writerverse Challenge #07: Inspired!
Title: Dissipate
Word Count: 1861
Rating: PG
Original/Fandom: Football RPS (AU)
Pairings (if any): Rubén de la Red/Esteban Granero
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con/RPF etc): none.
Summary: Rubén has disappeared, just like that, leaving nothing but strange dreams to haunt Esteban behind. Dreams which tell him that he's the only one who can find Rubén. But can he, really?
Link:
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vaull Starr
Blinding lights. Everything was filled with this blinding light, a light that wouldn’t vanish even as he squeezed his eyes shut. The light was still there - and so was the voice.
“Esteban. … I know you can hear me, Esteban, you’re the only one who always could. It’s alright, Esteban, don’t be afraid, it’s only me. You know who I am, don’t you?”
Something warm and heavy suddenly seemed to coil itself around Esteban’s torso. He couldn’t move.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Esteban, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be fine, if only you listen to me now. … It is in you, too, Esteban, and that’s why you’ve got to hear me out. I don’t want you to be afraid of what’s happened to me, it’ll also happen to you. … Trust me, Esteban, you’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. It’s been inside of us for all this time. …”
Esteban woke up to a sore cry forcing its way out of his sleep-clenched throat, to sweat staining his forehead and making his hair ruffled in a greasy way, to his heart pounding viciously in his chest. He could still feel the dream clawing at him, its taste still on the back of his tongue, its voice still filling his ears, the vision still before his inner eye. It took him a good five minutes to calm himself enough to relax, to lay back and stare up at the dark ceiling of his small college student’s dorm room, another three minutes before he was absolutely sure that it had only been a dream. Even though he knew better, Esteban turned his head to stare into the dark, stare at the other side of the room where a second bed was located. Even in the darkness, Esteban could see that it was untouched. Of course. The fluorescent stars that had been applied to the wall by Rubén himself cast their dim, ghost-like glow at a perfectly made, perfectly empty bed. It had only been a dream, the reoccurring dream of Rubén suddenly being there again that haunted him since a couple of weeks now. But it was only a dream. Nothing more. Esteban repeated the words in his head over and over again, until he eventually drifted off to sleep, again, not comforted but at least exhausted enough to sleep - until the next nightmare found its way into his conscious.
#
“Remember all the plans we’ve made, everything we wanted to do after graduation? I wanted to take you to a trip somewhere and you said that’s not going to happen since we both will be busy hunting for jobs at that time. … I just wish we would have gone already, Esteban, I wish we had. … You need to dream more, Esteban, I’ll need to talk to you more than just this once. And maybe you’ll indeed figure out where I am, you’ll figure out what I have become. … Won’t you, Esteban?”
The lights around him still remained blinding.
#
In the beginning, Esteban didn’t have any troubles with sleeping, at all. It felt as if someone had gone and set his whole body on autopilot, enabling it for him to feel and behave the way he always had, making it possible for him to function. But slowly, the edges of that solely functioning had started to show. People had realised that his smile wasn’t real and the indifferent shrug of his shoulders, accompanied by a small but firm ‘I’m alright’ had been fake, too. Esteban had realised the same thing at the same time. And slowly, ever so slowly, cruelly so, realization had finally started to sink in as reality had started to catch up with him.
Rubén had disappeared.
It had happened from one day to the next. On one grey October morning, the two of them had sat together in the Great Hall, sipping their coffee, eating toast and seeing Esteban complaining about the injustice that was the incredible amount of homework professor Carvalho had encumbered them with yet again, then he had unwillingly tapered off to his lectures, leaving Rubén behind who had made plans to spend his free day of the week in the library, researching on his favourite topic - “The glory of astrophysics! And all mine for the taking while you … well, isn’t that essay on theory of the state for professor Perez due for today? Oh, lucky you!”. Esteban had shot him a tiny, envious smile, a smile that quickly dissolved when Rubén had handed him over the rest of his coffee with an almost apologizing grin and then he had left the Great Hall.
Esteban didn’t know what he had done, had he known that this was the last time he’d see the other boy, but later on he had found himself unable to shake the thought that maybe, if only he had known, he could have done something to prevent whatever had happened to Rubén that day. He wished he had done anything, at all.
