"Hey — isn't that Mateo's cousin?"
Gavi slowed his pace slightly, eyes moving across the car park toward the building entrance. Beside him, Casado, Fermín, and Balde drew level, and Adrian, a half step behind the group, continued toward the van without breaking stride.
The four of them looked in the direction Gavi was looking.
A car — an Uber, by the look of it — had pulled up near the entrance of the complex, and two girls were at the back of it, working suitcases out of the boot with the particular energy of people who had been travelling for a while and were ready to be done with it.
"Yeah," Casado said, settling into focus after a moment. "That looks like her."
Fermín had already seen them. He watched for a second, then glanced sideways.
Balde was not watching the car. He was watching his own reflection in the glass panel of the building entrance, running a hand through his hair with the focused attention of an artist making final adjustments before an exhibition opened.
Then he looked up and saw them.
He stepped forward — one smooth, unhurried step, the hand dropping from his hair, the smile arriving as though it had always been there.
"And her friend," he said.
He said it the way someone makes an observation about the weather — casually, pleasantly — while his eyes moved with considerably more interest than the tone suggested.
Fermín turned to look at him. "Dude."
Balde ignored this completely.
Gavi was already moving. "They look like they could use a hand." He nodded toward the girls and started walking. "Come on."
He didn't need to say it twice. Casado fell in beside him immediately. Fermín followed with a small shake of his head in Balde's direction that Balde also ignored. The four of them crossed the car park toward the car as Adrian veered off in the direction of the van without comment.
"Wait — I'm not done!"
Aina's voice carried clearly across the car park, sharp and certain, aimed at the driver who had begun to ease the car forward before the last suitcase had fully cleared the boot.
The driver's window was down. "Please hurry up — I have another customer waiting."
"Attend to the ones at your front before thinking about another one," Aina said, without looking up, both hands on the handle of the final suitcase, walking it backward and down with the concentrated effort of someone who had been doing this alone since before she asked for help.
The suitcase hit the ground.
She straightened up, hands on her lower back for a brief second, then looked at the boot. Empty. She gave it a single decisive nod.
"Done."
Olivia appeared at her side, reaching for the bag that had toppled against the bumper, righting it and pulling it clear of the car. "I've already paid, so we should be—"
The engine revved.
The car pulled away.
Not gradually. Not with any particular acknowledgment of the two people and four suitcases it was leaving behind. Just — gone, indicating out into the road and accelerating with the efficient indifference of someone who had, in fact, another customer waiting.
Aina stood on the pavement and stared after it.
A short silence passed.
She blew out a breath — slow, deliberate, through her teeth — aimed at the disappearing car like she was extinguishing something.
"Well," she said, her eyes still fixed on the back of the vehicle as it shrank into the street. "There go your five stars."
She stared after it for one more moment with the flat, focused expression of someone committing a number plate to memory for reasons they had not yet fully decided on.
"Do you need a hand?"
Both of them turned.
Gavi, Casado, Fermín, and Balde had arrived — four of them, spread loosely, looking between the girls and the collection of suitcases on the pavement with the easy, unhurried manner of people who had appeared at a useful moment and were comfortable with that.
Aina blinked. Her expression shifted — the remains of the car-related irritation dissolving as recognition arrived.
"It's you guys."
Olivia had already turned fully, a small surprised smile breaking across her face. "We didn't expect to see you here—"
"Guilty," Balde said, grinning, hands in his pockets, the picture of coincidental arrival.
The girls smiled — properly, warmly, clearly pleased at the familiar faces in an unfamiliar car park. Aina's expression had shed the last of its edges, replaced now with something lighter and more open. Olivia laughed a little — the soft, slightly relieved laugh of someone who has just had a mildly frustrating few minutes and then unexpectedly run into people they like.
The boys responded in kind — the easy back and forth of people picking up something that had been briefly set down, not much time having passed since the match, the warmth between them still immediate and accessible.
"We just came from Mateo's," Gavi offered. "Just got him settled in — heading back to the dorms now."
Casado glanced at his watch. A small crease appeared between his brows. "Which we need to do quickly — it's nearly six."
"Yeah." Gavi nodded, checking his own. "We don't want to break the deadline." He looked up, gathering the group with a glance. "Okay — let's move." He was already turning toward the suitcases. "But first—"
He gestured — a small, simple movement, directing Fermín, Balde, and Casado toward the luggage with no further explanation needed.
The four of them distributed themselves across the bags. Casado took the largest suitcase, extending the handle in one motion and tilting it back onto its wheels. Fermín picked up a mid-sized one, testing the weight briefly before tucking it under his arm at the handle. Gavi took another. Balde — who had positioned himself closest to Olivia's side of things — reached for the bag she had been carrying over her shoulder with a smooth, unhurried movement.
"Oh — don't worry, it's fine—" Aina started, reaching back toward one of the bags.
"It's fine," Gavi said simply, the bag already in his hand, already moving.
