feeling both
Title: Feeling Both
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mesut Özil / Angel di Maria
Word Count: 7,100
Summary: Mesut watches as Germany changes. They add domes to the football stadiums, darken windows of cars. True Blood is added to every menu, every convenience store, every vending machine. It makes Mesut’s hands shake with the knowledge of how wrong it is.
A/N: A True Blood AU from someone who doesn't know anything about True Blood, and so you don't need to, either.
Mesut hates Germany.
He loves it for what it was-familiar, home-but he hates it for what it is, what it’s become. And of course everyone jumped at the idea of equality-equality, Mesut thinks, what a joke considering they’re not equal, they’re not-because it was working so well in America, the land of the free. But Mesut doesn’t want to be free, not if it means this, walking around with the Devil’s children as if they were no different from everyone else.
Vampires, he thinks, and his nails bite into the skin of his palms.
His family says he is lucky; blessed.
Look at what you can do, they say. You’re a gift from God. Look at how God has deemed you special enough to be able to be any of His creations.
They don’t talk about it much besides that, never ask Mesut to use his gift for their entertainment. That doesn’t stop him from shifting-when he feels like it, when he wants to or needs too-hawk, dog, frog, praying mantis.
Mesut thanks God each time, every time, and then wonders why him and what it means.
Mesut watches as Germany changes. They add domes to the football stadiums, darken windows of cars. True Blood is added to every menu, every convenience store, every vending machine. It makes Mesut’s hands shake with the knowledge of how wrong it is.
On the news, they talk about hate crimes and intolerance. Commercials push vampire dating sights and advertise pro-vampire laws. Vampires were people too, they say, and Mesut thinks that’s exactly the point. They were people, but they’re not now and won’t ever be again.
Mesut’s father says that Germany is filled with good-minded people, children of God who look for the good rather than the bad. But there is bad, he says, and Mesut knows. He sees it every time he leaves the house.
“What do you think about all this vampire stuff?” Marko had asked him during practice one day. Mesut had just shrugged; he hadn’t believed politics belonged on the pitch.
But then all the laws passed and suddenly everyone was coming out of the woodwork, people he loved and respected were suddenly saying, I am, and Mesut is left wondering, How did I not know? and Who did this to you? and Why?
Löw, Thomas, Manuel-all suddenly gone, different in Mesut’s mind. It’s hard, he thinks, but he tells himself that politics do not, do not, do not belong on the pitch. And then-
“I am,” Marko says. “You know. A vampire.”
And this is Marko, Mesut’s Marko, and he’s one of them, one of the Devil’s creations, and Mesut doesn’t know what to think. He’s played football with Marko for years-played football with Marko and watched movies on the couch next to Marko and slept in the same room as Marko-and Mesut thinks, How? How did I not know? How?
Mesut shifts into a black eagle when he gets home and he flies over all of the rooftops in his hometown, over everything and over nothing. The black eagle is the national animal of Germany, his Germany. He’ll miss it, he knows, and the next morning he puts in a transfer request.
Spain appeals to him because he likes their Queen.
“Dirty, disgusting things,” she had said, and everyone cheered when the anti-vampire laws passed. Mesut had watched it on the news, had seen the signs and the graffiti. Die, Vamp, Die. Save us, Buffy. God Hates Fangs.
Sold, Mesut thinks, and he signs for Real Madrid.
Spanish is easy, a joke. Mesut learns it in no time, has the basics down before his plane even lands.
The team sets him up with an apartment that he shares with Sami. Sami doesn’t care about vampires, doesn’t care about learning Spanish, doesn’t care about anything but football. Mesut thinks he leads a sad existence but doesn’t say anything about it.
There’s another new signing, though-Angel, he says his name is, and Mesut likes him, wishes he was living with him instead. Angel is from Argentina and has a long face, a thin nose. He’s left-footed and likes the same kind of music as Mesut.
“I like Madrid,” Angel says to him. “Spain. It’s quiet.”
Mesut likes Madrid, likes Spain, too.
They stretch together at practice every time. Mesut first or Angel first, it doesn’t matter, but Mesut notes how hot Angel’s palms are when they press on his legs.
“You know how yesterday Ramos told me that Argentina was the eighth largest country in the world?” Angel asks. “I didn’t believe him, had to Google it and everything. But it’s true, go figure.”
“That’s sad that you don’t even know your own country,” Mesut tells him.
“You’re just mad Germany is sixtieth,” Angel says.
“Sixty-second,” Mesut corrects.
“You’re just mad you’re sixty-second, then,” Angel laughs, and his smile is so wide, his eyes so close-set, and Mesut likes the imperfection found in those proportions.
“No,” he says. “Germany has Beethoven, Engels. Einstein.”
“But Einstein left.”
“Doesn’t make him any less German.”
“I guess,” Angel says, and Mesut likes that. “Argentina has Evita.”
“Congratulations,” Mesut says, and Angel pulls out some of the hairs on his legs.
“Hey, we have Messi, too. Maradona.”
“di Maria,” Mesut says, and Angel laughs.
Mesut remembers how cold Marko’s hands always were. He didn’t think.
Madrid changes all the time, every day, depending on when and how and from where Mesut looks at it. From the point of view of a fly, Madrid is busy, chaotic. There are people who walk past him, don’t notice him, as if he weren’t even there. From the point of view of a street dog, Madrid is friendly, warm. There are vampire gallows in the center of the city, but no one pays attention. From the point of view of Mesut-when Mesut is just Mesut, lounging on the couch with the heat from Angel’s arm melting into his-
“What was it like?” Canales asks him one day. “Playing with them, I mean.”
Mesut shakes his head, says, “Wrong.”
“I wouldn’t like it either,” he says. “I heard they’re really fast and really strong. That’s almost like cheating.”
Mesut says, “They’re vampires,” and Canales laughs.
“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t.
It happens the day the Spanish police find a nest of vampires, although that doesn’t have much to do with anything other than how it calms Mesut’s nerves.
It’s all over the news and all anyone is talking about during the match, how the vampires were found and then tied to a post, left in Plaza Mayor to wait for sunrise. Mesut thinks it’s justice.
And then later, as Real Madrid celebrate a 4-1 victory over Athletic Bilbao, Angel kisses him and Mesut kisses back.
“I was worried,” Angel says, and Mesut tells him, “Don’t be.”
They go back to Angel’s and Mesut kisses up Angel’s chest, bites down on his shoulders and collar bones. Mesut loves the noises he makes; tries to see how loud Angel can get and which places on his body are the most sensitive. Mesut loves the smooth expanse of Angel’s skin, the way his pulse beats underneath his jaw and the feel of friction between their hips.
Mesut’s father calls the next day. Germany, he says. Overrun, he says. People asking to be turned and humans together with vampires and the government will do nothing, can do nothing.
Mesut says that he doesn’t see much of that in Spain. He doesn’t know a single one. Thank God.
“Okay,” Angel says. “What if we do this-hold on.”
They’re on the pitch, messing around during a water break. It’s hot out and Mesut’s sweating, the sun overhead being a bit too much. For a second he wishes the stadium was domed, but then he takes it back. He likes the sun.
“I’ll take it like this,” Angel says, “and then tap it back with my heel-”
He does and then Mesut takes off with the ball for a few paces, Angel yelling, “Yeah, yeah! Like that, yeah!” at his back. Moving feels good; the wind feels good on his cheeks, and he almost doesn’t want to stop. He does, though, and heads back to Angel.
“Come on,” Angel says. “That was good!”
“Yeah, it was,” Mesut says. “It was good.”
Angel smiles.
Sergio takes him to see a bullfight and Mesut watches steadily.
It’s beautiful, the bull, the way his muscles move underneath his skin. Mesut can appreciate that. Large animals are usually the most graceful-tigers, whales, colossal squid-and bulls are no exception to that. He commits everything to memory just in case, just in case he needs to know how a bull walks and breathes, just in case he ever needs to do it himself sometime.
“It’s a misconception,” Sergio tells him, “that bulls hate the color red. They’re all colorblind.” Sergio’s eyes don’t leave the ring; Mesut can tell he’s really into this. He remembers, back before transferring to Real Madrid was even an option, hearing that someone on the squad had gotten fined for attending a bullfight instead of sitting on the sideline of a match while injured. He figures it was probably Sergio.
“Then why all the red?” Mesut asks. The bull is sweating; he can see it.
“Tradition,” Sergio says. “I think originally it was used to cover up the color of the blood, but it’s just tradition, mostly.”
“Oh,” Mesut says. What else can he say?
He watches the Matador thrust his sword out, again and again, and it’s strangely beautiful, like a dance. Mesut doesn’t look away as the bull dies, doesn’t blink, because someone has to witness it, has to witness the way the bull lies in the dirt, and how it struggles and how it bleeds, and how it lies there, in the dirt.
He can feel Sergio’s eyes on him the entire time.
“Why do you want to watch this?” Angel asks. They’re at his place, stretched out on the couch, the news airing on the tv in front of them.
