Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Sergio's gaze moved past Luka and settled on Vedran.

Luka felt the change in him almost immediately. Sergio had come through the door smelling of travel, the children and the faint remains of whatever he'd used that morning, but within seconds his scent sharpened with such a sudden rush of adrenaline that Luka's own body reacted before he'd even fully registered why.

Apparently Vedran noticed too.

He looked at Sergio for a moment and lifted one eyebrow, which was enough for Luka to give him a warning across from across the room. He knew that expression. Vedran had spent far too many years finding Sergio's dislike of him entertaining, and this was absolutely not the moment to rediscover the hobby.

Niko, thankfully, had no interest in any of it.

"Tata!"

He ran straight at Luka, who caught him against his legs before he could knock himself over.

"Careful."

"We got Papa!"

Luka looked over Niko's head at Sergio. "I can see that."

"It was a surprise."

"Yes. It definitely was."

Mateo appeared beside them looking far too pleased with himself. "Baka didn't tell you because then you'd know."

"Wow, that's just.. Wow!."

"You're welcome."

Luka looked at his mother, who was making absolutely no effort to appear sorry. He would deal with her later.

By the time he turned back, Sergio had recovered enough that somebody who didn't know him might have believed there was nothing wrong at all. Luka knew better, and judging by Vedran's expression, so did he. Sergio's jaw had gone tight, and although he was looking at Luka now, his attention kept moving back toward Vedran.

Then he started walking toward them.

Luka wasn't sure what he expected him to do. There were too many people around for an argument. Still, Luka wasn't prepared for Sergio to come directly to him, put a hand against his neck and lean in to kiss his cheek.

It was the kind of kiss that wouldn't have meant anything a year ago. Sergio had greeted him that way in front of his family hundreds of times, sometimes barely interrupting whatever conversation he was having to do it.

Nine months apart made it feel very different.

Luka caught Sergio's scent at close range and had to stop himself from leaning into it. His Omega, apparently delighted that the Alpha it had spent a week missing had finally had the sense to follow them, didn't seem particularly interested in Luka's opinion on the matter.

Sergio pulled back before Luka had decided what to do with any of that.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Sergio's hand left him, although not before his thumb moved once against Luka's cheek, and then he turned to Vedran with a smile that Luka didn't trust for a second.

"Vedran. Fuck, it's been a while."

"It has."

Sergio reached for him and Vedran accepted the greeting easily enough, only for Sergio's hand to remain on his shoulder afterward.

"How are you?"

"Good."

"Family?"

"Good."

"Good."

Vedran glanced at the hand on his shoulder and then at Luka.

Luka refused to get involved.

"Have you eaten?" Sergio asked.

That seemed to surprise Vedran more than finding him there had surprised Sergio.

"Yes."

"You sure?"

"Quite sure."

Sergio turned toward Luka's mother before Vedran had even finished answering. "Mama! He hasn't eaten!"

Vedran looked at him. "I just said I've.."

"There must be something!"

His mother was immediately interested. "Of course there is! Sit down. I'll make a proper breakfast."

"No, really, I should go."

"Nonsense."

"I've been here for an hour already."

That information made something in Sergio's expression shift, only slightly, but Luka saw it.

"An hour. So you had coffee," Sergio said.

"And breakfast before I came."

"That was an hour ago."

Vedran finally looked down at Sergio's hand again. The fingers had tightened enough by now that there was no possible way he hadn't noticed, and when his eyes came back up there was the beginning of a smile in them.

"Are you worried I'm hungry?"

"You're a guest."

"Very considerate."

Luka pressed his lips together.

Mateo, who had been following this exchange with increasing interest, looked at Sergio's hand too.

"Papa, you're squeezing Uncle Vedran."

Sergio released him.

"I am not."

Vedran laughed as he stepped away, rubbing his shoulder once in a gesture so unnecessary that Luka knew it was deliberate. He eventually stepped out from beneath Sergio's hand, rubbing his shoulder once before turning back to Luka's mother.

"I really should go."

She objected immediately, following him toward the kitchen when he went to retrieve the phone he'd left beside the coffee machine. Luka couldn't hear everything she said from the garden, only her insistence that he couldn't possibly leave without eating something proper and Vedran answering her in Croatian.

Sergio, who had remained outside with Luka and the children, listened for a few seconds before throwing both hands into the air.

"Whoa! I really need to brush up on my Croatian, man. Now I'm constantly surrounded by all these Croatians."

Mateo laughed, and Niko joined him mostly because Sergio had said it so dramatically.  Luka looked at him.

There had been a time when Sergio complained about this at least ten times every summer. He understood more Croatian than he liked to admit, certainly enough to know when people were talking about him, but that had never stopped him from behaving personally betrayed whenever a conversation moved beyond what he could follow. Apparently nine months apart hadn't changed that either.

His mother and Vedran came back outside a moment later, still talking. She had one hand around his arm and was clearly making a final attempt to keep him there, but Vedran kissed her cheek and promised her something that seemed to satisfy her enough to finally let him leave.

On his way past the children, he gave Mateo and Mia a quick high five and bent down to do the same with Niko. Then he looked at Luka.

"Zovem te neki drugi put."

"Okay."

Vedran had already taken another step when Sergio spoke.

"Zovem?"

Vedran stopped. Sergio was looking between him and Luka.

"As in call?"

Luka said nothing.

Vedran smiled and held his hand out to Sergio.

"Tako je."

Sergio took it.

Vedran shook his hand once, perfectly friendly.

"Doviđenja, Španjolac."

Luka's mother laughed first. Mateo understood quickly enough to start laughing too, and Niko followed when Sergio looked around at all of them as though he'd been personally betrayed.

"Haha. Ha."

He even smiled for them.

The smile disappeared the moment Vedran turned away.

Vedran lifted a hand without looking back and headed toward his car, leaving Sergio standing in the garden with one hand on his hip and his sunglasses still pushed into his hair. Luka's mother watched the car leave before turning around.

"You need to eat, though."

Sergio looked at her.

"I do?"

"Yes. Come."

That seemed to improve his mood considerably.

"See?" Sergio bent and caught Niko around the middle before the boy realized what he was doing, lifting him straight off the ground. Niko shrieked and immediately wrapped himself around Sergio when Sergio settled him against one side. "Finally. Someone cares that I've been travelling all morning."

"You ate at the airport," Mateo said.

Sergio looked at him.

"Whose side are you on?"

Mateo grinned.

Sergio reached for him too.

Mateo tried to get away, but there was never much chance of that happening. Sergio caught him around the waist and hauled him up against his other side, ignoring his protests.

"Papa!"

"Yeah, yeah. Come on." He muttered, crouching down with two squeling boys, so that Mia could climb his back, giggling.

Sergio turned toward the house with all of his pups on him.

"Let's go. Let these Spanish people have something to eat."

"Spanish?!" Luka's mother repeated from somewhere inside. 

Within seconds the garden that had been full of people was almost empty. Luka hadn't moved.

Sergio had been there for perhaps five minutes.

Five minutes, and he'd kissed Luka's cheek, nearly crushed Vedran's shoulder, complained about Croatian and carried three of their children into Luka's mother's house as though he'd been arriving there every summer without interruption. There hadn't been time for Luka to decide how he felt about any of it.

He could hear Sergio inside now, loudly objecting to something his mother was saying. Niko was laughing again, and a moment later Mateo shouted something over both of them.

It sounded horribly normal. Luka stayed outside for another minute before going in.

It was unsettling how easily Sergio slipped back into their lives.

There should have been some adjustment after nine months of Tuesdays to Fridays and carefully arranged handovers, but apparently the children had no use for one. By the time Luka went inside, Sergio was already sitting at his mother's table eating a second breakfast, with Niko pressed against his side and Mateo talking over him, and his suitcase had somehow found its way upstairs before Luka had even thought to ask how long he was staying.

The rest of the day wasn't much different. They went to the beach because the children had been promising Sergio all week that they would take him, and after that there was the pool because apparently several hours in the sea hadn't been enough. Luka mostly stayed out of the way and watched Sergio get dragged from one thing to another, complaining whenever the children demanded something particularly unreasonable and doing it anyway.

It shouldn't have felt as normal as it did.

That bothered Luka more than he wanted to admit. Sergio's shoes appeared beside the door, his wet towel ended up over the back of a chair, and by afternoon his scent had worked its way into a house that had spent the previous week smelling only of Luka, the children and his family. Luka had spent days getting used to Sergio's absence and apparently all it took to undo that was one morning.

Dinner stretched late, as it usually did there, and by the time Luka finally took the children upstairs, Niko was nearly asleep against him.

Mia's room was in the attic. Sergio had made it for her over a Christmas break several years earlier after she'd decided that she was too old to keep sharing whenever they came to Croatia, although made remained a generous description of what Sergio had done to the walls. He'd painted the entire room himself in one day, refused help and somehow managed to leave behind several places where even Mia could tell he'd become impatient around the edges. She adored it and had never allowed anyone to fix them.

The boys were in what his mother still called the guest room despite the fact that no guest had been able to use it properly in years. Their things had slowly taken over the cupboards and shelves, toys remained beneath the bed from one summer to the next, and Niko had once become genuinely offended when Luka suggested that somebody else might sleep there.

Tonight neither of them needed much convincing. Luka tucked Niko in, waited through Mateo's questions about what they were doing tomorrow and eventually left them both quiet. It wasn't until he reached his own bedroom that he realized what he'd failed to think about all day.

Sergio was there.

Of course Sergio was there.

His mother was there too, which was initially such a relief that Luka almost laughed at himself. She was changing the sheets while Sergio lay directly in the middle of the bed, making the task considerably more difficult than it needed to be and apparently seeing no reason to move.

"Pomakni nogu."

"Oh? My leg?" Sergio lifted it.

"The other one."

He changed legs without opening his eyes, and Luka's mother muttered something under her breath while pulling the fitted sheet into place around him.

"I've been travelling all daaay," Sergio told her.

"You sat on a plane."

"Exactly."

"And then you spent the afternoon in the sea."

"Exactly. And your grandchildren almost killed me today."

Luka stayed in the doorway longer than he needed to, watching his mother tell Sergio to move again while Sergio did everything except actually get out of her way. It was such a familiar scene that it took him a moment to understand why there was something wrong with it.

