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He gets Ronaldo’s number from di Maria. The desire for it crawled under his skin, somehow, burrowed in there with the weight of the loss and the acid burn of expectations. Leo used to think that he didn’t get angry, ever, but now he’s old enough to realize he just doesn’t get angry like other people do: shouting and punching walls and kicking doors. He gets quiet, crushes his disappointment and his failures and his fury into something small and dark and sharp, something that keeps him up at night in the gym, that pushes him to run another mile, that drives him into ice baths until he’s shaking.
Tonight, it’s different. If someone had handed him a glass, he’d shatter it against the wall. He wants to make the bus that’s taking them back to their compound veer into traffic, wants to jump off an overpass. Wants to leave damage and ruin in his wake, the way he couldn’t on the pitch.
“Leo,” Kun whispers, like they’re kids again, lying awake in their hotel room past curfew. Leo turns away from him to face the window, clenching his hands so that his nails dig into his palm.
“Come on,” Kun reaches out, wrapping a hand around Leo’s wrist. “Leo, please.” Leo shakes him off, not wanting the touch. He feels like he’s about to blow apart, or that he already has and all that’s left are viscera and ashes. He can’t. Kun presses their knees together and doesn’t move away, even when Leo tries. Every time Leo risks a look over at him, he’s look back at Leo, eyes soft with tears. Leo turns back to the window. It’s fucking unbearable, to see Kun like this. To know he did this to him.
Back at the compound, the team is breaking off into cliques. Kun looks at him, expectantly, but he can’t join them. He wishes he could, wishes he could find a way to blame someone other than himself, but he’s afraid if he does he’ll end up screaming. He grabs di Maria before heading to his room.
“You sure, man?” Angel asks.
Shut up, Leo wants to scream, of course I’m not sure, what the fuck do you think, just give it to me. He can’t talk about this.
“Yeah,” he says.
---
He lies on his bed, shoes still on. Kun is still with the rest of the team, so Leo has their room to himself. He hates it: the bland same-ness of the room, the scratchy sheets, the harsh lighting. When he was younger, he liked being in concentration hotels. It reminded him of the academy, of home, of Barcelona — and that’s a traitorous thought. Now, the simplicity of it seems like a rebuke. Here, we’re all one team, all equals. Except they’re not. For everyone else on that pitch, the loss will sting, but they’ll move past it and one day it will be just another game they lost. For Leo, it will be another tally against him, another argument used to hold him up against history and find him wanting.
So, he calls. It’s better than thinking.
“Who are you and how did you get this number?” Ronaldo says, instead of a greeting. In the background, Leo can hear laughter, tiny and distorted, multiple voices.
“It’s me,” Leo says, momentarily taken aback. He hasn’t had to introduce himself for years. “Um, Leo Messi.”
“You know, if this is a prank call, it isn’t very original,” Ronaldo says.
“It’s not?” Leo curls into himself. God, this was so stupid of him.
“Oh,” Ronaldo says. He sounds as lost as Leo. “One second?” Leo hears Ronaldo say something in Portuguese; laughter in response. Then quiet.
“Sorry, I was playing cards with the team,” Ronaldo says, as the silence stretches.
“Of course you were,” Leo says, and his voice sounds bitter and acid-burned.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Ronaldo asks.
“Of course you’re the kind of captain who organizes fun team activities for everyone,” Leo says, “just like you’re one of them.” It’s strange talking to Ronaldo on the phone, not being able to see him, when so much of what Leo feels about him is tied to his looks, his body, the physical fact of him.
“I am one of them,” Ronaldo says. “Would you mind telling me what this is about? I have curfew in half an hour.”
“You’re not,” Leo’s gripping his phone too tight, can feel his sweat against the screen. “Because when you lose, who do you think, who the fuck do you think they’re going to.” He has to stop for a second. It feels like his throat is closing on him and his breath sobs around it. “Who are they going to blame.”
Ronaldo’s voice, when he speaks, is very soft, almost kind. Almost, Leo thinks, even though it’s absurd, almost scared. “Are you okay?”
“Obviously not.” Leo feels cold with fear and relief saying it.
“Are you. Is there someone you can call?”
“Obviously not,” Leo repeats, almost laughing.
