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Potro remembers exactly where he was when Aitor Cardoné desecrated the World Cup — in his own bed, laid up with a torn tendon in his thigh, frustrated and miserable and half-hard and doing his best to ignore that last part.
He hasn't heard from Moi since Mexico got knocked out, and he hasn't bothered him. He's been good. But now— well. Now it's over, it's all said and done, Spain can enjoy four years of gloating before someone (Argentina, Potro privately thinks; Argentina, and I'll be there with them next time) knocks them off their pedestal. Now there's no use sulking and licking wounds. So—
TO: moi
did u see that shit broTO: moi
with prettyboy & the cupTO: moi
if one of us did that we'd get our asses thrown off the team hahahahhahaaaaTO: moi
anyway where are u? dead? don't be dead, the cuervos need their capi
He stares at his barrage of messages, then flicks his eyes back to the television, locking his phone again.
Somebody else has the cup now, hastily polishing it off with their jersey before giving it a kiss, but the camera lingers on Aitor as he strips off his shorts and throws them toward the screaming crowd. From just off-screen there's Casillas — who looks like he's still crying, hasn't stopped crying since the final whistle blew — swooping in to cover him with a spare flag.
Potro shifts restlessly, a little rougher than is strictly necessary so the pain shooting up his thigh can distract him from more pressing matters.
Honestly, he mostly forgets about him after that. There's enough to focus on right in front of him, and Aitor is a world away. Occasionally he catches highlights from a Barça match and watches him sink the ball into the back of the net, takes note of the relaxed ease in his form, the way it looks like he's barely putting thought into his shots. Occasionally a boring, predictable journalist asks him, "Who's better: Messi, Ronaldo, or Aitor?" More-than-occasionally a scandal with his name in the byline passes through his Twitter feed.
He doesn't get the call-up for the next World Cup either. At twenty-seven, he knows he should stop hoping. Moi returns, sullen and furious and not at all appreciative of Potro's suggestion of getting no era penal tattooed on his lower back. They watch the final together, Moi pretends not to notice when Potro cries a little at the result, they go out and get blindingly drunk. Just us, no girls, Moi tells him, pointing to his wedding band as Potro whines about how Moi being old and boring shouldn't have to hold him back.
"At least nobody tried to fuck the cup this year," Moi eventually jokes, doing his best to prod gently at a subject he knows isn't going to become less sore any time soon.
Potro bangs his palm against the bar in time with his slurred words, eyes shut, voice far too loud. "I would have, man, I would have!" He blindly grabs for his beer, finds it empty and lays his head down on the bar. "Won the cup, then fucked it," he mutters. "I would've. You know it."
Moi pats his shoulder and raises his hand for another round. "I know," he agrees. Potro keeps his cheek smashed against the woodgrain, wallowing in his own self-pity until Moi tries to force him to drink his beer like a baby and he sits up fast, curses flowing as quickly as Moi can laugh them off.
He's lost count of how many times he's heard the same thing from his teammates. In all its variations, everyone has the same advice — don't put so much stock into what others think.
Moi has little patience for tabloids, and even less for Potro when he gets caught up in them. "The more papers they sell, the more money they make," he shrugs it off. "Of course they're going to print lies — that's more interesting than the truth, right? Nobody actually believes that shit. So who cares?"
"I care," Potro counters, each and every time.
And each and every time, Moi laughs at him: "Sounds like your problem."
Rafa is kinder, gentler, more weatherworn about it. Sure, he might heave a little sigh or two, but then he'll lay an arm across Potro's shoulders and speak quietly to him about focus. About how he's a great player, and that's why people talk about him — it won't ever change, it's the way the world has always been. He never tells Potro outright that he shouldn't care, only says he needs to take what he's feeling and channel it into playing even better football. Focus. Focus.
Chava has no time for either approach. He leaps on the defense immediately, calls the papers and yells at whoever he can get ahold of, placates Potro with promises of the great story they're going to run next week about his charity work (so you better pick a charity like, right now, güey), Walter Bazar quotes, and enough drinks and coke to put the offending article out of his mind for the night. Of course it doesn't stick, they'll be back to printing total bullshit about him within the month, but he does sort of appreciate the Iglesias band-aid effect.