Then Sergio opened his eyes and saw him.

The bed.

Luka had completely forgotten about the bed.

There were other rooms in the house, but not as far as his mother was concerned. Sergio had slept beside Luka every time he'd come here for more than a decade, and telling her now that one of them would rather sleep elsewhere would require an explanation Luka had successfully avoided giving her for nine months.

His mother finally got the sheet around the last corner and moved on to the pillows, perfectly happy with the arrangement she'd made for them.

"I put clean towels in the bathroom."

"Hvala, Mama," Sergio said.

Luka said nothing.

He was suddenly regretting putting Niko to bed. Keeping him would have been so easy; Niko had slept with Luka often enough since the separation that nobody would have questioned it, and right now Luka would have happily sacrificed half the mattress to a four-year-old who kicked in his sleep if it meant there was someone else in the room.

Instead his mother finished with the pillows, patted Sergio's leg, kissed Luka on the cheek and wished them both good night.

Luka almost asked her to stay. He couldn't think of a single reason she should, so he watched her leave and felt considerably less grateful when the door closed behind her.

For a while he remained where he was. Sergio had rolled onto his back and was looking at him now, far too comfortable in a bed that smelled almost entirely of Luka after a week of sleeping there alone. Luka went to the dresser rather than answer him and started looking for something to sleep in. He could feel Sergio watching him, which made the simple act of finding a shirt unnecessarily irritating. Eventually Sergio sighed behind him.

"We can't suddenly sleep in different rooms."

Luka shut the drawer. "You could."

"And when your mother asks why?"

"Make something up."

"Like you have for nine months?"

That made Luka turn.

Sergio wasn't smiling anymore. He'd obviously worked it out at some point during the day, although Luka supposed it hadn't been particularly difficult. His mother had welcomed Sergio as though nothing had happened, complained about how long it had been since his last visit and put his suitcase upstairs without asking a single question.

"Why didn't you tell her?"

"Because I didn't want to."

"Nine months, Luka."

"I know how long it's been."

"Does anyone know?"

Luka looked away again. "People in Madrid."

"That's not what I meant."

Of course it wasn't.

Luka took his clothes from the drawer and folded them over his arm, although there was no reason to fold something he was about to put on.

"I didn't want Mama worrying."

"So you just didn't tell her."

"Yes."

Sergio was quiet for a moment, and Luka could feel the direction the conversation was taking before either of them said anything else.

"You really don't like telling people things, do you?"

Luka stopped.

The regret came quickly enough that Sergio didn't need to explain what he'd meant. It was there in the way his expression changed almost as soon as the words were out, but that didn't make them disappear. Luka had spent nine months hearing versions of that accusation in his own head.

He hadn't told Sergio about Vedran. He could explain why until neither of them wanted to hear it anymore, could say that the marriage hadn't meant anything and that by the time Sergio came into his life it had been over for years, but none of that changed the simple fact that he'd kept something from his mate that Sergio believed he had a right to know.

Now he hadn't told his mother about this either. Luka looked down at the clothes in his hands.

"Apparently not."

There was no anger in it, and Sergio seemed to have been expecting some because he immediately looked uncomfortable.

"I didn't tell her because I don't want her worrying about me from another country when there's nothing she can do about it. I don't want her looking at me and wondering what went wrong, or asking if the children are okay every time she calls. And I don't particularly want to tell my mother that I couldn't keep my family together."

Sergio's face changed again. Luka swallowed and looked toward the bathroom because getting away from this conversation was suddenly much more important than winning it.

"I spent my whole life hearing what happens when an Omega chooses the wrong Alpha. Then I chose one, mated him, had three children with him and spent fifteen years telling everyone I chose right." His voice had gone quieter despite himself. "I don't want to come home and tell my mother I couldn't even keep my mate."

For once, Sergio had nothing ready to say.

Luka went into the bathroom and closed the door.

He took longer than necessary getting ready for bed. By the time he came back, he had himself under control again, and Sergio hadn't moved much. He was sitting against the headboard now rather than lying down, his phone untouched beside him.

Luka got into bed without looking at him.

The mattress dipped a few minutes later when Sergio lay down too, carefully keeping to the other side. There was enough space between them for another person, which felt ridiculous in a bed where they'd spent years sleeping tangled together whenever the summer heat allowed it.

Neither spoke.

Luka turned onto his side with his back to Sergio and closed his eyes.

Behind him, Sergio stayed still for long enough that Luka thought perhaps that was how they were going to do this. They would lie there without touching, pretend to sleep and get up in the morning to perform being together again for his mother.

Then the mattress moved. Luka opened his eyes but didn't turn around until he heard Sergio pulling the spare blanket from the end of the bed.

"What are you doing?"

Sergio had already taken his pillow. "Going to sleep."

"On the floor?"

"Looks like it."

There was none of the earlier irritation left in Sergio's voice. If anything, he looked tired now, and Luka realized that whatever fight Sergio might have been prepared to have when they'd first been left alone had gone out of him completely.

He lowered himself onto the narrow rug beside the bed and tried to arrange six feet of himself in a space that had very clearly not been designed for it.

"Sergio."

"It's fine."

For a moment he considered telling him to stop being ridiculous and get back into bed.

Then Sergio looked up at him.

"I'm sorry"

Luka didn't ask which part he meant. He lay back down and turned off the light.

In the darkness beside him, Sergio shifted until he found something resembling a comfortable position, and Luka stared at the ceiling while the familiar scent of his Alpha rose from somewhere just below the edge of the mattress.

Being angry had been much easier when Sergio was in Spain.

Luka woke the next morning to the sound of the bedroom door opening.

He had enough time to register bare feet crossing the floor before Niko appeared at the side of the bed, still rumpled from sleep. His hair was sticking up at the back and he was rubbing one eye with his fist when he looked down.

Then he gasped.

"Papa!"

The alarm in his voice woke Sergio immediately. Luka heard him move somewhere below the mattress, followed by a confused sound, and Niko dropped onto his knees beside him.

"Papa, you fell!"

Sergio's head appeared over the edge of the mattress. For several seconds he looked as though he had absolutely no idea where he was, then his eyes found Niko.

"Oh. Yeah."

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Niko didn't look convinced. "I fall out sometimes too."

"Yeah?"

"At Tata's house. I fell two times."

Sergio's voice was still thick with sleep, low enough that Luka felt the sound of it before he really listened to the words. His Omega had been embarrassingly aware of Sergio lying beside the bed all night, but that voice seemed to wake something else entirely, a warm pull low in his chest that had Luka staring determinedly at the opposite wall.

"Two times is a lot," Sergio murmured.

"I didn't cry."

"Very brave."

"You can come back up."

Sergio hesitated, but Niko had already taken hold of his arm and was pulling with all the confidence of someone who had no idea there was a reason Papa had been on the floor in the first place. A moment later the mattress dipped behind Luka.

Niko climbed in after him and immediately curled himself against Sergio, apparently deciding that somebody who had suffered such a terrible fall required comfort. Sergio wrapped an arm around him and pressed a sleepy kiss into his hair.

"It happens," Niko assured him. "Next time you put a pillow on the floor."

"I'll remember that."

Luka got out of bed before his Omega could develop any further opinions about the sound of Sergio Ramos speaking softly to their son first thing in the morning.

It didn't help that he'd slept well.

He realized that properly in the shower, where there was considerably less to distract him from it. He hadn't lain awake listening to Sergio breathe, hadn't woken every hour because another person was in the room and, sometime after closing his eyes, had apparently stopped caring that his Alpha was sleeping less than a metre away.

He'd slept better than he had in weeks. Luka didn't examine that too closely either.

The next three days passed with surprising ease.

Not perfectly, and certainly not comfortably enough that Luka forgot what they were doing, but they found a politeness that allowed them to get through mornings and meals without trouble. Sergio didn't mention Vedran or the conversation they'd had that first night, and Luka didn't ask how long he intended to stay.

What Luka noticed instead were the hours.

He could take Mia into town and spend an afternoon with her without simultaneously keeping track of where her brothers were because Sergio had them. He could sit outside alone with coffee while all three children were in the pool and know there were another pair of eyes on them. When Mateo wanted to go somewhere with him, Niko didn't automatically have to come too. His mother helped, of course; she always had. But his mother hadn't raised these children with him.

Sergio had.

Luka had forgotten what a difference that made. He also kept sleeping well, which was particularly irritating considering Sergio returned to the floor every night.

On the fourth day, Niko woke from an afternoon nap warm and miserable.

There was nothing seriously wrong with him. His temperature wasn't high enough to worry about, and by evening he'd eaten some toast and complained about a stoamachache and even worse, being bored, which Luka considered encouraging. Still, illness made Niko clingy, and tonight he wanted both of them.

Sergio carried him upstairs after dinner while Luka followed with water and the thermometer, and when Niko refused to settle in the boys' room they took him into Luka's bed.

Somewhere between another temperature check and Niko insisting that he wasn't tired while barely keeping his eyes open, Sergio ended up lying on the other side of him.

Nobody discussed it.

Niko fell asleep between them with one hand curled into Luka's shirt and his feet tucked against Sergio's stomach. Luka remained awake a little longer, watching his breathing and occasionally touching his forehead until he was satisfied the fever wasn't getting worse.

When he finally looked up, Sergio was already watching him.

Their eyes met over Niko's head.

There were things Luka could have said. Sergio could have moved to the floor once Niko was asleep, and Luka could have reminded him to.

Neither happened.

In the morning Niko's fever was almost gone.

The following night there was no sick child between them.

Sergio still got into the bed.

Luka let him. That was all.

It was just after six when Luka woke the next morning, and for several seconds he couldn't understand why he was so warm. Then he became aware of the weight against him.

Sergio had crossed the distance between them sometime during the night. Not by a little, either. Luka was on his back with one arm trapped beneath Sergio, the other resting across his shoulders, while Sergio slept almost completely against his side with his face buried into Luka's neck.

Right against the mating mark. Luka stopped breathing properly.

His body didn't share his alarm. His Omega seemed to have woken into a world in which the last nine months had never happened and found absolutely nothing wrong with it. Sergio was warm and heavy against him, his scent everywhere after hours spent pressed together, and the familiar nose tucked against his mark sent a rush of contentment through Luka so intense that his own scent changed before he could stop it.

