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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Villa/Silva, Figo/Mutu, Nesta/Zlatan.
Feedback: Good lines, typos, etc.
Disclaimer: This is absolutely fiction and not real and I don’t know these people at all. Any resemblance to any real-life magazine is completely accidental.
Notes: Titled after the song by Marc Broussard. Dedicated to hermine, who’s always there despite having a ridiculous time of it herself.
Summary: Conspiracy, assault and all before the Sandro-Zlatan show rolls into town.
***
“I liked it a lot when I first read it. But then Andrés pulled me aside and explained all the subtext, and now I’m a little…okay, to be honest, I’m not sure what to think. I still like it, but it’s kind of horribly embarrassing, isn’t it?” David said, covertly shifting his weight. Then he made an apologetic face at his pedicurist, who’d hissed at him to stop wiggling. “And I heard Iker flipped out when he read it.”
Juan looked cautiously at the man working on his feet before he answered. “Yeah, I was just coming back from lunch and walked right into it. He was eating pudding or something, and forgot to swallow it before he started yelling at Figo. You should have seen Figo’s face, with that splattered on him.”
“I’m glad I didn’t. Ew—ow. What are you doing?” David leaned down to look at his feet, only to retreat hastily when the pedicurist waved a pointy orangewood stick at his face. He sat contritely back and watched nervously as they began to wrap his and Juan’s feet in some smelly olive-green sludge. “Mata, what did we sign up for again?”
“The mud one,” Juan said, making a face. He wrinkled up his nose, and when the pedicurist gave him a nasty look, snorted in disgust. “Sorry, man. When they said write a piece on spa treatments for men, I figured we’d be getting shaves, that sort of thing. I didn’t think they’d be sticking our toes in sewer waste.”
“Excuse me, sirs, but this is the purest Dead Sea mud, filled with minerals and other nutrients that’ll nourish your skin. Which certainly needs it,” Juan’s pedicurist told them. He was just quoting from the brochure, but made it sound like he was pronouncing a penal sentence.
Juan and David glanced at each other, and in the middle of that both pedicurists left in a huff. Which made David feel bad for a second, but then he checked the brochure in his lap and saw what they were paying for this stuff. With prices like that, the staff could put up with a little whining; David certainly swallowed down a lot more for a much lower hourly rate.
Not that it was all about the money, and especially not in their line of work. But it could be a little less about who was dating who, David thought. “Poor Iker.”
“And poor you, huh?” When David didn’t get it, Juan glanced stagily around before leaning over and whispering conspiratorially into David’s ear. “I mean, the Villa can’t be too—ow!”
“Don’t call him that, Mata,” David said sharply. He hit Juan again, then ignored the puppy-eyes he got in return. Then he leaned back in his seat and mud squished up between his toes. David looked down and watched them wiggle, little fleshy dots amidst a sea of ugly brown-green. “Actually, I don’t think Guaje’s going to think it’s a big deal. It’s about Morientes’ ex, not me.”
“It’s about getting over the ex, and moving on, and…look, David, I’m not trying to hash your relationship here, but it’s the Villa. When he thinks he’s being threatened, he makes those kinds of weird, paranoid connections. He’s worse than the movie guys that way.” Juan picked the brochure out of David’s lap and skimmed through it, then flipped it over to read the back. His eyebrows rose at something, but then he tossed the brochure at a nearby trashcan.
It missed, but a passing spa employee picked it up, shook it reprovingly at them and then placed it in the trashcan.
Apologetic face firmly in place, Juan twisted around as best he could to follow her. She didn’t seem to pay any attention to him after her silent scolding, but when Juan finally settled back, he had a faintly silly grin on his face. “So it’s not all bad here,” he said, gesturing towards her ass. Then he glanced at David. “And it’s a good thing, too. Thank God I’m straighter than those skinny ties Gutí’s championing now, because I’d hate to have the Villa pop up here and accuse me of canoodling with you.”
David hit Juan a third time, on the off-chance that that would finally work, then sighed because unfortunately, the other man was very right. “I know. So poor Iker, because Guaje sneaked in on him and his other…what’s his na—Cesc, sneaked in on him and Cesc in a movie theater. And then Fernando turns in his column, and it’s just a really lousy week for him.”
“Wait, wait, back that up right there,” Juan ordered, eyes widening. “Villa did what? And this morning he and Iker were both still alive? Or I guess maybe Iker was too busy to kill him. It is hard to stop in the middle of—”
“They weren’t doing anything. Iker was watching a movie for work, and Guaje thought it would be a good time to talk to him and it wasn’t, and Cesc was there and God, I’m making apologies for Guaje again, aren’t I?” Hand to face, David slumped back against his seat and moaned. “It is really awful, what he did. Even I know that. When I found out, I was so…”
“Yeah, how’d that happen? Did Iker complain to Figo? Because that’d explain why Figo was so nice about calming him down and getting him into an office to talk privately about Morientes’ column,” Juan said.
David wished it’d been like that. But it was good to know that Figo was being sensitive to the whole mess—too bad he couldn’t have just not started it. But it was too late for that, and Figo had had good reasons for doing what he did, and David just needed to stop brooding on that and start doing something…something that’d help fix things now, not back then. “Um, no. Guaje came home and was kind of quiet, so I asked him how things were, and…well, he told me. I was mad. He didn’t really get it.”
“Get that you were mad or get why you were mad? Or both?” The other man craned his head around to peer into David’s face, then nodded definitively. “Both. Okay, I guess foot treatments aren’t so bad if that means I don’t have to go back into work today.”
“Huh?”
“Silva, I love David—not like that, but you know. But he is a hard guy to deal with, and when you’re mad at him, he gets pretty much impossible. You’re still mad at him, right?” Something squished loudly and Juan looked into his foot bin. He frowned and lifted one foot, then gingerly put it back into the mud. The noise came again and he made a face. “Or did you make up? I don’t need details, okay, just a yes or no.”
It was a couple minutes before David could answer, and the delay was only partly due to people coming back to take away the mud bins. But their feet didn’t get rinsed off. Instead they were wrapped in what looked and felt a lot like aluminum foil, and then they were sternly told to keep put and not rip the foil.
This was taking a lot longer than David had thought. He and Juan were probably going to have to have lunch here, and to be honest he didn’t even know how he felt about that. Usually he went over to David’s office or place for lunch. “Probably not.”