Still. It gets to be insulting when they run stories about how he's dissatisfied with the team and looking to turn tail and move back to Boca Juniors — and it's even worse when they point out a decline in his form, either real or imagined, and start saying the club's looking to push him out the door the next time the window opens. Potro can't keep track of how many interviews he's given where he tells them: Nuevo Toledo is my home. I'm a Cuervo ‘til the death. He knows talk is cheap in their line of work, but he means it.
He searches through the complex for Chava before calling him, only to get his voicemail. Potro isn't proud of the words on the tip of his tongue — Marca's been saying Salvador was the only one keeping me around, that shit's gonna change now that you're in charge — and he's even less proud that he needs confirmation for what he already knows is true. He's not in danger. Chava wouldn't throw him out. Still— still. He hangs up without leaving the message, tries one more lap around the building, and does his best to edge around the growing pit of anxiety in his gut.
"You seen Chava?" he asks Cuau, lingering outside Félix's office. He shakes his head. Potro sucks his teeth, whips around to crane his neck down the hallway. "Where the hell's his assistant?"
"Probably blowing him," Cuau snickers, eyes still focused on his phone.
They bump fists before parting ways — Cuau for a tongue-lashing from Félix, Potro to the gym to try and run off his worries.
An hour later he gets the Snapchat notification.
"Sorry I missed your call — but check my story, güey, check my story," Chava's extreme closeup shouts into the camera. There's a sliver of blue sky visible behind him, city sounds below. "Check out the Cuervos' newest signing! And my new best friend—"
The ten seconds are up and Potro can't help but roll his eyes as he lays back against the weight bench and loads Chava's story.
There it is, cycling across his screen: Aitor Cardoné glancing at the camera, shitty black crows scribbled around his face. Chava with his arm over an unimpressed looking Aitor's shoulders, grinning so hard his eyes scrunch up. Chava and Aitor doing shots. Chava and Aitor on a dancefloor surrounded by barely-dressed women. Aitor at a urinal, looking over his shoulder, mid-shouting at Chava. Aitor posing in front of his trophies back home, the very picture of smug. Chava touring Aitor's jersey closet, Aitor slapping his hand away from Pirlo's.
He watches the story again. Then again. Then, just for potential blackmail purposes, he screenshots that urinal picture. It's pretty hilarious.
Potro sends a selfie, purposefully musses up his hair beforehand and pulls his most exaggerated confused face, captions it with seriously? It only takes a few seconds for Chava to send a response, jumping up and down as he yells, "Seriously, man! Aitor fucking Cardoné!"
Chava tips his head back and whoops at the crystal clear sky until the recording cuts off.
"No way," Moi whispers back when he tells him, final and decisive and so very Moi. "They're probably high as shit right now. Chava's talking out his ass."
"Yeah." He's unconvinced. "Yeah, you're probably right." But he wants to believe it, so he lets himself smile at Moi, kicks him the ball and starts a game of keepy-uppy.
He finds Hugo Sánchez rushing through the halls, arms full of folders bulging with paperwork. The kid stills like a frightened rabbit when Potro catches him by the arm. He almost feels bad.
"So," he nods to the overflowing papers. "It's true? Aitor Cardoné?"
"Ah," Hugo Sánchez yelps, then ducks his head. "Mmm, I'm not sure how much I should say, Mr. Romani—"
"Seriously, kid, just call me Potro."
He shifts his weight, balances the stack of papers against one hip. His voice is high and thin, clearly trying to change the subject. "I've always wondered, Mr.— Potro, where does the nickname come from?"
Potro stares at him, his baby face and his curious smile and his guileless eyes. "I'm very fast, no?" he answers, and Hugo Sánchez's face lights up in understanding as he murmurs ahh, yes, I see, of course, how could I be so stupid. "I mean. Also..." Potro slowly points down to his groin.