"Really, we've got it—" Olivia tried, stepping slightly toward Balde.
"It's fine," Balde said warmly, the bag already off the pavement, his smile entirely genuine and entirely unmoving.
The girls looked at each other for a brief moment — the particular look exchanged between two people rapidly concluding that resistance is both unnecessary and logistically pointless.
They had barely taken two steps toward the building entrance when the van rolled around from the side of the car park and Adrian's window came down.
"Okay guys — let's go."
He looked at the scene in front of him — four boys, two girls, six pieces of luggage distributed between them — and his expression moved through several calculations simultaneously.
Gavi turned back. "Ehm — Adrian, just give us a few minutes. Let us help them get their bags up to Mateo's place."
Adrian's face did the thing it did when he was trying to be reasonable and the clock was making it difficult.
"Okay, but ehm—" He glanced at the dashboard. Back at them. At the dashboard again. "If we don't leave — right now, I mean now — we're not getting back before six." He muttered the last part mostly to himself, the logistics clearly running in real time behind his eyes. "To even have a chance I'd have to pass some speed limits as it is—"
"It's a few minutes," Gavi said.
"Just a few minutes," Fermín confirmed.
"We'll be quick," Casado added.
Adrian looked at them. Looked at the time. Opened his mouth.
"Guys."
The voice came from behind them.
Aina and Olivia had been watching the exchange quietly, and now Aina stepped forward slightly, her hand already moving back toward the handle of her suitcase. Olivia was already reaching for hers.
"Thank you — really," Aina said, and she meant it, the warmth entirely genuine. "But don't worry about it."
"Honestly," Olivia added, her voice easy and settled. "We'd hate to be the reason you all get back to your dorms late. That's the last thing we want."
"No, no — it's fine, we can—" Balde started.
"It's okay," Aina said, already reclaiming her bag.
"We appreciate it," Olivia said, "but really—"
"We don't mind at all—" Fermín tried.
"We know," Aina said, with a smile that closed the conversation politely but completely. She popped the handle of the larger suitcase up to its full height and took it in her right hand, her other bag draped across her left shoulder, settled and sorted. Olivia did the same beside her — handles extended, bags redistributed, both of them standing with the composed, capable energy of two people who had managed their own luggage before and were prepared to do so again.
"We'll be fine," Olivia said simply. "You should go."
The boys looked at them. Then at each other. Then back at them.
Then, with the reluctant, slightly deflated energy of people who have been politely but firmly outmaneuvered, they turned and got back into the van.
Balde dropped into his seat last, pulling the door shut, and immediately turned to look back out the window with a frown that was entirely sincere.
"We really should be helping them," he said.
"Yeah." Aina's voice came through the open window, light and unbothered. "But you really should also be heading out."
Olivia waved from beside her. "Go — seriously. Thank you though."
"Buckle up," Adrian said, already checking his mirror, the van already beginning to move with the quiet efficiency of a man who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Gavi leaned toward the window as the van rolled forward, raising his voice just enough to carry.
"Third floor — you go through the main door, stairs are on the right. When you get up there, it's the first door at the end of the hall. That's his place."
Aina nodded, hand coming up. "Okay."
"Got it," Olivia confirmed.
"Okay — bye!" Gavi called back.
They waved — both of them, standing in the car park with their suitcases, the evening light behind them — and the van pulled out and joined the road, and within a few seconds the building and the two girls had disappeared behind a turn.
The van settled into the rhythm of the route back.
For a moment nobody said anything particularly — the comfortable, slightly deflated quiet of people readjusting after an evening that had been very full and was now, conclusively, over.
Then Balde spoke.
"Too bad we couldn't help them," he said, to the window, mostly to himself, his frown still in residence.
"Yeah," Fermín said. He paused. Seemed to be thinking about something. "But—" He stopped again.
Balde turned to look at him. "But what?"
Fermín glanced across at him, then at the others, the thought arriving properly now.
"With those suitcases." He nodded back in the general direction they had come from. "You don't think they're planning on staying at Mateo's place?"
The van went quiet.
Balde's frown dissolved. His eyes widened, the new information rearranging itself into a completely different picture than the one he had been sitting with. He stared at Fermín for a moment.
Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face — the wide, unhurried grin of someone who has just connected two things and likes very much what the connection implies.
"Now that you mention it," he said.
He let it sit for exactly one second.
"That lucky bastard."
Casado laughed — a proper one, head back, no warning.
Gavi shook his head from the front, but the smile was already there. "More than that — I'm just hoping we actually get back to the dorms before six." He glanced at Adrian's dashboard. "That's the more pressing issue right now."
The effect was immediate.
It landed on all four of them like a bucket of cold water tipped from a significant height — the laughter cutting off, the grins fading, faces reorganising themselves around the sudden, very real weight of the reminder.
Six o'clock.
Alejandro.
