Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The water was warm but Cristiano´s body against the wet skin of his chest was even warmer. It was a strange picture, Leo being much smaller in comparison to Cristiano´s toned and muscular body to be the one leaning back against the wall of the bathtub with Cristiano resting over his chest, but Lionel wouldn´t have it any other way.

It had been an exhausting 24 hours, his body ached for moments and his muscles complained because of strain, the same tightness that resembled the tiredness and tension suffered through erratic Champion League´s finals and cardiac games that defined championships and yet, at what it seemed like the last lame kicks of life of Cristiano´s dying heat, Lionel felt complete.

The Argentinian smiled softly ashe glanced down to his own chest, witnessing therelaxed face of the older man currently laying over him, his pretty caramel eyes were closed and his features relaxed as if he were asleep, the perfect picture of contentment.  Leo loved to hear the low random purrs that dropped from the omega´s pillow lips every time the Argentinian´s hands massaged his tights, his sides or his tense neck under the water. It was even more gratifying to see him leaning towards the direction of Leo´s lips whenever the alphabent his head down and left little kisses on every stretch of available and obtainable skin.

“I take it it´s almost over, then.” Leo murmured almost to himself as he caressed one of the omega´s tights with the tips of his right´s hand fingers.

Cristiano sighed deeplybefore responding. “To your great disappointment.”

Leo chuckled, leaning his head back against the edge of the bathtub and feeling the cold white marble against his wet scalp. “As first experiences go… it wasn´t half bad.” Leo admitted.

Cristiano laughed rather chestly at this simple commentary, making the water splash a little and prompting an automatic grin on Leo´s own lips.

“That´s because you weren´t the one with a forty-degree fever.” Cris commented with a groan as he stretched inside the tub like a lazy cat, with the sound of some cracking bones to match.

Leo frowned as he twisted his mouth. “Is that true? Was it that unpleasant for you?” he asked like a fool, biting his lower lip for a second.

The question must have taken the Portuguese by surprise because the omega tensed all of a sudden and turned his head to the side, opening his previously closed eyes a little, the razors of concerned orbs peaking from curled lashes to stare at the insecure alpha.

“No.” Cris rectified, sounding soft. “Well… yes, but not like that. It was a joke.” He explained. “It would have been painful… if you hadn´t come, of course.” He added.

“Mmm” Leo hummed, suddenly a little shy by the generous declaration at the end of that sentence. He sighed as he moved his arms from the edge of the tub to hug the older man´s middle, pushing him against his body even further and trying to fuse him into his body.

There was the itchy reminder of all the filth they did together but a few hours ago and Lionel pursed his mouth as he drew figures of their lustful past activities over the white impeccable wall in front of him, the shadow of the candles that he had the care to lit before submerging them both into the tub playing cruel tricks on his mind as the flames danced around the bathroom.

It all seemed so intimate, maybe even more so than the love they made on Cristiano´s bed, and yet Lionel felt there was still some distance to breach between them.

In an act that couldn´t be described as anything but of intrinsic sulking, Leo bent down and buried his nose in that delicate space between Cristiano´s neck and shoulder, breathing in the musky scent of burning caramel and Lavender soap sticking to that tender yet firm skin.

Cristiano chuckled at the sensation as he threw a hand back, petting Leo´s wet hair a couple of times as the younger man pouted over the Portuguese´s trapezium. “Don´t be such a baby.” He scolded him gently “You were great. Perfect, even. I loved it.” He praised him before lowering his arm again and patting one of Leo´s hands, which were firmly locked over his abdomen. “It was good.”

Lionel grunted, feeling like a kid by being graded as ꞌgoodꞌ, and decided to be a bitch about it. “Thank you for that but I highly doubt you remember what happened on that bed.”

“Moody beast.” Cristiano grunted back, elbowing him gently over his liver and making him huff in the process. “I remember enough. Don´t argue with me.”

That´s even scarier, Lionel thought. The Argentinian felt suddenly melancholic, both treasuring as lamenting the whole experience. He had had many expectations when he took the plane from Paris to Riyadh and none of them had really materialized as he thought they would. Not that any of them mattered, really, the result had been the same. He had spent a heat with Cristiano and had feasted in his body and his natural lovingness, that was already much more than he could ask for, but the sore look of that black leather band that was still, even now, as they relaxed into a bathtub together, firmly placed over the Portuguese´s neck had managed to break some of that enchantment and made him land face first onto the cold dirty ground.

He knew it was wrong, in a way. But Lionel wasn´t going to hold himself accountable for a natural instinct that all alphas that just shared a heat with their omegas had.

He may be a quiet unassuming guy, but he was still an alpha like any other.

He had the same damn instincts of possessiveness that dominated most of their lot.

Felt as equally as eager to bite on the tender flesh of their omegas and bound themselves to the other.

Lionel huffed petulantly at remembering his father´s words when he was still a child. That there was no greater desire in the world for an alpha that to be tied to his or her omega.

Such notion he had underestimated and ignored at the time, being as in love as he was with a perfectly attractive and fulfilling beta woman as he had been.

He understood that urge now, though.

Understood it so well he felt his teeth ache every time he sniffed in the sweet caramel smell of his omega.

His.

“So, it´s over then.” Leo declared mindlessly, sighing a little in regret and looking at the ceiling in lament. “The heat.”

“Mmm?” Cristiano asked groggily, probably already falling asleep into Leo´s embrace. “Oh, yes, more or less, it´s not entirely gone, I still feel warm and itchy…but, well…” he chuckled a little at the end, prompting Leo to spy a look on him and find the omega grinning at his own lower anatomy with cheeky diversion. “…there is still the urge, I guess. But give me a couple of hours and I will be totally clean.”

Leo groaned in affirmation, blinking down at that muscular and toned body Cristiano took great care in keeping in shape. It had always amazed him how perfect it was, how attractive and how both firm and soft it was even with its sharp edges, without thinking twice he untangled his hands and cruised them downwards, touching skin and reaching that sweet apex where Cristiano´s excited groin peaked slightly from the water, making the Portuguese moan at the contact.

“That´s a pity.” Leo said with the beginning of a smile “I would have loved to enjoy you a little bit more.” He said before kissing him over his right ear.

“Ah! Leo!” Cristiano moaned, biting his lower lip as Lionel started to slowly pump his rapidly interested cock, enjoying the small tremors that seemed to shake the older man slightly.

“You used me like a toy.” Lionel scolded him as he kept a nice rhythm with his hand. “Don´t think I didn´t notice. Made me come all the way here for you to ride me like one of your own personal dildos.”

He spew that as if he really held a grudge about it when Lionel could still feel himself grow stiff by simply remembering the way the omega had mounted him with expertise and wore that mesmerizing melted expression of pleasure all over his pretty face. His alpha could choke, he will pay a thousand fortunes to see this magnificent man riding him the way he did hours ago.

Cristiano started to squirm under the attentions of Leo´s hand, legs almost kicking the end of the tub as his hips rose and fell in place, looking for more friction when all he had was the cruel generosity that Leo saw fit to give or deny him.

Somehow the thought of it brought a shameless smile to Leo´s face.

“You know… and maybe I shouldn´t say this, but you never told me how pretty you looked during your heat…” Leo commented casually over the strokes of his hand. “Nor how loud you moaned whenever you rode dick. You were like a pretty princess, all blushed pink as you moved your hips like a professional equestrian. I might not mind be the sweet white steed.”

Cristiano didn´t answer that but that was okay because it didn´t really seem like a question to begin with. Leo felt rather powerful like this, fondling Cristiano´s cock with his hand, holding a power that he never really had during their time together in bed.

Leo loved it and a small pang of something dirty lodged inside his chest, enjoying Cristiano´s loss of control and his own sudden gain of it.

“You were taking my cock so deep in your beautiful ass as you whispered in my ear how much you loved it. How handsome I was. How perfect for you and how much you would miss me once I´ll go back to France.”

Cristiano moaned loudly as a response, gasping and throwing his head back as Leo twisted his wrist in one particular hard stroke, accelerating his hand and making the sound of the water splash with every movement.

“It´s not fair.” Leo complained further, deep thoughts spilling from his mouth the same way Cristiano´s moans spilled from his open mouth“You controlled everything, you rode me as you pleased, you directed the pace, you asked to be called sweetie when I wanted to treat you like a whore…” he confessed. “…tell me, Cristiano, when are you going to play nice and do as you are told? Or am I supposed to be your fucking fool forever? Your little plaything all ready and set for your entertainment?”

It was all rhetorical and driven by the lust of the moment, no real spite for Lionel had loved every minute of being inside Cristiano, of seeing his desperate face bloom as he was fucked by his cock, but in the depths of his soul, Lionel wondered if the alpha beast in him wanted something else, and the instinctual knowledge that that was true made him growl inside his mouth before biting the space between Cristiano´s neck and shoulder.

Leo kissed Cristiano´s forehead as the man squirmed in his arms, enjoying the melodically sound of his moans and grunts as the alpha´s playful hands moved masterly over him and made him fall apart. Suddenly, like the cruel and simultaneously generous creature Leo could come to be, the alpha lowered his other hand, accommodating his body to be able to reach that hidden part of Cristiano´s anatomy that Leo knew would send him right over the edge.

“AH!” Cristiano actually screamed once two of Leo´s fingers touched his hole and he unceremoniously plugged them inside, parting those deliciously hot and yet tight walls that overflowed with slick even underneath the water, making Leo lick his lips at imagining the sweet taste of it over his tongue.

“You like that better, honey?” Leo groaned at the older man´s ear, enjoying the way Cristiano couldn´t help but yelp an almost unintelligible ´yes´ under his moans. “I´m inside you, just like you like it, don´t you?” he told him.

When there was no real answer to his filthy questions, the Argentinian roughed up the movements of his fingers inside that wet cavity, making the Portuguese shout.

“I asked you a question, omega.”

“YES!” Cristiano screamed, snapping his hips at the rhythm of both Lionel´s hand stroking his cock and the fingers torturously fucking his hole.

“Good. It´s about time you learn to follow orders.”

Lionel could feel the needy omega shake with pleasurable tremors as he cried out by the combination of the overwhelming sensations he was feeling. It was a little funny how now he turned into the melted defenseless creature Lionel had imagined an omega in heat to be, just when his estrus was about to end, and yet, as before, Lionel had no complains, he had loved the tenderness in Cristiano´s eyes when they were still in bed hours before, riding him fast as he pull at the strands of Leo´s hair and he cupped his face with uncharacteristic gentle hands as much as he loved what they were sharing now, a passionate fucking that was meant to ride the last trots of a dying heat. It was just such a shame that it had taken them so long to get here.

“Are you close, Cris? Are you about to come?” he asked kindly as he bit the end of the omega´s right shoulder, tasting a little saccharine caramel as he lapped at the skin. “Let it go, honey. It´s just what you need. Let me take the edge off.”

Cristiano didn´t take long to follow the advice, he bit his lips fiercely as he tried in vain to kill the erotic sounds that slipped past the closed gates of his mouth, shaking almost obscenely in the alpha´s arms as he launched forward and moaned so high that Lionel wondered if somebody had been able to hear them, even as secluded as they were. The omega´s cock spurt a substantial amount of cum all over himself and the water, making it filthy as his walls squeezed Leo´s fingers inside him so tightly the Argentinian smirked snidely; it almost felt as if they were going to rip his fingers off his hand.