#
“You know what saddens me? That you’ve stopped trying to think of something. You’ve stopped caring, haven’t you? … I don’t see you struggling anymore, not like you did in the beginning. You’ve stopped asking questions. … I would have never stopped asking questions if it had been you that were missing, not ever, not until the minute that I’d have found you. … Listen to me, Esteban, I mean it. You’re the only one who can stop having me feel so lonely around here. … You should come, Esteban. I know you will, but you should really come. … Soon. …”
#
Morning came at last, as it always did, seeing Esteban unwillingly facing another day filled with interrogations, meetings with police officers, psychologists and family members and, of course, classes. As suspected, he had barely slipped into his seat in his Practical Philosophy class, when the professor already called out his name and informed him that he was due to attend a meeting of higher importance in the headmaster’s office immediately. Sighing, and having seized to react to his fellow student’s whispers and gazes, Esteban slipped out of his seat again to find the by now all too familiar way to the headmaster’s office.
With relief, Esteban registered right away that the only family member’s present were Rubén’s father, an enormously rich and extremely tired and worried looking dark-haired man named Raúl, and Rubén’s older brother, Iker. Those two were the easiest one to deal with out of the whole family, as both men - though worry and the marks of many sleepless nights were deeply edged into their faces - always had their feelings under control - contrary to Rubén’s mother.
Also present was the police officer who had been assigned with the task of finding out what had happened to Rubén and the headmaster himself who quickly excused himself, though.
“Good morning, kid. …Everything alright with you?” the police officer, his name was Gutierrez, asked Esteban as soon as he had sat down.
“Anything new?” he simply asked back, not really surprised when the officer’s ever-present smile faltered a little as he discreetly shook his head.
“Only some more questions I’d like to ask all of you. You know … since you’ve been the people who seem to have been close to the boy the most and-”
“Still are,” Rubén’s brother interrupted the officer with clenched teeth, crossing his arms before his chest. “We still are close to him. It’s not like he’s dead. …” The wavering edge in his voice betrayed the firmness of his words.
“Right...,” officer Gutierrez nodded, before he gripped a thick bundle of papers.
Right, Esteban thought.
#
“Do you think I’m dead, Esteban? … Do you?”
#
They invited Esteban over for Christmas. The last summer night in which Esteban and Rubén had been down at the river, from nightfall to breaking dawn, was long gone but never forgotten. The bed at the other side of the room still remained empty, no matter how often Esteban woke up to crying Rubén’s name out in vain, asking him to stop, asking him to help, asking him what he should do, what it was that he had to know, asking him for forgiveness for not knowing. He never got an answer - only these reoccurring dreams that never seemed to find an end.
Rubén’s mother was polite, her face fallen and her body visibly slimmed since the last time Esteban had seen her, the expression on the male family member’s faces hadn’t changed, at all. Only a slight touch of desperation seemed to have crept into the way they would try everything to look normal. The food was exquisite and delicious, still it didn’t manage to taste like anything but ashes in Esteban’s mouth. And when Iker wordlessly motioned Esteban to Rubén’s room for the night, the covers around him felt nothing like covers should have felt like on Esteban’s skin. He imagined being able to still smell Rubén’s scent on the linen, but figured that this only had to be his mind playing tricks on him. Cruel tricks, but tricks nonetheless.
Staring up at the ceiling, a ceiling covered in the same fluorescent stars that also covered the ceiling above Rubén’s part of their shared dorm back in school, Esteban found himself unable to fall asleep. His eyes wandered along the ceiling, there were hundreds of these stars there, it seemed and-...
Esteban.
Esteban, do you remember that time when I told you about what’s written on the walls of my room? Have you found it, Esteban? Have you seen it? Because if you have, you know all about where I am right now. Where you’re going to be, too, soon.
This time around, Esteban was as far from sleeping as he could be. But clearly, the voice had been there, not only inside of his head, he was sure of it. Almost jumping out of the bed, his feet protesting when his cool bones connected hard with the floor, Esteban was up, hurrying to the window. Indeed he remember how Rubén had told him about that spot on his wall he had scribbled on with a pencil as a small boy, sitting at the window and gazing up to the stars. And there, right beneath Esteban’s hips, he indeed found something scribbled unto the wall, a little faded over the course of time, but Rubén’s handwriting had always been exceptionally readable.
Reach high, for stars are hidden in your soul. … That’s it, Esteban. That’s it. … Now you’ve got me … do you?
Esteban froze. Then he looked up, out of the window, where the night sky was veiled by heavy clouds, drowning the world in snow. Only the moon was to be seen - the moon and some stars. Their light was blinding against the dark background of the vast universe. … And suddenly Esteban knew where Rubén had gone.
#
When Iker opened the door to his little brother’s room the next morning, wanting to ask Esteban if he was alright and why he didn’t join them for breakfast, Esteban was gone.