“That’s…neither of those two,” Juan said, frustration audible in his voice.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I mean, we didn’t break up or anything but I’m really annoyed at him and I don’t know exactly what to do about it right now. I kind of get why he’s doing this crap, but at the same time, I wish he’d get that he doesn’t have to.” David rubbed the side of his face, then squeezed the back of his neck. If they were going to be stuck here anyway, he wondered if their expense account would stretch to a massage. “And now you’ve got me all paranoid about how he’s going to react to Fernando’s column, and we’re not even done with this fight.”
“Hey, well, I’m probably wrong about that. I’m sure you know him better than me,” Juan said, contrite and sympathetic and awkward. He was trying, but it was just coming a little late for David’s nerves.
Well, he wasn’t really the problem here, and he was listening to David complain about it, which was nice of him. So David mustered up a smile for the other man, and changed the subject.
* * *
Adrian squeezed his eyes shut and nearly walked into a telephone pole. He only caught himself by jamming up his elbow so his forearm and not his nose took the brunt of the impact, and then he slowly eased away from the pole. Then he blinked hard a second time, but at least this time he made sure to stop moving first.
“You’re extremely pale,” Luís noted. “I understand that vampires are in again, but skin cancer is never fashionable. Maybe I should have you test out sunscreens instead of Bojan.”
“I just need sunglasses,” Adrian stubbornly muttered. He rubbed at his eyes, then cracked them open to squint at the sunny, beautiful day. Then he closed his eyes again. “It’s been a while since I went out in the middle of the day.”
Both of them did wake up before dawn: Luís because he wanted to get into work and have a quiet moment before things started going wrong, Adrian because he thought he needed to make Luís’ coffee all the time. But Adrian usually came home much earlier than Luís—and inevitably had a delicious dinner ready and waiting, in case Luís had forgotten how much tastier being in a relationship was—well before the sun went down. And then there was lunch, which Luís didn’t always manage to do with Adrian, and Luís had always assumed that on those days, Adrian ate with Pep or Pep’s staff. Of course anybody who worked for Pep had his insane work ethic as well, but he was Spanish and in nice weather it was a cultural imperative for him to eat outside.
Adrian began to fidget under Luís’ close scrutiny. “I’m Romanian. We’re supposed to be pale. We invented vampires, you know?”
“Great for your people, but that doesn’t mean I want to hop on this trend. Any paler and you’ll put Andrés out of a job,” Luís said. He turned around and unlocked the driver’s door to his car, then opened it and ducked inside to get at his bag. “He’s not a vampire either, but he does glow a little in the dark. If there’s no moon, and you’re a drunken movie critic who’s just walked out of Werner Herzog’s Noseferatu.”
Something slapped glancingly down Luís’ arm, like the gesture was intended to get rid of a particularly sticky-looking bit of dust. Or like Adrian had gone to hit Luís, but had lost his nerve and instead was standing there and settling for looking peeved. Peeved and vaguely curious. “Victor?”
“Iker, actually. He’s nice and quiet right up until he’s incredibly high-strung, and nearly flips your poor copy editor into a window because he thinks he’s seeing a phantom of his psyche.” While they’d been inside, Luís’ bag had sank into the space between the chair and the gearshift and was now firmly stuck there. He yanked a few times, then had to sling the strap over his shoulder and use that plus both hands to get the damn thing out. Then he dropped it into the back, and pivoted so he could slide in behind the wheel. “It was a relief when he got a steady relationship and finally stopped going to bars with Victor. He calmed down a lot.”
Adrian h’mmed in acknowledgement, but there was a funny undertone to the sound. He was still standing by the driver’s side, clasping his hands about at eye-level with Luís and twisting them around and around each other. When Luís looked up, he found the other man wasn’t watching him at all, but instead was staring hard at something across the street.
He looked that way as well and immediately spotted the shifty man with the suspicious satchel, just about the right size for a camera bag and a few other paparazzi essentials. Luís pressed two fingers against his temple, then reached across and popped open the passenger’s side door.
Outside the car, Adrian jerked sharply and looked around before realizing what had made that noise. He glanced at Luís, then hurriedly went around the front of the car and got inside, his shoulders a little hunched up. He was careful to keep his face turned away from the photographer, but when he’d gotten his seatbelt on and looked up again to see the bastard snapping away, he flinched as if he was at fault. Then he slumped down and covered his face with his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I—sorry. I knew I should’ve had you come pick me up in the back.”
“This is the back.” Luís turned on the ignition, then twisted around to look through the rearview window. He threw one arm behind the back of Adrian’s seat to help keep himself in the right position. “I’m not mad, Adi. It’s just part of…look, I’ll deal with it.”
Adrian breathed in shortly. He was still rubbing at his face, and now he was trying to smush himself into the leg-space as well. The car was roomy enough to justify the obscene amount of money Luís had shelled out for it, but Adrian would still have to chop off half his legs to make that work. “I know, but I wish you didn’t, and that asshole wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
“Because…I have a significant other for the first time in a few years, and this is apparently shocking enough to have market value with the tabloids? Yes, this is all about you. I wish it was, because then that would mean they’re at least curious about who and not just what you are, but—”
“No, it’s me,” Adrian said angrily. Then he glanced at Luís and there was enough frustration in his eyes to show that it wasn’t just a slip on his part. He really had meant to cut Luís off.
He wasn’t even done with his glance before the remorse was slipping into his eyes, but Luís looked away. Partly out of surprise but partly out of sheer pragmatism—it was a tightly-packed parking lot, and if Luís was going to avoid an accident on top of Adrian’s sudden strangeness, he just had to let the other man go for a couple seconds.
Once he’d extracted the car and gotten it on the road, he looked over, only to look away because he knew that expression and he knew if he kept looking at it, Adrian was going to completely break down.
Even so, Adrian’s voice was shaking when he finally began to mutter an explanation. “I just heard back from my bandmates. They’re saying maybe they sue me for breach of contract. Pep…he doesn’t think it’s a strong case, but anyway they made a press release and now everybody knows we’re splitting up.”
“I think people knew when they replaced you,” Luís said.
“I know!” Adrian snapped, jerking up. The seatbelt held him back, but just barely as he stared at Luís, furious and wounded.
Then he fell back, grunting at the impact. He put both hands over his face and dragged them up and down before finally sliding them into his hair, his eyes squeezed shut. His breathing grew raspier and raspier, then abruptly stopped as he yanked his hands down. His eyes opened and he stared at them for a while. Then he put his elbow up on the window and stared dully outside.