Sergio stirred. Years of sleeping beside children had trained both of them to wake at the smallest change, and apparently a mate suddenly flooding the bed with scent was more than enough.

He didn't wake properly at first. Instead he made a quiet sound and pulled Luka closer, his arm tightening around Luka's middle while one leg slid over his. His body was warm and he was unmistakably hard against Luka, although Sergio himself seemed completely unaware of it as he buried his face more firmly against Luka's neck.

Luka's heart started beating harder. Sergio eventually lifted his head.

His eyes were barely open, his hair flattened on one side, and for a few seconds he only squinted at Luka with the soft confusion of somebody still caught somewhere between sleeping and waking.

Luka should have moved.

Instead he touched him.

His hand found Sergio's cheek before he'd decided to put it there, thumb brushing over the roughness along his jaw before his fingers slipped upward into his hair. Sergio's eyes closed again for half a second.

"Lukita."

His voice was ruined by sleep. Luka's fingers stopped. Because suddenly this wasn't the bed in Croatia.

He saw Sergio standing in the doorway in Madrid instead, looking tired and startled to find them there. He remembered the unfamiliar sweetness buried beneath Sergio's scent and Niko clinging to him while Luka stood several feet away trying not to understand what it meant.

Another Omega had been this close to him. Closer even.

Luka shoved him away.

Sergio woke properly when his shoulder hit the mattress. For a moment he only stared at Luka, the sleep disappearing from his face while Luka pulled himself upright and moved as far away from him as the bed allowed.

"Luka?"

Luka was already getting out of bed.

He didn't know what he was angry about first: Sergio, himself, the other Omega, or the fact that for several minutes after waking up he'd been happier than he had any right to be. Behind him, Sergio said his name again.

Luka went into the bathroom and shut the door.

The morning gave them enough people to hide behind.

Luka had no intention of discussing what had happened in bed, and Sergio, whether out of embarrassment or some belated instinct for self-preservation, seemed to have reached the same conclusion. They managed breakfast without being alone for more than a few seconds, and afterward Luka found several unnecessary reasons to stay in the kitchen while Sergio took the children outside.

Niko was feeling much better, which quickly became its own problem.

By ten he had already been told twice not to run around the pool, once by Luka and once by Sergio, and had responded to both warnings with the solemn agreement of a child who fully intended to do it again as soon as nobody was looking. Sergio spent the first half hour calling him back every time he got too excited, until eventually even he seemed to accept that keeping Niko quietly beside him was going to require tying him to a chair.

"He's fine," Sergio said when Luka looked over after Niko raced after Mateo again.

"He had a fever yesterday."

"And today he doesn't."

"That doesn't mean he needs to run."

Sergio watched Niko launch himself into the water after his brother and shrugged. "Try telling him."

It was the closest they'd come to speaking normally all morning, and Luka disliked how relieved he was by it. Mia was already in the water with the boys, and within a few minutes the three of them had moved to the other end of the pool, where Mateo was trying to organize some game whose rules seemed to change whenever Niko started losing. Luka stayed beneath the shade with a book he hadn't read more than two pages of, while Sergio sat on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water, watching the children closely enough that Luka knew he hadn't really stopped worrying about Niko either.

"You haven't trained since we got here."

Luka looked up from the same paragraph he'd been staring at for several minutes.

Sergio was still looking toward the pool.

"I'm on holiday."

"You used to train on holiday."

"Maybe I've changed."

That got his attention. Sergio turned around, resting one arm across his raised knee as he looked at Luka properly.

"You love training."

"I tolerate training."

"You love football."

Luka returned his attention to the book. "Thank you for telling me."

Sergio waited, and Luka knew him well enough to know the conversation wasn't going away simply because he refused to participate in it. "When did you last train properly?"

Luka considered lying, mostly because he didn't particularly want to find out where Sergio was going with this, but there was little point. Sergio had known his routines for too many years.

"A while ago."

"How long?"

"I'm recovering."

"From what?"

Luka looked at him again. Sergio seemed to realize how that sounded and shook his head. "I know you were injured. I mean now. You're not injured now."

"You don't know that."

"I know how you move."

Something about the certainty of it irritated Luka more than it should have.

"You haven't lived with me for nine months."

"No, but I've watched you ove. I've watched you play football for years."

"I haven't been playing."

"Exactly."

Luka closed the book around one finger and watched Niko climb out of the pool at the other end. Sergio's attention followed him automatically before returning to Luka once the boy was safely on his feet.

"I needed time."

"You've had time."

"Apparently I need more."

Sergio frowned. "For what?"

Luka didn't answer.

He had known this conversation would happen eventually. Sergio might be capable of ignoring a great many things when it suited him, but football had occupied too much of both their lives for him not to notice that Luka had stopped arranging his days around it.

Sergio studied him for another moment. "You should start again."

"Should I?"

"Yes."

"Good to know."

"Come on, Luka. I'm not saying you need to go back tomorrow, but you can't just stop."

"I can do whatever I want."

"I know that."

"Doesn't sound like it."

Sergio exhaled and looked away, visibly trying not to let Luka turn the conversation into a fight. It worked for perhaps ten seconds.

"You were happy playing."

"Was I?"

"Yes."

The answer came so quickly that Luka almost laughed.

"You know everything today."

"I know you."

Luka's stomach tightened.

He thought of waking up with Sergio's face against his neck that morning and his own hand in Sergio's hair, and then, because his mind apparently hated him, he thought of the scent that had been clinging to Sergio when he'd gone to collect the children.

He wondered whether the other Omega played football. The thought was so petty that Luka immediately resented himself for having it. Maybe he trained every morning. Maybe he was extremely sporty. Maybe Sergio had been delighted to finally spend a night with someone whose current exercise routine met his standards.

Luka shut the book.Sergio was still talking, thankfully unaware of the direction Luka's thoughts had taken.

"You loved it too much to suddenly not care. You'd come home furious after a bad match and still be talking about it three hours later. You made me watch things back when everyone else had already told you that you played well, because apparently my opinion was the one you needed to argue with."

"I didn't make you."

"You absolutely did. You'd put it on while I was eating."

"Then you could have left."

"It was my house."

"Our house."

Sergio paused.

Luka wished he hadn't corrected him.For a moment the only noise between them came from the children, and Luka could hear Niko protesting something loudly enough that he was clearly no longer feeling ill.

Sergio spoke more carefully when he continued. "You don't stop loving something like that in nine months."

"I didn't say I stopped loving it."

"Then why aren't you playing?"

"Because I have three children."

"So do I."

"Yes, Sergio. I'm aware."

"And they have two parents."

"Do they?"

The words came out harsher than Luka intended, and Sergio's expression changed.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we don't live together anymore. We don't have one house, one schedule, one person there when the other one has training or travels for three days. Somebody has to be available."

"Then we figure it out."

"We did figure it out."

"No, you figured it out by stopping."

Luka glanced toward the pool, but the children were still occupied.

"Keep your voice down."

"I'm not shouting."

"You will be in a minute."

Sergio looked offended by the accuracy of that prediction. "I'm saying you don't have to do this!"

"And I'm saying it's already done."

"Why? Because you decided it was easier than asking me?"

Luka felt his patience beginning to go. "I wasn't going to move out and then call you every day because I needed you to take the children so I could train."

"They're my children, too!"

Sergio's voice carried across the garden. All three heads turned in the pool.

The argument ended immediately.

Sergio noticed them looking and the frustration disappeared from his face with almost impressive speed.

"Everything okay?" Mia called.

"Perfect!"

His smile was already in place when he stood, although Luka could still smell the agitation underneath it.Mateo shouted something about Sergio joining them, and that was apparently enough of an excuse. Sergio pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it onto the chair, then walked toward the pool as though the last five minutes hadn't happened.

Niko was bouncing in the shallow end. "Papa, jump!"

"I'm coming."

Luka watched Sergio dive in and resurface beside them, immediately getting splashed in the face by Mateo while Niko climbed onto his back.

Within seconds all three children were laughing.

Luka opened his book again. He didn't read a word.

By the time Luka managed to get everyone out of the pool, it was late enough that lunch had become unavoidable.

His mother had gone to visit a friend shortly before noon, leaving behind several vague instructions about food that Luka had only half listened to because Niko had been attempting to put his shoes on while still wet. Without her there to produce three courses from seemingly nowhere, Luka settled for whatever he could assemble quickly from the fridge, bread and the leftovers she'd made the night before.

Nobody complained. Swimming had apparently made the children hungry enough that standards no longer mattered, although Niko was still eating at a speed that suggested he had somewhere else to be and was merely stopping at the table occasionally to take another bite.

Sergio had finished before everyone else and wandered away from the table, only to return carrying the watermelon he'd insisted on buying at the market the previous evening.

Luka had laughed when he'd first seen it.

It was enormous, large enough that Sergio had carried itwith both arms with considerably more pride than the purchase warranted, while Luka's mother had asked what exactly he intended to do with it. Sergio's answer had been that they would eat it, which wasn't much of a plan considering it could probably have fed half the street.

Now he put it on the kitchen counter and started cutting into it.

"Don't make all of it."

Sergio looked over his shoulder. "Why?"

"Because there are five of us."

"Six."

"Mama isn't here."

"She'll come back."

"Not hungry enough to eat four kilos of watermelon."

Sergio ignored him and pushed the knife through the middle.

Mia, who had inherited Sergio's inexplicable ability to consume absurd quantities of watermelon during the summer, immediately abandoned the last of her lunch and went to investigate.

"Can I have the middle?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because that's mine." Sergio replied seriously, yet turned to wink at her.

Luka left them to negotiate their division of something neither of them was going to finish and went back to making sure Niko actually ate rather than simply rearranging his food. He had just convinced him to take another bite when his phone started vibrating against the table.

He picked it up without checking the screen.

"Da?"

"You're becoming Croatian again."

Luka recognized the voice immediately.

"Shut up."

Vedran laughed. "What are you doing tonight?"

Luka leaned back in his chair. "Nothing. Why?"

Sergio was still cutting watermelon behind him, although the steady sound of the knife against the board stopped briefly.

"There's something down by the water tonight. I don't know what they're calling it, some summer festival thing. Music, food, all of that. There's a local band playing later."

