gaps in the door. "I guess, now you know."
"Now I know."
"I'm sorry, man." Villa folded his arms, not quite knowing what else there was to do.
"Oh, can we not talk about it anymore?" Sergio leaned back against the headboard of the bed, closing his eyes. "Let's talk about you."
"Let's not."
"You've got to have cheerier stories than me."
"I don't, Sergio, fuck."
"What happened? I thought things were fine?"
"Things are fine," Villa said irritably. "It's just - I don't know. He lost his job, so he's been miserable, and he can't pay his rent, and -"
"Well -"
"I don't want to hear it, Sergio."
"But -"
"I don't want to fucking hear it! I know, if I had a job then he wouldn't be behind on rent payment, yada yada yada!"
"I'm not telling you off," Sergio rolled his eyes. "It's true, though. You should be helping him out."
"You can see yourself out, yeah?" Villa made to leave.
"No, listen, listen," Sergio sat up, looking earnest. "He lost his job?"
"Well, I don't know what conversation you've been having, but -"
"There's a job opening at the agency." Villa stared. "For writers - they need writers to work on drafting treatments for the clients. It's not a big job and it doesn't pay a shitload, but it's good, steady work. You know, challenging. Mentally simulating."
"Stimulating."
"Well, aren't you a brain?"
A schedule as monochrome as Silva's presented few challenges. Villa had it memorised within the first month. The first time he'd showed up before he was supposed to - his watch had stopped without his realising it, and he'd found himself in the apartment with two and a half hours to kill - he realised that it was perhaps not an unhappy accident. There was a world of Silva to discover in those stolen minutes before the man slumped home from work. That evening, Villa discovered an old passport, which revealed that Silva had once been to Berlin and never anywhere else. He found the photos from Silva's high school prom and subsequently wished that he could erase that picture of gawkiness from his mind. He found receipts and bills, discarded ideas for short stories, rejection letters from potential employers. He left fifteen minutes before Silva was to arrive, and turned up again as though nothing had changed.
After he ushered Sergio out of his parents' house, and Sergio mumbled something about going to see the new Michael Bay movie, Villa made a beeline for the apartment. He knew what he was looking for. This wasn't like the other days, when he simply lifted up folder covers and opened doors leisurely, wondering what he would find. This was a day for rummaging, and for hoping that he didn't disturb things too much in the process.
He found what he was looking for - a dog-eared, green manila folder, the inside of which was filled with print-outs and cut-outs, sticky notes on them showing that they were from various bulletins and newsletters, faculty magazines and such.
He checked his watch - he had twenty minutes. Yeah, it was enough.
He sat down on the bed which saw so little sitting, and leafed through the work that, once, Silva must have been so proud of. And understandably - the man had a natural talent for it. Villa didn't know much about writing, but he understood that 'A+' and 'feature writer' were generally things worthy of more than merely being locked away in an old folder that looked like it had been wet at some point. He understood that, once, Silva had wanted more, and been capable of more.
He checked his watch again - a mere five minutes. More rummaging, until he found item number two: a résumé - outdated by a year, but nothing had changed much in that year. He scrambled up, rushed out of the apartment, and headed to the post office with his right hand dialling Sergio's number on the phone.
"Get out, just get out."
It was a poor start to the morning.
Silva had woken up at six o'clock sharp, his shrill alarm trilling as though it still had a purpose, Silva having forgotten to turn it off. He stretched and yawned before realising that he didn't have to be up that early, and he was slouching back under the covers when he noticed Villa noticing him and smiling, and his comment about silver linings wasn't what Silva had wanted to hear.
Villa still had sleep in his eyes and he stumbled down the stairs, waving a callous hand at the landlord, who shook his head with the same disapproval that Villa seemed to elicit in everyone, whether they knew him well or not. The cafés were closed, and a kiosk selling coffee by the main street looked about as hygienic as Villa's father's toilet if Villa's mother wasn't around to do the housework.
He was trying to ignore how uncomfortable the park bench was against his back, and how loudly his stomach churned, and how blinding the sun was in its early morning flatness, when a small dog ran up to him and peed on his leg.
It was a poor morning all around.
"How's the boyfriend?" Villa's dad asked when he came home, stinking of urine and frowning at his trouser leg as though it had personally failed him.
"Still loves me."
"Even though you smell like piss?"
"Well, I try to cover it up as well as I can, but sometimes cologne just isn't enough, and he's just had to get used to it."
"You're a smart-ass."
"I learnt from the best," Villa shrugged, pulling off his trousers and heading for the bathroom.
"You talk to him this way?"
"Much worse."
"Poor guy."
"Well, yeah, unemployment does that to a man."
"You'd know."
"I learnt from the best." Villa ran some bathwater and soaked his trousers under it.
"He must love you a lot."
Villa paused, staring at the bathroom tiles. "I don't think he realises how much."
