Title: And Ain’t He Lovely Bone and Blood
Author:
firetruckyouxxRating: PG-13
Word Count: 652
Pairings, Characters: Cesc Fàbregas/Iker Casillas
Genre/Warnings: Fluff, Drabble
Summary: When your lover is a goalkeeper, you get used to the cuts and the bruises, the scars and marks that represent the work he puts in day in and day out.
(Alternatively: An Ode to Goalkeepers)
Author's Note: For
fc_smorgasbord's challenge. The prompt: A time for tenderness. A story in which I abuse the italic button in Google Docs.
When your lover is a goalkeeper, you get used to the cuts and the bruises, the scars and marks that represent the work he puts in day in and day out. You become an expert at cleaning wounds while holding his arm steady so he won’t flinch. You also become an expert at bandaging sharp hipbones and elbows.
You used to feel concern in the beginning, even though you knew what he was feeling because you're a footballer, too, and you understand but it’s different for him. In the beginning, during tired nights under the shower with him after heart-wrenching matches, you’d clean his dirty knees and forearms for him and cautiously clean his wounds, like the dirty scrap that refuses to stop bleeding on his hip or the cuts on his knees.
You would look at him on those nights, bask in the way the light hits him to make him look the most beautiful with his bruised body and his messy hair and dirt-smeared cheeks, and you’d ask, “Are you okay?”
And he’d always just chuckle lightly with a fond smile and reply, “It comes with the job,” since he sees the way you eye his bruises with concern and he feels the tenderness in your caresses as you heal him with your hands.
After a while, you stop asking verbally, but after matches you always touch him in a certain way, maybe a pat on the cheek or a careful brush of the lips, to make sure he’s okay. He recognizes it and sends you that fond smile that makes your heart melt accompanied with a short nod. You heal him anyway since you know your hands against his hot, damp skin drive him crazy in ways that nothing else does.
You sometimes massage his feet and calves after national team callups, since that’s the only time you really ever see each other. He moans softly and you smile empathetically because massages are better than any hot shower could ever hope to be. He always thanks you later with his hot mouth and his long fingers and huge palms that make your body shake with desire. One time you were so loud that Sergio started banging on the wall your rooms shared and cursing at the two of you. Iker laughed recklessly then, in a way you rarely hear from him and you can’t help but fall impossibly in love with him even more.
You fondly make fun of the tan line that his gloves leave behind and how many shades darker his forearms are from his hands. He always tries to point out your ridiculous farmer’s tan that you’d had since you were a kid but you always remind him that he has the exact same one and then would laugh at the bright red blush that spreads across his tanned cheeks when he realizes you’re right.
You think that maybe what’s best about being in love with a goalkeeper is the commanding yet gentle presence he has in bed, the way his fingers dance across your skin and inside you, unyielding but always careful not to hurt you. And even when you think you have him completely undone, he still manages to rasp out commands that you happily obilge to because he’s your keeper and your skipper, your lover and your friend.
You love him so much that it hurts, hurts more than any loss or miscalculated tackle ever will, but you know it’s mutual but the way he smiles in an almost pained way, lips twisted into a sweet grimace, when you chant sweet nothings when you’re withering under his strong hands. You love him with a fiercity that beats every strike that you’ve attempted or that he has saved, and it should be scary but it isn’t, and that is why you work despite the rivalries and the fights and the worries and the world.