“When did it go out? Just now? I don’t remember seeing anything when I left work.” They stopped at a light and Luís reached for his phone. Then he withdrew his hand and put it back on the wheel. He could find out in two seconds, but it wouldn’t be coming from Adrian then.
“It’s not out yet—they said tomorrow morning. They called me and said—” Adrian wrenched his head around, grimacing. A bone in his neck popped and he hissed, rubbing his hand over the nape of his neck. Then he sighed and thumped his head back against the seat. His eyes half-shut. “I’m not an idiot, okay? I know what happens when a band breaks up. You said I need to take care of this myself, so I’m doing that.”
Luís pressed his lips together. The light turned green and he stepped on the accelerator. “Well, then I have time to see to that paparazzi.”
“Don’t want people to think you’re on the losing side? No, I know, you have to be a neutral, you don’t want them to know you’re on a side at all,” Adrian muttered bitterly.
Luís cut off the car to their right, then ignored the honking he got as he spun the car into a side-street. He had to take the turn so roughly that he felt one of the wheels lift off the ground. Then it came down with a teeth-rattling crunch, but by then he’d pulled over to the curb. He put the car into park, then sat back and unclenched his teeth.
Then he looked to the right. Adrian had been thrown towards Luís and had one hand on the gear-shift, which he was leaning over so his chin was nearly resting on Luís’ shoulder. His eyes were wide and as they looked at each other, he nervously bit his lip. Then he began to ease himself back into his seat.
“Adrian. I’m truthful but that means I’m harsh. I prefer that over lying till I have to betray someone,” Luís said in measured tones. “I’m going to take care of it because I don’t care to have the public looking into my private life. If you want me to support you against your bandmates, I’ll do that. But not on the supermarket magazine rack. That’s just not how I work, and you should know that.”
Adrian stopped midway back in his seat, still staring at Luís. Then he flinched and dropped his head. His hands fell into his lap, immediately tangled around each other and began to do their best to wrench their fingers out of their sockets. “I know. I know. I’m just—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I don’t think—I just—”
“You just say stupid things when you’re upset, like everyone else.” That was a little harsher than it needed to be, but Luís’ advantage over others was that he understood why something upset. It wasn’t that he didn’t get upset—he took a few deep breaths, looking out the windshield. “You know, I don’t have you around just because you were in a rock band at some point. I’m not a groupie. I’m too old, and back when I wasn’t, my hair wasn’t good enough.”
For a couple moments there was only a puzzled silence. Then Adrian snorted, and then the snort turned into a startled laugh. It was short and too uneven to sound great, but it was a laugh. “Your hair?”
“Don’t go asking Pep for photos now. Because he’ll show them to you,” Luís muttered. He let go of the wheel and draped his arms over it, then had to take one off as his phone went off. It was just a text and from Victor at that, so Luís dismissed it. “Anyway, the point is that I’m not embarrassed to be seen with you.”
“I know,” Adrian said quietly. “I just…”
As his voice trailed off, a weight came down on Luís’ shoulder. It lifted almost immediately and Luís started to turn his head, but then changed his mind. He continued to gaze out the windshield, and after a moment, Adrian put his forehead back on Luís’ shoulder. The other man let it rest there for a few breaths. Then he sighed deeply, and at the same time turned his head so he was laying his temple against Luís. His hand brushed Luís’ hip and Luís reached down and took it as Adrian was withdrawing it; Adrian stiffened, then relaxed and let Luís pull his hand over.
He had good fingers, Luís idly thought. Long, well-shaped. Nails a little ragged, but extremely clean…the skin around them had a dry, cracked look, like that of an overworked dishwasher. A couple paper cuts. They were doing that piece on men’s spa treatments, so maybe Luís could have Mata take Adrian along to one. Juan hadn’t been with them very long so he was still fairly normal, and he was smart enough to not bring up Adrian’s old band. He’d probably be good company; Pep’s staff was fine, but they were always busy, and anyway Luís couldn’t keep leaving it up to them to re-socialize Adrian. God knew what they’d teach him about dealing with nasty, difficult clients like Luís.
“So what are you doing tonight?” Adrian asked quietly. He moved his head so he could just look at Luís. “You’re out, aren’t you?”
“Another party. Pepe Reina’s last bash before he heads to America to do promotion there, and since his new film looks like the hottest ticket of the month, I’m going instead of Iker.” Luís slid his hands down the sides of the wheel and twisted the key in the ignition, then carefully turned the car back into the street without dislodging Adrian’s head from his shoulder. “Well, and also Iker’s far too angry about Morientes’ column to be in the same room as the man. I need to talk to Morientes about that, and I’m thinking I’ll do that at the party. Get all my dirty work done at once.”
Adrian nodded, then slowly pulled himself upright. He scruffed a bit at his hair, then checked it in the rearview mirror. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like, and he spent a few more seconds tugging tufts this way and that. “Sounds fun. Can I come?”
Luís looked sharply at the other man. “It is…not that I wouldn’t mind having along company I actually like, but it is a promotional event, Adi. There’ll be more photographers than drinks, and since most of them are official, I can’t do as much about them.”
“Well, then don’t,” Adrian muttered. He tilted his head, flicking his fingers at his hair, and the light streaming in from Luís’ side cut into the hard line of his mouth, the stony cast to his jaw. His eyes were narrowed against more than the brightness of the sun. Then he sighed, hitching back his shoulders and lifting his chin. He looked back at Luís. “Hey, you say that I should come out more. Do something besides work.”
“When you’re ready. You don’t have to come now, just because…”
Adrian’s brows rose high. “Because what?”
If Luís wanted to, he could make a couple guesses. But he didn’t. Instead he took one hand off the wheel and used it to get his sunglasses from an overhead compartment. He flipped out the earpieces with a casual flick of the wrist, then put on the sunglasses. The world went dark and cool, all its outlines more clear-cut but at the same time more lifeless.
“If you think it’s all right, then okay,” Luís said. This one wasn’t his fight. Some people might think he was still under an obligation to provide pointers, but neither Pep nor Victor had to deal with the fallout. And curiously enough, experience had taught Luís that the consequences of treating somebody like a child were far more unpleasant than those for letting somebody figure out a certain tactic was bound to backfire.