Cristiano panted over him, looking like one of the melting candles that burned around the room, Lionel felt the sudden urge to shush him and kiss him tenderly, right after having his fist around his needy cock and with his fingers still plugged deeply inside his ass. It was almost a surrealist painting.

Slowly, Leo pulled his fingers from inside the omega, making the bigger man whine a little at the action and raising the digits towards his face. Cristiano opened his eyes slightly, looking at the dripping fingers, mixed with water and the Portuguese´s own juices, frowning at the filthy offering as he turned to look at Lionel with questioning eyes.

The Argentinian didn´t change the calculated expression on his face, ignoring the silent interrogation being taken place to focus only in his own hands. The water felt boiling as the alpha brought the fingers to his own mouth, taking them deep and letting his tongue feast on the taste of Cristiano as he looked at the older man straight in the eye, fearless and unabashed from the obscene picture he painted, humming tellingly as he savored the musky and penetrating blend dripping from his hand, like a viscid pastry. 

Cristiano didn´t say anything but exhaled, hypnotized by Leo´s actions as he followed his every move.

Lionel smirked with the two fingers still in his mouth.

They tasted sweet.

Everything about them was an escape, and none of it rang truer than when they dared to have a peak from the door of their bedroom. Lionel looked down at his phone with concern, brows furrowed down almost touching each other as his brown eyes seemed to nearly pierce the screen of the phone in his hand.

“What is it?” Cristiano asked, finally wearing a shirt after days of being completely and unabashedly naked.

The Argentinian didn´t answer, which in and on itself should have been worrying enough, but he slowly raised his eyes towards Cristiano with a signature concerned expression.

“Apparently… I´ve been grounded.” He mumbled as he scratched a side of his beard.

Cristiano blinked at the air, perplexed.

“What do you mean with… grounded?” he asked rather slowly. “How can that—”

“For leaving.” The alpha huffed as he leaned back on the mattress, back of his hands wrinkling the bedding. “They are calling it unprofessional. Apparently, I skipped training with PSG because I made an unauthorized trip to Saudi Arabia.”

Cristiano would be lying if he said he didn´t feel a strange pang of guilt assault him for a second, forcing him to look away and pursing his lips before he regained his usual demeanor.

Lionel stared at him a little softly, more resigned than mortified by the news of his club probably ready to punish him for taking this unscheduled trip. It made something inside Cristiano´s stomach twist into knots and made him feel uneasy.

“…I´m sorry.” He said in an exhaled of breath.

Lionel looked at him startled and confused, brown eyes shining with a mysterious gleam of concern.

“…I made you come all the way here without warning.” Cristiano continued “I didn´t think of the consequences and now your team is upset with you—”

“What on earth?” Lionel breathed out, interrupting Cristiano uncharacteristic and sudden wallowing. “What are you talking about, Cris? No.” He shook his head as he stood up from the bed. “Don´t say that.”

Cristiano blinked at him, closing his mouth slowly as Lionel started to walk to his direction, closer to the bathroom´s door.

“I don´t regret coming here with you.” Leo said with the beginnings of a smile as he stood in front of him. “Or sharing your heat with you. It was truly wonderful.”

The way the alpha smiled made Cristiano purse his lips again, this time to hide the intrinsic smile that the lovely sight of Leo´s brough to his own face. It took considerable effort and his cheeks hurt a little as he tried to stop it but Cristiano´s pride could only bare so much in one day; broken and blurry memories of the soft words and the longing stares he gave Lionel while they were in bed would embarrass him for weeks, and high in happy hormones as he was, it certainly took very little to tear a silly tender expression from him at the moment.

“I don´t regret it one bit.” Leo said, full toothy grin plastered on his long weasel looking face, or at least that was the way Cristiano´s brain tried hard to describe it in order to not notice how handsome he looked with that manly gingerish beard growing on his face, or how his brown eyes shined so prettily when they fixed solely upon him. Everything was easier to manage if he still clung to more conventional not compromised standards of beauty and didn´t put his own input on the lovingness of Lionel Messi´s face.

“You might, tomorrow morning when you fly back to France and find Al-Khelaifi staring angrily down at you with those crazy eyes of his.” Cristiano mocked with a snort as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Lionel´s resolution didn´t seem to waiver as he shook his head slightly. “Then I´ll make sure to think of yours instead, and then his ugly eyes would truly have no effect on me.” He casually said, making Cristiano´s teasing smile tremble and give.

“Shut up, you are making me blush now.” The omega confessed in defeat, looking down at the cream carpet covering the floor, too late to stop the goofy smile that now spread over his lips without permission.

Leo´s hands invaded his sight as they curled around Cristiano´s stubborn folded arms, forcing the Portuguese to lift his stare to look at those doe eyed orbs that seemed to want to invite him into their coffee-colored waters.

Chocolate filled his lungs as that soft and yet intimate smell appeared just in time, making a funny taste smear on his tongue, forcing Cristiano to admit his partiality towards sweetness even when his diet rarely permitted it.

“If I make you blush, am I allowed to claim a kiss as a reward?” Leo playfully asked, eager to appeal to the competitive side of Cristiano to obtain his benefits.

The true it was the Argentinian didn´t have to exert himself too much to get what he wanted, but Cristiano wouldn´t be the one to reveal that to him, although he could make an exception today, for the omega suddenly felt his own lips burn with the need to press them against the alpha´s.

“You don’t have to beg for those, you know.” Cristiano let him know before leaning down slightly until he deposited a soft and quick kiss on those of the younger man. “I mean… apparently you have certain advantages on that department.” He teased with spirited ambiguity.

Now Lionel´s face was the one painted red as that lovely silly smile reappeared on his lips and his coffee like eyes melted to Cristiano´s new found reciprocity.

“Is that so?” he asked, desirous.

“Well, I seem to recall that I am your boyfriend, so…” Cristiano responded with a shrug and a charming side-smirk.

Lionel´s smile only grew as his eyebrows lifted over his forehead in delighted appreciation.

“…I guess you could just kiss me as much as you like.” Cristiano finished, trying to sound as uninterested as possible and failing miserably at it, prompting Lionel to melt like one of the candles they had lit during their mischievous bath together.

It all seemed too perfect, and it was entirely scary.

Lionel heeded his advice and went for it, in that romantic completely youthful way that only teenagers and young lovers had to embrace the moment, sizing Cristiano´s lips with his and making those caramel eyes close shut-in response, losing himself in the electrifying feel of it, of uncomplicated emotions far away from the unnecessary strain of the world trying to wreck whatever they had.

It was entirely cathartic, the sweet warmth upon his sensitive lips, it was the missing piece to make Cristiano feel at ease and his still awaken omega praise him for it. It was quite liberating.

When they separated it was to a longing stare, intimately shared and intricated, mixing so much wires that could easily lit a dangerous spark, and yet Cristiano was betting that it wouldn´t, that it would ultimately work because he didn´t want to know what it would do to him if it didn´t.

“Would it be too inappropriate from me to stay another day?” Lionel asked while biting his lips, one hand gripping the back of Cristiano´s head, trying to keep him close by.

The omega raised one eyebrow as he mused the petition, not really knowing how to feel about it. “I don´t think that would be well taken by your Qatari boss.” He suggested, chuckling again.

Messi clicked his tongue in distaste. “He is already pissed with me, what would another day do?”

Cristiano shook his head slightly, trying not to laugh.

“This is so unlike yourself.” He declared, pulling away from his gripping hand with a sigh of his own. “As it´s from me.”

The moment was stolen and even Lionel knew it, because Cristiano could see the deep disappointment in his puppy eyes when Cristiano took his distance, walking towards one of the night tables to pick his own phone up and check the time, trying to pretend that the younger man´s sad expression didn´t affect him. It was almost midnight. He hadn´t seen his children in three days and the creeping reminder of the outside world demanding their attention and presence made his guts tangle again, bringing him back from cloud nine and down to earth.

“Are you going to still use that?”

The slightly crispier sound of Leo´s voice took him out of his self-imposed exile and made him turn to look at the other man. Lionel stood where Cristiano had left him, hands hidden inside his pockets as he looked at the floor with that lost expression of his, the great mask of indifference that he usually wore anywhere but here, in the safe intimacy of Cristiano´s company, the sight of it made him feel strangely frustrated.

“What do you mean?” he asked, unsured of what the younger man meant.

Leo grazed the smallest of smiles before it all fade away, back into parsimony. “The collar. Would you keep wearing it until I´m gone?”

The way he said that sounded bitter and it made Cristiano frown for a second, his hand reached upwards, touching the edge of the hard leather mindlessly.

“I suppose I can do without it now.” He joked, pulling back to undo the secret latch. It gave after a couple of tries and he watched as Lionel followed every movement like a wounded man, his mask was well put but his eyes seemed to speak what his mouth wouldn´t articulate. It just occurred to Cristiano how much he hated it, the way Lionel seemed to coil into himself like an inexpressive little kid afraid of raising his voice, sometimes Cristiano just preferred open confrontation.

In his hand, there was the black piece of leather and he looked at it before looking back at Lionel, finding him as focused on the protective band as it had been when Cristiano had undone it. With a rapid movement, Cristiano tossed it to the side, making it land on the ruined bed.

He had seen that spark before and he supposed he must have suspected it from the start. A bitter smile of his own was fighting to appear on his lips but he refused to give in to the fickleness of his beaten heart, knowing full well he had committed himself to this, when he had just felt the tenderness of Leo´s hands and had seen the unadulterated truth of his emotion reflected on the brown windows of his eyes.

He had to hold on to that instead, not in the hungry ghosts of his past.

“I seem to recall you holding me against the wall of an elevator in Paris telling me that I would look nice with a collar on.” He said with a chuckle, stepping closer to the tense alpha in the other side of the room as he tried to light up the mood.

Messi pursed his lips as the incriminatory reminder hit close to home, probably already embarrassing him for his current poor behavior.

“I didn´t mean that…” Leo tried to pretend but that only widened Cristiano´s grin as he approached him.

“…because you were horny?” Cristiano finished for him as he stopped before the shorter man, forcing the alpha to glance at him instead of the uninteresting corner of the room. “Or because the experience of a heat with me didn´t live up to your standards?”

Leo´s eyes opened in panic, the previous red on his cheeks draining from his face, making him look like a bleached phantom.

“Of course not! I´m not disappointed!” he corrected immediately, stepping towards Cristiano and making his soft dark chocolate scent more prominent and almost dragging a purr out of him. “I meant what I said before, it was truly wonderful.”

Cristiano smiled tenderly. “But not what you expected.” He insisted. “It´s all right to say that. Most alphas think omegas act like mindless and needy sex-starved little monsters, it´s not necessarily like that actually.”

Cristiano could tell the conversation was making the other man uncomfortable and not for the first time the omega enjoyed the unconventional power switch. Having the upper hand was a gratifying feeling, especially in omega-alpha relationships, but with Leo it was even more pronounced; his cluelessness over their second gender roles made everything even more exhalating.

“Omegas can be needy, can be demanding, can be intense, can be aggressive during their heats.” Cristiano informed him, tilting his head to the side as he inspected the blushing man in front of him. “It´s a myth that we all just become some submissive blubs that just beg to be taken by an alpha. It´s different for all of us.”

That made the Argentinian think, apparently, for he stopped fidgeting and squeezed his eyes slightly, as if remembering something.

“You were…” he started, looking at nowhere in particular as his teeth nibbled at his bottom lip. “…soft.” He declared finally, making eye contact again.