Hugo Sánchez turns a shade of red Potro's only seen before in pigments streaked across canvas. He follows the invisible arc of Potro's finger down on instinct, then snaps his gaze back up to his face, then quickly away. "I have to fax Mr. Iglesias some— very important— goodbye!"
In the end, all his passions have a singular focus.
Potro picks up a paintbrush around the same time he starts kicking a ball: When he's too young to know or care if he's any good with either of them. All he knows is he loves it. He loves meeting a teammate's cross and heading it into goal just as much as he loves layering on colors until they take shape. He loves getting his hands dirty, pressing into the grass to pick himself up after a bad tackle or washing off his palettes and brushes, scrubbing dried paint off his skin until it's raw. He loves having physical representation of his accomplishments — scorelines lit up in neon, easels splashed with color, the occasional trophy.
Around fourteen his father tells him to pick a horse and stick with it. And he's scored more goals than he's completed paintings, so.
Around the same time, girls start taking note of him. And weirdly enough there's a lot more girls hanging around football pitches than art galleries, so.
Sex is more of the same, he eventually finds. There's as much beauty in it as there is in football, in art; he gets the same feeling in the afterglow with a girl as he does after winning a game or completing a painting. He keeps chasing that feeling anywhere he can get it, the allure of something tangible.
He's seen Aitor Cardoné on enough billboards, spread across enough magazines, writhing around his television screen in enough commercials, but it doesn't hit until he sees him in person. He's beautiful. Inhumanely, otherworldly beautiful. The kind of beauty that's too perfect, that's intimidating and frightening and draws you in like quicksand. Even with his hair in stupid little braids, even when he looks bored to death with all of them, even — god, fuck, especially when he's got an all-over sheen of sweat after training.
Aitor is beautiful, and as with everything else Potro finds beautiful, he's immediately obsessed.
"Well." Moi folds his arms, stares after Chava and Aitor and the bodyguard's retreating forms. Potro raises his eyebrows at him and Moi flips him off. "Fuck off, I've been wrong before."
Cuau throws both of them a sidelong look. "How the fuck did we afford Aitor Cardoné?"
Potro closes his eyes. He wishes someone, anyone would say his name without that emphasis — the awe, the disbelief, the knowledge that they aren't worthy to be in his presence. He knows he's been doing it too, but he wishes he could stop. He wishes he could stop all of this.
It's surreal, how quickly everything changes.
Chava isn't there for them anymore — granted, he was only ever half-there before, Félix has always been the more reliable source of support — but now he's there for Aitor. Everything he does serves Aitor's best interests — not theirs, not the team's.
Then again, Potro thinks, maybe the team's best interest is Aitor.
It's difficult to contest that, as much as he might want to. Aitor is better than the rest of them by about a mile. He makes them better. Potro can tell; he can see it in the younger guys pushing themselves to impress Aitor Cardoné, the veterans clawing harder against the grain to show that they're still relevant, they won't be replaced. Whether it's for good reason or not, they all have extra vigor.
At first the press at all of their training sessions is exciting, until he realizes that they aren't there for him, or for any of them. Even when he angles his body toward the photographers, catches the hem of his shirt and pulls it up — those aren't the photos that end up in the papers the next day. Every paper is splashed with Aitor's brilliant smile glistening in the sunlight, Aitor taking shots on goal, Aitor drinking from his water bottle and winking at the camera. Potro occasionally spots himself in the background of these photos. Somehow he's always making the most awful faces.
When the journalists do approach him, it's always the same—
What is it like, playing with Aitor Cardoné?
(Honestly? It can be terrible. He doesn't pass when he should, but at least he scores the goals he hogs. He doesn't join in any of their traditional celebrations. He shows up to training late, leaves early, doesn't put in half the effort the rest of them do and somehow manages to see better results.)
"It's great, you know?" Potro runs a hand through his hair before letting it flop back across his forehead. "He's incredible. An inspiration."
What does this mean for the Cuervos?