The specific and well-documented consequences of arriving back at La Masia after the stated deadline, on the one day they had been granted a special extension, having already been told explicitly — sternly, finally, with eye contact — to be back before six.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
The shuddering was not coordinated. It happened independently, at slightly different times, each of them arriving at the mental image of Alejandro's face on their own schedule and reacting accordingly.
Adrian, to his credit, said nothing. He simply drove slightly faster.
It was somewhere in the middle of this collective silent reckoning that Casado shifted in his seat, leaning toward the window, his eyes catching something in the stream of traffic moving alongside them.
"Isn't that—" he started, squinting at a car pulling ahead in the adjacent lane, its rear end familiar in some way he was still placing.
Gavi leaned across to look.
The car passed through a pool of streetlight, the back of it clear for a moment before it moved ahead.
"Yeah," Gavi said.
"It's him."
...
"Shit."
The word came out quiet and collective — not quite in unison, but close enough, all four of them recognising the car at approximately the same moment and arriving at the same conclusion about what its presence on this particular road, heading in this particular direction, meant.
Adrian said nothing. He drove faster.
Meanwhile, back at the apartment complex, the girls were making progress.
They had taken Gavi's directions at face value — main door, stairs on the right, third floor, first door at the end of the hall — and set off with the practical confidence of two people who had been given clear instructions and intended to follow them. The suitcases rolled well enough on the ground floor, the smooth surface of the lobby making it manageable, and by the time they reached the first staircase they had already developed a system — cases lifted together, one step at a time, brief rest at the landing, carry on.
The first staircase was fine. Narrow, but straight. They managed it without too much difficulty, and emerged onto the first floor slightly breathless but encouraged. Aina rolled her shoulders. Olivia adjusted her grip.
"One more," Olivia said.
"One more," Aina confirmed.
They found the second staircase.
It was not the same as the first staircase.
Where the first had been straightforward — a direct, honest flight of steps going from one level to the next without any architectural opinions about it — the second was a spiral. A proper one, curving upward in a tight continuous arc, the kind that looked elegant from a distance and became a personal problem the moment you introduced luggage to it.
They stood at the bottom of it and looked up.
"Oh," Olivia said.
"Yeah," Aina said.
They tried anyway. Because the alternative was standing at the bottom of a staircase indefinitely, and neither of them was interested in that.
Olivia, with slightly less to carry and a better angle, managed to start upward. Awkward, yes. Slow, certainly. But moving.
Aina made it two steps.
On the third, the geometry became specific and unforgiving. The curve of the staircase pulled the larger suitcase against the outer wall while the bag on her shoulder swung the other direction, and suddenly she was a person-shaped counterweight in the middle of a physics problem, with the very clear understanding that any movement in any direction was going to have consequences.
She stopped.
She assessed.
She was stuck.
Not dramatically — nothing had fallen, nothing was broken, she was standing on a staircase with her feet planted and her arms full and the complete, crystalline awareness that she could not move forward without dropping something and could not move backward without the same outcome.
"Maybe we should call your cousin," Olivia said, paused a few steps above her, looking down with the expression of someone doing rapid problem-solving. "Get him to come help—"
"Yeah—" Aina started, then stopped. Her eyes moved toward her bag. Her phone was in her bag. Her bag was on her left shoulder, pinned between her arm and the wall, accessible only if she released something with her right hand, which was currently the primary structural support for the larger suitcase. "My phone is in my bag."
"Okay — can you reach it?"
Aina calculated the movement. She shifted her weight fractionally, testing it, and immediately felt the entire arrangement respond — the suitcase tilting, the bag swinging, the precarious equilibrium she had established flickering dangerously.
"Woa— woa—"
She went still. Everything went still.
A moment passed in which both of them breathed carefully.
"It'll make the cases fall," Aina said, with the flat certainty of someone who has just run the numbers.
Olivia's eyes widened slightly. "Okay — ehm." She looked at the cases. At Aina. At the cases again. "Let me go call him then. I'll go up, knock on his door—"
"Yes," Aina said immediately. "Please. Thank you."
"Okay — just — don't move."
"I was not planning on moving."
Olivia carefully placed the cases she had been carrying against the outer wall of the staircase, angling them in toward Aina's side so the weight helped rather than hindered, using Aina's position as an anchor to keep them from sliding back down. It was an inexact science.
Aina grunted.
"Sorry—"
"It's fine," Aina said, through a breath that suggested it was fine in the sense that nothing had collapsed yet. "Seems stable. Just — go. Go quickly."
"Going," Olivia said, and went, her footsteps disappearing upward around the curve of the staircase until the sound of them faded entirely.
Aina stood very still.
She focused on her breathing. In. Out. Steady. She was on a staircase. She was holding some bags. This was not a crisis. This was a temporary logistical inconvenience and it would be resolved in approximately two minutes when Olivia knocked on Mateo's door and Mateo came down and this entire situation ended.
She just had to stay still.
Okay, Aina. Calm down. Don't shake. Don't move. Just stand here.
