meretricula | fic: morning comes in paradise (football rpf)

someone call the exorcist, this damn thing took on a life of its own. sorry for my abject failure at keeping this up during Hanukkah, but it's done now? just in time for me to start flailing over

cornerflag, hurrah!

title: morning comes in paradise
fandom: Football RPF
pairing: Victor Valdes/Andres Iniesta
rating: PG-13
word count: 4000
summary: In which puberty hits Andres like a freight train, and Victor is an innocent victim of the collision.
notes: This was originally supposed to be a Hanukkah present for

ibuyu, so whenever you come back, here it is, sweetie! It's not exactly the story I wanted to write, but the further I got into it, the more I realized that while that story would make the characters happier, it would also make them assholes. And I couldn't do that, in the end. An infinite number of thanks go to

stickmarionette and especially

mardia for helping me figure out how the final compromise between what I wanted and what the characters would do should go! And who knows, maybe someday I will write the outtakes in which Andres wages a lolita-esque campaign of seduction and breaks Victor's resistance to his sweet-natured wiles. For now, I've had more than enough of teenage whining. XD

Andres hated losing—he was a footballer, of course he hated to lose—but it wasn't so bad for away matches. When they won everyone was excited and loud on the bus home, and that was good, of course. That was the best. Victor and Pepe were always in the thick of it, egging each other on, but Andres liked to sit by the window and listen.

When they lost, Victor was unbearable. He snapped at anyone who talked to him if he answered at all, and he sulked and stomped around the dorm for hours. He'd never snapped at Andres, though, not once in all the years they'd known each other, and now that they were finally on the same team, if they played away and lost, Andres could curl up between him and the window and sleep on his shoulder on the way home; Victor always let him, no matter how upset he was. And that was good, too.

They'd only drawn this time, but the other team had equalized on a last-minute penalty and Victor was angry he hadn't saved it, so Andres headed for the very back of the bus, ignoring Pepe's frantic gesture to sit with him instead. Victor dropped down beside him a few minutes later, his face like a storm cloud, predictable as clockwork. Andres leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes.

He dreamed—something; he didn't remember much of it except that it was nice, about someone with dark eyes and a warm mouth that they didn't mind using in ways he'd heard the older boys joking about in the locker room, and he was hard when he woke up. That had been happening more often lately, though at least he hadn't come in his pants, Andres thought with resignation. It had come later for him than most of the boys in his year, but puberty had finally struck with a vengeance, and it sucked.

Beside him, Victor was fast asleep and possibly drooling on his shirt. He'd fallen over onto Andres' shoulder at some point and now he was teetering on the verge of tipping all the way into his lap; that was probably what had woken Andres up. He shifted Victor so he was resting more securely against his shoulder and took advantage of the unaccustomed quiet to look at him, really look.

All the girls who came to watch their games were crazy about Victor, though he would ignore them when they swarmed around to talk to him after matches if Andres came to tell him he'd played well, and Andres knew it wasn't nice but it always made him feel a little smug when Victor would shoulder past his fans to meet him, so pleased just that Andres had come to watch. It wasn't hard to see why they liked him. Victor was maybe the handsomest person Andres had ever seen—more handsome, even, a treacherous part of him whispered, than Laudrup and Guardiola—and he was so kind, so determined to protect the people he cared about. Maybe the girls didn't see that part of him, but Andres did. Nobody was a better friend than Victor, Andres thought, watching the sweep of his lashes flutter slightly against his cheek with a strange sense of deja vu.

It came to him with a terrible sinking feeling, where he had seen this before. He'd dreamt about those lashes, about the eyes behind them looking up at him. He was remembering it more now, in bits and pieces.

He'd been dreaming about having sex with Victor. He'd dreamt that Victor kissed him and knelt in front of him and put his mouth—

And he still wanted it, Andres realized, horrified. He wanted Victor to look at him and never at the girls after matches and kiss him and do all the things the other boys talked about doing with their girlfriends and love him back.

He was in love with Victor. Andres wanted to throw up.

*

Andres tried to act normal for the rest of the day, like he was normal and nothing had changed, but in the end he gave up halfway through dinner and slipped away to go up to his room. He wasn't the same and he wasn't normal and it was so tiring already, having to pretend, he thought as he pushed his face into his pillow and allowed himself the luxury of self-pitying tears.