“Because it’s important,” Mesut says.
“We're citizens. We pay taxes. We deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else,” some woman is saying. Her name is Nan Flanagan; she’s advocating vampire rights in the United States and Mesut thinks she’s an idiot.
“You know,” Angel says, “I remember back in Argentina, before The Great Revelation, everyone said that if you hung Aloe Vera backwards behind your door, you’d ward off vampires. It was just superstition, nobody really believed in it, but…”
“But then again, no one really believed in vampires either,” Mesut says.
“Yeah,” Angel says. “Hey, give me the remote?”
“No,” Mesut says.
“Give me the remote,” Angel says again, although this time it’s not a question.
“Still no.”
Angel knocks his knee against Mesut’s and Mesut looks over. Angel’s got that look in his eyes and a lopsided smile on his face.
Mesut shuts off the tv, and Angel’s smile widens. He tastes like coffee beans.
Mesut likes taking the form of a swallow. He remembers being a little boy in Germany and how if he stood real still, they’d come and eat seeds right out of his hand. His brother would try to feed them, too, and he would stand even more still, like a statue made of flesh and bone, but the birds would never come. Mesut thinks they sensed something in him that they didn’t find in his brother; a kindred spirit, maybe.
Flying is strange. It’s nothing he would have ever expected, could have ever imagined. He has feathers, not hair; he is light; he is fragile. He’s tried explaining it to his mother once, tried explaining how to fly and how it felt, only he couldn’t. He doesn’t know how he does it; he just does.
Mesut, she had said to him, some things cannot be expressed with words, and a gift from God is one of them. Live it, Mesut; be it. Don’t try to tie it down and examine it.
And he didn’t; doesn’t. Not when he’s flying over the Royal Palace, not when he’s on a tree branch outside a flamenco restaurant, and especially not when he’s weaving in and out of the goal posts and the holes of the nets at the Bernabéu.
Mesut lives it, is it.
El Clásico comes and it’s just another game to Mesut, just another team to beat because the rivalry isn’t in his blood yet.
But then when he’s standing at mid waiting for the whistle to blow, all he can feel is eyes on him and it makes him nervous. Mesut can see who it is, stares right back at Villa just as hard, but the emotion isn’t there on his end; he’s just confused. It causes Mesut to miss easy shots, simple passes. He bobbles the ball, plays poorly, and Villa just watches.
After the match, they switch jerseys and Villa says, “I know what you are.”
Mesut jokes, “German?” because what else is he supposed to think?
“Shifter,” Villa says, and Mesut freezes with Villa’s shirt halfway on. “I saw you and I just knew.”
“How?” Mesut asks, because how could he know? How?
“Just could,” Villa says. “I haven’t met one of us in a long time.”
“I haven’t met one of us in ever,” he says, but it’s okay, doesn’t matter because suddenly there’s an us.
They go out for coffee and Villa becomes the first person that Mesut tells the true reasons for his transfer.
“I hate them,” Villa says, and his voice is hard. “I hate them and what they stand for and what they do to the people we care about.”
“Me too,” Mesut says, and he doesn’t know how else to say it. Me too. Me too.
“You know, I once fell in love with someone who turned out to be one of them,” Villa says. “A fucking blood-sucker.” He lets out a rush of air and it sounds like a voiceless laugh to Mesut, although there’s nothing funny about any of it.
“Yeah?” he asks. “What’d you do?”
“I told him that if he didn’t leave Spain, I’d fucking kill him myself; I’d do everything I could to make sure that he ended up nothing more than dust on my coffee table.”
And something about that doesn’t sit right with Mesut, doesn’t line up. He looks at Villa and the way his face is hard but his eyes are sad; he looks at Villa and the way he is tearing his napkin into tiny shreds.
“Are you still in love with him?” Mesut asks, and Villa shoots him a glare.
“I ran him out of the fucking country, didn’t I?” he snaps.
“Yes,” Mesut says, “but that’s not what I asked.”
Villa doesn’t answer, just gets up and leaves.
“What would you do if you had all the time in the world?” Angel asks.
“Pray,” Mesut says, and his eyes follow the line of Angel’s body, its angles and curves as he lies on the floor. “For something to do; a purpose.”
“I think I’d read,” Angel says. “I haven’t read a book in ages.”
“Me either,” Mesut says, and he thumbs the stretch of Angel’s skin where his shirt has ridden up.
“Hey Mesut, it’s Marko. I just-I needed to call because I’m sorry. Except I’m not, that’s a lie, I’m not sorry because I haven’t done anything. I’m still the same, Mesut. And I just-I wanted you to know that I miss talking to you. I know that it was probably a big shock and you probably hate me for not telling you sooner, but I’m still me. I haven’t changed. And I didn’t call sooner because I thought you’d call me once you calmed down, but you haven’t and I-you’re my best friend, Mesut. Call me back. Please.”
To erase this message, press seven. To save it, press-
Message erased.
The grass where he’s sitting is tickling the back of Mesut’s knees when he asks, “Hey Marcelo? What’s your full name?”
“I don’t have one,” he says, and he’s being cheeky, Mesut knows that.
“It’s like Madonna,” Cristiano says, and he quirks a smile. “Or Cher. He’s trying to dethrone me as team diva.”
“Ha, ha,” Marcelo says. “We’ll see who’s laughing when they finish the dome! You’ll turn pale.” And that-huh.
“What dome?” Mesut asks.
“Just one of those sun and rain things,” Marcelo says. “Over the Bernabéu. I don’t know, someone floated a lot of extra cash in, I guess. A lot of the stadiums are getting one.”
Mesut thinks, No sun. No sun. He tries to tell himself that it’s not familiar, that it’s not Germany all over again, but then he lets his mind wander and all he can think of is the Weserstadion and how he had to leave because the shade became too stifling and made it hard for him to breathe and those things parading around in the skin of his friends and how every time he thought that maybe-No, no, it’s not Germany. It’s not.
“No, no, Mesut,” Angel says, and he grabs Mesut by the forearm to keep him from walking away to stretch. “I’m serious, watch this. It’s the weirdest thing.”
They stand there and just stare at Mourinho, but he doesn’t do anything of note and Mesut begins to feel stupid, standing there with Angel’s fingers wrapped around his arm.
“Just-wait,” Angel says.
Nothing. And then Mourinho takes a pack of gum out of his pocket and empties it out on the bench. He counts them, one through twelve, and then counts them again, one through twelve. When he’s done, he puts them back in the pack and back in his pocket.
“What is he even-?” Mesut asks.
“I don’t know,” Angel says, and even though Mesut’s not looking at him, he can tell that Angel’s shaking his head by the way his hand tugs lightly on Mesut’s arm.
“Does he even eat all of them?”
“No,” Angel says. His face is serious but there’s laughter in his voice, and Mesut likes that.
It’s one of those things where he can’t look away.
Mesut doesn’t know anything about Martín Cáceres, not a thing other than that his shorts are too big and his socks are too high and his hair is too long. Mesut doesn’t care; it’s not something that matters to him. What does matter to him, though, is the way he tackles Angel and the way Angel hits the ground and the way Angel doesn’t get up afterwards.
Mesut gets to him first, although he doesn’t know how he feels about that, doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.
“Angel,” he says, reaching a hand out. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Angel says, and he sounds so confused. “I think I broke my legs.”
Mesut looks down over Angel’s body; he’s fine, Angel’s fine.
“They look okay,” Mesut says, but the referee waves over the paramedics anyways. “Why? Do they hurt?”
“No,” Angel says. “I can’t feel them.”
The paramedics push him away after that, strap Angel to a backboard and cart him out of there. Mesut watches as he leaves with his hands on his hips.
He’s fine.
They win 3-1, but Mesut doesn’t care. The audio in his head is on loop, Angel, Angel, Angel. He races down the tunnel and through the locker room, down the hall to where he knows the physio’s office is. He doesn’t know-hadn’t heard any word about a hospital, so maybe-
The door isn’t closed. Mesut can hear voices.
“And what would that,” Angel says, “what would that mean?”
“Nothing needs to change.” A physio this time. “It would speed recovery and you’ll be back playing in two weeks.”
“But wouldn’t I-”
“The dome will be done by then,” the physio says. “It’s illegal, but we could.”
“Okay.”
Mesut backs away, and suddenly there’s too much-too much noise in his head, all going at the same time, one on top of the other, and none of it makes any sense. And he doesn’t-doesn’t know what to think because he can’t have heard that right, only he did and Angel said Okay. Angel said Okay and Mesut doesn’t know why, doesn’t know why anyone would say Okay, doesn’t know what this means for him or for Angel or for them or for anyone. Okay. Okay. And suddenly he can’t breathe, is running down the hall to an exit and sitting on the ground, his head between his knees, Marko and Germany and God and Why and No and Okay. Okay. Okay.