Across the car, Adrian gave his forelock one more smoothing with his hand. He frowned at the rearview mirror, tension drawing the lines around his eyes and mouth thin and taut, but stretching smooth the skin over his jaw. Freshly-broken ice had nothing on the angles of his face. “When—when are you going?” he finally asked, softer but no less determined.
“I’ll come back around seven to pick you up,” Luís replied.
* * *
“He’s just such a bigheaded shit,” David said. “You know what I mean.”
No response. David drummed his fingers against the arms of the chair, then kicked out his feet and slouched down till his toes were touching the side of the desk before him. He wondered, not for the first time, why people always were so slow to catch on to the obvious. Other people, that was. Not everybody was that oblivious, and he wasn’t just referring to himself, to all those idiots who thought he was the arrogant one. David Silva was pretty quick as well…David frowned and checked the clock on the wall. How long was this stupid spa trip David Silva had gotten sent on? Mata had better not have dragged them off into anything idiotic, or else David would kill him and then…then…
…David slouched some more, wriggling uncomfortably. He knew he needed to apologize to David Silva—even if he still didn’t get what the hell he’d done—and he needed to do it soon. Not just for the sake of their relationship, but also because frankly, he hated waiting around, he hated feeling lousy, and he hated the most waiting around feeling lousy. He was crap at apologies but the sooner he got that over with, the better.
He looked up. Iker was still slumped over his desk, face-first into the wood with his arms thrown out wherever they’d gone when he’d first flopped downwards. The top of the man’s head didn’t move, even when David reached out and shifted the pen-holder near it. He frowned at Iker, then began to clear his throat. Then he stopped and stared at Iker’s head some more. He lifted his hand and put it down, and then lifted it again and flicked Iker’s head. “Hey.”
“Go away, you walking soap villain,” Iker mumbled. “The last thing I want to talk about right now is Morientes. His whole first column is—damn it, I don’t want to talk about it. I want to throw pudding at you.”
“You did that already. And anyway, there’s none left.” Annoyingly enough, since David had hoped to steal some of the caramel to take home. No, he didn’t think that that was going to make David Silva less mad at him, but maybe afterward they could have some, and David Silva could lick it off his fingers, and all right, pointless tangent. “And how am I a soap villain? Did I show up after years away just to ruin everybody’s life? Did I join the magazine just to make a nuisance of myself?”
Iker finally levered himself up, but only his head. He glowered at David under mussy tufts of hair. “Fine, you’re not a soap villain. You’re the resident asshole. And I just said I don’t want to talk about him. Everybody’s talking about him. He wants people to talk about him. Why the hell else would he write something like that?”
“Write what? An open love letter?” David asked, annoyed. Resident asshole? He wasn’t the nicest guy in the office, but if Iker was going to throw that term around, the man needed to look at their boss first.
“Basically,” Iker muttered, rolling his eyes. He put his head back down, but moved his arm under it so he could rest his chin and still try to peel the skin from David’s skull with his eyes. “He wrote—how didn’t you hear about this? He turned in the draft of his first column, and—and okay, it doesn’t name names but nobody ever names names these days. Because it’s so much cooler to just throw pseudonyms around and have multiple layers of symbolism and ambiguity instead of a fucking coherent story, and goddamn you, I’m talking about him!”
“Yeah, and I’m not holding a gun to your head. You’re doing it all by yourself so stop blaming me.” Forever, David thought. It took people forever to get it.
Iker pushed himself up on his arms and leaned over the desk. He stared really hard at David, and when David looked back, Iker only narrowed his eyes even more. Then he abruptly sat back and threw his head against his chair so he was staring at the ceiling. His arms flopped down to dangle at his sides. “God. We’re talking about it. Him. He’s such a…a jerk. He broke up with Raúl years ago, and suddenly he’s got to talk about it? Why can’t he just get a therapist? Or even just be in a movie where he sees one? It’s a whole subgenre now.”
“He wrote a column about what?” On the other hand, some people just never fucking got it. And for a moment David felt a little bit better—but then he realized that if Morientes was actually just still hung up on González, then that made David Silva a mere rebound for him and that was such crap. “His break-up?”
“It was all metaphorical, kind of. He went on about how he was moving back after a long time away, and how all his old memories were affecting him and he kept having to…to…what was the cliché he used? Oh, right. How he had to ‘banish his ghosts’ and move on, and erase the old memories. He doesn’t have to move back! He can just stay away!” As Iker spoke, his hands began to swing. Then to rise and swoop about in the air, their arcs increasing as his agitation grew. By the end he was gesturing so violently that it was making his chair spin in place. “And everybody’ll know what ‘ghosts’ he’s talking about. It was old news, but now it’s going to be new again and nobody needed that. Raúl doesn’t need that. He’s got enough shit at work to deal with without having his personal life give him trouble too.”
“See, he thinks it’s all about him, all the time,” David said. Well, fuck, Morientes couldn’t even just have a straightforward fixation. He had that and he was looking for a replacement, and that was just insulting to David Silva in so many ways that David couldn’t even begin to think about it. His head would explode. “Somebody needs to just tell him he’s being a shit.”
Iker snorted. Then he did it again, right at David when David looked over. He turned his chair so he was facing front, then pulled his keyboard towards him. “Like you? That’ll work, all right. When the last time you did that, it ended in Morientes getting offered a position here.”
“That wasn’t me! That was Figo!” David yelped. He jumped forward in his seat without thinking, then had to catch himself on the edge of Iker’s desk. Then he pushed himself back. “No, you’re right. Morientes isn’t exactly listening so talking’ll do no good.”
“Don’t start talking about sneaking around after him or anything like that again. I’m mad about this but I don’t want to get into trouble like you,” Iker warned. “That’s why you’re stuck in the office whining to me anyway.”
“I’m not stuck in the office.” In fact, Figo had lifted the ban on David covering live events a few days ago; it just was that there weren’t any going on today that David needed or wanted to attend. If David wanted to go home, he could. He just didn’t want to, because…because okay, it didn’t matter where he worked because he had a hard time doing it without David Silva around. And David Silva was going to be coming back to the office whenever he was done with Mata and the spas, so David was going to wait here. It was more practical. “Well, what are you doing? Sitting around, waiting for Morientes to make all the moves?”
Iker glanced at David, then looked down at the keyboard. He flexed his fingers a few times, then curled them up into fists that he pressed down into the desk, just behind the keyboard. “Villa. You’re just making me want to hurt you, and I almost think that’d be a good idea even when I’m not mad at you. Lately all the things about Morientes go back to you, so you’d think if I get rid of you, he’d stop being a big deal too.”