Word Count: 1861
Rating: PG
Original/Fandom: Football RPS (AU)
Pairings (if any): Rubén de la Red/Esteban Granero
Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con/RPF etc): none.
Summary: Rubén has disappeared, just like that, leaving nothing but strange dreams to haunt Esteban behind. Dreams which tell him that he's the only one who can find Rubén. But can he, really?
Link:
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vaull Starr
Blinding lights. Everything was filled with this blinding light, a light that wouldn’t vanish even as he squeezed his eyes shut. The light was still there - and so was the voice.
“Esteban. … I know you can hear me, Esteban, you’re the only one who always could. It’s alright, Esteban, don’t be afraid, it’s only me. You know who I am, don’t you?”
Something warm and heavy suddenly seemed to coil itself around Esteban’s torso. He couldn’t move.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Esteban, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be fine, if only you listen to me now. … It is in you, too, Esteban, and that’s why you’ve got to hear me out. I don’t want you to be afraid of what’s happened to me, it’ll also happen to you. … Trust me, Esteban, you’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. It’s been inside of us for all this time. …”
Esteban woke up to a sore cry forcing its way out of his sleep-clenched throat, to sweat staining his forehead and making his hair ruffled in a greasy way, to his heart pounding viciously in his chest. He could still feel the dream clawing at him, its taste still on the back of his tongue, its voice still filling his ears, the vision still before his inner eye. It took him a good five minutes to calm himself enough to relax, to lay back and stare up at the dark ceiling of his small college student’s dorm room, another three minutes before he was absolutely sure that it had only been a dream. Even though he knew better, Esteban turned his head to stare into the dark, stare at the other side of the room where a second bed was located. Even in the darkness, Esteban could see that it was untouched. Of course. The fluorescent stars that had been applied to the wall by Rubén himself cast their dim, ghost-like glow at a perfectly made, perfectly empty bed. It had only been a dream, the reoccurring dream of Rubén suddenly being there again that haunted him since a couple of weeks now. But it was only a dream. Nothing more. Esteban repeated the words in his head over and over again, until he eventually drifted off to sleep, again, not comforted but at least exhausted enough to sleep - until the next nightmare found its way into his conscious.
#
“Remember all the plans we’ve made, everything we wanted to do after graduation? I wanted to take you to a trip somewhere and you said that’s not going to happen since we both will be busy hunting for jobs at that time. … I just wish we would have gone already, Esteban, I wish we had. … You need to dream more, Esteban, I’ll need to talk to you more than just this once. And maybe you’ll indeed figure out where I am, you’ll figure out what I have become. … Won’t you, Esteban?”
The lights around him still remained blinding.
#
In the beginning, Esteban didn’t have any troubles with sleeping, at all. It felt as if someone had gone and set his whole body on autopilot, enabling it for him to feel and behave the way he always had, making it possible for him to function. But slowly, the edges of that solely functioning had started to show. People had realised that his smile wasn’t real and the indifferent shrug of his shoulders, accompanied by a small but firm ‘I’m alright’ had been fake, too. Esteban had realised the same thing at the same time. And slowly, ever so slowly, cruelly so, realization had finally started to sink in as reality had started to catch up with him.
Rubén had disappeared.
It had happened from one day to the next. On one grey October morning, the two of them had sat together in the Great Hall, sipping their coffee, eating toast and seeing Esteban complaining about the injustice that was the incredible amount of homework professor Carvalho had encumbered them with yet again, then he had unwillingly tapered off to his lectures, leaving Rubén behind who had made plans to spend his free day of the week in the library, researching on his favourite topic - “The glory of astrophysics! And all mine for the taking while you … well, isn’t that essay on theory of the state for professor Perez due for today? Oh, lucky you!”. Esteban had shot him a tiny, envious smile, a smile that quickly dissolved when Rubén had handed him over the rest of his coffee with an almost apologizing grin and then he had left the Great Hall.
Esteban didn’t know what he had done, had he known that this was the last time he’d see the other boy, but later on he had found himself unable to shake the thought that maybe, if only he had known, he could have done something to prevent whatever had happened to Rubén that day. He wished he had done anything, at all.