The cases were stable. Her arms were tired but holding. The wall was cooperating. Everything was fine.
Then her nose itched.
Not a vague, ignorable suggestion of an itch. A real one — sharp and specific, sitting directly on the bridge of her nose with the particular insistence of something that had arrived with a purpose and intended to be acknowledged.
She ignored it.
It got worse.
She tried blowing a careful stream of air upward from the corner of her mouth, redirecting it toward her nose bridge, the way you do when your hands are occupied. The air reached approximately nowhere near the itch and accomplished nothing except making the suitcase in her right arm shift slightly.
She froze.
Don't sneeze. Do not sneeze. You are not going to sneeze.
The itch intensified with what felt like personal malice.
Her nose twitched. Her shoulders drew up involuntarily. The suitcase moved.
"No — no no no—"
The larger case tilted. She compensated. The bag on her shoulder swung. She compensated for that. The compensation for the bag undid the compensation for the case and suddenly everything was in motion at once — the whole careful arrangement unravelling in slow, horrible increments, each correction creating a new problem somewhere else, the physics of it cascading out of her control.
She tried her left foot first — swinging it out to brace against the case. It helped for approximately one second. Then the angle was wrong and her own balance was now part of the problem.
She looked at the case heading toward the edge of the step.
She looked at herself.
Better the case than me.
She made the decision cleanly and let go.
Time slowed in the specific way it does in the half second before something bad happens — the case tipping past the point of no return, the bag beginning to follow, the whole arrangement starting its collapse, and Aina planting her feet and accepting that this was simply going to be a noise that the whole building was about to hear—
"Wow—"
A hand appeared.
It caught the falling case — not barely, not frantically, but cleanly, fingers closing around the handle with the instinct of someone whose reflexes had been professionally trained, the momentum absorbed and arrested before the case had fully committed to its descent.
A voice came with it — slightly rushed, carrying the particular quality of someone who had arrived at speed and was still catching up to what they had found.
"Are you okay?"
...
"Hello."
Mateo turned slowly.
He had been moving away from the door — already half-pivoting back toward the kitchen, already mid-sentence about forgotten things — and the voice stopped him the way unexpected things stop you, not loudly but completely, the unfamiliarity of it registering before anything else did.
He turned around.
A girl was standing in the doorway.
She was around his age, maybe a year or so either side, with warm brown eyes that were currently doing two things at once — looking at him and looking past him, toward the staircase end of the corridor, with the particular divided attention of someone carrying an urgency they haven't yet been able to explain. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, dark and slightly tousled in the way that happens when you have been travelling and then immediately dealing with suitcases in a spiral staircase. She was wearing a casual outfit — a soft oversized cream top tucked loosely into wide-leg trousers, clean white trainers — put together in the easy, unconsidered way that takes more instinct than effort.
In the span of approximately three seconds, and with the complete lack of ceremony of someone whose eyes simply did what eyes do, Mateo had taken in all of this.
She was also, he noted, clearly in some kind of hurry.
He realised he had been staring for a moment longer than was strictly polite.
"Hello," he said.
The word came out slightly more measured than he intended — the conscious correction of someone who had just caught themselves.
Her eyes came back to him fully. They held for just a second — registering him, the same instinctive cataloguing running in both directions — and then she was already glancing back toward the staircase, the urgency reasserting itself.
"Ehm — I'm—"
"Aina's friend," Mateo said.
Something in his face shifted to a smile, easy and recognising.
"My mom told me Aina and her friend were coming," he said, already stepping forward, already moving into the corridor. His eyes moved past her automatically — scanning left, scanning right — looking for the second person he was expecting.
His brow creased slightly.
Isn't she the friend? The thought arrived with mild confusion. Then where's—
"Yes — yes, I'm her friend." The girl's words came out slightly rushed, her hand already gesturing back down the corridor. "But please — can you come? We need your help."
Mateo was already moving before she finished the sentence.
"What's wrong?" He stepped out fully, door swinging behind him, looking around as his gaze then fell toward the staircase at end of the hall.
"The staircase." She was already turning, pointing, making way for him. "Aina's still there — we couldn't get the suitcases up. We couldn't reach the phone, so I came to—"
"Why didn't she just call me?" Mateo said, moving, the two of them heading down the corridor together toward the staircase.
"We couldn't reach the phone," she said again. "It was in her bag and she couldn't—"
"Yeah, okay—"
They moved quickly, the corridor short, the staircase entrance coming up fast. And then — before they reached it, before either of them had fully rounded the corner — they both slowed at the same moment.
Because what they were hearing was not what either of them had expected to hear.
A voice. Aina's voice — coming up from the staircase, light and relieved, the distinct warmth of someone who has just been extracted from a difficult situation by an unexpected hand.
"— thank you so much, honestly—"
A laugh in it. The loosened, slightly giddy laugh of someone whose adrenaline was still settling.