(They're either going to rocket to the top of the league and make history or crash and burn and get laughed into relegation. With someone like Aitor around, there's no middle ground for them anymore.)
"Only good things, only good things. We can only get better from here."
Did you ever dream this would happen to you?
(Which part? Playing for sold out stadiums? The international attention, hearing his team's name on the lips of reporters in every language? How he keeps catching himself staring at the way Aitor's thin training shirt clings to the sweat on his back, the fine divot of his hips when he pulls his jersey over his face in frustration, the outline of his dick in his too-tight designer briefs as he traipses around the locker room?)
"No, mi amor," he purrs, leaning into the reporter's microphone and fixing her with his most intense bedroom eyes. "I only dream of you."
"You ever wonder if he's a robot?" he asks Tony one day in the locker room. Because he'd have to be, right? To be that perfect, he'd have to be constructed in some mad scientist's lab. Or chiseled out of pure marble in the Renaissance. Or the hallucination of a dying man. Potro idly checks his own pulse.
The kid glances over, the look in his eyes somewhere between desperate and longing. "Because he's so good, right?" He sighs wistfully. "Robot legs. I want some."
Potro swallows hard. "Yeah," he agrees, "Robot legs."
He can't reconcile any of it.
The disgust that rises in his throat the day Aitor shows up wearing the number ten—
("That's Moi's number," Potro says blankly, the words escaping before he can think them through.
Aitor glances over at him like he hadn't realized he was there, disinterested. "I don't see his name on it," he says, and if Potro's teeth weren't already sliding against each other on edge, they definitely would be when he watches Aitor slip on the captain's armband.)
The noxious mixture of jealousy and admiration every time Aitor scores another perfect goal, puts them ahead, gets his name up in lights—
(CARDONÉ ON HIS WAY TO SURPASS "EL POTRO" AS CUERVOS' CURRENT LEADING GOALSCORER, the headlines scream at him. Against his better judgment, he picks up the paper and thumbs through it. With Cardoné on the rise, do the Cuervos have a use for the fallen Potro?
Two kids catch sight of him and snicker behind their hands. Potro can't get out of the shop fast enough.)
Worse than both combined, the desire that pools in the bottom of his stomach when late nights start crawling into daylight and he hasn't slept because every time he closes his eyes—
(Aitor fresh from the showers, lifting weights during recovery sessions, letting his hair loose after practice. Aitor spitting curses at a referee with fire in his eyes, stretching languid in the morning sun, taking selfies with screaming girls outside the stadium. Aitor flashing him a rare, genuine smile after an assist, allowing Potro to high five him and sling an arm over his shoulders. Aitor staring him down, unflinching, when Potro approached him naked as the day he was born. Aitor.)
They've played their fourth game together, a 2-1 win over Querétaro, goals from Aitor and Tony on the scoreboard. Potro missed a penalty, shot it straight over the crossbar — but he didn't miss the way Chava leaned in to whisper in Félix's ear. He's certain there's going to be a new ordinance about how only the great Aitor Cardoné can take penalties from now on.
They've played their fourth game together, and it might be time to admit to himself that he isn't just going through a freak dry spell on and off the pitch. He's distracted, one eye on the game and the other on Aitor, his mind warring between cataloguing every detail and trying to pick him apart to find the singular flaw that proves he's human.
They've played their fourth game together, and Potro thinks he's finally cracked the code.
He waits until Aitor's out of the shower, towel slung low on his waist, before he calls across the locker room: "You're slower than I am."
Everyone's low murmurs echo off the walls as Aitor turns to him. "Sorry," he yawns, "What was that?"
Not to be deterred, Potro points to him. "You're slower. You scored, but I covered more ground. I've been outrunning you in every match." He smirks at Aitor's furrowed brow. "I mean, I can pull up the stats..."
"And?" Aitor shrugs. "Run in your little hamster ball all you like, man. It doesn't matter how fast you run if you don't get results."
Another ripple through the team, louder this time. Potro bristles. "Race me," he says, a little more desperate than he would've liked.
"Not a chance. Just showered."