"Hey," someone said above him. The mattress dipped under the weight of another body. "Hey, what's wrong?" Victor put a hand on the back of his neck, warm and heavy, and just let it rest there. Of course it was Victor. It was always Victor. That was the problem.

"Nothing," Andres sniffled. He left his face mashed into his pillow, half hoping that Victor would go away and half hoping he would stay forever.

Victor was quiet for a moment, while Andres tried and failed to stop crying. "Okay," he said at last. There was a thunking noise, like something heavy hitting the floor, and then another, and then Victor was pushing at Andres' side. "Budge over."

Andres obeyed, mostly out of habit, and before he could process what was happening Victor had stretched himself against and over Andres' body in the narrow bunk. Victor barely fit into one of their dorm beds by himself anymore; Andres was squashed up as close against the wall as humanly possible and there was still no way to avoid touching him with every inch of his side.

Victor draped an arm across his back and squeezed, just for a second. "Whatever it is, you can tell me," he whispered. "Okay? If you want to. You know you can tell me anything. Just. If you want."

"Okay," Andres said miserably. His throat hurt too much to say anything else, even if he'd wanted to. The point of Victor's chin briefly dug into the top of his head, and then he gave up and let Victor rearrange him so they fit together properly, his face buried in Victor's shirt. They would have to move before the rest of their roommates came back from dinner, but just for now—

Just for now, Andres was going to take whatever he could get.

*

After that, he tried to keep a more cheerful expression on, at least where other people could see him. He was better at finding corners where he could sneak off and cry than he'd been when he was eleven—mostly because he had more experience now, but partly because nobody was watching him for random outbursts of homesickness anymore. At least, he'd thought nobody was watching him.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Pepe's voice scared Andres half out of his skin. He was almost sure he'd remembered to lock the bathroom door. "N-no," he said. His voice somehow managed to crack over the course of a single syllable.

"Okay," Pepe said agreeably. He sat down on the cold tile floor next to Andres and made a show of rubbing his bare shins for warmth before he dropped an arm around Andres' shoulders. "Because you know if there's anything you want to talk about, I'll listen."

"I said I don't w-want to talk." Andres stared resolutely at the floor.

"And you're kind of scaring your friends," Pepe went on as if he hadn't said anything. "Victor's getting really worried. He asked me to talk to me."

"Victor asked you?" Andres repeated incredulously. He wasn't a little kid; he knew Victor didn't—it wasn't that he didn't like Pepe. Everybody liked Pepe. But Victor was uncomfortable around him now that it was getting obvious they were going to have to fight each other for the first team, and he got moody if Andres talked much with him. It was fine; Andres had picked Victor, or let Victor pick him, a long time ago, and he knew from the start that Victor didn't like to share. Every footballer Andres had ever met was selfish in his own way, but not even strikers were selfish like goalkeepers. Andres would still pick Victor for however long Victor wanted him to. Longer.

"He's worried," Pepe said again. "He thought maybe he did something to upset you."

Andres kept looking down while his eyes welled up again. He hated that he cried so easily and he hated that he was such a bad liar and he hated that being upset at Victor and being upset because of Victor would mean the same thing to Victor, and he didn't want to talk about it anyway.

"Oh, Andresito," Pepe said. His voice had changed, gotten gentler.

"Don't call me that!"

"Andres." Pepe shut up for a minute and just sat there, rubbing Andres' shoulder. "Andres, whatever it was, he didn't mean it. Victor wouldn't ever hurt you on purpose. He's just kind of a jerk sometimes."

"No, he's not," Andres said, sniffling. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "He's not, okay, he's not—"

"Okay, okay!" Pepe laughed. "Hey. Okay. He's not a jerk. And he really loves you, all right? So stop hiding in bathrooms and spend some time with him, or he'll start thinking you hate him."

Pepe meant well, but he wasn't all that helpful; Andres already knew that Victor loved him. Just not the way Andres wanted him to.

*

He hadn't been called up to train with the B team that week, which had made it a lot easier to avoid Victor. He felt guilty after talking with Pepe, though, so he went to watch their match over the weekend. Victor played well enough—no spectacular saves, but no glaring mistakes, either—and the team won, 3-1.

There were a few fans hanging around after the game for autographs, but it was mostly just friends and younger players, like Andres, waiting to meet up with someone. Half a dozen people must have ruffled Andres' hair to say hello before Victor looked up from the two girls he was talking to. Andres' stomach was twisting itself into knots, but Victor's entire face lit up as soon as he saw him. "You came!" he exclaimed.