#
“You know what saddens me? That you’ve stopped trying to think of something. You’ve stopped caring, haven’t you? … I don’t see you struggling anymore, not like you did in the beginning. You’ve stopped asking questions. … I would have never stopped asking questions if it had been you that were missing, not ever, not until the minute that I’d have found you. … Listen to me, Esteban, I mean it. You’re the only one who can stop having me feel so lonely around here. … You should come, Esteban. I know you will, but you should really come. … Soon. …”
#
Morning came at last, as it always did, seeing Esteban unwillingly facing another day filled with interrogations, meetings with police officers, psychologists and family members and, of course, classes. As suspected, he had barely slipped into his seat in his Practical Philosophy class, when the professor already called out his name and informed him that he was due to attend a meeting of higher importance in the headmaster’s office immediately. Sighing, and having seized to react to his fellow student’s whispers and gazes, Esteban slipped out of his seat again to find the by now all too familiar way to the headmaster’s office.
With relief, Esteban registered right away that the only family member’s present were Rubén’s father, an enormously rich and extremely tired and worried looking dark-haired man named Raúl, and Rubén’s older brother, Iker. Those two were the easiest one to deal with out of the whole family, as both men - though worry and the marks of many sleepless nights were deeply edged into their faces - always had their feelings under control - contrary to Rubén’s mother.
Also present was the police officer who had been assigned with the task of finding out what had happened to Rubén and the headmaster himself who quickly excused himself, though.
“Good morning, kid. …Everything alright with you?” the police officer, his name was Gutierrez, asked Esteban as soon as he had sat down.
“Anything new?” he simply asked back, not really surprised when the officer’s ever-present smile faltered a little as he discreetly shook his head.
“Only some more questions I’d like to ask all of you. You know … since you’ve been the people who seem to have been close to the boy the most and-”
“Still are,” Rubén’s brother interrupted the officer with clenched teeth, crossing his arms before his chest. “We still are close to him. It’s not like he’s dead. …” The wavering edge in his voice betrayed the firmness of his words.
“Right...,” officer Gutierrez nodded, before he gripped a thick bundle of papers.
Right, Esteban thought.
#
“Do you think I’m dead, Esteban? … Do you?”
#
They invited Esteban over for Christmas. The last summer night in which Esteban and Rubén had been down at the river, from nightfall to breaking dawn, was long gone but never forgotten. The bed at the other side of the room still remained empty, no matter how often Esteban woke up to crying Rubén’s name out in vain, asking him to stop, asking him to help, asking him what he should do, what it was that he had to know, asking him for forgiveness for not knowing. He never got an answer - only these reoccurring dreams that never seemed to find an end.
Rubén’s mother was polite, her face fallen and her body visibly slimmed since the last time Esteban had seen her, the expression on the male family member’s faces hadn’t changed, at all. Only a slight touch of desperation seemed to have crept into the way they would try everything to look normal. The food was exquisite and delicious, still it didn’t manage to taste like anything but ashes in Esteban’s mouth. And when Iker wordlessly motioned Esteban to Rubén’s room for the night, the covers around him felt nothing like covers should have felt like on Esteban’s skin. He imagined being able to still smell Rubén’s scent on the linen, but figured that this only had to be his mind playing tricks on him. Cruel tricks, but tricks nonetheless.
Staring up at the ceiling, a ceiling covered in the same fluorescent stars that also covered the ceiling above Rubén’s part of their shared dorm back in school, Esteban found himself unable to fall asleep. His eyes wandered along the ceiling, there were hundreds of these stars there, it seemed and-...
Esteban.
Esteban, do you remember that time when I told you about what’s written on the walls of my room? Have you found it, Esteban? Have you seen it? Because if you have, you know all about where I am right now. Where you’re going to be, too, soon.
This time around, Esteban was as far from sleeping as he could be. But clearly, the voice had been there, not only inside of his head, he was sure of it. Almost jumping out of the bed, his feet protesting when his cool bones connected hard with the floor, Esteban was up, hurrying to the window. Indeed he remember how Rubén had told him about that spot on his wall he had scribbled on with a pencil as a small boy, sitting at the window and gazing up to the stars. And there, right beneath Esteban’s hips, he indeed found something scribbled unto the wall, a little faded over the course of time, but Rubén’s handwriting had always been exceptionally readable.
Reach high, for stars are hidden in your soul. … That’s it, Esteban. That’s it. … Now you’ve got me … do you?
Esteban froze. Then he looked up, out of the window, where the night sky was veiled by heavy clouds, drowning the world in snow. Only the moon was to be seen - the moon and some stars. Their light was blinding against the dark background of the vast universe. … And suddenly Esteban knew where Rubén had gone.
#
When Iker opened the door to his little brother’s room the next morning, wanting to ask Esteban if he was alright and why he didn’t join them for breakfast, Esteban was gone.