"Sounds like an excuse," Potro scoffs. When Aitor glares back at him he repeats it, firmer, grateful he can keep the tremor of nervous adrenaline out of his voice. "Race me."
That's how they all end up piled onto the pitch again, some of the guys still half-dressed and toweling off wet hair. Tony stands at the other end of the field with one of Félix's old stopwatches. They do individual sprints — and sure enough, pride blossoming in his chest, Potro beats him by six seconds. "Bullshit, you bought the kid out," Aitor spits. "Let's go head to head, come on."
It's— different. They stand together at the far edge of the pitch and wait for the signal to go, crouched, breathing heavily. It might just be in his head, he reasons, but the air between them crackles, alive with— something. Something different, immediate and electric.
Potro realizes it's the first time he's been alone with Aitor.
"This is stupid," Aitor whispers. "You know that, right?"
Naturally, the second Potro looks over to answer him, the rest of the Cuervos scream GO! in unison, and they're off.
He can feel himself pulling ahead, tilting forward, his legs churning — and he can feel Aitor at his side, just slightly behind him, can't hear anything but the rush of wind and his own heart hammering out of his chest.
Aitor puts up a better fight when it's one on one, but Potro still slaps Tony's hand first, a second and a half before Aitor manages it. He can hear their teammates whooping, shouting for the press to come back, King Aitor just got his ass handed to him in a foot race — then Aitor reaches out and smacks him on the chest. "What the hell did that prove anyway?"
And— god, it's stupid, but Potro's an artist deep into his heart. He's got an appreciation for aesthetics. Aitor resting his hands on his knees, squinting up at him and breathing hard, backlit by the sunset dipping into twilight— this plan backfired horribly, because it's so fucking beautiful. He hasn't got a good answer, wouldn't have one even if his heart wasn't currently caught in his throat, so he just grins and shakes his head. "Asshole," Aitor snorts, and Potro thinks maybe — just maybe — he hears a thin laugh through his gasping breaths.
If he can't score goals (and he can't, he's been trying) and he can't get hard (and he can't, he's been trying) then maybe he can put paintbrush to paper for the first time in years.
Except—
Once he's pulled the dusty supplies out of his garage and set up shop in the dining room, all he can think of are his figure drawing classes during school, the models they brought in, the nervous teenage laughter, the discomfort, the desire. He wonders if Aitor has ever posed nude. He wonders if he'd consider it now.
Potro groans and leans forward on his stool until his forehead thunks against the blank canvas. This is getting out of hand.
When shit starts to hit the fan, Potro gets the message all too clear: pick a side.
He'll choose the Cuervos over Eliseo Canales every time. The fancy cars, the models ready to hang off his arm, the enticing overseas transfer offers — they don't appeal to Potro. Well. Not much, anyway.
But when it comes down to the battle raging within the team, when Moi shoves Aitor down into the dirt, it gets a little more difficult. How is he supposed to tell one of his closest friends, his teammate of the past seven years, his (former, should-be) captain that he can't take his side?
In the end, he doesn't. He quietly keeps his neutral territory, and when Moi disappears from training sessions like Cuau and Rio did, he knows he has no right to feel as hurt as he does.
All it takes is one rock to divert the path of a river, Chava once told him. Be the the rock.
("Walter Bazar?"
"Of course it's Walter Bazar, güey.")
And Chava's quotes are trite bullshit more than half the time, but this is one of the few that's come in handy. Be the rock, he tells himself as he squares his shoulders and approaches Aitor as training's winding down.
"I need help with my free kicks," he says.
It's barely out of his mouth before Aitor shoots back, "You need help with all your kicks."
The skin on the back of his neck pricks and barbs. Keep calm, Potro. Be the rock. "Yeah, well, start small, right? Come on." Almost without thinking, he reaches out and knocks his fist lightly against Aitor's arm. "You're so good at them, man, help me out."
The worst part is it isn't even flattery for flattery's sake, though he knows that's the easiest (and most times, only) way to get Aitor to do something. He means it, desperately and disgustingly. Aitor looks from the place Potro touched him to his face, lets out a little sigh. "Fine," he says. "But only for an hour, I have shit to do."