"Sounds terrible."

"It probably is. The kids will like it."

Vedran continued telling him about the rides they'd set up nearby and that a few people Luka knew were already planning to go. They could meet there later, let the children run around for a few hours and stay for the music if nobody had fallen asleep by then.

Behind Luka, the knife hit the cutting board again. Hard.

Luka glanced over his shoulder.

Sergio was looking down at the watermelon with remarkable concentration.

"Who is it?" Mateo asked.

"Uncle Vedran."

The knife stopped. This time Luka actually watched Sergio look up.

Mateo had already forgotten his lunch. "What does he want?"

"There's something in town tonight."

"What?"

"Music, I think."

"And rides," Vedran supplied through the phone.

"And rides."

That was enough.

Niko's head came up. "What rides?"

"I don't know yet."

"I want to go."

"You don't even know what they are."

"I still want to go."

Mia had turned away from the watermelon too. "Is it by the water?"

Luka nodded.

"Can we go?"

Three children were now looking at him expectantly, which meant Vedran had won without Luka ever actually agreeing to anything.

He sighed into the phone. "What time?"

"Maybe seven? We'll find each other."

"Okay."

"I'll send you where we are."

"Fine."

"...And bring Sergio."

Luka's eyes went automatically toward the kitchen counter.

Sergio was cutting through another section of watermelon with enough force that the knife struck the board loudly beneath it.

Luka lowered his voice slightly. "He's here."

There was a pause.

Then Vedran laughed.

Luka knew exactly what he was thinking.

"I'll see you tonight."

Vedran hung up before Luka could answer.

Luka put the phone back on the table and immediately found all three children still waiting for confirmation.

"Yes, we're going."

Mateo and Niko reacted loudly enough for Luka to regret telling them while they were still eating, while Mia simply smiled and went back to stealing pieces of watermelon as Sergio massacred them.

Nobody asked Sergio whether he was coming. Apparently that part was assumed.

"You know you're cutting fruit, right?" Luka asked eventually. Not Vedran.

By the time they reached the waterfront that evening, Luka understood why Vedran had warned him that the children would like it.

Someone had apparently decided that a local band performing by the water wasn't enough entertainment on its own and surrounded the whole thing with rides, games and enough food stalls to keep three children distracted for hours. Music was already carrying along the promenade even though the concert hadn't properly started, and every few metres there was something else being fried, spun into sugar or sold in a brightly coloured cup that Niko immediately wanted.

It was busy enough that Luka thought they might disappear into the crowd.

They didn't.

The first person recognized Sergio before they'd even made it properly inside, and after that it happened often enough that Luka stopped being surprised by it. Most people were polite, asking for a photograph and moving on after a few words, although there were also plenty who simply stared or called their names as they passed. Sergio seemed perfectly happy with it, especially when someone wanted a picture with both of them, while Luka concentrated on keeping track of three children in a crowd that appeared determined to swallow them.

That was probably why he didn't notice what was happening behind him until it was far too late. He'd stopped for less than two minutes to speak to an older man who remembered watching him play when he was young, and when he finally turned around, all three children had acquired things.

Mateo and Niko each had a box of popcorn tucked under one arm and cotton candy in colours Luka wasn't convinced occurred naturally in food. Mia was admiring a new bracelet around her wrist, and above all of them floated a large Hello Kitty balloon attached to a string she was holding loosely in one hand.

The boys, meanwhile, were standing in front of a stall discussing two plastic cars that flashed so violently Luka could see them from several metres away.

Both had money in their hands. Luka looked at Sergio.

Sergio shrugged.

"Seriously?"

"What?"

Luka pointed at the children.

Sergio looked at them as though he'd only just noticed. "...They seem happy."

"Where did they get the money?"

Another shrug.

Luka narrowed his eyes.

"I missed them," Sergio said, as though that explained financial irresponsibility.

Niko came running over before Luka could ask what the point actually was and held up a blinking blue car. "Papa said I can get this one."

Luka looked at Papa. Sergio suddenly found the crowd very interesting.

By the time they reached a carousel all three children could agree on, Luka had given up. The boys had their cars, Mia still had her balloon, and Sergio had somehow ended up carrying most of what the children had lost interest in holding themselves. They watched the three of them disappear around the other side of the carousel before Sergio shifted the collection of snacks in his arms and sighed.

"I really missed them."

There was no joke attached this time.

Luka looked at him.

Sergio was watching for the children to come around again, smiling when Niko appeared first and waved with such enthusiasm that he nearly dropped the car he'd insisted on taking with him.

Luka knew Sergio had missed them. Of course he did. He'd seen the children every week, but Tuesdays to Fridays weren't the same as this, and Luka had spent enough nights over the past nine months missing them while they were with Sergio to know exactly what the difference felt like.

He just hadn't spent much time considering that Sergio had been doing the same thing every weekend.

Before Luka could think of anything to say, an arm slipped around his waist from behind.

Sergio reacted before Luka did.

"Oi."

Vedran laughed as Luka turned around.

"...You couldn't say hello normally?"

"I had to," Vedran muttered back, grinning.

Sergio had several thoughts about that, none of which he got the chance to express because Vedran's wife appeared behind him with their children, greeting Luka first and then Sergio warmly enough that he had to stop glaring and behave like a normal person.

He managed. Mostly.

They spent the next hour together, running into more people Luka knew as they moved through the crowd. A few were familiar to Sergio, others were names he'd heard over the years without ever putting faces to them, and introductions became increasingly unnecessary because someone always seemed to recognize Luka first. The children disappeared between the rides and food stalls in various combinations, Vedran's youngest spent most of the time on somebody's shoulders, and Sergio gradually stopped paying quite so much attention to where Vedran was standing.

Not entirely.

There were limits.

By the time the band started, they had ended up with a loose group near the water, drinks being passed between the adults while the children made one last attempt at staying awake. Niko lasted less than two songs.

He climbed into Luka's lap first, curled against him and went quiet, and when Sergio reached for him a little later, he came willingly and put his head straight onto Sergio's shoulder. Mateo wasn't doing much better. Even Mia had stopped asking when they could go on another ride.

"We should take them home," Luka said.

Sergio looked around them. Three people immediately objected.

"Oh, stay," one of Luka's old friends said. "We never see you anymore." Someone else agreed, and Vedran said something in Croatian that made Luka roll his eyes.

Luka looked at Sergio. "I'll come."

"I can take them."

Luka hesitated.

Sergio adjusted Niko against his shoulder. "They're my children, Luka. Stay."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

He meant it.

Luka hadn't seen most of these people in God knew how long. The children were exhausted, Sergio wasn't particularly interested in standing around drinking while carrying a sleeping four-year-old, and the house wasn't far.

So Luka stayed.

Sergio took the children home.

Niko barely woke when Sergio changed him and tucked him in, although he did mumble something about his car until Sergio found it and left it beside his pillow. Mateo required considerably more convincing before he settled, and Mia was already under her covers when Sergio went upstairs to check on her.

By the time he left the house again after an hour, everything was quiet except granny's TV still going.

The walk back gave him too much time to think.

Mostly, Sergio thought about how good the last few days had been.

Not easy. Certainly not fixed. He and Luka could barely get through a full day without stepping around something one of them wasn't ready to talk about, and Sergio had spent the first nights sleeping on a floor because apparently fifteen years together hadn't taught him when to keep his mouth shut. But his children had been there every morning.

Luka had been there.

For the first time in nine months, Sergio hadn't had to count days.

He hadn't realized how much he'd been doing that until he'd stopped. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday morning, and then the bags were packed again. Luka had done the same thing from the other side, Sergio knew that, but knowing it hadn't made Friday afternoons any quieter. Here there were no handovers. There was just breakfast and wet towels and children running through the house and Luka complaining that somebody had left shoes in the middle of the doorway.

His family.

All of them.

Sergio shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked. Maybe that was why Vedran had been getting under his skin so badly. Maybe he was being stupid.

Vedran had spent half the evening carrying one of his own children. His wife had been beside him. Sergio had watched them move through the crowd together, watched Vedran reach automatically for her, watched their children climb over him without asking.

He had his family. Sergio had his.

And God, it felt good to have them back.

By the time Sergio reached the water again, he'd almost managed to make peace with the entire thing. Then he found Luka.

The crowd around the tables was smaller now. The band was still playing farther down the waterfront, but several of the families had gone and what remained of Luka's group had settled around two tables pushed together. Luka was still there. A couple of beers farther into the evening than when Sergio had left him, judging by the bottles, and considerably more relaxed. He was laughing at something Sergio couldn't understand, head tipped back, one hand resting on Vedran's shoulder while Vedran leaned close enough to say something into his ear over the music.

Sergio stopped. So much for personal growth.

Luka noticed him a moment later.

His face brightened immediately.

"Sergio."

That should have helped.

It did, a little.

Then Vedran's hand landed on Luka's back as Luka stood up.

It stopped helping.

"Ready?" Sergio asked.

Luka blinked at him, still smiling. "You came back."

"Obviously I came back."

"For me?"

Sergio stared at him.

Luka's smile widened.

Oh, he was drunk.

Not properly drunk. Sergio had seen properly drunk Luka enough times to know the difference. But there was a softness to his eyes and a slight delay to everything that told Sergio the beers on the table hadn't been decorative.

"Yes, for you."

"That's nice."

Vedran laughed. Sergio exhaled through his nose.He could already feel the annoyance he'd so carefully talked himself out of on the walk over returning.

"Come on."

Luka made his way around the table, stopping to say goodbye to everyone. It took longer than Sergio thought strictly necessary. There were hugs, promises to call, more Croatian, another conversation that apparently needed to happen immediately despite the fact that Luka had been sitting with these people for hours.

Sergio waited.

Then Vedran hugged him.

Again.

Sergio looked away.

He had a wife. He had children. Sergio had literally just spent the entire walk reminding himself of that.

It didn't matter. Another Alpha's hand was on his mate. The response was immediate, his scent sharpening before he could stop it.

And almost as quickly, another thought followed it.

Madrid.

Sergio had had a family then too. A mate. Three children asleep upstairs. Fifteen years that hadn't ceased to exist simply because Luka had moved into another house and told him he wasn't coming back. He had still taken another Omega home. The thought killed whatever righteous anger Sergio might have managed to build.