Cristiano grinned. “That can be true.” He shrugged. “I don´t really remember specifics but I do recall you slow fucking me very nicely. I probably asked you for that.”

Lionel narrowed his eyes as that charming red threatened to paint his cheeks again, Cristiano loved it and he laughed a little at the sight of it.

“Don´t worry, though” Cristiano said, placing his hand on one of Leo´s shoulders “you will have more opportunities to make me your little bitch and take it from behind as you call me ´your little slut´.”

Leo slapped his hand away with genuine embarrassment as Cristiano laughed wholeheartedly, enjoying his flustered expression.

“Pará, burro!” the Argentinian exclaimed as he too fought not to give in to whatever they were doing at the moment.

It was silly and reckless and dangerously misgiving. The flow between them was more natural than it had ever been and Cristiano hated the way they ran like water, free and unleashed, disregarding the fact that they were not able to do as they pleased with their time and lives, that there were people, teams, companies and careers involved.

And yet, why did it feel so right?

Cristiano didn´t even want to begin to think about it, and gracefully enough he didn´t have to, because Lionel took initiative and pulled him down towards him, kissing him hungrily and without the anxiety he had shown before, took him onto him as if he owned him.

And somehow, without the Argentinian even knowing, he did.

Cristiano knew he was behaving like some sort of lunatic. He knew it because he had never thrown himself into the rocks like this, with a desperation that screamed insanity. He imagined his mother´s face, mortified and pale as he presented himself to her doorstep with the news. He could picture his siblings´ faces too, overwhelmed and utterly silenced by the incredibly dumbfounded move he was about to make.

He could even see his agent´s face, his teammates´ expressions, the disbelief in Kaka´s black eyes… but Cristiano couldn´t think much on that when he himself couldn´t quite put together how he got himself in this situation.

It had been a whim.

A rush of the moment kind of thing.

And because Cristiano was defined by those, he had gone through it as if such behavior was normal. Because in a way it was, normal for him at least.

He stared at the elegant ring he had stored inside his closet, seeing the sparkling tiny diamonds shine at his direction as if they were talking to him, daring him to make his move.

He shut the little velvety box down, casting the killing thought of it before it festered further.

There. Out of sight, out of mind.

Just in cue, he heard the resounding heels of Irina walk through the halls of Cristiano´s home—now more like ´their´--announcing her presence as she came into view, finding the Portuguese footballer hunched over their closet´s resting bench instead of hunched over the tiny secret ring he kept somewhere the Russian model wouldn´t even attempt to look.

Not that he thought she would even think about it, of course.

“What are you doing here?” She asked with a raised eyebrow. “Musing on which Nike shoes you will use tonight for our date?”

There was humor in her voice, but Cristiano huffed rather tiredly at the small jab hidden between what it would seem as simple banter. He knew Irina wasn´t actually throwing punches, but the female alpha, as all of her kind, were given to be controlling freaks from time to time. Cristiano couldn´t ignore the way the woman had tried to suggest some changes into his wardrobe.

And the fact that the Real Madrid´s player had actually listened to some of her advice and gone and followed her direct instructions in some of his looks, told him just how much she had wrapped him on her little finger.

Jesus Christ, sometimes he couldn´t recognize himself anymore.

And he silently wondered if that was a good or a bad thing.

“Are you all right, Cris?” The woman asked, looking at him with true concern as she looked through her side of the closet.

“Eh?” He mumbled clumsily.

She looked at him for a second, with those green eyes that seemed to see right through him, and that spiky eucalypt scent that burned his nose and his problems when it was convenient.

“Yeah…” He responded when the silence started to become uncomfortable. “I´m just thinking on the next match, that´s all.”

Irina huffed and smirked, almost as loud as a horse. “Already? You just played two days ago. You can´t think of football all the time, Cris.”

Cristiano suppressed the need to clarify that he, actually and very much in fact, could think about football, his career, his dream, his passion, everyday, at all hours and in many ways, but he didn´t need to pick up senseless fights with his girlfriend, especially when she was about to leave to attend her own professional engagements and that would prompt them to be separated from the other for a while.

So, the male omega sighed instead of biting back and turned around to have a better look at the beautiful and unique figure of his girlfriend.

“When are you leaving exactly?”

“Tomorrow, I already told you that.”

“Oh.” He said “I must have forgotten about it.”

There was that huffing sound again. “Why am I not surprised?” She retorted with mockery.

Well, this was not going as smoothly as Cristiano wanted it to be.

He bit his lower lip; if she were any other person, the omega would have already thrown some equally sarcastic comment straight to her face, but he had learned to bite his tongue while dating Irina Shayk for almost two years now. His mother had mentioned that he had grown more patient now that he was a father.

He had snorted at the weird compliment/thin veiled insult and then he had kept to himself that such new acquired abilities had been forged by having to put up with his alpha girlfriend´s territorial demands.

“So, what do you want to have tonight?” the football player asked, restarting the conversation in a less confrontational direction.

That seemed to have worked, for the woman turned on her heels and she gave him an excited and complicit look.

“I don´t know. What do you feel up to? And please tell me is your cheating day because I´m really feeling like ribs.” She confessed with a cheeky smile.

Cristiano mirrored the gesture because he found those small things that Irina did utterly debilitating.

“If that is what you want in the last day before you go far away from my arms, then you shall have it, princess.” He said with a silly voice that just reiterated how low he had fallen.

Irina´s eyes sparkled and she abandoned her search for whatever it was she was looking for, going towards Cristiano and sitting over his lap, arms crossing at the back of the male omega´s head.

“Would you eat bbq for me, baby doll?”

Cristiano would not admit it, because it was humiliating and so typical of alphas to use feminine pet names on their omegas regardless of the so called omega´s gender, but the Portuguese man secretly loved it when she called him that, so he smirked prettily and held her girlfriend enticing hips.

“Sure, thing.” He said with a shrug. “You can even talk me into some form of carbonated drink if you try hard enough.”

Irina´s eyes opened wide at the wild suggestion thrown in the air so effortlessly. It wasn´t as if Cristiano fully meant it, but liked he said, he could be opened to the idea, if the woman currently in his arms was willing to put those wonderful hands of hers to good use.

“Jesus Christ, this must be my lucky day.” She exclaimed as she laugh. “Tell me it´s not April´s fools.”

Cristiano rolled his eyes before hunching down and nipping at her neck, making the stunning woman in his arms squirm and laugh even louder than before.

“Take me to your favorite place, baby tiger.” He said, kissing her brow and smelling the traces of nutmeg on her alpha scent. “I would gladly follow your lead.”

And wasn´t that just the right thing to say? Because the woman on his lap just seemed to come to life at those magical words.

Ever since their bedroom fight some months ago, the tension built on their relationship making them fear a possible separation. They hadn´t really talked about it in the way they should have had to, but at the very least they had called a truce and mended in every possible way they could without compromising each other´s pride.

Such compromises came with certain prices, of course. Irina had learned not to push and Cristiano had learned to indulge the possessiveness of the woman that shared his bed and adopted some new features in his demeanor and vocabulary.

Baby tiger, came to mind. But at least, the pet name was quite fitting.

With those dangerous green eyes preying on Cristiano as if he were only a small tiny kitten in comparison, and although, the Portuguese man resented being casted in a passive role that could never fit him, he had learned to love the way Irina shuddered at the pretended power play, the way she bit her lips whenever he said ´yes, ma´am´ when she ordered him around, the way she melted to his touches

Fuck. He must be in love, then.

Hence why he had decided to sporadically buy an engagement ring while he was passing a fancy jewelry store in Italy during one of his work-related trips.

Oh, well.

If it wasn´t love, then it was close enough. He said to himself, kissing Irina full on the mouth and closing his eyes, just taking in her burning minty scent and ignoring the rest.

It was easier when he didn´t think too much about it.

It was all much better when he closed his eyes just like this.

And simply let himself go.

He had said it best, after all. Out of sight, out of mind.

“The last one, I swear…”

Lionel huffed as he tried so hard not to roll his eyes and keep the fake smile in place for the camera.

The sound of the click made him sigh as the photographer made an awkward thumb up sign towards him and Leo instantly dropped the stiffness on his shoulders, barely registering the kangaroo that still looked up at him with curious, and Lionel swore, judging eyes next to him.

“It´s easier to make Mateo smile for a picture than you.” Antonella huffed angrily as she looked at Lionel with familiar disappointment. “And that´s saying something.”

The footballer turned to look at his wife a little offended at the comparison before shifting his gaze towards their two children, who seemed pretty entertained by the visit to the Saudi Arabian zoo that their parents had spontaneously dragged them to another continent.

Lionel felt a little sheepish at the light scolding, after all, Antonella had flown all the way from France with kids in toil just to cover up for his carelessness. He ought to be more considerate.

“I´m sorry. You know I´m not a huge fan of photos.” He said.

“A stupidity, really, if one considers that people take pictures of you all the time.”

“Maybe that is exactly the reason why I don´t like it, Anto.” Leo suggested as he glared at the her.

“Maybe” she conceded “or perhaps you would be having a better disposition for one if you were in the company of certain tall sun-tanned Portuguese footballer instead of ours.”

Now, that was unfair. And low. It only served to make Leo feel guilty, and by the mischievous gleam in Antonella´s eyes, the male Argentinian could bet that that had been the intention all along.

He sighed, facing the woman wholly. “Don´t say that. Of course, I want to spend time with you and the kids. This is just too…”

“Bizarre?” the fellow Argentinian filled in for him.

Leo didn´t answer but he pursed his lips and that was as good as an affirmation.

“It´s all right. About time I get to experience other type of weather that isn´t the gloomy clouded sight of Paris.” Antonella said with a shrug, glancing at Mateo who was now trying to tempt his brother into a sword fight with sticks. “Although, I would have liked for you to inform your dear club before disappearing to Riyadh.” She finished with a telling grin.

The way Lionel couldn´t refute that without mentioning that Cristiano needed him and that had been more important than his job was the only thing that stopped him for speaking, he could imagine how well that would go; Antonella would chew him out for that and laugh at his face for days.

“Don´t even mention it.” Leo said instead, rolling his eyes at remembering his current club. “I can´t even begin to imagine what kind of reception I will have once we fly back to Paris.”

Antonella hummed, still amused. “I can. They´re already whispers about a two-week suspension, I believe.”

“Really?” he asked, frowning.

“Really. Everybody´s talking about it.”

The way Lionel groaned must have come from the catacombs of his soul. Against conviction, Lionel truly wished he had never left Cristiano´s bed, the way he could be buried in the fluffy pillows and soft Egyptian cotton sheets with the warm Lavender smelling body of the Portuguese omega next to him right now, instead of trying to entertain a spontaneous and panickily arranged photo-op for the Saudi Arabian government in order to save face.

His agent had managed to arrange everything very hastily, pulling contacts and offering a great excuse to hand to the PSG directors and the whole media to propagate.

In truth, Lionel couldn´t care less. Not since yesterday.

Cristiano had been right at mentioning that their share heat had been a very different experience to what Lionel had expected to be when he had flew from Europe to his arms.

At the end of it all, it had been even better.

And he wasn´t really talking about the sex.

The way Cristiano looked at him was different. There were flying sparks of feelings that were difficult to describe with words but that Lionel swore he had felt since the moment he had fallen into the depths of the Portuguese´s caramel eyes.