"Only an hour," Potro agrees, and when they shake on it he feels Aitor's pulse through his palm.
Aitor tallies goal after goal, one by one, while Potro chases his stray balls off the sidelines and carries them back.
"You're overthinking it," Aitor calls out to him, arms folded over his chest, smug smile plastered on his face.
"You're supposed to overthink it," Potro shouts, scooping up the ball and jogging back. "You know, angle. Trajectory. Velocity. Shit like that."
"No." Aitor takes the ball from him, sets it down, steps back, gives it nothing more than a cursory glance, then sinks it into the back of the net. He shoots his best photoshoot smoulder over his shoulder when he says, "You're supposed to feel it."
Potro could kill him.
His next ball goes too far left, scrapes the post and bounces to a stop against the barricade. Aitor's makes a beautiful arc into the top right corner. Potro's bangs off the crossbar and returns to him, and he can't even score on the rebound. Aitor feints and rockets it straight into center. Potro somehow manages to kick his right into the wall.
"Waste of time," Aitor huffs out as Potro groans, staggers forward and bends down to pick it up. "Well, that's a good view at least."
Potro freezes momentarily, fingers splayed over the ball and tips of his ears burning bright red, before deciding that he didn't hear that.
It takes four more shots each before Potro finally, fucking finally finds the back of the net. Everything inside him explodes at once, his primal shout echoing across the empty field. Aitor applauds him, half-sarcastic, and deigns to pick the ball out of the net for him. "See? You are capable of it. Sometimes."
"Yeah," Potro laughs, catches the ball Aitor tosses to him and looks down at it. His grin fades and slips away. He settles onto the ground for a break, muttering, "Yeah, but it was just the one. You got all of them."
"I know," Aitor says easily. "That's because I'm the best."
Potro scoffs, and Aitor raises his eyebrows. It's almost entirely dark out now, only a couple of the flood lights still on, and he can see every hair out of place on Aitor's perfect head backlit by the wash of light. "No, I'm being very serious. I'm the best. And I don't— I'm not bullshitting." Aitor looks askance, licks his bottom lip and catches it briefly between his teeth, like he knows exactly what he's about to say but he can't believe he's really going to have to lay it all out there. The brief moment of hesitation, of checking into himself, it's all so unfamiliar that Potro's heart stutters in his chest. But then AItor crouches next to him and meets his eyes again, as piercing as ever. "I believe I am the best. Every day. It's not hard."
The guy's got balls, no doubt about it, and Potro's hackles raise. "It's not hard," he echoes. "Who says shit like that?"
"Me," Aitor points out, like that's normal. "Even when— like, okay, when you raced me, no? You won." His face sours a little on the words, you won, and Potro takes deliberate note that he doesn't say I lost instead. "But I still believe I am the best."
"Even when you're wrong?"
Aitor shrugs. "It's not one race, just like it's not one bad game. Or even a bad season. It's the— fuck, what's the saying?" He snaps his fingers, glances around the pitch as he searches for his words. "The sum is greater than its parts, or some shit? So it's more than that. It's the whole package." He presses his hand against his chest and inclines his body toward Potro, leaning in territorially far. "I'm the whole package."
Alright, this conversation is done. Potro rolls his eyes and pushes himself up, only to find Aitor's fingers digging into his forearm, dragging him back. "Asshole, I'm trying to give you advice," he snaps. Potro stares down at him, holds his ground—
It's then that he realizes Aitor looks distressingly good from this angle, looking up at him through his thick eyelashes, square jaw set in determination and annoyance.
"Then hurry up," Potro says quickly, hoping to cut off the thin flush rising up his cheeks.
"I'm telling you, no more of this pussy shit you pull." Aitor lets go of his arm, but only so he can run the hand through his hair exactly like Potro does, gesture the same way he does. It's a dead-on impression. "You know, oh, I can't score goals anymore, I'm crap, I'm useless, I'm— all of it, you know? None of that. I don't do that. That's why I'm the best."