“Look, this is not a horror movie and it doesn’t work like that,” David said, exasperated. He pushed himself straight in his chair and leveled his gaze at Iker. “Besides, even in a horror movie, killing the killer never works. He always comes back and you know that.”
A look of chagrin passed over Iker’s face. He lifted one hand and touched his temple, then dropped it while shaking his head. Then he raised his head and gave David a long-suffering, long-aggravated stare. “Villa, what the hell do you want?”
“I’m just trying to say, I don’t think Morientes is doing this all on a whim. Or to piss me off. Or even to make your boyfriend uncomfortable or whatever,” David said after a moment. “I think there’s something else going on.”
Iker didn’t really buy it, but he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand. He rubbed at the side of his face. “Like what?”
“Like…look, I know you don’t want to talk about the break-up, but don’t you think that that was weird? Normally prying somebody free from FC’s harder than squeezing blood from a stone, but they just about let him walk out. Not only that, but they let him go and do his independent producer thing. Let him try and be a competitor, basically.” David scooted up his chair so he could put his hands on Iker’s desk, then leaned over them so he had Iker’s complete attention. “And till this column of his, nobody’s talked about it. Yeah, I know, your boyfriend González is a huge deal but protecting insiders only goes so far. And it wouldn’t have worked on Figo, and he’s never wanted to check out the real back-story either.”
“What are you saying? That Figo’s biased?” Iker went back to typing. “Okay, he is, but not like that. You know that. And I don’t think he and Morientes are friends.”
“I’m just saying it looks weird. Even if you take out all the personal shit, it’s weird from a journalistic perspective,” David muttered. “But this did all happen before I joined Duende, so maybe I just don’t know.”
For nearly a minute Iker kept typing, but his brow got more and more scrunched as his typing got slower and slower. Finally he gave up with an irritated sigh. He stared at his computer, then shook his head and moved his mouse to highlight something. Then he hit the ‘Delete’ button and sat back, and sighed again. He rubbed his mouth.
“No, it was pretty quiet, news-wise. When Morientes left. I think. I—I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I was around but it wasn’t my area,” Iker said under his breath. “I didn’t know anybody back then. I wouldn’t know either.”
“I just think maybe we should know. Fine, Figo wants his guest columnist and you don’t want to get in trouble with Figo or González, but still. I don’t want to get David Silva upset—anymore upset than he has been already, because he just wants to let it go. But I think I—we should get to know the whole story. That’s only fair.” David sat back and looked at Iker. “Who would know?”
Iker opened his mouth, then shut it and looked off to the side. The muscles in his cheek and jaw worked. Then he shook his head, and grabbed at the keyboard as if it was going to save him. “You go find out. I’ve no idea.”
“Well, I will. Somebody has to. You’ll see,” David said, getting up.
* * *
“There are reasons we have arrest procedures in place, all right? It’s call respecting people’s rights because that’s why we have laws in the first place, and also because it’s hard enough getting convictions without having them overturned due to technicalities,” Alessandro snapped, kicking a hamper out of the way. With all the suds on the floor, he nearly managed to kick himself into a dryer as well, but at the last moment he caught himself on Zlatan’s shoulder. His voice only stuttered slightly before he adjusted his grip and resumed scolding. “Are you paying attention to me? You never listen, that’s your problem.”
Zlatan opened his mouth, then shut it and retrained his gun on the shadow moving around the back door. It was no good telling the other man that his weight dragging on Zlatan’s arm might throw off a shot; Sandro would just start bitching about how that shit was supposed to be what had kept Zlatan out of jail. “I’m listening! But there’s stuff about protecting civilians too, and I remember that overrides the other things. Besides, we haven’t actually arrested him yet so stop getting your panties all twisted up, okay? It’s not like I can’t still fix it.”
“My what?” Great, Sandro was in an extra-pissy mood today.
Just then the shadow turned into a man darting into the laundromat’s main room. The bastard had balls—instead of trying to duck behind the rows of washers like Zlatan would’ve expected, he just ran straight at Zlatan with his Uzi blazing. Thankfully he was so fucking nervous his first rounds went well wide, so Zlatan had time to yank himself and Alessandro out of the way. The slippery floor meant they did it by falling, and Zlatan’s knees hated him but whatever.
Sandro went one way and Zlatan threw himself the other, rolling over onto his belly as soon as he could. By then the asshole was halfway to the door, and making his skid work for him. Zlatan cursed and grabbed the nearest dryer, heaving himself up. “Hey! Stop! We’re—”
A metal cart came out of nowhere and smacked right into the asshole. Machine-gun fire went all over, Zlatan ducked behind the dryer, and then looked for Sandro. Didn’t see him, but heard their suspect coming towards him. So Zlatan peeked around, then kicked out as the man slid by, neatly knocking away the machine gun. He pinned that safely under a foot and put on the safety, then looked up in time to see Sandro flinging a hamper into the recovering suspect’s head. Suspect went down, grunted hard and then half-curled up into fetal position. Sandro came slowly up after him, gasping for breath.
Zlatan looked at him, then at the bastard suspect on the floor. “Law enforcement. Stop or else we’ll have to use force. Also, you—”
“Oh,” Sandro said, screwing up his face. He hit Zlatan in the arm, then turned in place and surveyed the wrecked laundromat. He absently straightened his suit-jacket, ignoring or just not noticing that one sleeve of it was almost completely torn off. “You could’ve said he was still back there.”
“Yeah, well, I hate interrupting you when you’re on a roll like that,” Zlatan shrugged. He put the safety back on his own gun and then tried to figure out where his set of handcuffs had gone. Or the local cops. “Plus it made him think I was distracted, so he’d try to get out. Otherwise we could’ve gotten stuck in a shootout and then we’d be late for our flight, and you get so bitchy when that happens.”
Sandro had had his phone out and was making a call, but at that he looked up at Zlatan. His face was all tight like he was going to start another rant, but it never came. Instead he just looked at Zlatan and it was…hard to read everything that was going on in his expression. But it made Zlatan shift awkwardly, and Zlatan had to say he was glad when somebody finally came on the other line and took Sandro’s attention off him.
Right about then some sergeant finally crawled out of the suds and volunteered to take over arresting the suspect. Which they should’ve done two days ago anyway, and had him all ready for questioning, so Zlatan was fine with turning that over. He holstered his gun, then took a look at himself. God. Detergent everywhere. Another suit ruined, thanks to Alessandro’s magic ability to have chases end in the stupidest places imaginable.