Mesut sleeps for a while and then goes to lie out in the sun in the Parque del Oeste. He stays until he can feel his skin start to turn red and then he stays some more. He thinks of Angel and what he did and what has happened to him and how no one knows but Mesut and how it hurts him, deep in his chest and in the back of his mind and in the pit of his stomach, all the way out to the tips of his fingers and toes.
He was so good and now he's not, now he's rotten. Angel. Devil's child. Drinking blood.
Mesut stays in the sun.
It’s hard-new and different and strange, too, but mostly just hard-to ignore Angel when he comes back. It was easier when he wasn’t at practice, when Mesut could just silence his phone, but now he’s back and acting like nothing has changed. He doesn’t look any different. Mesut doesn’t know what he expected; Marko looks the same.
And so Mesut breezes past Angel on the field and doesn’t look at him when he calls Mesut’s name and chooses to stretch with Pipita instead.
“What's wrong?” Pipita asks.
“Nothing.” Everything.
“Mesut,” Angel says. “Mesut-wait!”
Mesut doesn’t.
He stands in a cluster of trees just outside Madrid.
A swallow, he thinks, or a dove. A dog. A cat, he hasn’t done a cat in a while. A pigeon. A bull. A deer. Angel. Can’t do Angel, can’t do people; too complicated. People. Angel’s not people. Angel’s not a person. Angel’s not human, not anymore, not since-and I didn’t-
Mesut gets back in his car and goes home.
Mesut spends so much time avoiding Angel that he forgets that Angel knows him and that they used to be friends, friends and something else.
There’s a knock at his door and Sami’s in the shower, so Mesut heads over to answer it. He’s wearing socks and they brush against the carpet, causing his fingers to get shocked when he reaches a hand out to the doorknob.
“Hi,” Angel says, and he slams a hand out to keep Mesut from closing the door. “What did I-I don’t get what I did.”
Mesut looks at him, thinks about how it would feel to touch Angel’s skin now, how cold it would be compared to how hot it always was.
“You know,” Angel says, and Mesut doesn’t say anything back, doesn’t have to. “Look at me.”
“I can’t,” Mesut says, and the door closes easily this time.
“Hi Mesut, it’s me again. I just-I don’t know if you got my other message, and so I’m calling to just say that I’m sorry. I didn’t-I didn’t handle any of that well, did I? But I miss you. Werder’s not the same without you. They’re making me room with Felix, now, which is alright I guess because he tells all these great stories about Toni, like how he-”
Message erased.
Mesut watches the news alone. More vampire rights bills have been passed, this time in Switzerland, Australia, the Emirates.
If we don’t give them rights now, someone is saying, we will have to learn to be ashamed of ourselves when our grandchildren study this in school.
“No,” Mesut says to the tv. “They’ll have killed us all by then, or delivered us straight to hell.”
The silence in the room is so very, very loud.
Maybe Mesut doesn’t give him enough credit, or maybe he’s gotten smarter since they’ve last talked, but Angel manages to corner Mesut and force him into being his partner when they do stability ball exercises. They do crunches with a medicine ball, passing the weight between them on the ups of each crunch.
“I don’t get it,” Angel says. “You’re not from Spain.”
“No,” Mesut says, and as he grabs for the medicine ball, he notices that Angel’s hands are cold; ice.
“You’re from Germany,” Angel says. “It’s okay there. It’s okay in Argentina, too. It’s okay in my culture, and in yours, so what’s-”
“It may be okay in Germany,” Mesut says, “but it’s not okay in my culture. It’s not now and it won’t ever be.”
Angel doesn’t say much after that, but it doesn’t feel like much of a victory to Mesut.
He thinks about it a lot, Angel and his skin and the way his ribcage felt underneath his hands. Mesut touches himself sometimes, in the shower or in bed, and he thinks about Angel and the bridge of his nose, the curve of his spine, the sharp angles of his hips. Mesut comes every time, but it’s not as good, his hand, because in the back of his mind, he’s always comparing it to the real thing.
They play Levante next, a night game, and there’s a breeze in Mesut’s hair that feels like fingertips. He loves the feel of it, of the wind and of the burn in his chest as he runs, and Pepe tells him that the cold air has turned his cheeks pink.
He scores in the fifty-seventh minute off a short pass from Xabi and when his team comes to hug him, he stiffens as he feels a shock of freezing fingers slide around his neck.
He said Okay, Mesut has to remind himself. He said it, you heard him. Okay.
Mesut thinks of Angel’s teeth, stained red with True Blood.
It’s after the game, hours and hours after the game, but Mesut knocks anyways. When Angel answers the door in only a pair of boxers, Mesut says, “I could tell and they’d tie you up in Plaza Mayor until you were nothing.”
“You won’t,” Angel says, and his voice is thick with sleep.
“I could,” Mesut says.
“If you were going to, you would have already.”
And Mesut- Mesut doesn’t like how sure of everything Angel is, doesn’t like it at all, and so he places two hands flat on Angel’s chest-cold chest, cold, cold-and shoves. Angel stumbles into the house and Mesut follows, kicking the door shut behind him.
He takes off his shirt and Angel just stands there, stunned. He kicks off his shoes and undoes his belt and takes off his jeans and Angel just stands there.
“Come on,” Mesut says, and his hands are on Angel’s hips and down the front of Angel’s boxers. Angel’s ready, hard already, but his hands are shaking where they are, placed on Mesut’s shoulders.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Shut up,” Mesut says, and he grinds his hips against Angel.
“Okay,” Angel says, and it’s that word again-Okay, okay-and when Angel leans in to kiss him, Mesut jerks his head back.
“Don’t touch me with your mouth,” he says. “Don’t you dare.”
Angel doesn’t try to again, but everything’s shifted and Mesut doesn’t like it. He gets dressed immediately afterward and drives home, where throws up, prays to God and asks for forgiveness.
He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling.
They fuck a lot, after that. Mesut doesn’t really like that word, but he doesn’t know what else to call it, what they do. So they fuck.
It’s strange, being trapped between the bed and an ice block like that. If they’re at his place, Mesut will wrap himself in extra blankets when they’re done. If they’re at Angel’s, Angel will always give him an extra sweatshirt or another pair of training pants to warm him up. It’s a nice thought, but they’re not friends. They don’t really talk anymore.
“Mesut, I just-I don’t know what you want me to say. What do you want me to say? Because I’ll-”
Message erased.
Iker calls him over one day as he’s strapping on his gloves.
“Everything okay with you and Angel?” he asks.
“Yes,” Mesut says. “It’s fine.”
“Because it doesn’t look fine,” Iker says. “It looks like you can’t stand each other.” And that’s not fair, it’s not, because Iker doesn’t know what Angel is and if he did, everything would be different and he wouldn’t be looking at Mesut like he was the bad guy.
“I don’t have any problems with Angel,” he says.
“I know,” Iker tells him. “But you used to be friends.”
“People change,” Mesut says, and he doesn’t wait for a response.
Mesut watches.
Angel handles the ball exactly the same. It’s beautiful football and Mesut can’t look away, not from the ball or Angel’s boots or Angel’s thighs, not from the look of concentration on Angel’s face. Mesut wants to say, You were so good. He wants to ask, Why did you do it? and What were you thinking? and Why didn’t you tell me afterwards? He wants to say, I love your nose, and he wants to say, I love your ears, and he wants to say, I love the hair at the nape of your neck.
And sometimes, when Mesut’s not paying attention to where his mind is wandering, he thinks of Angel’s mouth and what it would be like to kiss him again. He imagines it would taste like iron, but that doesn’t bother him until he reminds himself that it should.
He asks Angel, later, as he’s putting his clothes back on.
“Why did you agree?” Angel knows what he’s talking about without having to ask.
“If I wanted to play football, I had to,” he says.
“I didn’t care if you were a footballer or not,” Mesut tells him.
“If I wanted to walk, I had to,” Angel says.
“I didn’t care if you could walk or not.”
“I did,” Angel says, and Mesut just looks at him for a while, just looks at him and doesn’t say anything.
“I know,” he finally says. That much is evident.
Mesut makes it to the front door before Angel says, “Stay.”
“I have to go,” Mesut says, and he shuts the door quietly behind him.
His father calls.
“How are you?” he asks, and “You seem sad. Go outside; get some air.” Mesut says he does, it doesn’t help, and his father breathes on the other end of the line.
Mesut asks if it’s a failure on his part to like something that God wouldn’t. His father says, “God made you, Mesut. He knows your strengths and weaknesses and loves you all the same.”
“I don’t want to be the bad in the world,” Mesut says.
“Then be the good,” his father says.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Yes, you do.”
They’re in bed together and Mesut’s tired. He should leave soon and the heavy curtains on the windows make the room dark, make Mesut even sleepier.
“Do you want something to drink?” Angel asks. He gets up and Mesut follows him to the kitchen, watches as Angel digs in the fridge and pulls out a bottle of True Blood.
“Just water,” Mesut says. He doesn’t know what else Angel would have. Angel hands him a glass and then drinks his True Blood right from the bottle. The sight is unnerving to Mesut.