Andres stood rooted to the floor as Victor hurried across the room and hugged him, almost uncomfortably tight. "You didn't ask for a ticket, I didn't think—" he was saying.

"I got one from someone else," Andres said softly.

"Oh, good."

There was a long, awkward silence; Victor still hadn't let go. Andres took a deep breath—Victor had showered already but he always kept sweating for a while after he played, and Andres could smell him, which was strangely reassuring—and said, "I'm sorry I was in such a bad mood this week."

"Hey, no," Victor said. "I mean, that was nothing. You put up with me and I'm in a bad mood all the time."

"True." Andres felt a smile pulling involuntarily at his cheeks. The silence wasn't nearly as oppressive this time.

"Hey, Victor, who's your friend?" The girls who had been talking to Victor earlier had come over. Victor released Andres so he could turn and look at them, though he kept an arm slung around Andres' shoulders.

"This is Andres, my little brother."

Victor introduced the girls, too, but Andres could barely hear over the roaring in his ears. He wanted to cry; he wanted to run away and hide in a bathroom for a million years. He was going to choke on the lump in his throat.

"Oh, do you play too? Are you with the Juvenils or the Cadetes?" Both girls were looking at him now. They were pretty, Andres thought numbly. Older than he was, probably around Victor's age. The one who'd spoken to him looked nice; she had a kind smile.

"Andres trains with the first team sometimes," Victor said proudly. "He'll probably get promoted before me. You'll just have to wait for me to catch up, right?" He ruffled Andres' hair and then dropped his hand entirely. It was an old joke; usually Andres would kick him in the shin to make him stop jinxing them both. This time he just stared at the floor.

"Anyway, we were going to get something to eat, do you want to come? You too, Andres," the girl with the nice smile said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andres saw Victor look down at him. He shook his head violently, and Victor's arm came up around his shoulders again, squeezing gently. "Maybe some other time, yeah? I think we're going to head back to the dorm."

"She was pretty," Andres managed, once the girls were gone.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, she is. Um." Victor hesitated, then blurted, "Pepe said he thought maybe you have a, a crush? Because I can set you up, if she's one of the girls who comes to watch the matches, I can ask her for you—" Andres shook his head even harder than before, and Victor immediately dropped the topic. "Okay. Do you want ice cream? We can stop on the way back."

"Okay," Andres said. He didn't really, but if he said no Victor would know he was upset; they always got ice cream on the way back from Victor's home games. "You're buying."

Victor laughed, and even though he knew it was stupid and hopeless and he needed to stop, the butterflies in Andres' stomach started to flap their wings again.

*

As if everything wasn't humiliating enough already, Andres woke up in the middle of the night with sticky pajamas and quickly-fading impressions of another dream about Victor. He said a silent prayer of thanks for the small favor that he had the bottom bunk and padded out of the room in his bare feet, to the bathroom at the end of the hall. He couldn't run a bath or turn on the shower without waking up the rest of the floor, so he just wiped himself and his pajama bottoms off as best he could with a damp washcloth, and then he sat down on the toilet lid and cried. He kept very quiet; he'd had a lot of practice crying quietly, lately.

When he was finished, he washed his face and went back to bed, or at least that was the plan. Instead he almost tripped over Victor, who was sitting on the floor outside the bathroom. "Hey," Victor whispered. He'd washed the gel out of his hair before bed and now it was flopping down into his face, so it was hard to see his eyes, but Andres thought he looked upset. His lips were pressed together, the corners of his mouth curving down.

"W-what are you doing out here?"

Victor slowly and stiffly got to his feet, moving with none of his usual grace. "You were crying," he said at last, after a long enough pause that it had the air of a non sequitur. "I really—I hate it when you cry. Why won't you tell me what's wrong? I'll fix it for you," he added, and Andres thought, with the distant, dizzy feeling of not nearly enough sleep, that Victor sounded like he was about to cry too.

"It's not—it's nothing. It's stupid," Andres mumbled. "Let's just go back to bed, okay? It's really late."

"It's not nothing," Victor insisted. He reached out to touch Andres' face, fingers cool on his swollen cheek. "It's making you sad so it's not nothing. Tell me. Please?"

Victor had that look on his face, the one he got when he was going to stay out and practice an extra hour after the rest of the team had left. Arguing with him would be useless. "Pepe was right, all right?" Andres said, stepping back into the bathroom. Victor followed and shut the door. "I like someone and sh-she doesn't like me back. That's all. It's stupid."