“Why don’t you just strip it off and throw it in one of the washers with my panties,” Alessandro said suddenly. A tiny smirk played around his mouth as he watched Zlatan start, but it soon skittered away. Alessandro tapped his mobile. “We need to wrap this up. That was Gila. They screwed up your gun permit and we have to go back and straighten that out before we go to the airport.”
“Again? You know, I could just sneak my gear through customs and okay, okay, I know, I’m good now.” But Zlatan still helped himself to a hearty sigh as he contemplated another fight with the bureaucrats. “It’d just be a lot faster.”
Alessandro hit him. “You can use the time I’ll be spending yelling at them to read the file for the trip, and I know you haven’t.”
“I did too. When you were having your fight with Buffon at your check-up on Thursday. We’re plowing through financial records, party-time, blah blah blah.” Zlatan shouldered off that blow and scraped his shoes clean as best he could against a dryer, then headed for the door. A cop tried to stop them and he told them to just reschedule the interrogation with HQ. Then he grimaced and glowered at the other man over a shoulder. “Okay, now you’re just smacking me. That’s exactly what you would’ve done. We don’t have time to squeeze it in now.”
“I know, but—well, you’re an ass,” Sandro said shortly.
They got out of the store and into the street, then had to stop and wait for somebody to get them a car. Sandro fidgeted with his phone, put it away when he saw Zlatan watching, and then proceeded to twitch his damp shirt and twiddle his hair and hunch his shoulders.
“Also checked on your ex,” Zlatan drawled. “Still alive, still with the kid. Who’s celebrating his graduation with his family, by the way, so they’re both out of town.”
“See? Ass.” Alessandro wrapped one arm around himself and stared across the street. He chewed his lip a few times before abruptly throwing his shoulders back. “I don’t like that city, and it’s not just because of Paolo. He and I are fine now, more or less. But the rest…”
Zlatan patted Sandro on the shoulder, and while Sandro was busy shoving him off, got Sandro’s coat off. Then he shrugged off his own and tossed it at Sandro. That kept the other man busy while Zlatan bundled Sandro’s sopping-wet suit-jacket under an arm; Zlatan’s was much drier by far. “Yeah, well, we go in, we do our job, we leave. You know where I am, I know where Henke is, Henke knows where everybody else is, it should be pretty simple.”
“We’re not leaving,” Sandro muttered. He almost-looked at Zlatan, then gazed moodily at Zlatan’s coat, which he was still tossing in his hands. “Work’ll take two days at the most, but—”
“We’re scheduled for four days. Wait a minute, did Lippi put you on vacation again? That wasn’t in the file!”
Sandro wouldn’t look at Zlatan. He just kept massaging Zlatan’s suit-jacket.
After a moment, Zlatan exhaled roughly. He looked around, yelled at the nearest cop to get that damn car, and then rolled his shoulders a few times. Then he looked at Sandro, at how the man’s wet hair was separating from its neat curls into a meshy tangle, and he just took his coat from Sandro’s hands and yanked it down onto Sandro’s shoulders. Then he stood back. “I’d better get a vacation too, then.”
“It’s not a vacation. Not really.” The suit-jacket started to slip off Alessandro’s left shoulder and he started to pull it back. Then he sighed and finally looked up at Zlatan, miserable and defensive. “You know the deposition where the lobsters—” his face grew even longer at Zlatan’s flinch “—well, Lippi’s getting back at me for that one. He really likes Zidane, so we’re staying two extra days because we have to see Luís Figo, head editor of Duende, and pick up copies of some rare Zidane recordings from him. Apparently Lippi knows somebody who knows someone who’s friends with Figo, and Figo’s close to Zidane.”
The car showed up at the end of the street, but traffic was so bad—the burst pipes in the laundromat were flooding the road—that it was going to take a few minutes before it could get to them. Zlatan looked at Alessandro again, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “So basically we’re picking up Lippi’s shower music? Every time I think my life sucks, you make me feel better.”
Sandro twitched. He looked down at his hand, clutching Zlatan’s suit-jacket around him.
“Oh, just hit me,” Zlatan muttered. He cracked a grin at the half-hearted tap he got, then elbowed Sandro right back. “Okay. Duende? I think I read it once, when I got bored on a plane, but I’ve heard about this Figo guy. He sounds like fun.”
“Asshole,” Sandro said. He stepped a little nearer to Zlatan, so their arms bumped each other. Then he got fed up with waiting and began trudging through the puddles to get to the car. Still grinning, Zlatan followed.
* * *
“Nice party,” Figo said, coming up to Fernando.
Fernando paused, then swallowed his mouthful of drink and lowered his glass. He pointed to the corner, where Pepe appeared to be amusing several women and fending off somebody’s importuning publicist at the same time. “It’s not mine, so compliments should go over there.”
“You know, as much as I admire you for not going for the small talk, you probably could’ve used it. Oh, well. To business, then.” At that moment a passing waiter offered Figo some hors d’oeuvres, which he eyed dubiously before asking instead for a beer. The waiter blinked, fobbed Figo’s order off on another waiter and Figo pushed two fingers into the bridge of his nose. “I took a look at the first draft of your column.”
“Oh?” For some reason the waiter was still standing there, so Fernando finally picked up an hors d’oeuvre to make him leave. He had the distinct feeling that Figo wasn’t here to lavish praise on his writing and he didn’t want an audience to that discussion. “Listen, let’s go into the other room. It’s—”
“It’s a good column. Interesting start, sympathetic appeal, good personal insights and a nice introduction of your potential themes,” Figo said, staying where he was.
Fernando stopped in the middle of his step, opened his mouth, and then closed his mouth and moved back to where he’d been. He looked Figo over very carefully, but the other man seemed serious. And not too serious either: he met Fernando’s gaze, but didn’t insist on holding it, which might’ve indicated some defensiveness. When somebody bumped his elbow, Figo looked away, and then he narrowed his eyes at something going on at the other side of the room.
Somebody’s arm protruded between Figo and Fernando. It held out a beer and Figo looked at it, then took it. He unscrewed the top and swigged from the bottle, then turned back to Fernando. “In terms of basic quality, it’s certainly something I’d be comfortable publishing. On the other hand, I do have other considerations. Such as whether—”
“What, Villa? What on earth does he have to complain about? It’s not about him or—it’s not even about a time period where he was doing anything,” Fernando snorted.