“What?” Angel asks, but he knows already.
“Where do you even get that stuff?” Mesut asks. “I thought it was illegal in Spain.”
“I order it,” Angel says, and he shrugs.
“What does it taste like?” Mesut asks, and then immediately regrets it. What a stupid question.
“Want to try?” Angel asks, tipping the bottle towards Mesut. He’s joking.
“No, I just-does it taste like real blood?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Angel says with a smile, a small smile like he knows what Mesut’s thinking, what Mesut’s really asking. “I’ve never had real blood.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
Mesut thinks about love, sometimes, about the girls he left back in Germany and about Angel. He knows that love is a subtle blessing-subtle, but one of the most important blessings God has given to humanity.
He created mates for you from yourselves that you might find peace of mind in them, and He put between you love and compassion, Mesut reads.
It’s a shame Angel had to go and ruin it.
“Just pick up, Mesut. You’re being ridiculous. There’s nothing else I can do if you don’t pick up. Do you even care anymore, or are you just washing your-”
Message erased.
Nicolás González, an Argentinean vampire rights activist, has a thirty minute special that Mesut streams online. He doesn’t know why.
The time is now for the human race to show that they will not make the same mistakes of hatred that their fathers did before them, and their fathers before them.
Mesut hates.
Basic rights for all sentient beings should be guaranteed, not questioned, he says.
Mesut questions.
Love, he says. Pain. Vampires and humans alike, we are all capable of feeling both.
Mesut feels both.
He lays a hand on Angel’s bare chest, his palm covering one nipple.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, and Angel laughs.
“No,” he says. “It would take more than that.”
“Am I hurting you?” Mesut asks again.
“Yes,” Angel says. “Sometimes.”
Mesut spends the night because he falls asleep before he can leave. Sometime, in the middle of the night, he wakes up and Angel’s running his cold fingers though Mesut’s hair. It feels good on his scalp.
“It’s all okay except for the way you look at me,” Angel says, and Mesut has no doubt that he wasn’t supposed to ever hear this. “I hate the way you look at me.”
Mesut forces his breath steady, squeezes his eyes shut, Germany, Marko, Angel. Okay. Okay. Angel.
He very carefully does not move.
The next morning, they have sex. Mesut marvels at how in sync they are, at the faces and noises Angel makes. He feels Angel’s breath on his skin, his neck, and Angel’s lips are so close but they’re not touching him. Angel hasn’t tried to kiss him since Mesut told him not to.
“I want to see your teeth,” Mesut says, and Angel smiles. “No, your other ones.”
“I don’t want to show them to you,” Angel says. Mesut’s close and hearing Angel’s voice makes warmth pool in his stomach.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because you won’t like them,” Angel says.
“Please.”
Angel shows him and Mesut comes. He freaks out, leaves the apartment. His hands shake.
Mesut misses what happens, but the next day at practice, Pipita and Cristiano get into a fight.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Cristiano says. “Just because you can’t keep up.”
“Fuck you,” Pipita says. “You act like you’re God’s gift to football. Well, fuck you.”
Marcelo interrupts, tries to calm things down, says, “Hey, now, we all know that’s Messi, anyways,” but it doesn’t work and Esteban has to pull Pipita away. Mesut sits next to Cristiano in the grass.
“I don’t get why everyone hates me just because I want to be the best,” Cristiano says. “They do, too.”
“It’s because you’re closer than they’ll ever get to being it,” Mesut says. It’s true.
“But even off the pitch,” Cristiano says. “Off the pitch, I’m good. I donate to charity; I volunteer. I love my family; I’m good to my neighbor. So I’m a footballer. What should that matter?”
“It shouldn’t,” Mesut says. “It shouldn’t matter what you are, not so long as you’re good.”
He’s a hypocrite.
Mesut calls Angel sometime after practice to let him know that he’s coming over.
“Not tonight,” Angel says. “I just want to sleep.”
Mesut thinks of him and the way he looked when Mesut had seen his teeth and he feels guilty.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Angel says. “It’s not fair to me.”
“So it’s all about you?” Mesut asks, and he’s surprised at how mad he is, how hurt and upset he is.
“No,” Angel says, and he sounds calm. “It’s all only ever about you.”
Bookstores smell like moths to Mesut, and he thinks, A moth. I’ve never. And books are expensive, he didn’t realize that, hasn’t bought a book in ages that wasn’t a magazine, that wasn’t FourFourTwo. He walks out with a huge stack-philosophy and biographies and novels-and when he gets back to his car, he thinks, Okay.
Angel answers the door and says, “Come on, Mesut,” like he had expected something different, something better of him.
“I bought-here,” Mesut says, and pushes his way inside and thrusts the books at Angel. It’s awkward; he doesn’t know what to say.
“Books?” he asks.
“You have all the time in the world now,” Mesut says. “And you said that you-”
“This doesn’t change anything,” Angel says. “This doesn’t change the fact that you’re human and I’m-I’m not.”
And Mesut wants to tell Angel how maybe he’s not human either, because he doesn’t know what he is, because he can change into whatever he wants, and he’s not alone in that because he’s part of an us. He wants to say, I’m trying, and, This is hard for me, and, Bear with me, please, I’m trying, but he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he leans forward and kisses Angel on the mouth.
When he pulls back, Angel’s just staring at him blankly before saying, “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Mesut says, and then he has to take a second to think because he didn’t get that far; in his head, he kissed Angel and that was it, problem solved. “It means that I like you a lot. It means that I don’t-I don’t want you to not want to see me because I always want to see you. It means I don’t care-except I do, I do care that you’re a vampire, but it means that I’m trying to look past that because that’s not all that you are.”
“What’s the catch?” Angel asks, and he’s so hesitant that Mesut wants to slap himself because he’s the reason Angel’s that way to begin with.
“No catch,” Mesut says, and Angel doesn’t smile, but he looks like he almost can’t believe it. He bares his fangs and walks up to Mesut, crowding him against the wall and bracketing his hands on either side of Mesut’s head as he slides one knee in between both of Mesut’s.
Mesut doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t falter or pull back, because this is Angel, and Okay, but this is still Angel.
Angel kisses him, nice and slow, and Mesut’s missed it. It’s different now, feeling how the shape of Angel’s teeth have changed the shape of his mouth, but it’s still the same, too. Mesut grabs onto Angel’s jeans at his hips.
“Back out,” Angel says, and he bites down lightly on Mesut’s earlobe.
“No,” Mesut says.
Angel leans down and with his mouth at Mesut’s pulse point, says, “Back out.”
“No,” Mesut says, and Angel scrapes his teeth against Mesut’s neck, licks and sucks his skin there, and Mesut says, “Angel. Angel.”
They get to the bedroom and undress each other with steady hands. Mesut’s not nervous; the new part is staying afterwards, and he’s already done that once, anyways. Letting Angel touch him while he’s still there is routine.
Although maybe-maybe that’s not true, either, because Angel’s being careful with him in a way that he never was before, taking his time touching Mesut and exploring his body, despite already being familiar with it.
Subtle blessing, Mesut thinks. There’s truth in that.
“Look at you,” Angel says. “Look at you,” and his hand cups Mesut’s jaw.
He can feel the hickey on his neck each time his pulse beats.
In the morning, Mesut wakes up first. He lies there and looks at looks at Angel, and they’re not skin to skin because Mesut had gotten cold, but Mesut doesn’t mind. He thinks about how he almost passed this up, and he thinks about how it’s going to be hard because he still hates them, vampires, still wishes they didn’t exist, but if Angel is one and Angel is good, then they can’t all be bad and Mesut is going to have to work on accepting that.
When Angel wakes up, he smiles with all his regular teeth.
“Good morning,” Mesut says, and he smiles back.
They spend the night together almost every night for the next week, either at Angel’s or Mesut’s, but mostly at Angel’s because Mesut has to deal with Sami. It’s only been one week and it’s not all been easy, but the ups outweigh the downs and Mesut tries hard to make it work. He wants it to work.
Late that night, early morning, Mesut waits and when he’s sure that Angel has fallen asleep, he climbs out of bed and throws on a sweatshirt that he finds on the floor. He heads into the kitchen and pulls out a glass from one of the cabinets before rooting past the True Blood bottles in the fridge to get at the container of orange juice that Angel keeps there for him. He pours himself a glass and heads out to the balcony, his cell phone weighing heavily in his hand.
The sun is just coming up and Mesut thinks it’s beautiful. He feels a pang of sadness so sharp for a minute at the thought that Angel will never see one of them again, not like this.
He flips open his phone and pauses. He types in a number, one that he still remembers and will probably always remember, one that he hadn’t used in a long, long time. Too long. The phone rings in his ear and for a second, Mesut almost hopes no one picks up because he doesn’t know what-if-he doesn’t know what.
“Hello?”
“Hi Marko. It’s Mesut.”
Marko laughs in his ear, relieved, “I’ve missed you.”