“Christ,” Ronaldo says, with feeling.
“Who do you call?” Leo asks, kicking off his shoes. His muscles burn when he flexes them, familiar.
Ronaldo doesn’t say anything and Leo laughs, for real this time, even if it comes out fractured. “That’s what I thought.”
Ronaldo doesn’t say anything after that. Leo lies in bed, listening to his even breathing, imagining the steady, slow pulse of Ronaldo’s heart.
“Does it matter so much to you?” Ronaldo asks, finally.
“Losing?” Leo asks. Ronaldo’s voice is warm, smooth, and Leo lets himself curl towards it, presses his face to the pillows.
“No,” Ronaldo says. “I mean yes, but.” He lets out a long sigh. “You know. The future.”
“In twenty years, this will be all that matters,” Leo says, with a crushing certainty. He wishes it weren’t. He wishes for so much.
“Is it losing,” Ronaldo says, “or is it not beating me?” He doesn’t sound arrogant or sure of himself. He sounds — Leo doesn’t know how he sounds.
“I don’t know,” Leo says. “They’re the same, aren’t they?” He shuts his eyes, even though the room is dark, trying to picture Ronaldo, alone in another hotel, maybe sitting on the floor in the hallway, maybe lying in his own bed. His muscles aching too, his limbs heavy but his eyes still bright. His face — not smiling or smirking to the cameras, not a stormcloud of focus like he is during a game. Leo wishes he knew what Ronaldo looked like soft, tired out.
“You know,” Ronaldo says, after another long beat of silence, “some people would think you were doing this as part of some elaborate mind game.”
“Mourinho, you mean.” Leo’s sick of lying in the dark, rolls to the edge of the bed and flicks on a lamp, sitting himself up against the headboard.
“Or Guardiola,” Ronaldo volleys back to him.
“Do you?” Leo asks, pressing his thumb experimentally into one of the bruises on his hip, souvenirs from the group stages.
“Think this is some elaborate mind game?” Ronaldo laughs. “If it is, it’s not very good.”
“That’s what you would think,” Leo says, “until next season starts.”
“Oh, so your plan is during el Clasico yelling ‘because your father failed you, you fear losing control and failing yourself,’ and then you steal the ball from me in midfield?”
“No,” Leo says, “because there’s no way I’d be positioned that deep and centrally.”
Ronaldo laughs, big and bright, and it makes Leo laugh too.
“That’s good,” Ronaldo says, voice delighted and edged with disbelief. A lot of people talk to Leo that way, but with Ronaldo, it lands differently within him.
“We should hang out,” Leo says, and it feels like it came out of nowhere. But it couldn’t have. It must have been somewhere within him this whole time.
“After we win the Cup?” Ronaldo asks.
It should rankle Leo, but it doesn’t. He gets it: it’s a lesson that was drilled into him at La Masia — if you don’t believe in yourself, no one will.
“Yeah,” Leo says. “I’ll be home all summer. Stop by some time.”
---
Ronaldo doesn’t win the Cup. Leo watches from home, by himself, sitting at first and then pacing. He doesn’t know who he’s rooting for, his stomach and his heart twisted in on themselves. They have been since he came home. It feels worse than last time, worse than Copa America, too close to final. But there’s a raw edge somewhere in his chest that’s new. Watching Cristiano makes it worse.
I’m sorry, he texts Cris. i know how it feels. But looking at Quaresma holding Cris as he sobs, unselfconsciously, into his teammate’s shoulder before raising his head, his eyes red-rimmed to bow to the crowd in thanks, Leo thinks that maybe he doesn’t, after all.
Leo gives himself a few days. There’s no reason Cris will remember his invitation, or if he does, not reason he’ll want to see Leo at all. Just because after Leo, after Leo — lost, fucked up, ruined a generation's hopes — just because after all that, Leo wanted Ronaldo. It doesn't mean anything.
He keeps busy — he has meetings with his lawyers, and his agent, and Adidas. He goes to the gym at Camp Nou to work out, even though no one else is back yet and he has a gym at home he could use. The kit men and the physios are still around, and it’s good to see their familiar faces. It helps.
The text, when it does come, a week later, wakes him up. It’s the middle of the night when his personal phone chirps, and he rolls out of bed to grab it. A text from Ronaldo then a second, a third, his phone pulsing in his hand like a heart.