Figo blinked slowly, deliberately. Conveying a deep air of surprise and vague disappointment. “Actually, I was wondering about Iker.”
“Iker?” The name was familiar, but Fernando couldn’t quite place it. “Iker…”
Now Figo looked plain exasperated. “Casillas? Movie reviewer? Dating—”
“Oh, him. Sorry, I—well, we’ve never been formally introduced,” Fernando said. All right, that was slow of him, and it probably didn’t sound very polite of him either. But to be fair, and more than a lame excuse, Raúl had never really raised the subject of whom he was seeing, and Fernando had made a point of not looking too closely into it aside from what he already knew. “But why would he be upset? I’m writing about how I’m moving on from the…look, I’m sorry if I upset him, but I can’t pretend that that whole chunk of my life didn’t happen.”
“I’m not even suggesting that you do that. But—” That thing across the room got Figo’s attention again and he looked over, but didn’t entirely stop talking. He just slowed down some, and then he looked back and picked it up again. “Fernando, just why did you write about—”
“Because that’s what I wanted to write about, and what I could write about. I know we talked about editorial decisions and sensitive subject matter, but I really don’t think that this is it. For God’s sake, if your reviewer has a snit every time Raúl’s and my history come up, then he must never go out.” Shaking his head, Fernando grabbed a champagne flute off a passing tray and downed about half of it. Then he grimaced and stared down into the flute, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. That had been some damn dry champagne. “And if you’re going to censor me just to make nice with your employees, then I have to wonder what kind of editor you are these days.”
Figo’s brows shot up, but his eyes kept wandering off to the side. He put out his hand and stabbed a finger into Fernando’s shoulder, his voice forceful but without the impact it could’ve had because he was mostly turned away from Fernando. “Morientes, I really wouldn’t ask questions about censorship and editorial judgment calls when I’ve no experience with them. And I do, and you don’t, and this is not one of those calls anyway. This is a good taste call, where I stand here and make sure you’re willing to stand by your column because you have a share of any problems that—”
Something crashed loudly. Pepe’s parties were never that quiet, but it was the kind of crash that signaled a nasty scene to follow. The chatter in the room dipped precipitously in volume, continued for a few more seconds and then completely died away as someone called someone else a motherfucking son of a bitch.
“Ah, shit,” Figo said, and so heartfelt was it that Fernando glanced sharply at him. The other man had one hand gripping his hair and was watching the goings-on with much more disappointment than irritation in his face. Then he sighed and took down his hand. He looked at Fernando, not flinching when he figured out that Fernando had caught him in an unguarded moment. “Well, so you’ll stand by your writing?”
“Of course.” Fernando was half-distracted by whatever was going on across the room, but he was still paying enough attention to sound offended. “I always stand by what I say, and write and do. I meant everything I said in there. I’d say it to Raúl’s face, even.”
Figo started an intense, searching scan of Fernando’s face, but then a chair flew out of the other side of the room. It crashed down into a thankfully empty spot while people scattered away from it, squealing and cursing. That cleared the crowd enough for Fernando to see an overturned table, red wine staining the carpet—thank God production was covering this party—and a shortish stocky man screaming insults at another person who was partially hidden by a woman’s puffy skirt. After a second’s thought, Fernando placed the screamer as an MU guy.
“What the hell?” Pepe rumbled, making his way over.
The screamer noticed and briefly stopped his torrent of abuse, but then his target moved or something, and he started up again. Something about cocaine and Eastern European strippers. “MU,” Fernando said, jerking his chin at the screamer. “Not important. Where are your bouncers?”
“Yeah, where are—oh, finally.” Pepe stepped back as two burly men, about his height, intercepted the screamer and began to haul him towards the door. “How did he get in? I thought we settled all the copyright issues with the soundtrack.”
“I don’t think it was because of the—” Fernando started.
“You’re nothing but a fucking face. You were never that great of a singer, and when your ass doesn’t look so great anymore, your daddy’s going to drop you too,” the screamer shouted. “You hear me?”
His target finally moved out from the crowd, but had his head down, apparently checking some wine stains on his clothes. He had started towards Fernando and Pepe, but at that last insult he half-turned. His head came up and for a moment he stared impassively at the struggling MU guy. Then he hawked and spat on the floor in front of the MU guy. He gave the man another dead stare, then turned on his heel and stalked straight up to Figo.
“Sorry about that,” Pepe said, looking all over the place as he tried to figure out who needed the apology. “I’m gonna have words with the door people, believe me. Normally I don’t let in minions without their masters.”
“Minions?” Figo repeated, looking faintly amused.
He stopped when his date made a jerky, twisting movement, like the man was going to have a go at Figo. Figo didn’t make any attempt to put up his arms, but instead just looked at him. It was an odd kind of look, considering and a little distant, and not as calm as it was clearly intended to be.
His date glanced at him, then glowered past him and said something; Fernando realized it was Italian a moment later, due to the odd accent. Figo moved one shoulder and replied rather slowly—too slowly for the other man, who snapped back before Figo was done, his voice rising sharply. The planes of Figo’s face shifted very subtly, turning him from jaded to stony, and he answered in a low, deliberate tone. Whatever he said rocked the other man, making him flinch and then take a step back. Then he ducked his head and grabbed at his neck, mumbling something in a decidedly apologetic voice. Figo didn’t seem to be buying it.
“So you haven’t had any stalkers slip through too, have you?” Pepe said abruptly. He grabbed Fernando by the arm and moved them off a few meters—but still where they could see the other pair. “While I’m yelling at security, I might as well get it all done…and have I missed something here? Why is everybody more fascinated with Figo talking to some guy than Figo and you having an argument?”
“That’s not some guy,” Fernando answered after a moment. Then he rolled his eyes and lightly smacked Pepe on the arm. “That’s Figo’s current significant other, and even if you missed that rumor, you should know him. He was lead for that Romanian one-hit wonder about a year ago.”
Pepe looked doubtfully at Fernando, then peeked around Fernando’s head. “Oh…right. Sorry, didn’t recognize him without the eyeliner and leather. So was Figo telling you off about the column?”
“He—” Fernando said.
“Morientes, the column will go to print in two days,” Figo interjected. He either hadn’t heard the conversation or didn’t care, because he talked right over Pepe’s embarrassed jump. “If you change your mind, get any alterations to Albiol—he’ll be your copy editor. Otherwise, congratulations on your first column.”