Olivia slowed, a small crease forming between her brows. Who is she talking to?
And then the response came — unhurried, easy, familiar in a way that took Mateo approximately half a second to place.
"It's nothing. I'm on the second floor."
A brief pause, and then the same voice continuing, with the natural generosity of someone for whom the offer was obvious:
"Where are you headed? Let me help you carry these."
Mateo and Olivia reached the top of the staircase at the same moment and looked down.
Aina was still on the steps — suitcases now stabilised around her, the immediate crisis clearly resolved — her expression carrying the unmistakable light of someone who has just been very lucky and knows it. She looked up at the sound of footsteps, and the person helping her looked up with her.
Olivia's voice came first.
"Are you okay?"
"Barely." Aina's eyes were wide, still carrying the last traces of the near-miss. She let out a breath. "Everything was about to go — the cases, the bags, all of it. If he hadn't—" She gestured beside her, toward the person who had caught it. The gratitude in the gesture was full and genuine.
Mateo was already looking at him.
The recognition arrived instantly — the face, the build, the easy unhurried posture of someone entirely comfortable on a staircase in an apartment building because, of course, this was also his building.
"Pedri?"
Pedri looked up at him.
"Mateo."
A beat passed — the brief, slightly absurd beat of two people establishing that yes, this is actually happening, yes, we do both live here, yes, this is your cousin on the staircase.
Then Mateo was moving down the steps, reaching for the nearest suitcase, and Pedri was already repositioning to help with the angle, and between the two of them the logistics of the staircase reorganised themselves immediately into something manageable.
"Hey, dude," Mateo said, getting his hands around the handle, the two of them lifting together.
"Just finished with the documentary guys," Pedri said, as the four of them made their way up the final steps and into the corridor of the third floor.
"How was it?" Mateo asked, the larger suitcase in his hand, moving toward the apartment.
"Long." Pedri said it with the mild, unbothered tone of someone who has accepted the less glamorous parts of the job. "But good, I think."
The door was still open — the way Mateo had left it in his hurry — and he pushed through it first, case in hand, the others following behind him.
Pedri stepped into the apartment and stopped.
He looked left. He looked right. He took in the hallway wall — the framed jerseys, the photographs, the progression of a career laid out in fabric and glass — and then the living room opening beyond it, the warm light, the high windows, the general sense of a space that had been put together with intention.
"Wow," he said. "It looks nice."
"Thanks," Mateo said, already moving through the hallway toward the interior, leading with the suitcase.
Behind him, Aina and Olivia had come through the door and were doing their own quiet version of the same thing — eyes moving around the space, taking it in, the comparison to the family home doing itself automatically and without needing to be said out loud. It was larger. Considerably. The ceilings were higher, the rooms wider, the whole place carrying the particular ease of somewhere that had been designed rather than simply furnished.
"Ehm—" Mateo turned, gesturing down the short hall toward the second bedroom. "There should be a room down there. Let's get the cases in."
He led the way, Pedri falling in beside him with the remaining bags, and pushed the door open with his shoulder. The second bedroom was clean and simply furnished — a bed, a wardrobe, a window looking out over the building's exterior — waiting and quiet, the way spare rooms always are.
"You can leave them here," Mateo said, setting the larger case down against the wall.
Pedri placed the others beside it, straightening up and rolling out his shoulder once.
"Thanks, man," Mateo said.
Aina and Olivia came in behind them, looking around the room briefly before adding the remaining bags to the collection against the wall.
"Yes — thank you," Aina said. She looked at Pedri with the particular sincerity of someone who had been standing on a spiral staircase with her arms full and her nose itching and had genuinely believed it was about to go very badly. "Honestly. You appeared at exactly the right moment."
Pedri laughed — easy and warm. "I'm just happy I could help."
Mateo turned to look at Aina.
He looked at her for a moment — the specific, measuring look of someone who has known a person long enough to have formed a clear opinion of their recurring patterns.
"Why didn't you just call me?" he said. "I was right upstairs." He tilted his head slightly. "Some things never change. Still finding trouble everywhere."
Aina looked at him.
The look she returned was calm and precise and contained a quantity of energy she was choosing, for the moment, not to fully deploy.
"It's nice seeing you too, cousin," she said.
She delivered the word cousin with the particular sweetness of a word being used as a blunt instrument.
Beside her, Olivia pressed her lips together against a smile, looking at a point on the wall.
Pedri, who had caught all of this, glanced between them with mild curiosity.
"Cousin?" he said.
Aina turned to him, the sharpness evaporating immediately, replaced with the easy warmth she had been directing at him since the staircase. "Yes — I'm this one's older cousin." She gestured at Mateo with the comfortable authority of someone who has held a seniority and intends to continue holding it.
"Few months," Mateo said, to no one in particular but with the specific tone of someone ensuring a number gets onto the record.
Aina ignored this. She extended her hand to Pedri cleanly. "Aina."