I’ll be in Barca in two days if you still are
Where should we meet
Nowhere public please
Leo’s had time to think about this, turning it over in his mind when he isn’t replaying the World Cup loss. He knows as well as anyone that the home games and away games aren’t as different as people think, not if you’re confident, not if you’re focused. But sometimes: the red and blue smoke drifting in from the terraces; the sound of people, his people, chanting his name; the familiar flags. It matters.
My house he texts Cris, and then sends Cris his address and the code for the gate.
---
He’s not — nervous, exactly. He has no reason to be. He’s done this before. Well, not this but. Harder things.
“Calm down,” he says to himself, out loud, before wiping his palms on his jeans and going to trim his beard, just a little bit. In the mirror, he surveys himself, critically. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, something his stylist picked out for him for a photoshoot last year. It’s thin and soft, clinging to him just a little, a few artful holes in the shoulder. His tattoos stand out against it.
His hair is fine, spiked at soft angles. His beard as even as he’ll ever get it. The bags under his eyes could be smaller but, well. Cris will understand that.
His phone rings.
“I’m outside,” Cris says. “Should I pull into your garage?”
“What?” Leo asks, feeling wrong-footed already.
“Do I have to worry about cameras?” Cris asks.
“No?” Leo says, opening his front door. “It’s um. Private. Here. The club makes sure.” There’s a black car parked in his driveway, expensive, tinted windows. Leo waves, awkward.
“Hi,” Cris says, stepping out of his car. He waves back to Leo and Leo hangs up his phone, heading towards him, even though he doesn’t know what he should do when he gets there. A handshake? A half hug, like they might on the pitch? A hug seems impossible — they don’t know each other like that. Leo doesn’t even hug his father when he picks him up from the airport.
Cris pulls him in, tight. He smells expensive, untouchably good. Leo closes his eyes and leans against Cris’s chest, lets himself be enveloped.
Leo imagines — people must have fantasies about this. About Cristiano Ronaldo pulling them in, about the warmth of him, the breadth, the steady slow thump of his heart, the soft fabric of his shirt against their cheek. The reality of it, the pressure of his arms, the solidity of him, the rumble of his voice in Leo’s ear as he says hello, Leo can’t process it all before Cris has pulled back.
“It’s good to see you,” Cris say, his hands still on Leo’s shoulders, big, firm. Leo can feel the heat of him, hotter than the summer sun, soaking through his shirt.
“You too,” Leo says. He risks a look up at Cris’s face, finally. He looks tired. His skin looks less perfect than usual, unairbrushed, and there are shadows under his eyes, matching Leo’s. His hair is soft, unstyled and he’s not wearing earings.
“Hi,” Leo says, again, conscious that he’s been staring too long. “Do you want to come in?”
“Yeah,” Cris says, taking a hand from Leo’s shoulder to push his hair to one side. “That’d be good.”
---
They sit in Leo’s living room and Leo is very conscious of his Ballon d’Ors, on a high shelf in one corner, one of his Champions League medals draped around the neck of a teddy bear in a Barca jersey a kid with cancer gave him one time, the very many pictures of him, over the years, surrounded by his team, the pitch covered in red and blue confetti.
Cris notices Leo noticing and makes a face at him. Leo flushes. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Cris says, teasing but gently.
“What do you do with yours?” Leo asks.
“I gave the first ones to my mom,” Cris says, “so she’d think it was worth it. But now,” he shrugs. “They stop feeling good a lot faster.” His face twists into a smirk, self-mocking. Leo hates it.
“And losing’s still terrible,” Leo says. “Which doesn’t really feel fair? Pick one.”
Cris manages a laugh. “We can’t catch a break, can we? Rich, good looking, great players, and yet.”
This time Leo can feel his blush full-body. “Do you want something to drink?" he asks, standing suddenly. “I do.”
“Water,” Ronaldo says, and Leo retreats to his kitchen. He rests his head against the cool of his refrigerator door. Fuck. Part of him wishes he knew what he was doing, and part of him knows and is terrified. Fuckfuckfuck.
“Leo,” Cris says, “can I help — Leo?”
“Sorry,” Leo says. He turns to face Cris. “I should be making you feel better.”