"How do you know?" Victor asked. "Did you ask her? Andres."

"Why w-would she?" Andres struggled not to choke on the lump forming in his throat. "She's older and tall and b-beautiful and I'm—I'm little and weird-looking and, and, and ugly and—"

"Who said that to you?" Victor demanded. "I'll fucking kill—Andresito. Andres, you are the most beautiful person I've ever met in my whole life, all right? If she can't see that that's her fucking loss." He cupped Andres' chin in both hands and tilted his face up when he tried to look away. "Did you even talk to this girl? You have to give her a chance to say yes before you decide she'd say no."

"You don't understand," Andres said, voice wavering.

"Any girl would be lucky—"

"It's not a girl!" burst out of his mouth before he could think better of it. Andres swallowed and added more quietly, "It's not a girl. It's you."

Victor froze. "I—what?" He let go of Andres' face and then just stood there, hands still raised in the air between them.

He didn't look like he was going to say anything else, but he hadn't run away, and even when he was imagining absolute worst-case scenarios Andres had never been afraid Victor would hit him. He knew Victor wouldn't hurt him. Anyway, he probably couldn't make things any worse, Andres thought, and stood on his tiptoes to press his mouth to Victor's.

Victor was stiff and motionless for three terrifying heartbeats, and then he caught Andres' cheeks between his hands again and kissed him back. Andres parted his lips to the soft pressure of Victor's tongue and clumsily tried to imitate what Victor was doing, hoping desperately that it wasn't obvious how little practice he'd had. It wasn't his first kiss, but it was close, and he knew Victor had done this a lot.

Andres put his hands on Victor's shoulders to help keep his balance and then, feeling braver, he moved them up and down Victor's arms. He'd seen Victor naked before in the locker room, but it was different to feel the muscles in his biceps tense under his palms. It was a mistake: Victor jumped and then he pushed him away. "What?" he repeated.

"I love you," Andres said, and shut his mouth with a click, stunned into silence by his own admission. He'd never said that out loud to anyone but his family, and that was different.

"What? I mean—why? I mean—" Victor stuttered to a halt, turning dull red. He came one measured step closer and carefully ruffled Andres' hair. "Andres, of course I love you too."

"Oh." Andres paused. He hadn't really thought about what he would do if Victor said yes. "Really?"

He tried to reach up to kiss Victor again, but he yelped and flinched away as if Andres had burned him. "No! Don't—just don't. Please."

"Why?" Andres asked, bewildered.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Victor said. He was still holding Andres at arm's length, as if he were dangerous.

"But why?"

"I can't," Victor snapped. The flush on his face was rapidly draining away, leaving him so pale he looked sick, and his wide dark eyes seemed even huger in contrast. "Andres, I c-can't. You're fifteen. I shouldn't have—go back to bed, all right? I'm sorry. I should never have—I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry." He bolted before Andres could ask him what he had to be sorry for. He wasn't the one who had ruined everything with a stupid, stupid crush. Of course Victor didn't want him.

Andres finally trudged back to their room and lay down, but he couldn't get to sleep. Victor never came back to bed.

*

Andres spent the next week avoiding eye contact with Victor. He stretched with Thiago and sat with Pepe at meals and nobody asked him any questions at all. It was almost easy, except every time he turned around he wanted to look at Victor, tell him any stupid thing to make him laugh, lean into his side and grumble that he was too old to have his hair ruffled anymore. His stomach still felt strange when he remembered that they'd kissed; he still woke up hard and sweating from dreams about Victor kissing him in other places. He couldn't miss that, though. He hadn't had it long enough to miss it. He missed his best friend.

The away game at the weekend was the first time he hadn't sat next to Victor on the bus all season. Thiago pulled him down beside him before he could think about it, and Victor walked past them to the back of the bus without even looking up. He didn't say anything, and nobody said anything to him. No one sat with him.

Andres wanted to ask if it had been like that all week long. He'd been ignoring Victor so determinedly that he hadn't realized everyone else was ignoring Victor too. But the other boys never left enough of a gap in the conversation to get a question in, and Andres didn't want to interrupt. He didn't want to know. He wasn't an idiot: if the team had been freezing Victor out, they'd done it for him. He hadn't asked them to, but that didn't make it any less his fault.

Eventually he couldn't stand it any longer, so he turned around in his seat and looked back. Victor was pressed against the window, arms wrapped around himself. He was shaking a little, if you knew to look for it. It was going to be a really bad attack.