Pedri shook it. "Pedri—"
"I'm Olivia." Olivia stepped forward, hand out, a genuine smile on her face. "Her friend. Thank you again — really. You saved us back there."
"It's nothing," Pedri said, shaking her hand in turn. "Genuinely."
Mateo, who had been standing slightly to the side watching the introductions proceed without him, straightened up.
"I'm Mateo," he said.
The room responded.
Pedri laughed — properly, the kind that catches you off guard. Olivia's smile broke wide open, her hand coming up briefly to cover it. Aina simply turned to look at him with the expression of a person experiencing something they have experienced many times before and remain unimpressed by.
"No one asked," she said.
The small laughter settled, and Pedri glanced toward the door with the expression of someone returning to a prior commitment.
"I should probably get going—"
"Already?" Mateo said.
"Stay," Aina said, at almost the same moment. She said it with the easy certainty of someone issuing a reasonable offer rather than making a request. "My uncle sent a dish with us. You helped us get it up here — the least we can do is feed you. Stay for dinner."
"Yeah, man," Mateo said. "Stay."
Pedri looked at them both — the twin invitation, delivered from two directions. He smiled, and for a moment it seemed like he might be genuinely considering it.
"I would love to," he said. "But my brother's probably already cooked by now. He'll be waiting." He shook his head slightly, the regret in it real if light. "Maybe another time."
Aina made a small sound of genuine disappointment. "That's a shame."
Olivia tucked herself beside Aina's shoulder, looking at Pedri with a smile. "Next time then."
Pedri pointed at them both, the smile settling into something easy and decided. "Next time. For sure."
They walked Pedri back through the apartment to the front door, the four of them moving easily through the hallway, the evening settled and comfortable around them.
Pedri glanced at Mateo as they reached the door.
"So — do you have a ride sorted for tomorrow? I could take you to the Gamper when I'm heading there, if you need."
Mateo shook his head. "I don't think that's going to work, unfortunately."
Pedri frowned lightly. "Why not?"
"The documentary guys want me early." Mateo leaned against the door frame. "The club is sending someone over first thing — very early. It's already arranged."
"Ah." Pedri nodded. "Okay, fair enough."
Mateo pointed at him. "Keep the offer though." He said it with the particular gravity of someone making a business decision. "Because from now on you are my personal driver. I've decided."
Pedri laughed — a full one, surprised out of him. He shook his head, already reaching for the door handle. "Okay, let me start going—"
"I'm serious," Mateo said, smiling.
"I know you are." Pedri turned, hand out.
They shook — the easy, familiar handshake of two people who had been in the same building for approximately three hours and had already established a frequency.
"Okay, man," Mateo said. "Later."
Pedri turned back toward the hallway, looking past Mateo to where Aina and Olivia were standing.
"It was lovely meeting you." His eyes moved between them — landing on Olivia first, then moving to Aina, where they settled for just a moment longer than the even distribution of a general goodbye strictly required. "Both of you."
Both of them smiled back.
"It was nice meeting you too," Aina said. Warmly. Directly.
"Bye," Olivia said, with a small wave.
Pedri leaned slightly against the door frame, easy and unhurried. "I'm just one floor below — if you need anything while you're here, feel free to come down."
"Thanks," Olivia said.
Aina smiled at him. Said nothing for a moment. Just smiled — the particular smile of someone receiving an offer and deciding what to do with it.
Pedri smiled back.
Then he looked at Mateo again. "Okay, man."
"Okay, man," Mateo said back, and they shook hands one more time — because that was apparently necessary — before Pedri finally stepped out into the corridor, and Mateo swung the door shut behind him.
The apartment settled into quiet.
Mateo turned around.
Aina and Olivia were both looking at him — standing in the middle of his hallway, in front of the framed jerseys and the photographs, in the first proper stillness the evening had offered since everything started. He looked back at them for a moment.
Then he pushed off the door and started walking toward Aina.
She watched him come, a small crease of uncertainty crossing her face — not alarm, just the mild confusion of someone reading a social gesture and not yet having the translation.
Mateo reached her and wrapped both arms around her.
"It's nice seeing you again, Maria," he said, into her shoulder — and then the laugh that followed made very clear that the name had been deployed entirely on purpose.
Aina's hand found his side immediately, fingers pinching with precise and practised aim.
He laughed harder.
"This is much better than yesterday's greeting," she said, into the hug, the bite in it affectionate rather than sharp.
"Yesterday I was—" he started.
"I know," she said. Simply. No ceremony around it, no requirement for him to finish. Just — I know. The particular shorthand of people who have known each other long enough to not need full sentences for the things that matter.
She hugged him back properly — both arms, real and unhurried.
"I missed you too, doofus," she said.
He laughed again, quieter this time.
They stayed like that for a moment — cousins in a new apartment in Barcelona, the day having been what it had been — and then they let each other go.
Mateo turned to Olivia.