Mesut’s missed him, too.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mesut Özil / Angel di Maria
Word Count: 7,100
Summary: Mesut watches as Germany changes. They add domes to the football stadiums, darken windows of cars. True Blood is added to every menu, every convenience store, every vending machine. It makes Mesut’s hands shake with the knowledge of how wrong it is.
A/N: A True Blood AU from someone who doesn't know anything about True Blood, and so you don't need to, either.
Mesut hates Germany.
He loves it for what it was-familiar, home-but he hates it for what it is, what it’s become. And of course everyone jumped at the idea of equality-equality, Mesut thinks, what a joke considering they’re not equal, they’re not-because it was working so well in America, the land of the free. But Mesut doesn’t want to be free, not if it means this, walking around with the Devil’s children as if they were no different from everyone else.
Vampires, he thinks, and his nails bite into the skin of his palms.
His family says he is lucky; blessed.
Look at what you can do, they say. You’re a gift from God. Look at how God has deemed you special enough to be able to be any of His creations.
They don’t talk about it much besides that, never ask Mesut to use his gift for their entertainment. That doesn’t stop him from shifting-when he feels like it, when he wants to or needs too-hawk, dog, frog, praying mantis.
Mesut thanks God each time, every time, and then wonders why him and what it means.
Mesut watches as Germany changes. They add domes to the football stadiums, darken windows of cars. True Blood is added to every menu, every convenience store, every vending machine. It makes Mesut’s hands shake with the knowledge of how wrong it is.
On the news, they talk about hate crimes and intolerance. Commercials push vampire dating sights and advertise pro-vampire laws. Vampires were people too, they say, and Mesut thinks that’s exactly the point. They were people, but they’re not now and won’t ever be again.
Mesut’s father says that Germany is filled with good-minded people, children of God who look for the good rather than the bad. But there is bad, he says, and Mesut knows. He sees it every time he leaves the house.
“What do you think about all this vampire stuff?” Marko had asked him during practice one day. Mesut had just shrugged; he hadn’t believed politics belonged on the pitch.
But then all the laws passed and suddenly everyone was coming out of the woodwork, people he loved and respected were suddenly saying, I am, and Mesut is left wondering, How did I not know? and Who did this to you? and Why?
Löw, Thomas, Manuel-all suddenly gone, different in Mesut’s mind. It’s hard, he thinks, but he tells himself that politics do not, do not, do not belong on the pitch. And then-
“I am,” Marko says. “You know. A vampire.”
And this is Marko, Mesut’s Marko, and he’s one of them, one of the Devil’s creations, and Mesut doesn’t know what to think. He’s played football with Marko for years-played football with Marko and watched movies on the couch next to Marko and slept in the same room as Marko-and Mesut thinks, How? How did I not know? How?
Mesut shifts into a black eagle when he gets home and he flies over all of the rooftops in his hometown, over everything and over nothing. The black eagle is the national animal of Germany, his Germany. He’ll miss it, he knows, and the next morning he puts in a transfer request.
Spain appeals to him because he likes their Queen.
“Dirty, disgusting things,” she had said, and everyone cheered when the anti-vampire laws passed. Mesut had watched it on the news, had seen the signs and the graffiti. Die, Vamp, Die. Save us, Buffy. God Hates Fangs.
Sold, Mesut thinks, and he signs for Real Madrid.
Spanish is easy, a joke. Mesut learns it in no time, has the basics down before his plane even lands.
The team sets him up with an apartment that he shares with Sami. Sami doesn’t care about vampires, doesn’t care about learning Spanish, doesn’t care about anything but football. Mesut thinks he leads a sad existence but doesn’t say anything about it.
There’s another new signing, though-Angel, he says his name is, and Mesut likes him, wishes he was living with him instead. Angel is from Argentina and has a long face, a thin nose. He’s left-footed and likes the same kind of music as Mesut.
“I like Madrid,” Angel says to him. “Spain. It’s quiet.”
Mesut likes Madrid, likes Spain, too.
They stretch together at practice every time. Mesut first or Angel first, it doesn’t matter, but Mesut notes how hot Angel’s palms are when they press on his legs.
“You know how yesterday Ramos told me that Argentina was the eighth largest country in the world?” Angel asks. “I didn’t believe him, had to Google it and everything. But it’s true, go figure.”
“That’s sad that you don’t even know your own country,” Mesut tells him.
“You’re just mad Germany is sixtieth,” Angel says.
“Sixty-second,” Mesut corrects.
“You’re just mad you’re sixty-second, then,” Angel laughs, and his smile is so wide, his eyes so close-set, and Mesut likes the imperfection found in those proportions.
“No,” he says. “Germany has Beethoven, Engels. Einstein.”
“But Einstein left.”
“Doesn’t make him any less German.”
“I guess,” Angel says, and Mesut likes that. “Argentina has Evita.”
“Congratulations,” Mesut says, and Angel pulls out some of the hairs on his legs.
“Hey, we have Messi, too. Maradona.”
“di Maria,” Mesut says, and Angel laughs.
Mesut remembers how cold Marko’s hands always were. He didn’t think.
Madrid changes all the time, every day, depending on when and how and from where Mesut looks at it. From the point of view of a fly, Madrid is busy, chaotic. There are people who walk past him, don’t notice him, as if he weren’t even there. From the point of view of a street dog, Madrid is friendly, warm. There are vampire gallows in the center of the city, but no one pays attention. From the point of view of Mesut-when Mesut is just Mesut, lounging on the couch with the heat from Angel’s arm melting into his-
“What was it like?” Canales asks him one day. “Playing with them, I mean.”
Mesut shakes his head, says, “Wrong.”
“I wouldn’t like it either,” he says. “I heard they’re really fast and really strong. That’s almost like cheating.”
Mesut says, “They’re vampires,” and Canales laughs.
“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t.
It happens the day the Spanish police find a nest of vampires, although that doesn’t have much to do with anything other than how it calms Mesut’s nerves.
It’s all over the news and all anyone is talking about during the match, how the vampires were found and then tied to a post, left in Plaza Mayor to wait for sunrise. Mesut thinks it’s justice.
And then later, as Real Madrid celebrate a 4-1 victory over Athletic Bilbao, Angel kisses him and Mesut kisses back.
“I was worried,” Angel says, and Mesut tells him, “Don’t be.”
They go back to Angel’s and Mesut kisses up Angel’s chest, bites down on his shoulders and collar bones. Mesut loves the noises he makes; tries to see how loud Angel can get and which places on his body are the most sensitive. Mesut loves the smooth expanse of Angel’s skin, the way his pulse beats underneath his jaw and the feel of friction between their hips.
Mesut’s father calls the next day. Germany, he says. Overrun, he says. People asking to be turned and humans together with vampires and the government will do nothing, can do nothing.
Mesut says that he doesn’t see much of that in Spain. He doesn’t know a single one. Thank God.
“Okay,” Angel says. “What if we do this-hold on.”
They’re on the pitch, messing around during a water break. It’s hot out and Mesut’s sweating, the sun overhead being a bit too much. For a second he wishes the stadium was domed, but then he takes it back. He likes the sun.
“I’ll take it like this,” Angel says, “and then tap it back with my heel-”
He does and then Mesut takes off with the ball for a few paces, Angel yelling, “Yeah, yeah! Like that, yeah!” at his back. Moving feels good; the wind feels good on his cheeks, and he almost doesn’t want to stop. He does, though, and heads back to Angel.
“Come on,” Angel says. “That was good!”
“Yeah, it was,” Mesut says. “It was good.”
Angel smiles.
Sergio takes him to see a bullfight and Mesut watches steadily.
It’s beautiful, the bull, the way his muscles move underneath his skin. Mesut can appreciate that. Large animals are usually the most graceful-tigers, whales, colossal squid-and bulls are no exception to that. He commits everything to memory just in case, just in case he needs to know how a bull walks and breathes, just in case he ever needs to do it himself sometime.
“It’s a misconception,” Sergio tells him, “that bulls hate the color red. They’re all colorblind.” Sergio’s eyes don’t leave the ring; Mesut can tell he’s really into this. He remembers, back before transferring to Real Madrid was even an option, hearing that someone on the squad had gotten fined for attending a bullfight instead of sitting on the sideline of a match while injured. He figures it was probably Sergio.
“Then why all the red?” Mesut asks. The bull is sweating; he can see it.
“Tradition,” Sergio says. “I think originally it was used to cover up the color of the blood, but it’s just tradition, mostly.”
“Oh,” Mesut says. What else can he say?
He watches the Matador thrust his sword out, again and again, and it’s strangely beautiful, like a dance. Mesut doesn’t look away as the bull dies, doesn’t blink, because someone has to witness it, has to witness the way the bull lies in the dirt, and how it struggles and how it bleeds, and how it lies there, in the dirt.
He can feel Sergio’s eyes on him the entire time.
“Why do you want to watch this?” Angel asks. They’re at his place, stretched out on the couch, the news airing on the tv in front of them.