"Don't you let him know, now. You'll scare him away."
"Nah, he's in too deep," Villa shook his head, coming back into the living room.
"I mean it, boy."
"You're talking like I'm threatening to tell him that I have syphilis," Villa said, rolling his eyes as he sat down by his father's feet, still in his underwear.
"He's not like the others, is he?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have a different look to you. He's not one of the casual ones. One of the guys you fuck and desert in the morning."
"Well, it's the morning, and I've -"
"I know it looks the same - it looks casual - but I can see that it's not."
"Well, bully for you."
"Don't fuck this up, David."
"Or you'll do what?"
"If it's not casual, you let him know it's not casual. If you love him like he loves you. . . Don't you string him along like a cheap dog toy."
"Let's not talk about dogs."
"And put some pants on."
"I don't -"
". . . What?"
"I don't know if he . . . Maybe he thinks it's just casual. He hasn't done anything - said anything - to indicate -"
"You're a Villa, son. Nobody wants to be 'just casual' with a Villa."
"Well, I guess not," Villa smiled. "Look at us - upstanding gentlemen of the highest order."
"You learnt from the best."
The weekend passed like a bad Indian dinner and Silva emerged, on the other side, with a glower and a (weak) shove on the shoulder. He called Villa an ass and a dick, which Villa thought was anatomically confusing but he decided against making jokes about asexuality. Silva spluttered and stammered when Villa told him to keep it down, and he pounded a fist into the kitchen benchtop when Villa suggested that he stop acting like a petulant teenager.
"What right did you have?"
"You say that like I did something terrible."
"You went through my things, you signed me up for an interview - can you imagine what it's like to get a call in the morning confirming an interview you never knew about? Can you imagine how that interview went?"
"Why did you go? You didn't have to actually go."
"Why did I - why did - You went through my apartment! How did you even get in?"
"To be honest, your security system is lacking. And I - uh - well, I've gotten to know your landlord."
"Oh, man, I'm going to -"
"Calm down."
"No!"
"I only wanted to help out."
"You don't know anything about me, how could you possibly know how to help me out?"
"I know plenty about you."
"Oh, because you've been going through the relics of my life."
"Calm down."
"I don't feel like calming down right now."
"Surely everyone feels like calming down all the time."
"Not people in mosh pits."
". . . Well -"
"Or people in fight clubs."
"I don't think fight clubs actually exist."
"No, the movie sparked a whole trend across the States. A fight club fad, like the Union Jack dress fad, and the boombox-under-the-girl's-window fad -"
"Union Jack dress?"
"Never mind."
Villa smiled.
"What?"
"You've calmed down already."
". . . What are you even doing?"
"What do you mean?"
"What is this?" Silva looked weak. "You walk in to my life like you have a right to be here. You eat my food, sleep in my bed, send in my job applications. . . We - we say horrible, horrible things to each other, but we act like that's okay, because we're just being honest, and people are honest when they're -"
"When they're?"
"I don't know. That - that line's gone. You know? That line of - of civility. Like when you're with your friends, you don't honestly tell them that their knuckle-cracking makes you want to whack them over the head, or that you never liked the vomit-coloured jacket they like so much, or that you hate their passive-aggressiveness, or that you wish they were nicer in the mornings, or that sometimes you just can't stand the sound of their voice."
"Look, it was only that one time, when you had a cold, and your voice was really nasal -"
"I mean, it's only in families that people say that kind of shit. Or very, very, very close friends. Or - or -"
"Or us."
"You get to me like nobody else does. You've let yourself get to me where nobody else is allowed to."
"Well, maybe if you didn't talk to me the way my dad does -"
"That's my point! Where the hell did we get so close that we could be that honest, that cruel, but have it all be okay in a matter of minutes? When did those fights stop changing anything? They're like - like hellos and goodbyes and would-you-like-a-cup-of-teas. They're there, and they matter, but not more than anything else. How the fuck did that happen?"
"When you decided that you love me, I guess."
"I never -"
"Well, when the fact that you love me decided that it was here to stay, whether you like it or not."
"You've got some nerve."
"Tell me I'm a liar."
"You think this is a good thing?"
"I think it's a very good thing."
"I think it's terrifying."
"Ain't love grand."
"Funny way to measure progress."
"I love you too, you know."
"I know, God help me."
"That's why I make you madder than anyone else."
"Are congratulations in order?"
"No. I just want to have sex with you now."
"I'm still mad at you."
"Ah, but you were doing so well with the calming down!"
"I need a job. You need a job. Iker'll kick us out in a week if we don't get jobs."
"Well, we've seen that I can job-hunt for you."
"But not for yourself?"
"Hey, maybe you can pay me to find jobs for you."
"And I'll eat my limbs for dinner?"
"You are tasty."
"I hate you sometimes."
"Ain't love grand."