A brief look of easy apology crossed his face. "Sorry about that." He extended his hand toward her, the gesture open and unhurried. "I don't think we've properly introduced ourselves."
He smiled. "Mateo King."
Olivia looked at the hand, then at him, and took it — her grip clean and easy, the kind of handshake that doesn't make a performance of itself.
"It's nothing," she said. Then, with a small smile that suggested she had been enjoying the cousin exchange from a comfortable distance: "Olivia."
Their hands were still loosely clasped.
"Rodrigo," she added.
Mateo smiled. "Nice name."
Olivia tilted her head slightly, the smile staying where it was. "Can it really be nicer than having King though?"
A small laugh moved between them — light and brief, the first easy thing between two people who are still in the early minutes of figuring out each other's frequency.
They released hands.
To the side, Aina was watching with the quiet, small smile of someone who has been a spectator to something and has privately noted it without any intention of saying so yet. After a moment her eyes drifted from the two of them and moved around the apartment — taking it in properly now, without luggage in her arms and a staircase threatening her, the space finally available to be received at face value.
She let out a slow whistle. Low and genuine.
Then she looked at Mateo.
"You really have come a long way, huh."
Mateo looked around too. He was quiet for a second — not the quiet of someone searching for words, but the quiet of someone who has found the feeling and is just letting it sit where it is.
"Yeah," he said.
The word came out carrying more than its syllable.
Aina let a moment pass. Then, gently:
"Abuelo would have loved this."
The air in the hallway shifted — just slightly, just enough.
Mateo's jaw moved. His eyes stayed on the middle distance for a second, somewhere between the framed jerseys and whatever was behind them in his mind.
"Yeah," he said again.
Same word. Different weight.
It sat between them — the specific, familiar weight of someone who is no longer here but whose absence shows up in the good moments just as clearly as the hard ones, maybe more so, because the good moments are exactly where you want them standing beside you.
Then Mateo drew a breath and straightened slightly, the present reasserting itself in the easy way it does when you have learned to let it.
"Come on," he said, looking between the two of them, his expression opening back up. "Let me show you around the place."
---
"—and that's everything."
They had made the full circuit — the kitchen with its new appliances, the hall way with its jerseys lineups on the wall that Mateo had pointed out with particular pride, the main bedroom with its view over the city, the small balcony where they had placed a single chair facing out because as Adrian had explained, sometimes you just needed to sit and look at things without anything happening.
Now they were back in the living room.
The evening light had softened while they walked, the city beyond the windows shifting from gold to the deeper, quieter blue of Barcelona at dusk. The framed jerseys on the hallway wall caught the last of it, the colours muted now, the photographs beside them settling into shadow.
Olivia stopped in the centre of the room and turned slowly, taking it all in one more time — the clean lines of the furniture, the warm light from the standing lamp in the corner, the way the space held them without feeling empty.
"Your place is beautiful," she said.
Mateo looked around too, as if seeing it fresh through her words. He shrugged lightly, but the smile that came with it was pleased.
"Thanks," he said. "I would let the people who designed it know, but I think they already have a pretty good idea."
Olivia laughed — a real one, easy and unforced — and Mateo's smile widened in response.
Beside them, Aina stood with her arms loosely crossed, watching the exchange. She wasn't saying anything. She was just standing there with a small, quiet smile on her face, the particular smile of someone who was enjoying a show they had not purchased tickets for but were very happy to have stumbled into.
The laughter settled, and Olivia turned toward Mateo more fully, her expression shifting into something softer.
"Thank you, though," she said. "For letting us stay."
"Yeah," Aina added, uncrossing her arms and stepping forward slightly. "Thanks so much, dude."
Mateo waved both hands, the gesture dismissive in the way that meant the opposite.
"Come on — we're family." He looked at Aina as he said it, the word carrying the shorthand of everything that sat behind it. Then his eyes moved to Olivia, and his voice settled into something warm and declarative. "And any friend to family is a friend to all of us."
Olivia smiled at that — a real smile, the kind that arrived without being arranged, her eyes holding on him for a moment longer than strictly necessary.
Then Mateo clapped his hands together once, the sound soft and final.
"Okay."
He shifted his weight, the energy in the room changing as he moved toward the hallway. "I have to head to bed now. I've got a very busy day ahead of me tomorrow, and I need to sleep now if I want to have the energy for it."
Aina's eyebrows lifted. "You aren't going to eat?"
"Yeah," Olivia chimed in, gesturing back toward the kitchen area. "Uncle Davi — sorry, your dad — made some very nice Shepherd's Pie that we brought along."
Mateo's hand moved to his stomach, rubbing it with genuine regret.
"While that sounds very nice —" He drew the words out, the reluctance in them clear. " — I'm going to have to take a rain check on that."
He glanced toward the kitchen, then back at them.
"My friends were here not quite long ago, and I had something to eat already. So I'll have to pass."
Olivia nodded, accepting it easily. "Okay, then."
Aina gave a small shrug, conceding the point. "Good night."