“Because it’s important,” Mesut says.
“We're citizens. We pay taxes. We deserve basic civil rights just like everyone else,” some woman is saying. Her name is Nan Flanagan; she’s advocating vampire rights in the United States and Mesut thinks she’s an idiot.
“You know,” Angel says, “I remember back in Argentina, before The Great Revelation, everyone said that if you hung Aloe Vera backwards behind your door, you’d ward off vampires. It was just superstition, nobody really believed in it, but…”
“But then again, no one really believed in vampires either,” Mesut says.
“Yeah,” Angel says. “Hey, give me the remote?”
“No,” Mesut says.
“Give me the remote,” Angel says again, although this time it’s not a question.
“Still no.”
Angel knocks his knee against Mesut’s and Mesut looks over. Angel’s got that look in his eyes and a lopsided smile on his face.
Mesut shuts off the tv, and Angel’s smile widens. He tastes like coffee beans.
Mesut likes taking the form of a swallow. He remembers being a little boy in Germany and how if he stood real still, they’d come and eat seeds right out of his hand. His brother would try to feed them, too, and he would stand even more still, like a statue made of flesh and bone, but the birds would never come. Mesut thinks they sensed something in him that they didn’t find in his brother; a kindred spirit, maybe.
Flying is strange. It’s nothing he would have ever expected, could have ever imagined. He has feathers, not hair; he is light; he is fragile. He’s tried explaining it to his mother once, tried explaining how to fly and how it felt, only he couldn’t. He doesn’t know how he does it; he just does.
Mesut, she had said to him, some things cannot be expressed with words, and a gift from God is one of them. Live it, Mesut; be it. Don’t try to tie it down and examine it.
And he didn’t; doesn’t. Not when he’s flying over the Royal Palace, not when he’s on a tree branch outside a flamenco restaurant, and especially not when he’s weaving in and out of the goal posts and the holes of the nets at the Bernabéu.
Mesut lives it, is it.
El Clásico comes and it’s just another game to Mesut, just another team to beat because the rivalry isn’t in his blood yet.
But then when he’s standing at mid waiting for the whistle to blow, all he can feel is eyes on him and it makes him nervous. Mesut can see who it is, stares right back at Villa just as hard, but the emotion isn’t there on his end; he’s just confused. It causes Mesut to miss easy shots, simple passes. He bobbles the ball, plays poorly, and Villa just watches.
After the match, they switch jerseys and Villa says, “I know what you are.”
Mesut jokes, “German?” because what else is he supposed to think?
“Shifter,” Villa says, and Mesut freezes with Villa’s shirt halfway on. “I saw you and I just knew.”
“How?” Mesut asks, because how could he know? How?
“Just could,” Villa says. “I haven’t met one of us in a long time.”
“I haven’t met one of us in ever,” he says, but it’s okay, doesn’t matter because suddenly there’s an us.
They go out for coffee and Villa becomes the first person that Mesut tells the true reasons for his transfer.
“I hate them,” Villa says, and his voice is hard. “I hate them and what they stand for and what they do to the people we care about.”
“Me too,” Mesut says, and he doesn’t know how else to say it. Me too. Me too.
“You know, I once fell in love with someone who turned out to be one of them,” Villa says. “A fucking blood-sucker.” He lets out a rush of air and it sounds like a voiceless laugh to Mesut, although there’s nothing funny about any of it.
“Yeah?” he asks. “What’d you do?”
“I told him that if he didn’t leave Spain, I’d fucking kill him myself; I’d do everything I could to make sure that he ended up nothing more than dust on my coffee table.”
And something about that doesn’t sit right with Mesut, doesn’t line up. He looks at Villa and the way his face is hard but his eyes are sad; he looks at Villa and the way he is tearing his napkin into tiny shreds.
“Are you still in love with him?” Mesut asks, and Villa shoots him a glare.
“I ran him out of the fucking country, didn’t I?” he snaps.
“Yes,” Mesut says, “but that’s not what I asked.”
Villa doesn’t answer, just gets up and leaves.
“What would you do if you had all the time in the world?” Angel asks.
“Pray,” Mesut says, and his eyes follow the line of Angel’s body, its angles and curves as he lies on the floor. “For something to do; a purpose.”
“I think I’d read,” Angel says. “I haven’t read a book in ages.”
“Me either,” Mesut says, and he thumbs the stretch of Angel’s skin where his shirt has ridden up.
“Hey Mesut, it’s Marko. I just-I needed to call because I’m sorry. Except I’m not, that’s a lie, I’m not sorry because I haven’t done anything. I’m still the same, Mesut. And I just-I wanted you to know that I miss talking to you. I know that it was probably a big shock and you probably hate me for not telling you sooner, but I’m still me. I haven’t changed. And I didn’t call sooner because I thought you’d call me once you calmed down, but you haven’t and I-you’re my best friend, Mesut. Call me back. Please.”
To erase this message, press seven. To save it, press-
Message erased.
The grass where he’s sitting is tickling the back of Mesut’s knees when he asks, “Hey Marcelo? What’s your full name?”
“I don’t have one,” he says, and he’s being cheeky, Mesut knows that.
“It’s like Madonna,” Cristiano says, and he quirks a smile. “Or Cher. He’s trying to dethrone me as team diva.”
“Ha, ha,” Marcelo says. “We’ll see who’s laughing when they finish the dome! You’ll turn pale.” And that-huh.
“What dome?” Mesut asks.
“Just one of those sun and rain things,” Marcelo says. “Over the Bernabéu. I don’t know, someone floated a lot of extra cash in, I guess. A lot of the stadiums are getting one.”
Mesut thinks, No sun. No sun. He tries to tell himself that it’s not familiar, that it’s not Germany all over again, but then he lets his mind wander and all he can think of is the Weserstadion and how he had to leave because the shade became too stifling and made it hard for him to breathe and those things parading around in the skin of his friends and how every time he thought that maybe-No, no, it’s not Germany. It’s not.
“No, no, Mesut,” Angel says, and he grabs Mesut by the forearm to keep him from walking away to stretch. “I’m serious, watch this. It’s the weirdest thing.”
They stand there and just stare at Mourinho, but he doesn’t do anything of note and Mesut begins to feel stupid, standing there with Angel’s fingers wrapped around his arm.
“Just-wait,” Angel says.
Nothing. And then Mourinho takes a pack of gum out of his pocket and empties it out on the bench. He counts them, one through twelve, and then counts them again, one through twelve. When he’s done, he puts them back in the pack and back in his pocket.
“What is he even-?” Mesut asks.
“I don’t know,” Angel says, and even though Mesut’s not looking at him, he can tell that Angel’s shaking his head by the way his hand tugs lightly on Mesut’s arm.
“Does he even eat all of them?”
“No,” Angel says. His face is serious but there’s laughter in his voice, and Mesut likes that.
It’s one of those things where he can’t look away.
Mesut doesn’t know anything about Martín Cáceres, not a thing other than that his shorts are too big and his socks are too high and his hair is too long. Mesut doesn’t care; it’s not something that matters to him. What does matter to him, though, is the way he tackles Angel and the way Angel hits the ground and the way Angel doesn’t get up afterwards.
Mesut gets to him first, although he doesn’t know how he feels about that, doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.
“Angel,” he says, reaching a hand out. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Angel says, and he sounds so confused. “I think I broke my legs.”
Mesut looks down over Angel’s body; he’s fine, Angel’s fine.
“They look okay,” Mesut says, but the referee waves over the paramedics anyways. “Why? Do they hurt?”
“No,” Angel says. “I can’t feel them.”
The paramedics push him away after that, strap Angel to a backboard and cart him out of there. Mesut watches as he leaves with his hands on his hips.
He’s fine.
They win 3-1, but Mesut doesn’t care. The audio in his head is on loop, Angel, Angel, Angel. He races down the tunnel and through the locker room, down the hall to where he knows the physio’s office is. He doesn’t know-hadn’t heard any word about a hospital, so maybe-
The door isn’t closed. Mesut can hear voices.
“And what would that,” Angel says, “what would that mean?”
“Nothing needs to change.” A physio this time. “It would speed recovery and you’ll be back playing in two weeks.”
“But wouldn’t I-”
“The dome will be done by then,” the physio says. “It’s illegal, but we could.”
“Okay.”
Mesut backs away, and suddenly there’s too much-too much noise in his head, all going at the same time, one on top of the other, and none of it makes any sense. And he doesn’t-doesn’t know what to think because he can’t have heard that right, only he did and Angel said Okay. Angel said Okay and Mesut doesn’t know why, doesn’t know why anyone would say Okay, doesn’t know what this means for him or for Angel or for them or for anyone. Okay. Okay. And suddenly he can’t breathe, is running down the hall to an exit and sitting on the ground, his head between his knees, Marko and Germany and God and Why and No and Okay. Okay. Okay.