“Hey, hey,” Cris says, coming towards Leo. “You just lost too. You don’t need to make me feel better. You’re supposed to be revealing your weaknesses to me so I can more effectively sabotage you.”
“Right,” Leo says, mouth dry. He can’t quite make a laugh come out; it hits a little close to home.
Cris smiles at Leo, and his eyes are soft, sad, a little tired. It’s beautiful; he’s beautiful. “So, any weaknesses to confess?”
“I’m better with my left foot,” Leo says, because it’s the first thing he can think to say that isn’t the one thing he absolutely can’t.
“Knew that one already,” Cris says. “Don’t really believe it.”
“Guess I’m just perfect then,” Leo says.
Cris laughs at that, crow's feet coming out around his eyes. “Well then, guess I’m fucked.”
---
They play football in Leo’s backyard in the blue twilight. He can smell the sea in the air. There aren’t any rules, at first Leo is stealing the ball from between Cris’s legs and then he’s volleying it back to him, making impossible passes just for the pleasure of watching Cris receive them.
It darkens slowly, summer reluctant to let the day end. They play until it’s too dark to see any longer, Leo dancing along an imaginary touchline, lofting the ball to Cris who catches it on his chest, then his knees, then flicks it back. Leo, laughing, fakes like he’s going to pass it back to Cris before doing a Cruyff turn and sending the ball soaring until his pool.
“You’re a menace,” Cris says, lying down on the grass, his hands behind his head.
Leo comes to sit next to him, pulling blades of grass out of his lawn.
“You ever do that as a kid?” he asks.
“Cruyff turns? Yeah, British people hated them,” Cris says. The moon on his skin makes him look like a Greek statue, underwater; the stars make his eyes gleam. He smiles at the memory. “So I did them even more often.”
“No,” Leo says. “Playing around, you know? In the park, or wherever.”
“Not really,” Cris says. “The academy wasn’t really — that kind of place.”
“Yeah,” Leo says. “Me neither.” Leo loves football. He couldn’t not, has lived it, breathed it, crossed oceans for it. But.
“It’s fucked,” Cristiano says. Leo starts to say something, he doesn’t know what when Cris continues. “I mean, it worked, obviously it worked but. I think about my kids, you know? How old were you when you left home?”
“Thirteen,” Leo says, quietly. He pulls out another handful of grass from the lawn. La Masia is his home, as much as anywhere is. But at first. At first. “I was afraid of needles. When I first moved.”
Cris reaches out and puts a hand on Leo’s thigh. For two breaths, all of Leo’s awareness is reduced to that point of contact, to keeping himself still.
“How long did that last?” Cris asks, rubbing his thumb slowly back and forth.
“Longer than it should have,” Leo says. He’d curl up in bed at night, wishing he were even smaller, that no one could see him, even as his bones ached and grew and grew.
“You know what’s gonna matter, in twenty years?” Cris says. “That my kids won’t be supporting their entire family at 14. That they’ll have been kids.”
Leo can hear the quiet susurration of the wind through the palms, can smell the Mediterranean, can see Cris’s chest rise and fall in the moonlight. It breaks his heart, every piece of it, all of it. He puts his small, pale hand over Cris’s, rubs his thumb along the line of Cris’s knuckles. Cris’s inhale is sharp in the darkness, cuts too deep into Leo.
“What about you?” he asks, meaning what about me, what about both of us. “You just. You take your whole family and your country and, and Real Madrid onto your back and then what? Just take it?"
Cris sits up, fast and graceful, so he’s on his knees facing Leo. He turns his hand over, wrapping his fingers around Leo’s wrist, his fingers stroking across Leo’s pulse point. Leo’s breathing open-mouthed now, his heart rate picking up in response.
“Most people would say I’m doing ok,” Cris says. His eyes are impossibly dark, endless and Leo can barely meet them, can’t look away.
“I wouldn’t,” Leo says and then reaches forward to grab Cris’s t-shirt and pulls him in.