Cristiano had always been funny, had always been sensual, had always been lovable in many different ways and Lionel had never lacked sympathy nor desire nor affection for him, had never thought he would ever had his fill of the beautiful omega, and yet, now he couldn´t take his eyes away from the brightness of him, could feel his hands already ache by the emptiness they suddenly feel, without having them placed upon the other man´s perfect body, wishing he could still steal away kisses when the Portuguese was half-way through a cheeky phrase, wishing he could still smelling the residual lavender soap sticking to his tanned skin.

“You really miss him, don´t you?” Antonella asked solemnly, reading his mind as if Lionel had been broadcasting his thoughts.

Leo stared at her unmoved, capturing the reflection of himself in the brown of Antonella´s eyes, the sudden empathy that she showed towards his lost lovesick case.

“Is it strange to say that I miss him more than ever?” Leo asked, utterly defeated against the urge to confess. “Even when I´ve never been geographicallycloser to him since we started this?”

Antonella laughed, but her voice was perfectly mixed with affection and not plain mockery and that made Lionel smile tenderly to himself.

“No at all. Actually, that sounds exactly like something you would do.” She pointed out as she tried to hide ser smile behind one of her hands. “I´m surprised that you are currently here. I was betting you would simply tell the world to fuck off for once and simply stay with him these two days.”

“Don´t tempt me, I´m still debating the possibility…” Leo said as he stepped away from the two Kangaroos that seemed fond of his presence, hopping around him in the perfect imitation of his own children. “…but Cris would get upset with me if I did. He is the consummated professional, that one. Nearly kicked me out of his house the minute he read the news of me skipping training in favor of coming all the way here to kiss his ass.”

“Literally.” Antonella added cheekily as she rounded her eyes in fake mortification. Lionel glared at her from the corner of his eyes. “Although that seems in line with Cristiano´s personality. He pretends he doesn´t care when he is the one caring the most.” The beta woman huffed as she fed one of the Kangaroos a piece of lettuce and smiled softly to the camaras still following them around.“He is just saving face.”

Lionel would have been left impressed with such a detailed description of the male omega if he didn´t know that Antonella was in active communication with Georgina at the moment. He shouldn´t be surprised nor concerned about his wife being so deeply familiarized with Cristiano´s thinking process, and, to be honest, he didn´t feel envious at the insight, for Lionel was able to see things he didn´t see before.

Just one day it took to shake Cristiano´s and Lionel´s relationship to its foundations. It was as if some sort of blinding veil had been pulled from his eyes and Lionel could finally appreciate the full picture. It left him wondering if the omega knew this all along and that had been the reason why he rejected the idea of sharing a heat with him ever again.

Cristiano had turned to be such a mystery before. Lionel had always found him to be direct with his words but not with his actions, and in most of their encounters, that had left him feeling vulnerable and insecure. But now something had tilted irremediably.

The Portuguese had a tendency to be black and white, fluctuating between that only slightly in shades of grey, but now Lionel could see color in what the man did. The golden spark of his eyes was brighter when they settled upon him and his cheeks truly tainted themselves pink when Lionel touched him even if only slightly, Leo could see some yellow in the formidable joy of his laughter, a moody blue when they were reminded of the little time they had to spend together, raging red in the passion of their lovemaking. And better that, could see the joycome out from the other man´s pores in incandescent colors when they were close to each other, touching or not, simply connected by crashing breaths that didn´t really culminate in a kiss but promised they would if given one more second and half an inch less of a distance.

It was tangling knots inside his stomach and storming his mind into swirls of confusion. He ached for answers and he knew the only one capable to give them to him was happily burrowed inside his Saudi Arabian villa. But Lionel knew he shouldn´t be pushing his luck, this was all too new and his rampant desperation would probably only scare Cristiano away.

“Overthinking it again?” Antonella asked with a winning grin.

Leo simply glared at her.

“You can just drive back to his place, you know. I think we are almost done with this ridiculous photoshoot.”

Lionel sighed. “I think we are supposed to have a dinner tonight, right before we fly back to Paris.”

“You think?” she asked with a funny look.

The alpha shrugged, a little bit shy. “You never know with Cris. He suggested it but I think he just did that because I wasn´t really leaving his house and he was a little worried I would just stay.”

That sent the beta into a rightful chesty laughter and Leo sighed again as he looked away and smiled softly too, he had handed her that one.

“I have forgotten how needy you get when you are so pathetically in love.” The woman said between giggles.

Leo twisted his mouth to the side, remembering all those times he had made a fuss to be able to spend time in Antonella´s house when they were children. Leo´s dad had always lifted an eyebrow at such disruptive behavior coming from his best-behaved child but his mother had found it endearing and had always helped him to get away with it.

Thinking about his time as a young man irrevocably in love with his wife used to twist his guts and bring out that now familiar guilty sensation, but since their very open and vulnerable conversation about the current condition of their marriage, the thought of it only made him smile a little. Things were certainly easier then, when he was just as pathetic as he was now, fumbling through phrases and blushing read at just the sight of Antonella, but at the very least they were both children and the two of them were as equally as clumsy and innocent.

“Text him.” Anto suggested, breaking through his reminiscing with a salacious smile and arms crossed over her green-brownish jumper.

“Excuse me?” Leo asked, perplexed.

“Text Cristiano, tell him you two are having that dinner. You can´t leave Riyadh without a proper date.”

All of it sounded wonderful, but Leo still felt confused at the woman being the one pushing for it. Cristiano looked entirely convinced of his new discovered feeling for Leo this morning, but Lionel still felt like walking in eggshells. Experience told him that whenever he felt things were too good to be true with the Portuguese, it´s because they were.

“Oh, come on, Leo. I know you want to do this, if you don´t you´ll regret it and I would have to hear you moan about it all the way to Paris and then days after that.” The woman complained, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him a little.

Leo bit his lower lip as he felt himself give in to the suggestion. The desire was too great and him too weak to do away with the opportunity. Before he could put up a fake dishonest excuse, his hand was already fishing his phone out of his pocket.

“Atta boy.” Antonella praised with a wink as Leo was already texting.

His brown puppy eyes lit up when Cristiano took nothing but a couple of minutes to answer him back with a positive response. All of it felt completely unreal.

Lionel could remember himself fumbling and sinking down in depression back at home just a few weeks ago, thinking he had lost all chances with the man he was so desperately in love with since a little more than a decade, and now he was there, less than fifteen minutes away from his house planning a romantic dinner date in his company right after they had shared the most intense and intimate moment between them a few hours ago.

He was living in a dream. And for a minute, Leo feared it would all fade and blow back on his face the same way that night in Qatar had once the night had turned morning and the shadows that darkness hid so well inside that bedroom came to light during daylight.

This time, though, Leo would not let it be gone with the soft rays of sun through the foggy windows of their relationship. He would hold on to it, with claws and teeth and a desperate hunger and keep them forever in that room, even if the world demanded them to vacate it.

And for once, Leo suspected Cristiano would like to do the same.

They were on vacation, or supposed to be, with Cristiano thinking, hoping, nothing would go amiss. And because he was intrinsically optimistic, he always aimed higher than logic would tell him to. Watching Irina sit down in front of his mother in perfect opposition wasn´t his definition of relaxing, with two female alphas claiming the same ground in infantile exercise of the worst characteristics of their natures, but there was no avoiding it, specially when both women wanted to spend time with him at the very same time of the year.

Cristiano had cracked some jokes to make the atmosphere feel lighter and yet he had accomplished but sighs and groans at every attempt. He almost felt tempted to give up and hand them both a couple of boxing gloves and let them be alphas about it.

The winner gets him and then Cristiano could settle being either single forever or mated and claimed.

At the very least, such outcome would end up the argument and the staring match taking place in front of him, even if that meant having to give up his agency all together.

“I watched the ad you did. You looked quite good with that dress.” His mother had said, trying to be nice.

Irina took ten whole seconds to smile in response, and not only that smile didn´t reach her eyes, but it also came with the burnt smell of mint polluting the air, her scent showing his dominant displeasure.

“I´m glad you liked it, ma´am. It was for Valentino.”

And that was the extent of the niceties between them. Cristiano pointed out the great many fashion campaigns Irina had done this year and his mother pretended to be impressed by that as Cristiano could see one of his girlfriend´s eyebrows twitch. Then, he had tried to go back in time and tell nice comforting stories about his mother to Irina, in order to warm up her heart towards the family matriarch a bit, that had only earned him an uninterested hum from his girlfriend and that was the moment he knew he better put some distance between the two women before they actually decide to have a go at each other.

“I just don’t understand why you two can´t just get along.” Cristiano complained the minute he was alone with his girlfriend.

Irina narrowed her eyes at him. “I just don´t understand why you have this incessant need to have your mother around all the time.”

“I told you about this, Irina…” he growled “…my mom has cancer, I need to keep an eye on her.”

“During your vacations too?”

“Yes. I´d like to see my family during the summer break as well, you know…” he sighed, trying to fish patience from the pond of his very short temper. “We can go to that yacht to Mallorca in a couple of days, if you like…”

Irina didn´t say anything to that, but her eucalypt scent was like a forest fire, making his throat clench as he tried to breathe normally and not feel intimidated by the way it told him to obey the alpha in front of him.

“…just give me a couple of days with my mother and my sisters.” He begged, feeling immediately stupid for having to ask permission like that.

There were those stern green eyes, intimidating him in ways he would never admit, because he had some pride left of his own.

“All right…” she conceded with a sigh, looking away at the open sea of Lisbon, blue and wild at the brisk of nightfall.

And Cristiano smiled, satiated and finally lowering his guard.

“…but I want to be all alone. No football. No sporadic family calls. Not too many friends.” She added, eyes like accusatory daggers that the Portuguese wasn´t in the mood to argue against.

He nodded almost effusively. “Of course.”

Then she relaxed too, losing the tension on her shoulders and dropping the surly cat look she had been sporting from the moment the plane landed in his homeland.

Cristiano grabbed her hand into his and pulled her back to the family party. Watching as his siblings looked at them with questions in their eyes and Cristiano greet them with a too happy smile, like an excited puppy that had pleased his master.

Maybe he should have noticed right then, but Cristiano was slow in the uptake sometimes, and it took him a fiery disaster to see through the smoke.

Irina did her part and humored Cristiano´s sisters, which he conceded wasn´t an easy feat, they could be as overbearing as his mother but they were more docile if given some alcohol and a good conversation and the Russian model had worked enough time in the superficial fashion industry to know how to fake smiles and play a good game.

And then his mother took her turn, stealing a minute as he watched his nephews frolicking on the grass with each other, playing football and imitating his celebration with enthusiasm.

“She is really not that comfortable, is she?” her mother asked while she took a sip from her cranberry juice.

Cristiano groaned and rolled his eyes. “And whose fault is that, exactly?”

Dolores scrunched her face and pretended to be indignant. “I don´t know what you are talking about. Everybody was being incredibly welcoming.”

“You and I have very different definitions of welcoming, then…”

The old woman huffed. “It´s an alpha thing. Don´t you worry too much about it…”

“Exactly. It´s an archaic alpha thing that you well know I detest… so would you please don´t do it?”

“She is trying to mark territory, that I can understand.” His mother explained ignoring Cristiano´s petition all together “It´s just not advisable while in the presence of the alpha mother of your unmarked omega boyfriend, that is all.”

The explanation still lacked sense from Cristiano´s perspective and he had to bite down on the impulse to contradict his mother and called the whole thing a territorial shitshow he wanted no part on.