It didn't make him enjoy watching Vedran touch Luka. But it made it considerably harder to pretend he had any moral ground to stand on.

"Good night, Sergio," Vedran said eventually.

"Yeah. Good night."

Luka joined him a moment later.

They hadn't made it far before Luka drifted into Sergio's side.

Sergio caught his arm automatically.

"I'm fine."

"I know."

Luka didn't straighten. Instead he stayed there, shoulder pressed against Sergio's, and after a few more steps Sergio realized Luka was breathing rather deeply.

He looked down.

"What are you doing?"

Luka wasn't entirely sure.

Sergio smelled good.

That was the first clear thought he'd had since leaving the table. Not happy, exactly. There was something sharper threaded through the familiar scent, something Luka knew well enough that he probably should have paid attention to it.

He smiled and leaned a little more heavily into him. Sergio's scent was stronger this close, warm and familiar beneath the irritation, and Luka breathed it in without bothering to hide it. He had missed this.

He'd missed Sergio, obviously. He'd known that for months and had become very good at not examining it too closely. But he'd missed this too. His Alpha beside him. Close enough to smell without finding traces of him on an old shirt or on the children when they came back from Sergio's house. Close enough that Luka's Omega didn't have to search for him. Sergio was here.

By the time he finally arrived home, Luka had some water and got eady for bed quickly.

He'd changed and washed up, his hair still slightly damp around his face, and he looked considerably sleepier than he had when they'd left town.

"Kids okay?" he asked, when Sergio returned to the bedroom after checking on the kids.

"Yeah."

Luka smiled faintly and shifted further down beneath the covers.

Sergio got ready without saying much else. When he eventually climbed into bed, Luka had already turned onto his side, and Sergio lay on his back staring into the darkness.

For several nights now, they'd been doing this. Sleeping beside each other. It had started with Niko between them, and then somehow there hadn't been a reason for Sergio to go back to the floor the following night. Neither of them had mentioned it. Even after the way Luka had shoved him away that morning, Sergio had apparently been allowed back into the bed.

Sergio should have been satisfied with that.

Instead he could smell Luka beside him.

The alcohol had sweetened his scent slightly, and Sergio knew better than to read anything into it, but after an entire evening of keeping his hands to himself, lying this close to his mate without touching him felt almost unbearable. Others were touching him. not Sergio.

He lasted longer than he expected.

Eventually Sergio moved one hand beneath the covers and found Luka's arm.

His fingers closed around it before he could reconsider.

Luka went still.

Sergio did too, waiting for him to pull away.

He didn't.

Sergio's fingers stayed around his arm.

He didn't pull, which somehow made it worse. If Sergio had tried to drag him closer, Luka could have been angry about it. If he'd said something stupid, Luka could have turned over and gone to sleep. There were probably a dozen reasons why letting this happen was a terrible idea, and only a few hours ago Luka could have listed every one of them without difficulty.

Now, lying in the dark with Sergio's hand warm around his arm, he couldn't seem to remember any.

His Omega certainly couldn't.

The part of him that had spent nine months being denied something it had never understood why it had lost was already responding, his scent warming before Sergio had done anything more than touch him. Luka felt the answering change beside him and closed his eyes.

He could still stop this.

Instead he turned over.

Sergio's hand loosened immediately, giving him every opportunity to move away, but Luka only found him in the dark and remained there. They were close enough now that he could make out Sergio's face, although not well enough to read his expression.

"Luka?"

Luka kissed him.

There was a moment when Sergio didn't respond at all. It couldn't have lasted more than a second, but Luka felt it anyway, the surprise in the Alpha beneath his hands before Sergio understood what was happening and kissed him back. After that, there was very little hesitation left between them.

Nine months hadn't made Sergio unfamiliar. Luka knew the shape of his mouth, knew where Sergio's hand would settle when it came around his waist and how his breathing changed when Luka moved closer. Sergio knew him just as easily, which was perhaps the most dangerous part of it. They didn't have to discover anything about each other. Their bodies had spent fifteen years learning things neither of them had managed to forget simply because Luka had moved into another house.

Sergio shifted upward against the headboard as Luka moved over him, and the change brought their faces level again. For a moment Luka looked at him.

His Alpha. The thought came without permission, warm and possessive and so painfully relieved that Luka stopped trying to correct it.

Sergio's scent was everywhere now. There was nothing foreign underneath it, nothing that made Luka's instincts recoil the way they had in Madrid, and when Sergio's face moved toward his neck he stopped just short of the mark. That nearly undid him on its own.

He put a hand into Sergio's hair and guided him the rest of the way. Sergio breathed against the mark before touching it with his lips, and the reaction that went through Luka was immediate enough to make him tighten his arms around Sergio.

He wanted him closer.

After everything, that was the stupid, impossible truth of it. Luka had spent nine months building a life that didn't require Sergio in it, had crossed countries to get away from him, convinced himself that whatever remained between them had finally been damaged beyond repair. And now that Sergio was beneath his hands again, Luka couldn't get close enough.

They both moved together, chest to chest. The clothing was in the way now, and Sergio helped him out of the shirt he had just put on. Sergio’s shirt fell somewhere on the floor beside Luka’s.

Luka had Sergio's thigh underneath his hips and his hands roaming over his body. He was fully hard now, rolling his hips partly by himself, partly guided by the hand on his hip.

He was panting, yet he felt like he couldn’t breathe properly. When a hand brushed over his nipples as Sergio’s lips brushed over his mark again, he moaned loudly, his whole body jerking.

“Lukita. Luka.”

Sergio was breathless himself, but he kept saying his name anyway, softly now, with an almost unbearable kind of devotion, as though there was nothing else he needed to say. He was hard himself, Luka could feel it, but he wasn’t moving him anywhere, his hand simply slipping into Luka’s boxers as Luka continued using him for his own release.

Luka only let out another moan as he moved, searching for more friction. He leaned closer until they were sharing the same breath, and he watched the exact moment Sergio caught the scent of the slick escaping from Luka. His pupils widened almost immediately, spreading until there was barely any brown left around them, his eyes suddenly so dark that Luka knew the Alpha in him had noticed too.

Sergio growled, kissing him as his hand moved lower.

Luka was shaking, his hands locked around Sergio’s shoulders and his fingernails digging into tattooed skin as though holding on tighter might somehow steady him.

“Luka…”

“Shit, shit, shit…”

“You feel good? Cariño. Conejito. Feel good?”

Luka’s whine teetered into a groan. His hips were still moving, Sergio’s hands on him, seemingly everywhere at once.

“Argh… Alpha, Alpha. Alpha,” was all he managed. He hadn’t felt like this in a very long time; nobody could make him feel anything like this, ever, and he would—oh, he would—

Luka came with a shout, half muffled by Sergio’s lips back on his.

Afterward, for a little while, Luka didn't move.

Sergio was still against the headboard with Luka settled over him, both of them breathing harder than they should have been, and the room smelled so strongly of the two of them together that Luka couldn't remember the last time it had been like this.

Maybe that was what did it.

Or maybe it was Sergio's hands, which had gone gentle now and were resting against him with the same easy familiarity they'd had years ago. Maybe it was the mating bond settling into something Luka hadn't felt since before he left, or simply the fact that Sergio was here and warm and his, when Luka had spent months trying to teach himself that he wasn't supposed to think that anymore. Sergio looked up at him.

Luka felt his face crumple before he could stop it.

At first he only looked away, embarrassed by the sudden sting behind his eyes, but then Sergio said his name again and Luka couldn't hold onto whatever had been keeping him together. He covered his face with both hands.

Sergio moved immediately, but Luka couldn't even tell what he was doing anymore because the first sob had taken his breath with it. He tried to swallow it down and only made it worse, his chest tightening until every attempt to breathe came broken and uneven.

"Hey. Conejito..."

Sergio's arms went around him, holding him tight.

Luka shook his head against his hands, although he didn't know what he was saying no to. He wasn't even crying about one thing anymore. Madrid was in there somewhere, and Vedran, and the papers Sergio had thrown at him, and nine months of packing bags for the children every week. There was the other house and the empty bed, giving up football without ever quite admitting that was what he'd done, watching his children miss their father and then hating Sergio for making all of them happier simply by turning up in Croatia.

There was another Omega on Sergio's skin.

There was Sergio sleeping on the floor because Luka had looked sad.

There was fifteen years of loving him underneath all of it.

"Luka, breathe."

He tried.

Sergio pulled him closer until Luka's forehead was against his shoulder, one hand moving slowly over his back while the other held the back of his head. There was no panic in Sergio's voice even when Luka couldn't get himself under control, only that low steadiness Luka had spent months trying not to miss.

Eventually Luka managed to drag in a proper breath. Then another.

It didn't stop the crying.

"I hate this," he got out.

Sergio's hand paused briefly before continuing through his hair. "I know."

"I hate - I hate what happened to us."

That one nearly disappeared against Sergio's shoulder. Sergio heard it anyway. His arms tightened around him, and for once he didn't try to defend himself, didn't remind Luka who had left or who had kept secrets or what either of them had said when they were angry.

"I know," he said again.

Luka cried harder.

And Sergio just held him.

Sergio woke early enough that the room was still grey around him.

Luka was asleep beside him, turned toward the window with one hand tucked beneath the pillow, and Sergio spent several minutes looking at the back of his head before deciding that probably wasn't going to help him figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do now.

Last night had happened. That much he knew.

He remembered Luka kissing him, remembered his scent filling the room and, much more clearly than anything else, remembered what came afterward. Luka crying against him until Sergio's shirt had been wet beneath his face, struggling for breath while Sergio held him and tried very hard not to ask questions he knew Luka couldn't answer.

I hate what happened to us.

Sergio had barely slept after that.

Eventually he got out of bed, pulled on running clothes and left the house without waking anyone.

Running helped. It always had. By the time the sun had properly risen, he'd covered enough distance that his legs were beginning to complain and most of the restless energy from the night before had burned itself out. He still didn't know what last night meant, but the answer seemed slightly less urgent when he wasn't lying thirty centimetres away from Luka trying not to touch him.

The house was awake when he came back.