---
When Leo thought about sex with Cristiano Ronaldo, furtively, in hotel rooms, one hand on his dick and the other pressed to his mouth so he could bite the back of his wrist to keep quiet — when Leo thought about sex with Cris, it was hard, fast. Up against the wall of the tunnel, after a loss, both of them sweaty and pissed off, Cris holding him up without effort, keeping him there, making him take it, a hand against Leo’s throat. Or in the showers, Cris on his knees, Leo’s fingers laced through his hair, tugging, his head thrown back against the cold tile.
Not this. Nothing like this. The dim light of his bedroom, the crisp white of his sheets make Cris’s skin shine like gold. He has bruises from the Cup, like Leo’s, up his shins, on the edge of his hip bones. Leo runs his hand down Cris’s chest, over his stomach, his abs. He can feel the beginnings of stubble, leading lower and lower.
“Sorry,” Cris says, turning to press his face into Leo’s neck. “I haven’t.”
“Cris,” Leo says, reaching his hand down and taking Cris in hand. Leo sucks a breath in, finding Cris’s mouth, biting at his lips, wrapping himself around Cris, needing to be closer.
“Fuck, Leo,” Cris says, pulling back far enough to press their foreheads together, his eyes falling shut, pushing himself into Leo’s hand. Giving in to Leo’s rhythm. He doesn’t smell untouchable anymore: he smells like grass and night air and sex. Like everything Leo’s been waiting for.
Cris doesn’t last long; Leo doesn’t want him to. He pays attention, when Cris winds his free hand in the sheets and pulls, Leo leans down again, bites gently at the tendons of his neck, twists his wrist a little more on the upstroke.
“Cris,” Leo says, “god, you look so good.” Cris makes a hitching, desperate noise that makes Leo grind his cock against Cris’s thigh. “You’re doing such a good job,” Leo says, cupping Cris’s cheek, kissing him again, sweet and hot. “You’re perfect, Cris, Cris.”
Cris comes, shaking, pulling Leo’s sheets off the corners of the bed, his lips bitten deep red.
“God,” Cris says, panting, a little later. Leo is still hard, moving his hips in slow circles against Cris’s thigh. “Leo.” He giggles, running a hand over his face and then looking at Leo. He looks blissed out, loose limbed. Leo smiles back, helplessly.
Cris slides his leg between Leo’s and pulls Leo’s hand up, his fingers tracing the lines of Leo’s tattoos, featherlight. Leo’s arches towards Cris, needing more, needing it now. Cris lowers his head and sucks Leo’s fingers clean, one by one. He’s looking up through his eyelashes, and the slide of Leo’s fingers into his mouth, the heat of it, the catch of his teeth, his hooded eyes: Leo thrusts against Cris’s thigh, inelegant and past caring. He’s burning up with feelings too big for his body, grabbing Cris’s face with both hands to kiss him, to taste himself in Cris’s mouth. He’s coming apart from it, with it. Cris run a hand down Leo’s spine, grabs his ass, pulls him closer and Leo is lost, to the sensation, to the feeling. To Cris.
---
It’s early, the sky outside just starting to blush pink at the edges. Leo is lying across Cris’s chest, arms wrapped around his waist, head tucked under Cris’s chin. He feels fucked out: exhausted, sweaty, soreness just beginning to set in.
“Thank you,” Leo says, letting Cris’s heat soak into his bones. Cris laughs and then quiets. He runs his hands up and down Leo’s back, gentle.
“Yeah,” Cris says, pressing a kiss to the top of Leo’s head. “Same.”
---
The tunnel isn’t quiet: Leo can hear the echoing of the chants from outside, the chatter of his team, the cameramen trying to line up their shots and cursing, the click of cleats on the concrete.
He waits by the exit to the away lockers, nodding to Ramos and Benzema as they come out. Benzema glares back at him and Leo stifles a grin.
“Mind games?” Cris asks, coming out behind them. “That’s low, even for you.”
Leo laughs and bumps his shoulder against Cris’s. He’s mindful of the cameras, of the eyes of half the world on them. He shoots a sideways look up at Cris, who is smiling down at him, perfect dimples on his perfect cheeks.
“Hope you’re ready for a challenge,” Leo says, nudging their hips together. Cris throws an arm across Leo’s shoulder, pulls him in close, just for a second. Leo can smell cut grass and expensive cologne.
“Always,” Cris says, eyes bright, and crosses the tunnel to join his team, looking back at Leo the whole way.