Andres wasn't supposed to know about that, probably; Victor wouldn't talk about the attacks, not even if he asked point-blank. He was almost sure that Victor had had them for years, as long as Andres had known him, and he just hadn't noticed. He still felt like a failure for that, when Victor had always been the one who made him eat and listened to him when he cried and let him crawl into his bed when he couldn't sleep. Andres tried to sit with him when he had one, now that he knew; Victor let him do that much. He wasn't sure if it helped, but he hoped it did. He hoped Victor needed him even a little bit as much as he needed Victor. It wasn't something he was proud of, but it was true.

Thiago frowned when he got up to go to the back of the bus, but Andres ignored him. "You're going to be fine," he said softly. Victor looked up, mute and blindly staring. From this close Andres could hear his teeth rattle from how hard he was shivering. Andres sat down and tucked his arm through Victor's elbow; Victor clutched convulsively at his hand. Andres felt like his fingers were going to break, but he squeezed back and put his head on Victor's shoulder. "You're going to be great."

Victor didn't say a word for the rest of the trip, but he didn't let go, either. The shaking stopped before they had to get off the bus, and he was great during the match; he was brilliant. Andres was biased, but he thought Victor was almost always brilliant. He didn't understand how Victor could get so nervous about just playing, when Andres would have cheerfully slit throats to get on the pitch for more than a few minutes at the end of a game that had already been killed off since half-time. Leaving his parents at eleven was hard. Being the youngest on every single team he ever played in was hard. Playing football was the easiest thing in the world. But something about it frightened Victor so much he was almost sick, every game, every week.

Maybe Victor did need him, just a little, Andres decided on the bus back to Barcelona. He needed something, when he had an attack, and Andres knew how to be that for him. So it was all right if he couldn't have the other things he wanted from him, as long as he could still have this. He would rather be Victor's friend, be someone Victor needed, than nothing; that was so much more important than sticky dreams about Victor's hands and eyes and mouth or the butterflies in his stomach when Victor smiled at him. Victor loved him, and Victor needed him. It was enough.

Mind made up, he leaned his head against the window and tried to go to sleep. A few minutes later, an arm snaked around his shoulders and tugged him the other way, startling him out of his doze. "Okay?" Victor asked quietly.

"You can go talk with the others if you want," Andres yawned, barely awake. "I'm just going to nap for a while."

"I'm good like this," Victor said, and settled Andres on his shoulder so he could sleep for the rest of the trip. If he dreamed about anything, he didn't remember when they got home.

endnotes:
1. Most of the background information for this fic can be found in my Victor/Andres primer here, so I won't rehash it all. The one thing I wanted to especially highlight, though, was the fact that Victor really did have very serious anxiety problems when he was a teenager, so much that he tried to quit football when he was eighteen. As much as I would have loved to write a more conventionally happy ending to this story, Andres at fifteen was too young and Victor at seventeen was too emotionally unstable to have any chance of a functional romantic relationship. But Andres did get older, Victor did get happier, and if it's any consolation, in my head they totally gave it a shot a few years down the line, when they both were ready for it.
2. Title and cut-text from the Sufjan Stevens song For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti.
3. On the extremely slight chance that anyone reading this has not already read the gorgeous Victor/Andres fic that

stickmarionette wrote for me for

yuletide, run do not walk: Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

justkisa.livejournal.com

gah, this, I don't have the words to say, for the first time ever I kind of want to do the whole keyboard smash comment thing because that's how incoherent this makes me. it's lovely and beautiful and the end's so bittersweetly realistic and just, yeah, incoherent that's me!

and this -

"I really—I hate it when you cry. Why won't you tell me what's wrong? I'll fix it for you," he added, and Andres thought, with the distant, dizzy feeling of not nearly enough sleep, that Victor sounded like he was about to cry too.

and this -

"Who said that to you?" Victor demanded. "I'll fucking kill—Andresito. Andres, you are the most beautiful person I've ever met in my whole life, all right? If she can't see that that's her fucking loss." He cupped Andres' chin in both hands and tilted his face up when he tried to look away. "

I can't even, I just, it kills me dead, the depth of emotion between them and how neither of them really know what do with it but seem to recognize that they need each other so desperately and gah...

...just it's lovely, those lines, the whole thing!

(okay, I think I'm done babbling incoherently, maybe, for now at least)

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fic: morning comes in paradise (football rpf)

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