He heard them before he saw anyone, Luka somewhere upstairs with the children. Niko was talking loudly enough that Sergio could follow half the conversation from the hallway, Mateo kept interrupting him, and somewhere between the two of them Luka was trying to establish who had been in the bathroom for twenty minutes and apparently accomplished nothing while in there.

Sergio smiled before he could help it.

He stayed there for a moment, sweaty and exhausted from the run, listening to his family argue upstairs.

His family.

Whatever else was wrong between him and Luka, nobody could take that part away from him.

He went to shower.

When he came downstairs again, Luka's mother was in the kitchen, already dressed and searching through her handbag while drinking tea at the same time.

She glanced up when Sergio came in. "Eat something."

"Good morning to you too."

"Church, ljubavi. It's Sunday. Get going now."

Sergio stopped on his way to the fridge.

Oh.

Right.

He looked at the clock, then at her, and laughed. "You could've warned me yesterday."

"I just did."

"Mhm. Hvala mucho."

She waved him toward the food as though this were his problem rather than hers and disappeared from the kitchen again, calling something up the stairs about leaving on time. Sergio was still smiling when Luka came down.

The smile became a little different when he saw him. Luka had changed into dark trousers and a pale button-down shirt, neat enough for church without looking particularly formal, and was fixing one cuff as he walked into the kitchen.

Sergio whistled.

Luka looked up.

There was no smile waiting for him.

"...Okay," Sergio murmured.

Luka went to the coffee machine. Sergio watched him for a moment before looking down at the bread in front of him. Perhaps the run hadn't solved quite as much as he'd thought. They were alone. His mother was somewhere upstairs with the children, and from the amount of noise coming through the ceiling, nobody was likely to appear immediately. Sergio ate another bite before speaking.

"Are we going to talk about last night?"

Luka's hand paused briefly on his coffee cup. "I suppose we have to."

It wasn't exactly encouraging, but Sergio would take it. He leaned back against the counter. "I've been trying to work out what to say since about six this morning."

"Is that why you went running?"

"You were awake?"

"I woke up when you left."

Sergio hadn't known that. "I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't."

Luka took his coffee to the table and sat down, and after a moment Sergio joined him.

For once, Sergio didn't know how to begin. There were too many versions of last night to choose from. There was the part where Luka had kissed him, the part where they'd ended up together after nine months of barely touching, and then there was Luka falling apart in his arms afterward. Asking about one without the others felt impossible.

So he settled for the truth.

"I don't regret it."

Luka looked at him across the table.

"Do you?"

The answer took long enough that some of Sergio's good mood finally began to slip.

"No."

Sergio breathed out.

Luka rubbed his thumb slowly along the handle of his cup. "That doesn't mean I know what we're doing."

"Neither do I."

That seemed to surprise him.

Sergio gave a small shrug. "I woke up and went running for an hour because I didn't know whether I was supposed to kiss you good morning or pretend none of it happened. I'm not exactly ahead of you here."

Luka's mouth moved slightly at that, not quite enough to become a smile.

"I wouldn't have known what to do if you kissed me."

"Good thing I panicked and ran away, then."

This time Sergio did get the smallest smile, and the relief it gave him was ridiculous. He let the silence sit for a moment.

He reached across the table, stopping short of touching him. "I'm not asking you to decide everything this morning."

Luka's eyes settled on his hand before lifting to his face."But?"

Sergio smiled faintly. "There is a but."

"Of course there is."

"I need to know if there's something left to fix."

That wiped away what remained of Luka's smile.

Sergio waited.

There were footsteps overhead and Niko shouted something neither of them could make out, but nobody came downstairs.

Finally Luka spoke.

"There was always something left."

Sergio stared at him.

Luka seemed almost annoyed that he'd admitted it, his attention returning immediately to his coffee. For Sergio, the entire morning shifted.

"Then come home."

Luka's head came up. Sergio hadn't planned to say it. Perhaps that was why it came out so simply. "Come home with me when we leave."

Luka looked at him for a long moment, and Sergio could practically see the walls coming back up. When Luka answered, his voice was quiet.

"I'm not going back to that house, Sergio."

The hope Sergio had been trying very hard not to have since waking up disappeared anyway.

“...Everybody to the car, now! Church!”

They found space in the last pew at the back, Luka's mother going in first, followed by the children, Luka and finally Sergio at the end.

Sergio had been to Mass with them often enough over the years that none of it was unfamiliar, although following one in Croatian still required considerably more attention than he was capable of giving it that morning. He knew when to stand because Luka stood, sat when Luka sat and managed most of the responses by listening to everyone around him first and joining in half a second late.

Usually Luka helped him. A quiet word, a nudge with his knee, once an increasingly desperate Mia pulling at his hand because Sergio was apparently the only person in the church who hadn't realized everyone else was sitting down.

Today Luka was serious enough that Sergio didn't dare ask.

He sat beside him with his eyes toward the front, looking infuriatingly composed for someone who had spent the previous night crying in Sergio's arms and then informed him over breakfast that he wasn't coming home. Sergio tried to concentrate.

He really did. Lord forgive him.

Something changed beside him. Luka's expression softened first, and then, completely unexpectedly, he smiled. Not at Sergio.

He was looking toward the front of the church, lifting one hand in a small wave at somebody several rows ahead.

Sergio followed his gaze.

Of course.

Vedran.

Sergio closed his eyes and groaned quietly to himself. How did that demon walk into a sacret place like this? Why didn't he catch fire setting foot in here? Lord, help him.

There were hundreds of churches in Croatia. Thousands, probably. Sergio didn't know the statistics, but considering how enthusiastic the country seemed to be about Catholicism, there had to be enough that he shouldn't have to share one with Vedran fucking Ćorluka.

Vedran had noticed him too. The bastard grinned.

Sergio stared back.

Vedran lifted his hand in greeting. Sergio gave him nothing.

Beside him, Luka shifted as though he intended to stand with everyone else, and Sergio caught his arm and pulled him back down. Luka landed beside him with a startled look.

"We're standing," he whispered.

Sergio looked around. They were, in fact, standing. He released Luka immediately.

"Sorry."

Luka stared at him for another second before getting up, and Sergio followed, ignoring the look on Luka's face.

He hated this country. A few minutes later they were kneeling, and that was somehow worse.

There was nowhere to look except ahead, nowhere to go, and Sergio's shoulder was pressed close to Luka's while everyone around them prayed. Luka bowed his head. Sergio tried to do the same.

I'm not going back to that house.

He lasted perhaps thirty seconds before his hand moved. His fingers closed around Luka's wrist between them. Luka opened his eyes.

"...Please," Sergio whispered, desperate even to his own ears.

Luka gave the smallest shake of his head, eyes flicking toward the children and then back to the front.

Sergio knew. He wasn't going to start an argument here.

He loosened his grip, letting his hand slide down until his fingers found Luka's instead.

"Just think about it."

Luka looked at him.

"Please."

There was no anger left in Sergio now. He couldn't find it while kneeling there beside him, not with Luka's hand beneath his and their three children lined up on Luka's other side.

Luka's expression changed slightly.

Sergio lowered his eyes. "I want you home."

For a moment Luka didn't move at all.

Then his fingers curled around Sergio's.

Only briefly.

By the time everyone around them began to move again, Luka had already let go, rising with the children while Sergio remained kneeling for half a second longer than everyone else.

Mateo looked back at him.

"Papa!"

"Yeah, yeah." Sergio got up.

From several rows ahead, Vedran glanced over his shoulder.

Sergio's moment of spiritual reflection ended immediately. Lord, help him!!

The rest of Sunday passed so normally and without any demons following him or his mate. Sergio found himself wondering, more than once, whether the conversation in the back of the church had happened quite the way he remembered it. Nobody mentioned it. Luka certainly didn't.

After lunch the boys disappeared into the garden together, first with the football and later into the pool, emerging periodically because they were hungry or needed somebody to settle an argument before vanishing again. Luka's mother moved between the kitchen and the terrace, and Luka spent most of the afternoon outside with them, reading when the children allowed him to and looking up every few minutes when the splashing became suspiciously loud.

Sergio had been sitting nearby when Mia appeared with a colouring book tucked beneath her arm and her pencils in the other hand. She put both on the table in front of him, pulled out the chair beside his and sat down.

"You're doing this one."

Sergio looked at the page she'd opened for him. "Am I?"

"Yes."

Apparently that settled it. He picked up a pencil.

Mia was getting older in ways Sergio seemed to notice all at once lately. She cared about clothes now, disappeared with her phone more often than she used to, had begun developing the particular expression of long-suffering embarrassment reserved almost exclusively for her parents. There were moments when Sergio looked at her and could already see the teenager she was becoming, which made it strangely comforting that she still wanted to sit beside him and colour.

He wasn't going to mention that, obviously. The quickest way to ensure Mia never asked him again would be to make it sentimental. So Sergio coloured his assigned half of the page and tolerated her moving several of his pencils because apparently he wasn't putting them back correctly.

At some point she leaned against his arm to reach across the table and stayed there afterward without seeming to notice. Sergio didn't mention that either.

Across the garden, Luka was sitting near the pool with his mother, his attention divided between whatever she was telling him and the boys in the water. He looked over once and caught Sergio watching. For a moment neither of them looked away. Then Mateo shouted for Tata from the pool, Luka turned toward him, and the moment passed without becoming anything.

That was more or less how the afternoon went. Sergio found that he didn't mind. That much.

He'd said what he'd needed to say in church, or at least as much as he could say while kneeling in the last pew with Luka's mother and their three children only a few feet away. Luka hadn't given him the answer he'd wanted, but he hadn't rejected him either. Sergio had felt Luka's fingers close around his, and for now he was trying very hard not to demand more from that than Luka had actually given him.

By evening the previous night had caught up with all of them. Dinner was quieter than usual, Niko started yawning before he'd finished eating, and even Mateo went upstairs without the usual negotiations. Mia took the colouring book with her, leaving Sergio's unfinished page on the table because, according to her, he could finish it tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Sergio liked the casual certainty of that more than he should have.

He and Luka went upstairs not long afterward.

Sharing the bed no longer required discussion. Somewhere between Niko being ill, Sergio abandoning the floor and everything that had happened afterward, it had simply become where Sergio slept.