Fernando blinked. “Okay. I—okay. Thanks.”
But Figo had already moved on. He nodded to Pepe, threw out a compliment on the party mixed with a cryptic comment on the movie, which distracted Pepe, and then exited quickly. His date followed rather defensively, with a stiff back and plenty of darted looks at the curious onlookers.
“Huh. Well, my grandfather always says it’s not a good party if you don’t break anything,” Pepe finally said. He signaled to a waiter to bring them a couple of beers, then slung his arm around Fernando’s neck. “And let me say, I’m glad to hear you’ve got somebody else to do your editing now. If I have to explain the subjunctive tense to you one more time, I’ll lose my mind.”
“Maybe that’s down to the quality of the explanation, and not to me.” Fernando elbowed Pepe in the side, then laughingly ducked the other man’s attempt to ruffle his hair. Suddenly he was breathing easy, relaxing. His column was going through, and before that, he had a party to enjoy. Things certainly weren’t awful for him.
* * *
“Then he said, ‘At least I can still get into clubs. You, you’re never even going to get a sniff of that, let alone work in the music business again. You were riding on a fad, and you didn’t have the sense to set yourself up before you blew it,’” Adrian snarled. He stalked around the room, then aimed a kick at a chair. It missed; he was so angry he wasn’t even looking at what he was doing, but instead turned his head to follow Luís. His backswing made him stumble into the couch, which he slapped as he pushed off it. “And I said he didn’t know shit about talent, and he said, ‘What talent?’”
Luís plugged his mobile and his PDA into their respective holsters, then wiggled his mouse to take his computer off screensaver. He checked his email: only a couple, but it was still a little early. Villa, for example, typically didn’t start getting bounced from—oh, wait, Villa was home tonight. Hopefully. “How drunk was he?”
Half-wild laugh from Adrian. Right after they’d left, he’d been quiet, but as he’d explained things in the car, he’d gradually edged back towards enraged. “He said I was fucked. He said good thing he hears I’m a fucking secretary now, because I’m no fucking singer.”
“No, seriously. How drunk was he?” Luís asked, looking over his computer monitor.
Adrian stopped and stared uncomprehendingly at Luís.
“Adi. He gets Rio Ferdinand coffee. He’s not important, and he was just doing it to get a rise out of you.” Luís glanced at his email again. Nothing he probably needed to read right now—his phone beeped and he checked it, only to find a text from Iker on there, wanting him to call back. Which meant a long, complicated discussion, otherwise Iker would’ve sent an email. “His label represents your old bandmates, so he’s contractually obliged to be a shit to you.”
“I know,” Adrian spat out, twisting away. He scraped his nails through his hair hard enough to pull the skin of his face back, so his cheekbones almost burst through it. Then he dropped his hands and flopped on the couch. “I know, I know, I know. This is what I’m going to get when I go out. I knew that before I went out.”
For a moment Luís considered the text message. Then he pushed away the phone and went around his desk. He came up to the couch and leaned one arm against its top, looking over it at Adrian.
“What?” The other man widened his eyes in mock surprise. “What? You didn’t think so?”
“I think we had this discussion already today, and you wanted to come out anyway,” Luís said neutrally.
Adrian shut his mouth. His chin went up a touch, and then he grimaced and threw his head to the side, into the back of the couch. One of his hands went up and came down carelessly over his chest. “Well, so what? You said I can’t stay in forever. I’m sorry I made us have to leave, but I can’t—he just said—what he said—”
“Do you like working for Pep?” Luís asked.
After a few seconds, Adrian moved his head back and looked questioningly up at Luís. “Did he say something? What did I do?”
“Nothing. At least with him. I’m just asking whether you like being his accountant.” Speaking of whom, Pep had better still be up, family man or not. Luís was going to need someone to listen to him, and Iker was upset and Victor was attending a premiere. “Look, you’re right. That idiot doesn’t know what it takes to make it in music. You do—you’ve done it once already. So why are you getting so upset when people say it’ll never happen again?”
“I’m not upset!” Then even Adrian had to shake his head at himself. “I am, okay, but I—no, I’m happy working for Pep. I like him. He’s put a lot of trust in me, and I’m just trying to show that I deserve it.”
“Which isn’t answering my question, Adi. Are you bored? No, that’s not the right question.” Luís stood off the couch and ran one hand over his face, then looked at Adrian again. “Are you an accountant?”
“No,” Adrian said sharply. Too quick to have thought about it—afterward, his expression said he wished he had, but not because he thought it was the wrong one. He grimaced and pulled himself up, sliding one hand over the couch to grasp at the tails of Luís’ shirt. “No, I…but it’s what I’m doing right now. I’m not—you saw tonight, I got mad. And that’s just words. I’ve got to do better than that before I can even…even think about…”
“You got mad. You’re going to get mad. You stop getting mad when you’re dead.” The hand on Luís’ shirt tensed, dragging down the fabric, and he gently pulled it away and then wrapped his own hand around it. “For the record, Adi, I’m…annoyed about your fight, but I’m not mad. I got about everything I needed to do at that party done first. I still would’ve liked to stay a little longer, but if we’re talking about rearranging my life to fit yours, I probably still owe you a few times.”
After a long moment, Adrian dropped his gaze. He looked at Luís’ stomach, then leaned forward to rest his head on it. His other hand came up and went around Luís’ waist; Luís touched the tips of Adrian’s hair, then ran his hand down the back of Adrian’s neck till his fingers caught in the collar of Adrian’s shirt.
“That fucker,” Adrian muttered, the heat gone from his voice.
Luís stroked Adrian’s neck again, then slowly unwound himself from the other man. “He was right about one thing,” Luís said, bracing himself. It was a good decision, once Adrian had looked up at him. “You’re not a singer. Not right now. Maybe you will be again, maybe not—but that’s up to you. And you need to figure that out now, not later. One time, I’ll let you fuck up. I’ll be annoyed, but I’ll stay and help clean up. A second time, I’ll just let you fuck up.”
Adrian kept looking at Luís. He didn’t say anything, or try to. He did make a motion with his hand, like he was trying to pull Luís back, but then he pulled his arms over the couch. He inhaled deeply, then nodded and got to his feet. As Adrian was heading for the bedroom, Luís went back to his desk and picked up his phone to call Iker.
***