“You look ridiculous staring down at each other like some school bullies, Jesus Christ…” he said in a sigh, but his mother muttered a half-smile as if enjoying his exasperation.

“I hope you have expressed the same concerns to your girlfriend, then.”

“Don´t make this about her, now.” He asked her, tilting his head towards her while he spied Irina at the distance, helping his sisters prepare the dinner table at the other side of the backyard. “You are old enough to know better.”

Dolores laughed dryly before looking at her son funny. “Don´t try to scold me, child. I am your mother.”

“Yes, indeed, you are. Can you please pretend to be happy for me for a minute?” He nearly pleaded.

Dolores looked at him with a side-eye, spices scent engulfing the air like an open municipal market. Cristiano held his breath trying not to inhale too much of it, least the smell managed to cloud his mind.

“How can you say such a thing? I´m nothing if not happy for you. Always.” She accused him.

Cristiano bit his lower lip. “She makes me happy.” He declared, feeling how, for a moment, the words got a little stuck in his throat.

The alpha stared at him for a minute, the sound of the children laughing and kicking a ball with the encompassing crash of the waves the only noise between them. Cristiano felt his chest heavy at realizing what he had said and how much he held onto that statement wishing it was true.

For a moment, he thought of Ricardo, so distant and shaky now, gone from Real Madrid and back to Italy. Cristiano had taken his goodbye with aloofness, quietly staring as the Brazilian stood in the middle of the hallway, leaning against the railing of the end of the stairs, telling him the deal that was to take him back to Milan was almost assured.

Cristiano had not been entirely surprised. The man was not playing, and his relationship with Mourinho wasn´t exactly a happy marriage, but he still had to school his expression as he saw the man he had fallen in love with casually tell him he would go before the summer ended.

For a moment, it took the omega a while to understand he was morning something. In his mind, he was being obstinate. Clinging to the idea that he wouldn´t be happy with anybody else but the quiet sweet beta that had stolen his heart, and now he was keen in letting go, really settling with the relationship he was fighting with himself to build with the alpha he called his partner.

His mother´s face, now nearly stony in silence, reflected his own. The same brown eyes that he sported telling him that not even him believed such a terrible lie.

“All right.” The woman said, breathing out silently.

The male omega waited impatient for the punchline, the hidden dagger in the carefully collection of words that would follow such dishonest blessing, but it never came.

“…ok…” he said after a beat or two, still waiting for condemnation and all he got was his mother´s blank expression in return, unmoved and not really keen into discussing things further.

Somehow, and perhaps because he knew his mother too well, he knew she didn´t mean it, and yet he took it, thirsty for acceptance or any speck of affirmation.

And that was the end of it.

He spent the rest couple of days enjoying the company of his family, spying every sign of animosity coming from his mother towards Irina and finding himself with simple tolerant ignorance at worst and rehearsed friendliness at best, but that was good enough considering things.

By the time, the period of leniency given by Irina was up, Cristiano had felt strangely satisfied. Blindingly convinced he had scored some points with both his family and his girlfriend, breaching differences that would make the weight of the expensive ring he had been carrying around inside his bag from place-to-place lighter.

He smiled all the way to Mallorca, holding Irina´s hand with his own as the Russian model truly smiled for the first time throughout these days and convinced him further of the merits of his efforts.

“Thank you…” the woman whispered the minute they made it to the Spanish harbor, standing in front of the yacht that Cristiano owned and would be their refuge for the next two days. “…I know I was being difficult.” She confessed, looking down at her own feet as she apologized “You even left Junior behind, in the care of your mother and sisters. I know that is difficult for you but I also know you did that so you could spend time with me… so thank you.”

The words hanged in the air and Cristiano took a minute to let them settle in his mind. The smoke inside his head made things unclear at the naked eye, more often than not he felt as if he were trading difficult land with the woman in front of him, but his heart managed to soar at the warmth feeling of believing every word Irina said to him now.

He built walls against this in pure self-defense.

No alpha was worth the trouble they could bring into his life.

But now, he stood wondering if he had just been hardheaded because he had been too afraid and in turn too unfair.

Cristiano smiled and pulled her closer, until her nutmeg smell overtook that of her eucalypt leaves and made her taste sweeter as he kissed her lips.

“Let´s have a good time together, shall we?” he asked, looking down into her green eyes and losing himself into them. “And not think of anything else for a while.”

It wasn´t an I love you, but it was something.

Irina smiled and nodded, pleased with him and in turn making him feel pleased with himself.

And wasn´t that the bane of his existence? The need to prove himself he always had the upper hand. His mother had said it best, but Cristiano had been too set in his ways to listen to it.

And as he sailed the sea with Irina by his side and the water and the Spanish sun as a nice setting, Cristiano dug into his traveling bag and buried the ring inside the pockets of his pants, just waiting for the right moment to kneel onto the boat and simply ask.

Would you marry me?

There was no name for the way he felt when he saw that sparkling sly smile of his nor a gracious way to describe how he ran to him, nearly levitating off the ground in the desperation to feel the permeating layer of heat coming off his skin.

The surprise wasn´t that he did all of that but that Cristiano raised his hands and put them on his neck, holding him by the nape softly as he grinned down to him like he had passed through the Champion League´s quarterfinals and that was everything Lionel had wanted for years, so he lifted himself on his toes and kissed him full on the mouth in reciprocity.

Sweet caramel invaded his tongue immediately but something different stuck on his tongue like melted chocolate and he frowned at the new flavor, loving it instantly. Cristiano tilted his head to the side, giving him even more room and moved his lips at the rhythm of Leo´s own pace, not more a competition but a complicit camaraderie, as if they were playing for the same team for the first time in their lives.

Why did that feel prophetic?

When they parted from each other´s embrace it was to dazzling stars twinkling in both their eyes. All very emotional and romantic and so alike a child overtaken by their first love that the experience of them felt brand new, as if this was the first time they touched.

“Tell me you didn´t run all the way here.” Cristiano pleaded as he squinted his eyes at him. “It took you less than fifteen minutes.”

“You were counting.” Leo accused, one finger traveling down his face, from his brow to his chin. “That´s sweet.”

The sound of their mocking reminded them that no, they were not novices to this, but the sweet taste of all the changed circumstances around them made Leo feel that whatever they had wasn´t remotely the same as before.

It was better.

Cristiano didn´t quip back but smiled, brightly and open, like a kid in Christmas and Lionel felt his own features melt like a wretched burn out candle. His big hands were now on his cheeks, thumbs caressing over the scrappy thorns of his beard, lovingly staring down at him in a convincing imitation of how Leo himself swore he must look like whenever he gazed up at this towering force of a man, but his quivering weak heart couldn´t really aim that high at the moment, not when he was so easily encouraged and so rapidly dismantled to pieces.

“I´m glad you didn´t leave…” Cristiano admitted after a second, stepping away from him and taking his gentle hands with him. Lionel already ached at the separation.

“Why would I? After you invited me to dinner.”

Cristiano shrugged, looking away like a kid, this time, not excited and playful but timid, like an approval hungry toddler. “I sort of got this idea in my head… that it would be out of your hands…” he explained “…that you would have to leave early after all that mess…”

There was something terribly tender in the way Lionel loved that insecurity in the man´s voice. The way it shook with some speck of emotion, the honesty that it had always been hid between jokes and sarcasm and now was plain for sight and grabs. Lionel wanted to hold on to it with dear life as he heard every word, imagining that Cristiano loved him as foolishly as he did. But as much as a pessimist as he was—and most of times, he was—, he couldn´t stop listening to the underlying beating of Cristiano´s heart through the desperations of the words being said.

The alpha bit his lower lip, wanting pain to wash away the hopeful surge of emotion that came over him in cascading force.

“I´m not leaving without dinner with you.” He promised, grabbing the older man´s hand into his, caressing his skin in identical fashion the man had done just minutes ago. “They would have to send the French armada to make it happen.”

Cristiano stared at him for a second, brown eyes humorous surprised before he burst into scandalous laughter.

Lionel knew that might have been too much, he suppressed the need to laugh at himself as well, but he didn´t regret it.

“Sometimes you say the corniest stupid things I have ever heard.” Cristiano mocked as he shook his head, still rumbling with his deep vivacious laughter. “And I love it” He added, calming down as he tilted his head to the side and looked at him adoringly again.

Lionel really suspected someone would come and pull the curtain to the floor again, making him feel as if he were naked in the middle of a stage, but Cristiano´s smile never left and the shine of his eyes wasn´t eclipsed by the usual punch of reality and sense coming through his caramel skies.

“I had my chef cook a wonderful dinner…” Cristiano let him know, walking backwards as he pulled Lionel by their united hands, both of them looking entirely adolescent.

“Your chef?” Lionel snorted, finding it funny how that felt so out of place in the moment.

Cristiano rolled his eyes as they walked on a graveled path that led them away from the main house and somewhere else, a small cozy chalet at the distance.

“Well, yeah. I´m a man of many talents but cooking is not really one of them.” The prideful man admitted.

“I´m not a good cook either.” Leo shrugged.

“I bet you can fix me something.” Cristiano said with a wink, nearly daring him to do so.

Lionel felt suddenly giddy at thinking of cooking for Cristiano.

Somehow, he loved the idea of that.

They walked in a rhythmic synchrony, the sound of the gravel underneath their shoes the perfect music for such a lovely night. To Lionel, the dark sky seemed starry and the air blew delicate tendrils of wind that made the enticing caramel scent of Cristiano revolve around him like a whirlpool.

The alpha cautiously glanced at their united hands until they finally made it to the small house at the end of the road. The place was massive and it offered them so much privacy that he almost felt they were in the middle of nowhere, separated from a world that was clamoring for their attention and their presences.

Cristiano opened the door and made a gesture for Lionel to step into the chalet first, he did so, smiling instantly as he saw a well-prepared table in the middle of the room and right in front of them. White mantle, lit candles and expensive silverware. It took him only five seconds to see that the Portuguese footballer had tried to evoke the same atmosphere of their last time sharing a dinner.

Sweet memories of the place that until yesterday had been the real witness of their doomed romance came to mind in a cinematic reel, the only good thing Paris had ever given to him.

“And you dared call me corny…” Lionel said with a sigh, looking up at Cristiano with defeated eyes of affection.

The omega smiled with tight lips, trying hard not to blush and being saved only by the beautiful tan of his coppery skin.

“All good gestures must be answered in kind.” The man excused himself as he closed the door and rounded the table to pull Leo´s chair in silent offering.

The Argentinian didn´t really think twice and took his seat, looking at Cristiano´s elegant figure as he sat in front of him. The older man had three buttons of his white shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and light brown slacks that didn´t quite stick to his long legs, even when they made them look spectacularly tempting.

His examination didn´t come unnoticed, for Cristiano squinted his eyes and peaked at him through the curly lashes Leo loved to feel whenever Cristiano falls asleep on top of his bared chest.

“You look more…” Leo started, finding himself face to face with his lack of eloquence “… casual.”

Cristiano snorted as he leaned back on his chair, tilting his head slightly as he looked straight at Leo as if he could see through him.

“I stopped trying to look my best.” He confessed bitterly, shaking his head and sighing as if silently declaring that was Leo´s fault.

But the Argentinian didn´t need for the omega to tell him that, even him could pick up on that much, glancing down at his own outfit and seeing how his white plain t-shirt and dark shorts didn´t precisely screamed elegance.