It wasn't until the lights were off that he realized some part of him had been waiting all day to find out what Luka would do when they were alone again. The night before had changed the bed too.

Sergio could remember Luka turning toward him, the weight of him above him, Luka guiding him toward the mating mark when Sergio had been afraid to go near it. More than that, he remembered what came afterward, when the alcohol and everything else had worn away and Luka had cried against him until there was nothing left for Sergio to do except hold him.

Now Luka lay beside him in the dark, close enough that Sergio could smell him but not touching. Sergio waited without meaning to.

Luka shifted once, pulling the blanket higher, and settled onto his side with his back partly toward him. There was no deliberate distance in it, no stiffness that suggested he was angry. He simply made himself comfortable and, little by little, his breathing changed. Sergio understood.

He could have reached across the space between them. His hand would only have needed to move a few inches to find Luka's waist, and fifteen years of instinct told him exactly how easily Luka would fit against him if he did.

He kept his hands to himself. Luka had come to him the night before. Sergio wanted that to matter. If Luka wanted him again tonight, he would let Luka decide that too.

Eventually Luka fell asleep. Sergio remained awake beside him for considerably longer, listening to the familiar breathing and trying not to be disappointed by something Luka had never promised him.

Monday morning began with Niko climbing into their bed.

Sergio woke to a knee somewhere dangerously close to his stomach and opened his eyes to find Niko halfway across him, apparently on his way to Luka.

"Morning, Papa."

"Why are you on me?"

"I need Tata."

"Naturally."

Niko continued over him without apology and burrowed beneath Luka's arm. Luka woke enough to make room automatically, pulling him close before his eyes had properly opened. Sergio watched them for a moment and then got up, not needed by his Omega and pup. 

Downstairs, Luka's mother was already awake. Coffee appeared in front of Sergio before he asked for it, followed by breakfast.

Five minutes later she passed through carrying a stack of clean laundry, stopped, seemed to remember he could actually be useful and handed him a gaint pile of clean towels. 

"Cupboard upstairs, please."

"Which cupboard?"

"The big one."

"There are three big ones."

She was already walking away. "You'll find it."

Sergio muttered something about the organizational standards of the Modrić family and went upstairs.

He opened the wrong cupboard first. The second was full of blankets and things that looked as though nobody had touched them in years. He crouched to move a box from the bottom shelf with his foot, trying to see whether anything was hidden behind it, and another smaller box shifted with it.

The lid came loose. A handful of photographs slid onto the floor. Sergio sighed, put his pile down and reached down to gather them.

The first one he picked up was Luka.

Not Luka as Sergio had ever known him, but a little boy standing in front of a house with a football tucked under one arm, squinting unhappily into the sun.

Sergio smiled. He sat back on his heels and looked at the next one.

Then the next.

The towels could wait.

The next photograph was even better.

Luka couldn't have been more than six or seven, standing beside another boy in matching football shirts with one sock considerably lower than the other. His hair stuck up at the back and there was dirt across one knee. Sergio took his phone out immediately. He was absolutely keeping that one.

The box was deeper than he'd expected. Most of the photographs weren't arranged in any particular order, although they moved roughly through the years as Sergio worked his way down. There were school pictures and birthdays, football teams whose kits seemed to get progressively less ridiculous, holidays with cousins Sergio had met dozens before.

He found Luka at twelve, all elbows and enormous eyes, holding a trophy nearly half his size. Luka at fourteen with his mother standing behind him, both hands on his shoulders. Luka somewhere around sixteen asleep in the back of a car with his mouth open. Sergio photographed that one too. He was still smiling when he found Vedran for the first time.

That wasn't surprising. Sergio knew they'd grown up together, and there was nothing particularly interesting about the photograph anyway. A group of boys stood beside a pitch, all of them sweaty and muddy and pleased with themselves. Luka was near the middle. Vedran had an arm thrown around somebody on his other side.

Sergio put it down and kept going.

Vedran appeared again a few photographs later, then again at somebody's birthday. In another they were sitting on the floor with several other boys, plates balanced on their knees. There were families Sergio recognized now, Luka's parents when they were younger, people he'd spent Christmases and summers with over the years.

He'd known Vedran had been part of all of this. He just hadn't seen it before. The pictures made the years before Sergio strangely tangible. There had been an entire Luka before him, with people who had watched him grow up and knew stories Sergio didn't. Vedran had been there for much of it.

Sergio didn't particularly enjoy that realization. He kept looking anyway.

The photograph that eventually stopped him wasn't hidden or separated from the others. If anything, that was what made it strange. It sat between a picture of several people around a restaurant table and another taken beside a football pitch. Sergio knew what it was before he had properly looked at it. Luka stood beside Vedran outside what looked like a municipal building, a sheet of paper in his hand. He was wearing dark trousers and a shirt Sergio had never seen before. Vedran was dressed much the same. There were a few people around them, some looking toward the camera, some not. Luka was laughing.

For months, that detail would have been enough to make Sergio furious. Now he just stared at him.

Eighteen.

Of course Sergio had known that. Luka had told him how old he'd been. Eighteen wasn't new information. But the boy in the photograph was eighteen in a way Sergio hadn't managed to picture when he'd found the divorce papers. He was skinny, his hair too long around his ears, his face still carrying something of the child Sergio had just spent the last twenty minutes looking at.

Vedran didn't look much older. Neither of them looked like Sergio's idea of two men getting married. They looked like two boys who found whatever they had just done slightly ridiculous.

"Ah."

Sergio looked up. Luka's mother was standing in the doorway.

She looked first at him, then at the photographs covering the floor, and finally at the one in his hand.

"I was putting away towels," Sergio said.

"I can see that."

Sergio glanced around at the mess he'd made. "I got distracted."

She came farther into the room, stepping carefully around the photographs before lowering herself onto the edge of the bed behind Sergio. Sergio held up the one in his hand.

"You were there."

"Of course I was."

That made him look at the photograph again. He hadn't noticed her at first, partly obscured behind somebody else near the edge. "You knew they were doing it?"

She gave him a strange look. "He was barely eighteen, stupid. Of course I knew."

He handed her the photograph and she studied it for a moment, smiling faintly at something Sergio couldn't see.

"He was so thin."

"He's still thin."

"No. Now he eats."

Sergio laughed quietly. She handed the picture back.

For a while Sergio didn't ask anything else. He picked up another photograph, although he wasn't really looking at it anymore.

"Were you okay with it?"

Luka's mother understood what he meant.

"I wasn't happy that he had to do it."

"But you were there."

"Of course I was. He was still a child."

She looked down at the photograph again, her thumb brushing absently over one corner.

"There had already been problems. People who didn't want Luka travelling alone, not wating to talk to him, let alone sign him. People who suddenly needed to know which Alpha was responsible for him." Her mouth tightened. "Luka was furious. He thought being good enough should be enough."

"It should've been."

"Yes. It should have. But you know how things are."

Sergio looked at Vedran beside him in the photograph.

"And Vedran was there."

"Vedran was his friend."

The longer he looked at it, the more ridiculous some of the things he'd imagined over the past nine months began to feel. There was no intimacy in it that Sergio could find, no secret history hiding between them. Just two painfully young men holding paperwork and laughing about something outside the frame.

"I would've done it," Sergio said.

"I know."

"If he'd known me then, I mean. If Luka had asked—"

"I know."

Sergio glanced at her, but she seemed completely certain.

"I've known you a long time too, Sergio." she muttered, placing a hand on his hair in an attempt to flatten it back down. "...He should have told you, Zlato."

"...Fifteen years, Mama...."

"I know."

Sergio rubbed his thumb along the edge of another photograph. "Why wouldn't he tell me?"

She sighed.

"Because Luka is very good at deciding that a difficult conversation can wait until tomorrow. Then tomorrow becomes next year."

Despite himself, Sergio almost smiled. That sounded painfully familiar. "He must've known I'd be angry."

"Probably."

"Was he afraid of me?"

Her expression changed immediately.

"No. Afraid of losing something he loved, perhaps. That's different."

Sergio went quiet. He could still remember exactly how Luka had looked when he'd thrown the papers at him. Whatever Luka had feared might happen if Sergio found out, Sergio had managed to make it worse.

"I said horrible things to him."

"Mh."

"He didn't deserve that."

"No."

She let the silence sit for a moment before adding, much more gently, "And you didn't deserve to find out after fifteen years. Both can be true."

That, more than anything else she'd said, seemed to settle somewhere in him. Sergio stared down at the photograph for another few seconds before admitting, "I messed up, Mama."

The hand that had been smoothing his hair like he was one of her children gave the side of his head a light smack instead.

"I can imagine." She smiled at him as she got to her feet. "You should fix that."

As though it were that simple. Maybe to her it was.

"But fix my towels first, Ramos." 

Sergio found Luka upstairs.

He had gone looking for him with more determination than any actual plan, Baka's words still following him up the stairs. You should fix that.

Fine. He would.

For once, Sergio wasn't interested in explaining himself. He wasn't going to tell Luka again how those papers had felt in his hands, or why seeing Vedran's name had made something ugly and possessive take over before he'd stopped to think. Luka knew all of that already. Sergio had made very sure everybody in the house knew how hurt he'd been.

What he hadn't done nearly enough was tell Luka how sorry he was.

So that was what he intended to do. He would find him, close the door and apologize until Luka believed him. If that required begging, Sergio had very recently discovered in the back of a Croatian church that he was apparently no longer above begging. On his knees even. He would. 

He pushed open the bedroom door without knocking. Luka was sitting on the edge of the bed with his phone against his ear. He looked up when Sergio came in, and whatever Sergio had been about to say disappeared when Luka held up one finger.

"...Yes, he's here."

Sergio stopped.

Luka listened for a moment, his eyes still on Sergio.

"No, I didn't know."

There was something about the way he said it that made Sergio's stomach drop. He mouthed, Who is it?

Luka ignored him.

"Tonight?"

Sergio's stomach dropped a little farther. Luka got up and walked toward the window, listening while whoever was on the other end spoke for long enough that Sergio began checking his pockets for his own phone. He found it on silent.

There were eleven missed calls.

"Oh, fuck."

Luka turned around at that. Sergio opened his emails.There were enough unread messages from Madrid that he stopped counting after the first few.

"Yes," Luka was saying, much more politely than Sergio thought the situation deserved. "I'll tell him. No, he's standing right here."