Mesut sleeps for a while and then goes to lie out in the sun in the Parque del Oeste. He stays until he can feel his skin start to turn red and then he stays some more. He thinks of Angel and what he did and what has happened to him and how no one knows but Mesut and how it hurts him, deep in his chest and in the back of his mind and in the pit of his stomach, all the way out to the tips of his fingers and toes.
He was so good and now he's not, now he's rotten. Angel. Devil's child. Drinking blood.
Mesut stays in the sun.
It’s hard-new and different and strange, too, but mostly just hard-to ignore Angel when he comes back. It was easier when he wasn’t at practice, when Mesut could just silence his phone, but now he’s back and acting like nothing has changed. He doesn’t look any different. Mesut doesn’t know what he expected; Marko looks the same.
And so Mesut breezes past Angel on the field and doesn’t look at him when he calls Mesut’s name and chooses to stretch with Pipita instead.
“What's wrong?” Pipita asks.
“Nothing.” Everything.
“Mesut,” Angel says. “Mesut-wait!”
Mesut doesn’t.
He stands in a cluster of trees just outside Madrid.
A swallow, he thinks, or a dove. A dog. A cat, he hasn’t done a cat in a while. A pigeon. A bull. A deer. Angel. Can’t do Angel, can’t do people; too complicated. People. Angel’s not people. Angel’s not a person. Angel’s not human, not anymore, not since-and I didn’t-
Mesut gets back in his car and goes home.
Mesut spends so much time avoiding Angel that he forgets that Angel knows him and that they used to be friends, friends and something else.
There’s a knock at his door and Sami’s in the shower, so Mesut heads over to answer it. He’s wearing socks and they brush against the carpet, causing his fingers to get shocked when he reaches a hand out to the doorknob.
“Hi,” Angel says, and he slams a hand out to keep Mesut from closing the door. “What did I-I don’t get what I did.”
Mesut looks at him, thinks about how it would feel to touch Angel’s skin now, how cold it would be compared to how hot it always was.
“You know,” Angel says, and Mesut doesn’t say anything back, doesn’t have to. “Look at me.”
“I can’t,” Mesut says, and the door closes easily this time.
“Hi Mesut, it’s me again. I just-I don’t know if you got my other message, and so I’m calling to just say that I’m sorry. I didn’t-I didn’t handle any of that well, did I? But I miss you. Werder’s not the same without you. They’re making me room with Felix, now, which is alright I guess because he tells all these great stories about Toni, like how he-”
Message erased.
Mesut watches the news alone. More vampire rights bills have been passed, this time in Switzerland, Australia, the Emirates.
If we don’t give them rights now, someone is saying, we will have to learn to be ashamed of ourselves when our grandchildren study this in school.
“No,” Mesut says to the tv. “They’ll have killed us all by then, or delivered us straight to hell.”
The silence in the room is so very, very loud.
Maybe Mesut doesn’t give him enough credit, or maybe he’s gotten smarter since they’ve last talked, but Angel manages to corner Mesut and force him into being his partner when they do stability ball exercises. They do crunches with a medicine ball, passing the weight between them on the ups of each crunch.
“I don’t get it,” Angel says. “You’re not from Spain.”
“No,” Mesut says, and as he grabs for the medicine ball, he notices that Angel’s hands are cold; ice.
“You’re from Germany,” Angel says. “It’s okay there. It’s okay in Argentina, too. It’s okay in my culture, and in yours, so what’s-”
“It may be okay in Germany,” Mesut says, “but it’s not okay in my culture. It’s not now and it won’t ever be.”
Angel doesn’t say much after that, but it doesn’t feel like much of a victory to Mesut.
He thinks about it a lot, Angel and his skin and the way his ribcage felt underneath his hands. Mesut touches himself sometimes, in the shower or in bed, and he thinks about Angel and the bridge of his nose, the curve of his spine, the sharp angles of his hips. Mesut comes every time, but it’s not as good, his hand, because in the back of his mind, he’s always comparing it to the real thing.
They play Levante next, a night game, and there’s a breeze in Mesut’s hair that feels like fingertips. He loves the feel of it, of the wind and of the burn in his chest as he runs, and Pepe tells him that the cold air has turned his cheeks pink.
He scores in the fifty-seventh minute off a short pass from Xabi and when his team comes to hug him, he stiffens as he feels a shock of freezing fingers slide around his neck.
He said Okay, Mesut has to remind himself. He said it, you heard him. Okay.
Mesut thinks of Angel’s teeth, stained red with True Blood.
It’s after the game, hours and hours after the game, but Mesut knocks anyways. When Angel answers the door in only a pair of boxers, Mesut says, “I could tell and they’d tie you up in Plaza Mayor until you were nothing.”
“You won’t,” Angel says, and his voice is thick with sleep.
“I could,” Mesut says.
“If you were going to, you would have already.”
And Mesut- Mesut doesn’t like how sure of everything Angel is, doesn’t like it at all, and so he places two hands flat on Angel’s chest-cold chest, cold, cold-and shoves. Angel stumbles into the house and Mesut follows, kicking the door shut behind him.
He takes off his shirt and Angel just stands there, stunned. He kicks off his shoes and undoes his belt and takes off his jeans and Angel just stands there.
“Come on,” Mesut says, and his hands are on Angel’s hips and down the front of Angel’s boxers. Angel’s ready, hard already, but his hands are shaking where they are, placed on Mesut’s shoulders.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Shut up,” Mesut says, and he grinds his hips against Angel.
“Okay,” Angel says, and it’s that word again-Okay, okay-and when Angel leans in to kiss him, Mesut jerks his head back.
“Don’t touch me with your mouth,” he says. “Don’t you dare.”
Angel doesn’t try to again, but everything’s shifted and Mesut doesn’t like it. He gets dressed immediately afterward and drives home, where throws up, prays to God and asks for forgiveness.
He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling.
They fuck a lot, after that. Mesut doesn’t really like that word, but he doesn’t know what else to call it, what they do. So they fuck.
It’s strange, being trapped between the bed and an ice block like that. If they’re at his place, Mesut will wrap himself in extra blankets when they’re done. If they’re at Angel’s, Angel will always give him an extra sweatshirt or another pair of training pants to warm him up. It’s a nice thought, but they’re not friends. They don’t really talk anymore.
“Mesut, I just-I don’t know what you want me to say. What do you want me to say? Because I’ll-”
Message erased.
Iker calls him over one day as he’s strapping on his gloves.
“Everything okay with you and Angel?” he asks.
“Yes,” Mesut says. “It’s fine.”
“Because it doesn’t look fine,” Iker says. “It looks like you can’t stand each other.” And that’s not fair, it’s not, because Iker doesn’t know what Angel is and if he did, everything would be different and he wouldn’t be looking at Mesut like he was the bad guy.
“I don’t have any problems with Angel,” he says.
“I know,” Iker tells him. “But you used to be friends.”
“People change,” Mesut says, and he doesn’t wait for a response.
Mesut watches.
Angel handles the ball exactly the same. It’s beautiful football and Mesut can’t look away, not from the ball or Angel’s boots or Angel’s thighs, not from the look of concentration on Angel’s face. Mesut wants to say, You were so good. He wants to ask, Why did you do it? and What were you thinking? and Why didn’t you tell me afterwards? He wants to say, I love your nose, and he wants to say, I love your ears, and he wants to say, I love the hair at the nape of your neck.
And sometimes, when Mesut’s not paying attention to where his mind is wandering, he thinks of Angel’s mouth and what it would be like to kiss him again. He imagines it would taste like iron, but that doesn’t bother him until he reminds himself that it should.
He asks Angel, later, as he’s putting his clothes back on.
“Why did you agree?” Angel knows what he’s talking about without having to ask.
“If I wanted to play football, I had to,” he says.
“I didn’t care if you were a footballer or not,” Mesut tells him.
“If I wanted to walk, I had to,” Angel says.
“I didn’t care if you could walk or not.”
“I did,” Angel says, and Mesut just looks at him for a while, just looks at him and doesn’t say anything.
“I know,” he finally says. That much is evident.
Mesut makes it to the front door before Angel says, “Stay.”
“I have to go,” Mesut says, and he shuts the door quietly behind him.
His father calls.
“How are you?” he asks, and “You seem sad. Go outside; get some air.” Mesut says he does, it doesn’t help, and his father breathes on the other end of the line.
Mesut asks if it’s a failure on his part to like something that God wouldn’t. His father says, “God made you, Mesut. He knows your strengths and weaknesses and loves you all the same.”
“I don’t want to be the bad in the world,” Mesut says.
“Then be the good,” his father says.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Yes, you do.”
They’re in bed together and Mesut’s tired. He should leave soon and the heavy curtains on the windows make the room dark, make Mesut even sleepier.
“Do you want something to drink?” Angel asks. He gets up and Mesut follows him to the kitchen, watches as Angel digs in the fridge and pulls out a bottle of True Blood.
“Just water,” Mesut says. He doesn’t know what else Angel would have. Angel hands him a glass and then drinks his True Blood right from the bottle. The sight is unnerving to Mesut.