“I should have probably gone back to the hotel to change.” Leo admitted after feeling self-conscious about his clothes for the first time.

The Forward laughed with a rumbling sound coming from his chest, “Mmm, You think?” He asked, looking at him funny.

Lionel twisted his mouth to the side. “Yeah.” He agreed “But that would have meant having to drive back and forth through the city and then probably get stuck in the evening traffic and I really wanted to see you.” He ended up with a shrug.

An almost dazzling gleam shined through Cristiano´s eyes at his words, looking at Lionel with afflicted emotion before the tall man attempted to wink it away, leaning his head over one palm of his hand and resting the other over the mantle between them, shaking his head slightly at him.

“You cheat.” He accused, hypnotizing Leo with his penetrating gaze “Of course, I´ll forgive you if you say something like that.” He conceded with a deep sigh.

Leo grinned at the admission, biting part of his lower lip excitingly when that pinkish tone came through the caramel skin this time, winning over the usual petulance that Cristiano wielded as sword and shield.

“And it´s not like I haven´t tried to look nice for you before.” Lionel told him, feeling lucky as he leaned forward, elbows over the edge of the table.

Cristiano clicked his tongue and winced in surprise. “Are we talking about Paris?” He teased, eyes narrowing down to dangerous lines.

Lionel grinned again, enjoying the back and forth of accusations as those old memories of them came to the present in full force and color. The city lights late at night and the smell of burnt chocolate and sugary bread, the way the whipped creamed stuck to Cristiano´s upper lip as he tried to take a bite of Lionel´s crepe as they sat just a nice distance away from the Eiffel Tower, the nice portrait of two lovers just figuring out what was between them and now finding them here, seating across the other in a distant desert with shimmering eyes.

It felt like an eternity ago.

Who was to tell them it had only been two months?

“Of course, we are talking Paris.” Lionel reaffirmed, almost talking to himself. Cristiano´s mouth stretched in a warm smile, childish ghosts of dimples perking from his cheeks.

“Paris…” Cristiano repeated with something close to nostalgia “…and the impressive lengths we´ll go to get into bed.”

The statement fell over him like cold cold water, and the freezing gelid feel of it was enough to tarnish the edges of what they had at the moment. Cristiano´s eyes hadn´t changed in the way they gazed at Lionel, or the softness that had offered since the alpha had step in his property, but the lovely blush on his skin was gone and some of his features relaxed into a comfortable mask of apathy.

It was the call of the real world again, or more appropriately, of some screaming ghosts that Lionel could not see. It had been so easy to ignore when Cristiano had come out of his bedroom still covered by the sweet recollections of his heat, the closest they had been to lovemaking and not just sex. Leo had felt Cristiano´s heartbeat as he held his hand into his, had attested to the way his eyes illuminated when they fell upon him or how the lines around his mouth stretched in truth when he bestowed his smile upon Lionel. None of it could be fake or some convoluted way of keeping things cordial and amicable between them just because the Argentine was visiting the Portuguese´s house.

There got a be something more that he wasn´t privy of.

“It isn´t like that. Sex is not all that I want from you.” The alpha desperately explained, feeling as if he had confess to that so many times now and the Portuguese omega still hadn´t fully believed him.

“No. You don´t.” The older man conceded, tilting his head over his hand with a sigh “Which is truly astonishing considering our circumstances.” Cristiano repeated with uncharacteristic pessimism.

Lionel was unsure of what had brought this out; he felt as if they were having the best time of their lives just a few moments ago, but now everything seemed rather smeared and possibly even tilted. The creeping fear of that metaphorical curtain opening and revealing that all of it was a play on stage, with Leo as the unwilling and inadvertent protagonist, came back in a violent reverberation.

Cristiano was being honest with his feelings; the ones the man had expressed in the morning before Lionel had to leave him and the ones he saw again when he came back to him, like a pathetic lap dog ready to attend the call of his master.

But there was the shadow of doubt in his eyes and in his words now.

The taletelling sign that something wasn´t quite right.

“What have you like this?” Leo asked, standing from his seat and making the older man wince and looked up in surprise.

“What?”

“Was it something I did? Say?” he asked as he rounded the table from the back, taking note how Cristiano´s slightly panicked eyes followed his body until it reached him at his seat. Lionel didn´t wait for further reaction before he took the omega´s hand into his, too raddled and filled by emotions that impulsivity took over his body when discretion and taciturn passivity had always being his biggest asset.

Not this time.

He had idly let his feelings to run without recompense and had sat and waited for Cristiano to do something or for life itself to give and rip away as it pleased.

This time he would not allow it.

Not when he had seen that bright smile directed at him or those caramel eyes stared at him with loving longing.

This time he wanted it all and he wasn´t afraid to go and take it.

“To love an omega… well, that is the best feeling in the world for us alphas.”

Quite right.

“If I did something you didn´t like… then you must tell me.” Lionel pleaded with the other man, holding his hand harder, looking into those lovely eyes that had slaved him to these terrible feelings “…we promised to be upfront with what we wanted and what we felt, that time, on the plane…”

Recollections of that night seemed to come to Cristiano´s mind as Lionel reminded him of their promises, his brown eyes sparkling with intelligence before he exhaled his confusion, looking at Lionel as if he suddenly understood what the shorter man meant with such unprompted outburst.

“We agreed that we cannot always understand what the other feels or has gone through in life and experience…” Lionel told him, feeling how that same petition excited and filed him with dread. Would there be something Cristiano hadn´t told him that would change everything for them? A secret? A story? Something that would ruin the perfect portrait of them that Lionel had foolishly envisioned in his mind in just a matter of hours?

Something cold and even sad took over the omega´s features, the tiny speck of ice in his eyes before it melted away at will, as if the man had thought something cruel and then revoke it for the younger man´s sake.

“Wouldn´t you like to know…” he bitterly teased.

The tone wasn´t quite right but wasn´t quite wrong either, a stalemate between resentment and compromise that Lionel had trouble understanding or reconciling with. The fear of rejection projecting back into this mind making him feel wary and spent, already tired.

Then Cristiano lowered his eyes onto the table, then their hands over it, and when they came back to stare at Lionel´s, they were big, round and nearly hopeful.

“…and I´ll tell you.” He promised.

Lionel nearly gasped at the tenderness in the omega´s voice, the vulnerable texture overtaking those dark shadows of doubt, and dared to presume, even shame.

The most vivid sign of an effort.

“But first… I would like to have a nice dinner date with you.” Cristiano smiled, open and sincere, squeezing Lionel´s fingers as he intertwined his in their hand´s hold.

He would be a fool to reject such a white flag and the very confirmation of his wildest dreams. That the man in front of him wasn´t the same he met with a few months ago in the secrecy of his plane, not even similar to the one he invoked himself to his own plane, looking for truce and desperate to cling to whatever remained of them after their fight.

This man was brand new. With some giving smile and the most honest disposition. With his heart on the sleeve for the very first time, baring it so tellingly for Lionel to see, the same way the Argentinean had done so for years for him.

Leo nodded, too enthralled by the moment to speak, and with a single gentle push from the other man, he returned to his seat, in front of Cristiano trying to find any speck of hesitation on his face, and finding none.

“Shall we, then?” The male omega asked as he reached for his napkin, making the alpha follow the movement slowly and mirror it after a second or two.

“We shall.” Lionel answered, breathing for like it felt like the first time since the tension amounted between them.

Ready to enjoy each other´s company and the rest of the night, even if at the end of it there will be something Leo wasn´t planning to hear.

He couldn´t stop the bleeding, couldn´t look away from it either, as the deep tint of his own blood painted the crystalline water red.

“Cris! Please! Open the door!”

“Irina… go away…” he asked in a growl, voice trembling low as his right hand put pressure into the wound on his other arm, thumb caressing the fresh bite as a pang of sharp pain traveled up to his shoulder at the contact.

“I didn´t mean it, Cris! I swear!”

Cristiano let hot air go through the cage of his clenched teeth. He couldn´t think like this, with his head filled with fumes and his fiery temper inviting a fire to take place; this time, he might actually light the living room up in flames.

“Please, let me in…” the woman begged through the bathroom´s door. “…I can help you, dear… I´m so sorry…”

In other circumstances, Cristiano might have believed her, might have felt inclined to talk it through, but then his brown eyes fell onto the gruesome sight of his bleeding arm and the tingling pain electrifying his nerves and all he got was that misty fury again. The taste of something bitter and rotten polluting the inside of his mouth. Something like treason.

They had been so close lately, the Portuguese hadn´t noticed it.

Hadn´t even think about the possibility of that pretty mouth coming too close to his arm, that those honeyed kisses could ever turn violent grips or that innocent pretty look on that pretty face could ever be anything more than angelic and pliant on his arms.

Then again, Cristiano was the perfect antagonist in every fairytale there was left to tell. He could have pushed her towards that direction with his huffs and puffs, the way he rolled his eyes during their short-lived arguments or how he had refused to give into the alpha demands of allowing, at the very least, a little nip on the side of his neck for the world to see.

“Fuck. I sound like my mother.” He groaned at himself, hanging his head down as he let the cool water wash away the rest of the ugly evidence dripping from his arm.

There was another couple of knocks on the wood of the door, less frenetic this time, more polite and put together, and Cristiano wished the woman would have kept sounding desperate and insane through the barrier that kept them apart, because at least, in that way, Cristiano would not feel like the only one stranded in the middle of a storm. She would be there too, right in it with him, and then he would call it love and a phase and said it was only one of the too many bumps on the road for them.

Not a fucking catastrophe.

“Baby doll...please...” she called him.

Oh, that nasty nickname again. Cristiano wanted to rip the hard marble of the sink to shreds. He didn´t have the patience for this at the moment.

“Irina… just… go back to the living room…” he instructed with tension on the neck, catching his reflection in the mirror and seeing the veins on his neck popping through the skin.

There was the silence of hesitation, the moment where the other person decided to insist or desist and Cristiano, again, wanted her to choose the first option, in the primitive way he felt ready to fight, ready to raise his voice and being justified if he called her names or told her to fuck off without the fear of repercussions.

But he couldn´t quite do that, not even when he ached for it with all his might and all his buttled up resentment.

Because there was a secret ring stashed somewhere inside his traveling bag and there were going to be cameras the minute they´ll step out the penthouse and because even when he could be loud and obnoxious and rabid during a football game, he wasn´t one to show such aggression on his daily life.

He wasn´t like that, no matter how much the press liked to paint him on that light.

Suddenly and quietly, the sound of dragging sleepers started to resonate and then fade as the distance grew, the female alpha taking the good advice and leaving Cristiano well alone, with his bitter grudge and his prickling burning skin and her bitemark firmly put on his left arm, still angry and red and reminding Cristiano of whom he was and what he was worth.

In the yellow light of the hotel bathroom and in the reflection of the square mirror in front of the sink, the male omega could see himself for the first time.

He told himself not to cry, for he was so keen in doing that, a childish gimmick he would never get past, and convinced himself the burning sensation in his lungs were the residuals of the startled shout he gave when Irina had opened her mouth and buried her teeth on his skin while she pushed him against the wall.

´You have to be good, Cristiano. It´s what they always told us.´ His father had told him once as he cut the grass of Andorinha with his scarred married arms on full display. Cristiano had been kicking a ball no too far away from where his father worked “Omegas have to be good for their alphas…”

He had stopped kicking the ball at the tone of his father´s voice. The old omega lifted his brown eyes and through the sweat dripping lashes he saw his little son and held his stare.