A nicer person — a less self-obsessed person — would probably say something more along the lines of believe in yourself.
"I'm not like you," Potro grits out.
Without missing a beat, Aitor throws his head back and laughs, "Nobody is."
He's stuck deciding whether he wants to kick this pompous bastard in the stomach or lob the ball directly at his face when Aitor grabs his arm again to heave himself up — and then he keeps it there, fingers hot over Potro's skin.
Be the rock, he tells himself right before Aitor surges forward and kisses him.
As he's sprawled across the grass, shirt rucked up around his neck and Aitor between his legs, Potro figures the river's been sufficiently diverted.
"Oh fuck," he breathes. Both of his hands find Aitor's hair, pull it back into the tiniest ponytail with a tenderness that betrays his physique. "Oh fuck."
Aitor pulls off then and Potro lets out the lowest whining oh fuck yet. He drags his mouth across the sharp line of Potro's pelvic muscle and murmurs, "Say something else." All his words fail him then, even those two. All he can focus on are Aitor's tongue and teeth against one thigh, then the other. "I'm serious, man, say something else or I'm out of here."
"Ah." He swallows hard, stares up at the night sky. "I— you—" His hips strain against Aitor's grip. "Sorry, this is—" New. Different. A goddamn dream— or a nightmare, if somebody happened to show up at the complex past sunset and check on the training grounds. The first time he's been able to get hard in months, and hard's putting it mildly at this point. "Oh god, fuck—"
Aitor sighs and squeezes the base of his cock. "Three," he says, almost bored. "Two. One—"
"Let me fuck your mouth," Potro blurts out, immediately throws an arm over his face and bites into the skin inside his elbow. Stupid stupid stupid.
Through the blood pounding in his ears he hears— feels Aitor say, "Thank you, that's more like it." Then nothing, just the soft slide of wet heat and his own breath coming out in harsh pants.
When he recovers, when he crowds clumsily against Aitor to repay the favor, he finds his efforts halted. "A handjob?" Aitor chuckles, and Potro's hand stills. "Come on, this isn't Euro 2008 in the showers with Torres. We're men, not boys."
He stares at Aitor, wonders how someone can look so full of themselves with another guy's hand down their shorts. "Torres?"
"A joke," he adds unconvincingly. "As far as you know."
Potro doesn't let go of him, doesn't move away — but he isn't sure what else to do. "Well, I guess everyone starts somewhere," Aitor eventually relents. He reaches down and grips Potro's wrist, angles it differently, gives him the devil's smirk. "Fuck, I hope you're better at this than you are at free kicks."
Just for that, Potro pushes him down into the grass.
When Aitor spits it out in front of the whole team a couple weeks later — so casually, such an afterthought, although I'd sleep with the Argentine — it's like a lightning crack in Potro's mind. Everything is at once illuminated and terrifying for a singular moment — then it's gone, and he's left vaguely shaken without really knowing why.
"Don't say shit like that," he hisses when everyone's filing out to warm up before the game, studiously keeping their distance from Aitor. "About— about me. Don't."
"Why not? It's true." Aitor pauses, holds his headband between his teeth as he tucks his hair back before sweeping it on. "You're the best looking guy on the team after me, anyone can see that. I'm a ten, you're a nine, everyone else is—" He pulls a face then and waves a hand dismissively. "I can't count that low."
"Thanks," Potro deadpans through the warmth unspooling in his chest. "But would it kill you to keep it to yourself?" Aitor shrugs him off, whatever man, and Potro tries to keep his tone indifferent when he tacks on, "Besides, it's not true. We didn't— you know."
They've reached the edge of the tunnel. Aitor stops, stretches down to touch his toes, jumps back up and taps the ceiling. "Not yet," he counters, eyes alight and mouth upturned — then he's off, racing onto the pitch as the crowd erupts.
Potro takes it all in — the bright lights in his eyes, the deafening roar, the rows of fans in the colors of the club he loves — before he follows after Aitor, pretending it's for him.