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Chapter Text

Gilbert loves mornings in Madrid.

For one thing, Antonio Fernandez Carriedo has the nicest bed that Gilbert's ever had the pleasure of making friends with. King-sized and old fashioned, with sturdy oak four posters and a feather mattress you can drown in. Antonio says the canopy is a bitch to clean and Gilbert agrees that it is a little girly, but secretly he also thinks there's something a little nostalgic about it, waking up in a bed at least a hundred years old.

Gilbert almost always wakes later, sprawled on the bed with the sheets tucked considerately around him and bright sunlight and fresh air streaming through the open windows. The bedroom door is open too, and Gilbert can hear the sounds of clattering dishes and Antonio singing, Spanish guitars on the radio behind him. Gilbert just lays awake and listens, until he can smell eggs and cheese and fried onions and hear sausage sizzling. Then he gets up, dragging a sheet with him to wrap around his naked torso; security blanket and toga all in one.

Then he pads out into the main room of the flat; one big open airy space of high ceiling and golden stucco walls.

Antonio is in the kitchen wearing pants but no shirt, hips swaying in front of the stove as he sings in Spanish. The light from the window over the sink catches in his dark hair, painting warm honey-golden highlights through it. Gilbert leans in the bedroom door and watches him, a little smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Then Antonio turns, a frying pan in one hand and obviously about to call for Gilbert to get out of bed and come have breakfast. When his gaze sweeps over the room to find Gilbert already up, his green eyes seem to light from within and he breaks into a sunny smile. Gilbert can't help but smile a little back and cross the room, making sure Antonio's put the hot pan down before draping over his shoulders to kiss him.

Madrid is all warm, lazy mornings and gentle sex. Sometimes, Gilbert thinks about never going back to London.

Days in Madrid Gilbert gets entirely to himself. Antonio has his own flat but still works at his parents' winery and probably will until he dies. Like Gilbert, he never bothered to go to university, but he's never needed to. Antonio is bright and cheerful with a smile that can light up a room, and that's all he needs to sell wine and ramble on about vintages and curings and other things he imbibed with mother's milk.

So after breakfast Antonio wanders off on his moped headed for the farm and leaves Gilbert to his own devices.

Sometimes he goes into town, sits on a bench in the park during siesta time and ponders what would happen if he tried to get siestas instated in London. Somehow he just can't imagine the entire city shutting down for four hours every day. The British wouldn't know how to handle it. The British tourists to Spain are already baffled enough by the concept of shops closing for a break in the middle of the day.

At least tourist watching is entertaining. His favourite trick is to start speaking German when they try to ask him for help.

Sometimes he just stays at Antonio's flat all day, laying shirtless on the back terrace and letting the sun burn his shoulders as he watches the birds eat the breadcrumbs he scatters for them and dozing off himself, the radio inside playing Spanish music Gilbert can't understand.

He wonders sometimes what his friends, his bandmates, what West would think if they ever saw him in Spain. They'd be shocked, he thinks, by how quiet he can be. It's just something about warm, sleepy Spain and warm, sparkling Antonio, who Gilbert thinks couldn't hate anyone if he tried. It brings out the peace in him.

But not always. He's still Gilbert Beilschmidt, after all.

Case in point; it's spring, warm with barely a cloud in the sky, the trees blossoming and birds singing. Everyone with a drop of Spanish blood in them anywhere in the last three generations is flat on their back siesta-ing, and Gilbert is bored.

He's actually at the winery today; he rode in this morning on the back of Antonio's moped, arms around his waist and face buried in the back of his shoulder as he tried and failed to keep from laughing at what a ridiculous sight they must be.

Once Antonio's parents found out that his German-British friend is a mechanic, they started asking Gilbert to fix various vehicles whenever he's in town. Gilbert doesn't mind at all, they usually pay him in wine and it gives him something to do while everyone else is asleep.

But today, he's already stuck his head into the winery's ancient truck long enough to ascertain that it's not going to run without parts he doesn't have, and that Antonio's mother's car has stripped gears and he's going to need a jack and a really big wrench, at least.

So he's bored. Wandering around to the back of the shop, Gilbert puts his hands on his hips and surveys the winery proper. It's beautiful land, he'll readily admit that, rolling hills with rows and rows of grapevines stretching away to the horizon, broken here and there by little oasis formed by scrub trees.

He's just about to cross the back courtyard/parking lot to the giant industrial garage to give their tractor a preventative check-up when he notices someone asleep under the apple tree at the back of the shop. Not at all unusual, of course. There's people sprawled out snoring all over the place, like some weird fusion of Sleeping Beauty and a zombie apocalypse. But Gilbert would know this particular sleeping figure anywhere, despite the straw hat pulled down low to shade his face.

Grinning, Gilbert lays his plans for the tractor aside and slowly creeps forward, trying not to let his sandals crunch on the gravel courtyard. Once he's close enough, at the edge of the grassy space around the shop, he crouches and then pounces. He lands stradling Antonio's lap and half sprawled across his chest, a little less graceful than it had looked in his head. Antonio squawks at being woken, and Gilbert hooks an arm around his neck, leaning close to kiss him as the hat goes flying.

Then, three things happen almost at once.

First, Gil comes to the realization that he's kissed Antonio dozens, if not hundreds of times before, and this is not Antonio.

Second, Antonio's voice comes from behind him, sleepy and amused and bewildered as he asks, "What are you doing, Gil?"

And third, Gabriel Fernandez Carriedo bites him.

The tongue lashing he gets from Gabi after being shoved off on his arse is almost, almost worth it because Antonio looks fucking amazing when he's laughing that hard, and Gilbert can't even care that he has a bruise from Gabi's teeth on his jaw for a week afterwards.

Nights in Madrid are always, always spent with Antonio, talking and drinking and sleeping and sexing and dancing. Gilbert had thought he was joking the first time Antonio said he could dance, because they'd been through three bottles of wine between them and the stars were starting to spin. But then Antonio staggered to his feet, unsteady and shirtless and fucking beautiful.

And then he smiled, sparkling teeth and shining eyes and the lanterns hanging around the terrace making a halo of his hair, and Gilbert would have done anything for him at that moment, and he's drunk anyway, so it's easy to take his hand and dance until they're laughing and breathless and bruised from banging hips and thighs into cast iron patio furniture that gets in their way.

And one of them shoves the other - onto the glass-topped table, onto the cool brick floor, sometimes they miss and end up in the dirt flowerbeds that smell of lavender and crushed leaves - and they rut like animals or snog like teenagers or just lay there and breathe each others' scents because they're a little too far gone and it doesn't matter which one happens because it'll happen again tomorrow and the day after that.

And it's then, laying with his shoulders in the begonias and one leg hooked around an iron chair and Antonio across his chest and kissing his neck, warm and dark and alive, that Gilbert decides not to go back to London.

He sends the postcard the next day, no return address.