“What?” Angel asks, but he knows already.
“Where do you even get that stuff?” Mesut asks. “I thought it was illegal in Spain.”
“I order it,” Angel says, and he shrugs.
“What does it taste like?” Mesut asks, and then immediately regrets it. What a stupid question.
“Want to try?” Angel asks, tipping the bottle towards Mesut. He’s joking.
“No, I just-does it taste like real blood?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Angel says with a smile, a small smile like he knows what Mesut’s thinking, what Mesut’s really asking. “I’ve never had real blood.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
Mesut thinks about love, sometimes, about the girls he left back in Germany and about Angel. He knows that love is a subtle blessing-subtle, but one of the most important blessings God has given to humanity.
He created mates for you from yourselves that you might find peace of mind in them, and He put between you love and compassion, Mesut reads.
It’s a shame Angel had to go and ruin it.
“Just pick up, Mesut. You’re being ridiculous. There’s nothing else I can do if you don’t pick up. Do you even care anymore, or are you just washing your-”
Message erased.
Nicolás González, an Argentinean vampire rights activist, has a thirty minute special that Mesut streams online. He doesn’t know why.
The time is now for the human race to show that they will not make the same mistakes of hatred that their fathers did before them, and their fathers before them.
Mesut hates.
Basic rights for all sentient beings should be guaranteed, not questioned, he says.
Mesut questions.
Love, he says. Pain. Vampires and humans alike, we are all capable of feeling both.
Mesut feels both.
He lays a hand on Angel’s bare chest, his palm covering one nipple.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks, and Angel laughs.
“No,” he says. “It would take more than that.”
“Am I hurting you?” Mesut asks again.
“Yes,” Angel says. “Sometimes.”
Mesut spends the night because he falls asleep before he can leave. Sometime, in the middle of the night, he wakes up and Angel’s running his cold fingers though Mesut’s hair. It feels good on his scalp.
“It’s all okay except for the way you look at me,” Angel says, and Mesut has no doubt that he wasn’t supposed to ever hear this. “I hate the way you look at me.”
Mesut forces his breath steady, squeezes his eyes shut, Germany, Marko, Angel. Okay. Okay. Angel.
He very carefully does not move.
The next morning, they have sex. Mesut marvels at how in sync they are, at the faces and noises Angel makes. He feels Angel’s breath on his skin, his neck, and Angel’s lips are so close but they’re not touching him. Angel hasn’t tried to kiss him since Mesut told him not to.
“I want to see your teeth,” Mesut says, and Angel smiles. “No, your other ones.”
“I don’t want to show them to you,” Angel says. Mesut’s close and hearing Angel’s voice makes warmth pool in his stomach.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because you won’t like them,” Angel says.
“Please.”
Angel shows him and Mesut comes. He freaks out, leaves the apartment. His hands shake.
Mesut misses what happens, but the next day at practice, Pipita and Cristiano get into a fight.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Cristiano says. “Just because you can’t keep up.”
“Fuck you,” Pipita says. “You act like you’re God’s gift to football. Well, fuck you.”
Marcelo interrupts, tries to calm things down, says, “Hey, now, we all know that’s Messi, anyways,” but it doesn’t work and Esteban has to pull Pipita away. Mesut sits next to Cristiano in the grass.
“I don’t get why everyone hates me just because I want to be the best,” Cristiano says. “They do, too.”
“It’s because you’re closer than they’ll ever get to being it,” Mesut says. It’s true.
“But even off the pitch,” Cristiano says. “Off the pitch, I’m good. I donate to charity; I volunteer. I love my family; I’m good to my neighbor. So I’m a footballer. What should that matter?”
“It shouldn’t,” Mesut says. “It shouldn’t matter what you are, not so long as you’re good.”
He’s a hypocrite.
Mesut calls Angel sometime after practice to let him know that he’s coming over.
“Not tonight,” Angel says. “I just want to sleep.”
Mesut thinks of him and the way he looked when Mesut had seen his teeth and he feels guilty.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Angel says. “It’s not fair to me.”
“So it’s all about you?” Mesut asks, and he’s surprised at how mad he is, how hurt and upset he is.
“No,” Angel says, and he sounds calm. “It’s all only ever about you.”
Bookstores smell like moths to Mesut, and he thinks, A moth. I’ve never. And books are expensive, he didn’t realize that, hasn’t bought a book in ages that wasn’t a magazine, that wasn’t FourFourTwo. He walks out with a huge stack-philosophy and biographies and novels-and when he gets back to his car, he thinks, Okay.
Angel answers the door and says, “Come on, Mesut,” like he had expected something different, something better of him.
“I bought-here,” Mesut says, and pushes his way inside and thrusts the books at Angel. It’s awkward; he doesn’t know what to say.
“Books?” he asks.
“You have all the time in the world now,” Mesut says. “And you said that you-”
“This doesn’t change anything,” Angel says. “This doesn’t change the fact that you’re human and I’m-I’m not.”
And Mesut wants to tell Angel how maybe he’s not human either, because he doesn’t know what he is, because he can change into whatever he wants, and he’s not alone in that because he’s part of an us. He wants to say, I’m trying, and, This is hard for me, and, Bear with me, please, I’m trying, but he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he leans forward and kisses Angel on the mouth.
When he pulls back, Angel’s just staring at him blankly before saying, “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Mesut says, and then he has to take a second to think because he didn’t get that far; in his head, he kissed Angel and that was it, problem solved. “It means that I like you a lot. It means that I don’t-I don’t want you to not want to see me because I always want to see you. It means I don’t care-except I do, I do care that you’re a vampire, but it means that I’m trying to look past that because that’s not all that you are.”
“What’s the catch?” Angel asks, and he’s so hesitant that Mesut wants to slap himself because he’s the reason Angel’s that way to begin with.
“No catch,” Mesut says, and Angel doesn’t smile, but he looks like he almost can’t believe it. He bares his fangs and walks up to Mesut, crowding him against the wall and bracketing his hands on either side of Mesut’s head as he slides one knee in between both of Mesut’s.
Mesut doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t falter or pull back, because this is Angel, and Okay, but this is still Angel.
Angel kisses him, nice and slow, and Mesut’s missed it. It’s different now, feeling how the shape of Angel’s teeth have changed the shape of his mouth, but it’s still the same, too. Mesut grabs onto Angel’s jeans at his hips.
“Back out,” Angel says, and he bites down lightly on Mesut’s earlobe.
“No,” Mesut says.
Angel leans down and with his mouth at Mesut’s pulse point, says, “Back out.”
“No,” Mesut says, and Angel scrapes his teeth against Mesut’s neck, licks and sucks his skin there, and Mesut says, “Angel. Angel.”
They get to the bedroom and undress each other with steady hands. Mesut’s not nervous; the new part is staying afterwards, and he’s already done that once, anyways. Letting Angel touch him while he’s still there is routine.
Although maybe-maybe that’s not true, either, because Angel’s being careful with him in a way that he never was before, taking his time touching Mesut and exploring his body, despite already being familiar with it.
Subtle blessing, Mesut thinks. There’s truth in that.
“Look at you,” Angel says. “Look at you,” and his hand cups Mesut’s jaw.
He can feel the hickey on his neck each time his pulse beats.
In the morning, Mesut wakes up first. He lies there and looks at looks at Angel, and they’re not skin to skin because Mesut had gotten cold, but Mesut doesn’t mind. He thinks about how he almost passed this up, and he thinks about how it’s going to be hard because he still hates them, vampires, still wishes they didn’t exist, but if Angel is one and Angel is good, then they can’t all be bad and Mesut is going to have to work on accepting that.
When Angel wakes up, he smiles with all his regular teeth.
“Good morning,” Mesut says, and he smiles back.
They spend the night together almost every night for the next week, either at Angel’s or Mesut’s, but mostly at Angel’s because Mesut has to deal with Sami. It’s only been one week and it’s not all been easy, but the ups outweigh the downs and Mesut tries hard to make it work. He wants it to work.
Late that night, early morning, Mesut waits and when he’s sure that Angel has fallen asleep, he climbs out of bed and throws on a sweatshirt that he finds on the floor. He heads into the kitchen and pulls out a glass from one of the cabinets before rooting past the True Blood bottles in the fridge to get at the container of orange juice that Angel keeps there for him. He pours himself a glass and heads out to the balcony, his cell phone weighing heavily in his hand.
The sun is just coming up and Mesut thinks it’s beautiful. He feels a pang of sadness so sharp for a minute at the thought that Angel will never see one of them again, not like this.
He flips open his phone and pauses. He types in a number, one that he still remembers and will probably always remember, one that he hadn’t used in a long, long time. Too long. The phone rings in his ear and for a second, Mesut almost hopes no one picks up because he doesn’t know what-if-he doesn’t know what.
“Hello?”
“Hi Marko. It’s Mesut.”
Marko laughs in his ear, relieved, “I’ve missed you.”
Mesut’s missed him, too.