"Good night," Mateo said.
He started down the hallway toward his room, then stopped after a few steps. He turned back, one hand on the wall, his face half-lit by the soft light from the living room.
"Remember as we Spaniards always say mi casa es tu casa."
He bent a bit making a exaggerated bow spreading his arms as he turned around again.
Olivia laughed — bright and spontaneous — and Mateo's face broke into a grin at the sound of it.
"But seriously," he continued, pointing between them. "Make yourselves at home. If you want to use anything in the fridge, you can use it. Anything in the kitchen — it's yours. Seriously."
Aina, who had been watching Olivia laugh with the expression of someone noting evidence for later, turned back to Mateo.
"Good night, Mateo."
He smiled — the particular smile of someone who has said what he needed to say and is now ready to let the day end.
"Good night."
He turned and disappeared into his room, the door closing behind him with a soft, final click.
The living room settled into quiet.
Aina stood still for a moment, her eyes on the hallway where Mateo had been. Then she turned to look at Olivia.
Olivia was still giggling — not loudly, just a small, contained amusement that she hadn't quite finished processing.
Aina watched her for a beat, then shook her head.
"Girl, it wasn't that funny."
Olivia laughed properly at that, the sound breaking out of her. She reached over and punched Aina lightly on the arm.
"Don't start."
Aina laughed back, catching Olivia's arm and hooking her own through it.
"Why shouldn't I start?" She pulled Olivia closer, leaning in with the particular energy of someone who has been waiting for a moment to arrive. "So — how was it?"
Olivia looked at her blankly. "What?"
Aina's eyebrows rose, her voice dropping into something conspiratorial and teasing.
"My cousin. How was your first meeting with him?"
Olivia stared at her for a moment, then smiled — the kind of smile that doesn't answer anything but enjoys the question.
"Get your mind out of the gutter."
"Just tell me," Aina pressed, her grip on Olivia's arm tightening slightly, her face full of the delighted mischief of someone who has found exactly the thing they were looking for.
Olivia giggled, her free hand coming up as if to wave the question away.
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Anything."
Olivia hesitated, her smile turning inward for a moment, as if she were actually considering the question rather than deflecting it.
"Well," she said slowly. "If I had to pick —"
"What?" Aina's eyes went wide, leaning in.
"Ummmm."
Olivia drew the sound out, her eyes moving up to the ceiling, her expression the picture of someone taking a question very, very seriously while doing absolutely nothing of the sort.
Aina grunted, her patience visibly thinning.
"Just talk."
Olivia laughed saying "Okay okay", the pretence dissolving.
"It was normal."
Aina's face went through several expressions in quick succession, arriving finally at genuine shock.
"Normal?"
"Yes — normal." Olivia reached up and bonked Aina gently on the top of the head.
Aina winced — more theatrically than necessary — and Olivia continued.
"Yeah, he seems like a nice boy. I mean, he is letting us stay at his place." She swept her arm out to indicate the space around them. "A nice teenage boy."
She paused.
Then her voice dropped, quieter now, and a shy, cute smile crept onto her face — the kind of smile that arrives without permission and settles in whether you invited it or not.
"Howbeit — a very cute one."
"What?"
Aina's head snapped toward her, the word sharp with sudden interest.
Olivia startled, her smile flickering.
"What did you just say?" Aina pressed.
"Nothing — forget about that." Olivia grabbed Aina's arm again, hooking it back through her own, her voice coming faster now, redirecting with the practiced efficiency of someone changing the subject. "More than that — what was that chemistry I saw between you and that guy earlier?"
Aina blinked.
She tilted her head, her expression shifting into something deliberately blank.
"Who?"
Olivia gave her a look.
"You know — that guy. Ehm —" she said trying to remember the name.
Aina cut her off.
The blank face disappeared. In its place, something else arrived — a smile, breaking across her features slowly, deliberately, the kind of smile that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Oh — you mean Pedri."
The name came out wrapped in something coy, her face soft and pleased in a way she wasn't trying very hard to hide.
Olivia looked at her.
Aina looked back.
For a moment, neither of them said anything.
Then Olivia hooked her arm more firmly through Aina's, pulling her closer, and the two of them dissolved into giggles — the sound of it filling the living room, light and warm and entirely unselfconscious, carrying through the quiet apartment as the evening deepened around them.
And just like that — despite the suspense, the wait, all of it — the very first meeting had ended up so anticlimactic. So boring. So very normal.
Despite the obvious play-ons by fate — or rather, by a certain boy writing it, giggling as butterflies flew in their stomachs as he wrote about Mateo and Olivia's story — real life was, at the end of the day, normal. Not a K-drama. And while this was the first interaction between Mateo and Olivia, as life tended to be, it wouldn't be their last. Nor even their most memorable.
So as Mateo was finally sleeping, and Olivia was eating at the dining table with a quiet smile on her face, the two had taken the very first step in a long, long life together.
A/N
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