“Just promise me this, Cris…” He asked of him. And Cristiano listened because it was so rare for his father to be sober that the little kid drunk his every lucid word with a thirst that matched his father´s addiction. “… just promise me you will never be good. Ever.”

And little him didn´t seem to get it, or maybe he was too young and too much of a clean slate to ever suspect what all of it meant.

“No for an alpha. No for the whole world. Just don´t be good, son.” He repeated. Firm, severe, like the soldier that he used to be and that had turned him into this mess that worked two jobs and couldn´t keep himself without poison in his blood for even one single night.

“Don´t be good, Cristiano. Be yourself.”

Cristiano didn´t really remember if he said something back, if his father ever actually said such a thing or if he made it up in his head because he was hungry for every piece of the man that had conceived him on a hormonal storm and then forsake him for the bliss of inebriation.

But Cristiano always seemed to see his eyes, reflected back at him on moments like this, when he felt shaken a little, or he lost something along the way, saw the sad brown eyes of his father looking into his own, the shape of his own jaw growing the curly beard that had always permeated his face, dripping careless locks that hanged over his forehead and rebelled against the hairspray on the black mass of his hair.

Looking at the bleeding wound of his left arm, the transformation was complete.

He had turned into his father. And the sole truth of it terrified him.

“…Cris…” the weak voice of his girlfriend called for him through the door again, making him sigh.

The Portuguese hanged his head, realizing he could not run away from this even if he tried, trapped by four walls and the whole world outside, awaiting to see the gleaming mark on his skin, whispered taken in his ear as he forced a smile for the cameras and stood so proud for them.

He reached for the first aid kit and looked for a bandage to cover the nasty bite before opening the door and face the music again.

The sad look on Irina´s face was a poem, written in prose and so unlike herself he took a couple of minutes to recognize her, eyes so meek instead of fiery green and plump mouth pushed downwards as she expected his rightful retribution to befall on her.

With this sad look upon her face, she almost looked like an omega, and him the wronged husband who précised of scolding his unruly wife.

He didn´t like that either, he found.

“Let´s go.” He said, polished shoes squeaking against the floor, turning away from her as he just walked away and towards the hanger by the door, grabbing his coat.

Irina opened her mouth for a second and looked like somebody who wanted to talk about it, and of course she would want that because every time they picked a fight she was the one trying to interrogate the truth out of his lips and he was the one hiding inside his shell, avoiding the whole thing before the flames of his many past fires reignited and turned this fragile thing into nothing.

It was funny how it hadn´t been words that had finally made ashes of this capricious fling and maybe that was why it had blow up so spectacularly, like fireworks that instead of making glowing celebrations in the night, it had warned them about the catastrophe of them before burning them down.

“Cris…”

“Just… don´t…” he asked, tired beyond belief as he held the door´s knob, waiting for her and her dress to walk towards him, as if nothing had happened. “Don´t say anything and just… let´s just go…”

It was easier like that. With no words.

Because what can he said when he just saw a ghost?

His past and everything he ever tried to avoid reverberating back to him like a cruel joke where everybody who knew him had time to tell him ´I told you so´ and he still didn´t run away.

This time the alpha listened, mouth pursed and eyes casted down to the rug; she marched towards him clenching her bag with one hand as Cristiano held the door open for her.

The perfect picture of a couple right there.

And for one, the newly acquired bite on his skin would prove the world correct and Cristiano a sore loser. A filthy liar and a joke.

And maybe that was what it was meant to be from the start.

The burn on his left arm and the smoke in his head would say otherwise.

They walked through the gravel paths of Cristiano´s property almost stargazing. It was the most romantic they had been, and they had strolled through the streets of Paris with the Eiffel tower as decoration and held each other in arms as they buried their noses in each other´s necks in an airplane.

But this was different and it felt like it.

Lionel lost himself in the sight of the shadows left by the moonlight in Cristiano´s face, only fixed to the ground by the strong hold of the omega´s hand with his own, stuck to his presence as if he were a balloon tied firmly at the wrist of a child.

The dinner had been good and Lionel had gone through the playful conversation between bites of food half expecting it to be over. Leo was easy to overwhelm and Cristiano´s cryptic promises of opening up to him hanged between them like the pink elephant in the room.

He was unsure what had prompted all of it, but memories of the shared heat came to him, the vulnerability of Cristiano´s eyes and the soft words that came out between gasps and sighs as Lionel touched him; through all of it, the Argentinean had refused to buy into the treacherous feeling of intimacy, too wounded by the possibility of rejection once the pheromones were cleared from the air they breathed, but the sun had raised and now settled and Cristiano didn´t seem keen in sending him away, more tactile now that he had ever been since the beginning of their affair. The greedy beast inside his flesh demanded the satisfaction of reciprocated emotion but the anxious rational man that lived in his head didn´t wish for him to build fantasies in thin air.

He felt thorn and confused, like a boat lost at sea, waiting for the light of the lighthouse to send signals so he could reach the shore.

“I must have scared you.” Cristiano commented as he snickered at his shoes, not even spending a glance at his direction. “You are so quiet now.”

“Eh?” The alpha asked nearly jumping off his skin.

The tall omega laughed chestly at his reaction. 

“Sorry. I didn´t mean to sound so dramatic during dinner.” He continued, shrugging slightly. “I know you´ve been tensed ever since. I bet you were not expecting me to drop any bombs without warning.”

Leo blinked at the still too cryptic conversation. “I only feel as if I´m not understanding something…” he confessed, unafraid to be mocked by his slow uptake. “…and then again, you are just making me feel even more stupid the more you don´t actually talk about it.”

Cristiano laughed fully, enjoying the younger man´s confusion as usual and making Leo smile in complicity; he liked when Cristiano found him funny, even if that came at the cost of looking and sounding like a complete idiot.

The man shook his head to himself, eyes at the open ceiling of the night sky, looking entirely melancholic, like the protagonist of an Edward Hopper painting.

“I don´t do it on purpose, I swear.” The Portuguese clarified, dropping the alpha´s hand to scratch the back of his head. “It´s just not easy to talk about these types of things.”

Lionel frowned at the mention of the still unnamed issue at hand. He could feel the nervousness that Cristiano swore he felt, it was hidden in the tension of his smile and the inability of his eyes to stay in one single place. It was incredibly baffling, how Lionel had thought Cristiano to be difficult to read before when now he could hear every drop of his emotions in the slightest change of his timbre.

“You don´t have to…” Lionel consoled him, earning himself the full attention of the anxious man in front of him. “…if you don´t want to. If it´s too difficult. You don´t have to.”

“No, I do.” The man contradicted firmly; straightening himself up like a soldier as he stared at Lionel with resolution. “I owe you a clear explanation. I owe us honesty.”

The way he said that last part sounded so intimate and intense that Lionel held his breath for a moment, getting lost in the surprise of the sincerity of the emotions being projected in Cristiano´s brown orbs. It was incredibly overwhelming, and Lionel had to be the one to look away before his own emotions got the best of him.

“There are things about me that I haven´t been able nor willing to talk about…” the omega stated, not really giving the shorter man room to breathe. “At the beginning I didn´t think of any of it as any of your concern, I wasn´t really thinking about us as a real relationship, or one that would last at the very least…” He explained with a shrug.

Lionel knew that and he still pressed his lips on a tense line, looking up at Cristiano as they both awkwardly stood halfway through the pathway somewhere in the middle of his extensive garden. Cristiano´s face looked serious but not severe, as if he were really trying to convey something important and at the same time, keeping things soft and light, without any trace of real harshness in any of its lines.

It still seemed as if Cristiano was ready to face some sort of firing squad.

“…but things had changed... between us, at least.” the omega extended almost as a consolation prize.

Lionel nodded slowly, thinking of this morning, of last night as he held Cristiano in his arms, trying to soothe him and tear him apart into pieces at the same time, he thought of weeks ago too, of them in Paris after coming back together once again, having candle light dinners and playing dangerous games in private elevators.

They have evolved for the better, but as Lionel looked up at Cristiano´s nervous stare and fidgety hands, now he started to wonder if they had changed for good.

The alpha didn´t have time to make his own questions about it, Cristiano was ready to take lead of the conversation again.

“…I asked for something when we saw each other in that airplane, weeks ago.” He said, eyes to the gravel before they went back to Leo´s face, soft and endearing, pleading for something that Lionel didn´t know how to give him but he knew for sure he would fight teeth and nails to hand him, because his love for this man was that absolute and encompassing. “…I asked for you to make me love you, and you asked for me to be honest with my feelings. To tell you how I felt, what I wanted, what it hurt me and what didn´t, and tonight… during dinner… you asked the same from me again…”

“Yes.” Lionel confirmed, raising his chin to stare at the profundity of those brown pools, putting his best brave face. 

The omega looked away at the distance as he took a big breath, shifting his feet onto place, making those plump lips of his form a tight line, his caramel scent getting spicier, less sweet and more prickling at the nose, like the stab of tiny needles that made Lionel want to sneeze.

“I never wanted an alpha, not then, not ever.” Cristiano suddenly stated, looking back at Lionel with renewed energy, and yet, still begging for something that Lionel didn’t know what it was. “My parents were an alpha-omega paring, and although the world is keen in telling you such union is meant to work by itself, it didn´t.” He said, voice dripping with sincere hurt and squeezing Lionel´s heart. “When the doctors told my mom I was an omega, it was like a fatal blow. My father was too… and it ruined him…” he said, swallowing some saliva as he talked about his dead father; Lionel could see the hurt of it, peaking from the corner of the rims of his eyes. “I´m not ashamed of being an omega, I´m not.” Cristiano swore, almost trying to convince himself of the fact “But the world has been keen in treating me as if I should. As if I were an object, a possession and I should be content with that and I can´t…I can´t do that, Leo.” He confessed almost desperately, pleading to him as if Lionel had the power to change society and their perception of omegas at will “I just can´t. Even if that means being at odds with the rest of the world.”

It was too raw and too honest, and Leo never thought he would say he wanted Cristiano to stop talking when the man was finally opening up to him in the way Lionel had always wanted him to. The sight of the brokenness he could see in Cristiano´s eyes, no matter how hard the Portuguese tried to conceal it, pained him. Those words came from his pink lips like buried confessions and punishments, sounding like the secrets you keep to yourself for a lifetime and never share because you wouldn´t think people would ever believe how strongly you feel about them.

“I´ve tried to open up to the idea of being somebody´s omega before…” Cristiano told him, blinking nervously before smiling sadly to himself, as if remembering a bad joke. “It didn´t work. It only proved to me that I can´t do it…”

“What do you mean with that?” Lionel asked, blinking anxiously in place, fearing the worst.

Why did it sound as if the man was talking about them this time?

Cristiano shook his head. “Maybe I´m too hotheaded, maybe I´m the problem, you know. I don´t know...” He sighed; taking a step back as his hands seemed to tremble, looking for something to do that wasn´t just lying there, at his sides, rising towards his hair. “Maybe I´m broken beyond repair and I don´t know how to fix that…”

“Don´t say that…” Lionel whispered, stepping forward and recoiling at the sight of the taller man taking another step back, as if he couldn’t bear to be touched.

A silence followed and placed a stalemate between them, and Lionel wondered how everything came down to this. How a morning filled with kisses and tender words, a welcoming embrace with stars shining in each other´s eyes and a lovely dinner with jokes and playful conversation turned into this.

The downfall of a play. The reveal of the ugliness behind the pretty picture they painted together.

What Cristiano had called complicated months ago and Lionel had claimed an exaggeration as he tried to keep this man for himself.

 “After Irina I thought that was it.” The Portuguese continued, regaining his ability to speak after some minutes “That I wouldn´t be with an alpha ever again and I might have taken refuge in Georgina, an omega like myself… it was safe, it was someone who understood me even if it wasn´t what people and the world said a good omega like me needed…” He pointed out bitterly. “And it was, you know? It was the perfect refuge and I loved… I loved her…”

Lionel heard those words and tried to not be jealous of the fact the man was so willing to put a clear name of his feelings for her. It wasn´t his place to be bitter about that; but the heart knew no reason and Lionel felt shaken already by the confessions Cristiano had already made, that he was easily rattled.

“She was the best thing that happened to me…” Cristiano told him, tenderly. “…until I fucked that up too…”

Cristiano looked at him with that naked vulnerability now, forcing Lionel to hold his stare even when the alpha felt wounded by the conversation too, when he wished he could kiss his mouth to seal those terrible words he knew, just knew he was about to say.

“And then you happened…” Cristiano whispered brokenly.

And that startled his world, opening his eyes wide to the quiet night on that garden, feeling lost and hurt and yet found for a moment. Lionel tilted his head, drinking in Cristiano´s expression, softer this time, sweeter, looking at Leo with the tenderness the alpha had seen this morning, as if, for a second, he was Cristiano´s whole world too, the same way the Portuguese was and has been for Leo for quite some time now.

“…you happened and you made everything so fucking confusing and difficult, and now I´m here talking about this when it’s the last thing I had ever wanted to confess in my life.” Cristiano complained with a groan.

Lionel felt his throat constrict at the way the omega seemed to be hurt by Leo´s existence, by the way he told him that Lionel waltzed into his life, nearly like an unwanted thing, like an earthquake, as if Cristiano had not invaded his life in the same terrible unfair manner, ruining his marriage and had him dragging himself through the floor like a sad beggar.

As if it hadn´t been Cristiano the one who had enchanted him with words and jokes and provocations until Lionel had been rendered a puddle, and then let him be taken in a hotel room at the pinnacle of Lionel´s career, just to leave the Argentinian with his broken heart in his hand and a silly excuse as leave to do as he pleased, including building Lionel up and then letting him crash into the ground in pieces.  

“Then why are you doing it?” Lionel asked, perfectly offended as he tried to not growl under his breath, hands curled into fists by his sides as he stepped onto the gravel underneath his feet even harder, making crunch and cut the tension between them as if he held a knife.

“Because we promised.” The omega declared, sticking his face towards him, eyes accusatory. “Because even if I didn´t envisioned myself really caring and in a relationship with you, here I am. Taking planes to have secret dates in Paris, begging you through the phone to come here and fuck me when I´m burning in heat, knowing only you could ever touch me and see me like that.”

Explosions rarely came silently, but Lionel saw that rage in his face and could only compare it with supernovas; he felt the cosmic waste as it hit him, the way those velvety brown eyes turned red and Cristiano seemed fully desperate this time around. Meaning every word as he tried to make Leo understand.

“Because I never wanted an alpha to boss me around and to have me and all I fucking want now is you, holding my hand and whispering filthy things at my ear while I stick my nose in your neck and breathe your chocolate scent in, like a fucking diabetic that had been deprived of sweet things just because he thought he would die if he had them, but I won´t. I fucking won´t, Lionel. Because now I cannot foresee not having you touch me and kiss me and telling me you love me. I don´t.”

It was too much information and it came like a bursting cascade of water, drowning Lionel´s irritation and his mountain of confusion. Now he stood as an island, surrounded by words like an ocean and being trapped by his inability to swim through them. He felt his chest heaving, watching as Cristiano did the same, choking in his own emotions and getting lost by the absence of answer Lionel gave him.

His apprehensive heart didn´t know what to make of all of that and he clang to the hope he wasn´t reading things wrong just because he was that desperate to hear sweet words. Cristiano waited for something to drop from his mouth but the Argentinean felt unable to say the right thing, to make grandiloquent speeches of pure love and devotion the way Cristiano did or to even give a one-liner that would close the circle and made for a perfect story to tell years later, when they sat retelling their friends how they got together during a fucking dinner and a night stroll by the light of the moon.

All of it was a disaster, for reasons Lionel never thought it would be. And as he stood there, closer than he had ever been with what he had wanted for years, with Cristiano nearly heart in hand telling him things that were similar enough to an ´I love you´ as he would ever get, he found himself stranded in his inability to speak.

“…I´m not sure what you want from me.” Lionel said, shaken by the way that sounded as if he didn´t want any of what the man said, but unable to take it back and fix it.

And thank God, Cristiano seemed to know him as well as Lionel thought he knew Ronaldo too, because he didn´t jump in the offense and simply melted his own desperation away, body hanging in place as he looked at Lionel with pity.

“I don´t know either.” He seconded, letting one of his hands run through his hair, seeking patience. “I´m just telling you what I feel, which is not all that clear.”

Lionel looked at him for a second, twisting his lips. “Just… just try to be.” He asked, reaching for the man hand, feeling as the heat of the omega´s hand anchored him in the moment, calmed him. “Try to tell me what you mean in words I could understand.”

Cristiano smiled a little, as soft as the beginning, taking them back to a place they were both safe.

“I don´t really know how things are going to move forward with us now. It´s difficult to envision, us being who we are, I mean.” He stated, moving his head side to side as if to make him see what he meant, and he did, it was quite obvious what he meant. They were who they were, big names and rivals and legends and a whisper of them would send the world reeling and unmade it whole. “But if we mean to go as we do now… well, I think it´s important to put things on the table before it goes any further.”

That sounded ominous and terrible, Lionel couldn´t help but frown and squeeze Cristiano´s hand tighter as he felt the threat of a gray cloud over their head.

Cris seemed to understand that and he smiled sadly at the union of their hands.

“I cannot possibly tell you my life story and my sad sad past in a single night…” he joked, trying to make him feel better “…but I can assure you one thing. I know what I want and what I don´t.”

The declaration was strong, a death sentence and Cristiano´s eyes spoke true to it, with a sharpness as cutting as daggers and an invitation open for Lionel to refuse it.

He would not. Lionel declared inside his mind.

“…all right…” Lionel accepted, nodding slightly to ebb him to continue.

“I want you. I want us.” The omega admitted, firmer and more assured of himself that he had ever sounded all through the night. His eyes had that spark, the one Lionel had seen in his eyes when they played against each other in clasicos in Spain, and his heart soared at realizing now more than ever before that Cristiano was finally there with him, in the same synchrony of emotion. “And I want it to work.” He swore.

“As do I, Cris…” he sighed, smiling against his better judgment and his heart thumping against his eardrums.

“…but I don´t want a bite and I don´t want a bond.” He stated more firmly than ever before, parting the air in two, including the one that was stuck in Lionel´s lungs.

The alpha dropped Cristiano´s hand on pure instinct, feeling his skin burn as the omega didn´t seem keen in taking his words back.

“Not now. Not ever.” The man swore, doubling down as he stared the other man down.

The words seemed so cold and cruel, as if a minute ago, Cristiano wasn´t wording things in a way that screamed love. It almost seemed like a bad, terrible joke, Lionel half expected for the man to burst into laughter at any second now, tears of mockery clinging to the rim of his eyes as he made fun of the way Lionel´s face looked at the moment.

Of course that didn´t happen, and Lionel had one final realization right there.

Oh, there it is. He thought.

The butt of the joke.

The perfect stain on the white cloak.

The curtain pull and him at the center of the stage, naked for the laughing audience to ridicule.

For a second, he wanted to rage, against the injustice of the man that stood so sure and so proud of the hurtful things he said, the way the words resonated in an open space as if they were inside a cave, with the rocky walls projecting all the damage back to him.

It stabbed him, because Lionel had never spoke about bonding with Cristiano as if to give him reason to fear his bite, but Leo wasn´t in place to be a hypocrite about it when he had seen that expanse of skin in Cristiano´s neck and salivated at the possibility of his mark being left there.

The Portuguese looked at him intensely, as if trying to read the disgust reflected on his eyes. He wouldn´t be able to know that Lionel was agonizing over the rejection as if the omega had told him he hated him after all.

It was comical in the way it was all unprompted and unwarranted.

Was this the price to pay? He wondered. For wanting it all as if he had any right.

He wanted the world cup, so he prayed for it to God, claiming that was all he needed now. The last thing he would ever ask of him while he lived on this earth. And in return he stood here now, with half the things he wanted, still wanting more anyway. With the man he had loved for so long daring him to have him only in body and nothing else, with the union of spirit and the ultimate trophy forever out of the reach of his hands.

He knew right then it wasn´t an ´I love you´ what the man felt, at least not now and he wondered if it ever, by any chance.

Because was it really love if Cristiano still hesitated to give him the last bit of him?

Or was it selfish of him to expect it when Lionel himself had nothing to lose in return?

“Leo…” Cristiano breathed out, pulling him closer to him, making the cold air between them hot with his breath hitting the alpha´s face. “…tell me something, please.”

What was he supposed to say?

Yes? No? Let me think about it, Cris?

All seemed so dishonest and out of place.

So Lionel closed his eyes, seeking the blackness of nothingness instead of those puppy eyes that begged quick answers to demolishing questions.

He didn´t talk with words, because he didn´t have them, he took Cristiano´s hand and brought it up to his lips, kissing the knuckles of the hand that held his heart and had just squeezed it, blood dripping from the spaces between fingers in the grip of a terrible fist.

“It´s all right, Cris.” He swore, hearing himself promising things he wouldn´t know what they meant. “We will be all right.”

Cris didn´t either, because when Lionel opened his eyes again, the man looked as sad as Lionel felt.

As if he too knew, this was the prologue of the end of them.

It wasn´t. Lionel would make sure of that.

Even if it took his lifetime to let Cristiano see it the way Lionel did.

The perfect union of them was not a mistake, was not a thing to fear, and whatever had happened to Cristiano, the things he said he couldn’t ´quite share in just one night, Lionel was willing to wait to hear them and wait to heal them, one by one.

Because just as Cristiano had said, Lionel couldn´t envision a life where he didn´t get to touch to kiss to tell Cristiano he loved him ever again.

He couldn´t and he wouldn´t.

And just like that, he made a promise Cristiano didn´t hear with words but Lionel hoped he could hear in his heart, standing so close to the other until their breaths mingled and became one, mixing in one single gulp of air, just enough to keep them going.

Even through the storm of whom they were and what was done to them.

“To love an omega… well, that is the best feeling in the world for us alphas.”

Those words came back to mind, even now, specially now, as they both existed in the same space not wanting the same things and Lionel wondered if they ever will.

It hurt, this best love he was promised as a child. Hurt so much Lionel asked himself why he was so keen in feeling it still.

Cristiano embraced him tightly, burying his nose on his neck, letting his caramel scent overtake the air and erase the bitter taste that lingered on Lionel´s tongue, making it all sweet again, a temporary flavor to mask the acidic aftertaste of his words.

“Okey…” Cristiano whispered close to his ear. “We´ll be all right, Leo.”

And there was nothing between them for a tiny second in that warm desert night. No past, no future either. Just them.

Nothing but love and fear as they held each other with their hearts and their ghosts, hoping they didn´t devour them in the end.

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