That was humiliating. Luka ended the call and lowered the phone. For a moment he only looked at Sergio.

Sergio held up his own phone. "In my defence—"

"No."

There wasn't any anger behind it. That was worse. Sergio lowered the phone.

Luka sat down again, rubbing one hand over his face. "They've been trying to reach you since yesterday."

"I had it on silent."

"Since yesterday, Sergio."

"I know."

"And apparently you haven't answered an email since Thursday."

Sergio decided this probably wasn't the moment to explain that he hadn't opened his email at all since arriving in Croatia.

"They called me because nobody could get hold of you."

Sergio sat beside him.

"What do they want?"

"They need you back tonight. There's an assessment tomorrow morning and training after that. Something changed with the squad; I didn't ask for the whole story."

"Tonight?"

"That's what I just said."

Sergio looked toward the window.

Madrid had felt very far away for the last week. He had liked it that way.

"Okay."

Luka gave him a tired look. "Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to answer your phone when your club calls you eleven times."

There was no real bite in it. Luka sounded disappointed more than anything, and Sergio would almost have preferred an argument.

"You can't just disappear because you're here with us."

Sergio looked at him. Here with us. Luka seemed to realize what he'd said at roughly the same time Sergio did, because his eyes moved away.

Sergio forgot about Madrid for a moment.

"Luka."

"Don't."

"No, I came up here for a reason."

"You need to sort out your flight."

"I'll sort out the flight."

"Sergio—"

"I came up here to apologize to you."

That stopped him.

Sergio shifted closer, turning toward him properly. He ended up slipping off the bed, kneeling in font of Luka. Everything he'd been thinking on the way upstairs suddenly seemed much harder to say with Luka actually sitting in front of him.

He tried anyway. "I found the photographs."

Luka's expression changed. Sergio continued before he could retreat from the subject. "All of them. You as a kid, your family, football. Vedran. The one from that day."

Luka looked down at his hands.

"I talked to your mother."

That earned him a brief glance. "Of course you did."

"She found me on the floor surrounded by half your childhood. I didn't exactly have an escape route."

Under different circumstances Luka might have smiled. Today he only waited. Sergio took a breath.

"You should've told me."

Luka's face closed slightly, and Sergio reached for him before he could misunderstand where this was going, catching his hand between both of his.

"I'm not starting that again. Listen to me."

Luka let him hold on.

"You should have told me, and I wish you had. I think I'm always going to wish you had." Sergio looked down at their hands for a moment. "But I saw you."

Luka frowned.

"In the pictures. You were a kid, Luka."

"I was eighteen."

"You looked twelve."

That almost did it. The corner of Luka's mouth moved, but Sergio wasn't letting himself get distracted.

"I saw you with him. I saw what it was. And Mama explained some things that I should probably have let you explain nine months ago instead of screaming over you."

Luka went very still. Sergio tightened his hands around his.

"I am so sorry."

He had apologized before. Pieces of it, usually. For what he'd said. For frightening the children. For losing his temper. There had always been something attached to it, though, even if Sergio hadn't meant there to be. An explanation. His own hurt. Something Luka had done first. This time Sergio didn't want anything attached.

"I'm sorry for the way I spoke to you. I'm sorry I threw those papers at you. I'm sorry I made something you did when you were eighteen into..." He shook his head. "All that shit I said about him having you first. I knew better than that. Even angry, I knew better."

Luka's eyes had gone shiny. Sergio moved closer.

"I know who your mate is. I know who you've loved. I knew it then too, and I still said it.."

Luka swallowed.

"I did hurt you," Sergio continued. "I know I did. And then I spent months being angry because you left, like I hadn't given you a reason to."

"Sergio..."

"No, let me finish because apparently I have a plane to catch now."

That finally got the smallest, unwilling breath of laughter out of Luka.

Sergio brought Luka's hands closer, holding them against his lips briefly.

"I don't know how to fix this. I don't know if you believe me when I tell you I can. Maybe you don't. But I'm sorry, Luka. I'm so fucking sorry. And if I have to spend another fifteen years making up for that night, fine."

Luka shook his head, and Sergio couldn't tell whether he was rejecting the words or simply overwhelmed by them.

"I don't want you spending fifteen years apologizing."

"Good. Then forgive me sooner."

Luka actually laughed then, wet and quiet, and Sergio smiled despite the pressure behind his own eyes.

For a few seconds neither of them said anything. Then Luka glanced at Sergio's phone.

The moment was gone.

"You really do have to go."

Sergio's smile disappeared.

"I know."

They still hadn't moved when footsteps came down the hallway.

Mateo appeared first.

"Where are you going?"

Sergio looked toward the door.

Mateo was staring at the phone in Sergio's hand and then at the bag that wasn't even packed yet, somehow already putting things together.

"Nowhere yet."

"Are you going back to Madrid?"

Niko appeared behind him before Sergio could answer, followed more slowly by Mia.

Wonderful.

Apparently nobody in this family could receive bad news privately.

Sergio stood.

"I have to go back for work."

Niko's face fell immediately.

"No."

"Come here."

"No."

Niko backed away instead, already crying. "You just came."

"I've been here for days, cariño."

"That's not enough." Sergio couldn't argue with that.

Mateo had started asking questions over Niko—why tonight, how long, whether Sergio could come back tomorrow, whether Tata and all of them were going too. Sergio tried to answer one at a time and failed almost immediately. Mia didn't ask anything.

She stood in the doorway with her arms folded tightly across herself, blinking too much. Sergio noticed.

"Mía."

"I'm fine."

He knew that tone.

He opened an arm toward her.

She shook her head first, because apparently she was old enough now to find crying in front of everybody embarrassing.Sergio waited. A few seconds later she crossed the room anyway. That was all it took for Niko too. He came back immediately, squeezing himself between Sergio and Mia, and Mateo joined because there was apparently no dignity left to preserve once everyone else had started.

Sergio found himself with three children attached to him.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered into Mia's hair. "I'm going to Madrid, not war."

Niko cried harder.

"Bad joke. Sorry."

Over their heads, Sergio looked at Luka.

Luka was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

He looked tired, disappointed and sad in a way Sergio couldn't do anything about. Sergio sighed.

Madrid had been miserable since Sergio came back.

It rained the first morning and barely seemed to stop after that. Not the brief summer rain that disappeared almost as quickly as it came, but days of grey sky and water running down the windows at Valdebebas, turning the pitches slick and leaving everybody complaining about August weather that felt like it belonged several months later in the year.

Sergio hated it.

He hated the empty house more.

The first night had been the worst. He'd come home late, dropped his bag inside the door and immediately noticed how little the place smelled like anyone except him. There were traces of the children if he looked for them, because there always were, but nothing fresh. No shoes kicked into the hallway, no cups left where they shouldn't be, no Luka upstairs.

After Croatia, the silence felt unnatural.

He spoke to the children every day. Usually more than once. Niko had discovered video calls could be conducted while carrying the phone around the entire house, so Sergio had seen more ceilings, floors and extreme close-ups of his youngest son's forehead than he had actual faces. Mateo wanted updates about training. Mia mostly appeared somewhere in the background until Sergio demanded she come say hello.

Luka was harder.

Sometimes Sergio caught him passing behind the children. Once Niko had shoved the phone directly into his face and Sergio had got an annoyed, startled Luka for approximately four seconds before the phone disappeared again. Another evening they managed almost ten minutes after the children went to bed.

Neither of them mentioned the house.

Sergio didn't ask when they were coming back.

He wanted to. Every single time. Instead he went to training, came home, slept badly and woke up to more rain.

By the fourth day he was beginning to think Croatia had somehow existed outside real life entirely.

Training that afternoon ran longer than expected. The rain had finally eased into something closer to drizzle, although the pitch was still soaked and Sergio's socks were wet enough that he wanted them off immediately. Most of the others were already heading inside when one of the staff called after him.

"Ramos."

Sergio turned, expecting another instruction.

"Luka's up there."

For a second Sergio thought he'd misheard him.

"What?"

"Luka. And the kids. Just saw them."

Sergio stared at him.

The man stared back.

"What?"

Nothing.

Sergio was already moving.

He didn't bother asking why nobody had told him earlier, because that would require admitting that Luka being somewhere in the training centre was apparently information everybody should know needed to be delivered to Sergio immediately. He took the steps too quickly, still in his training kit, boots wet, hair damp from the rain.

He saw Luka through the glass before Luka saw him. He was standing alone near the covered area overlooking one of the smaller pitches, hands in his pockets, watching something below. Sergio followed his gaze and found three familiar figures on the grass.

Mia had apparently given up trying to keep dry. Mateo was chasing Niko, who was running away with a ball tucked under one arm despite Mateo shouting something after him.

Sergio stopped. They were here. Not on a phone screen. Not several countries away. Here.

Luka turned at the sound of Sergio's boots against the floor. His face changed immediately.

"Sergio—"

Sergio crossed the remaining distance and wrapped both arms around him.

There was no thought involved. No attempt to work out whether they were at the training ground, whether somebody might come past, whether Luka had actually invited the embrace. He simply needed him.

Luka made a startled sound when Sergio pulled him in, but a second later his arms came around Sergio too.

That was enough.

Sergio buried his face against Luka's neck and breathed.

Four days.

It had only been four days. He held him as though it had been four months.

Luka smelled like outside and rain and the familiar thing underneath that Sergio had spent days trying unsuccessfully to find in pillows that hadn't held Luka for nine months.

"You're wet," Luka murmured eventually.

"I don't care."

"You're getting me wet."

Sergio only held him tighter.

Luka's hand moved slowly over the back of his neck, and Sergio closed his eyes again. He hadn't realized quite how badly he'd missed him until he had him back in his arms. His Alpha had apparently decided that four days apart after nine months of separation was the final injustice it was prepared to tolerate.

Eventually Sergio lifted his head, but neither of them really let go. Luka's arms remained around him and Sergio kept one hand spread across the small of his back, the other somewhere beneath his jacket.

"You could've told me."

"We got back this morning."

"This morning?"

Luka nodded.

Sergio looked down at the pitch again, almost to make sure the children were actually still there. They were. Niko had the ball now and Mateo was trying to take it from him while Mia stood in goal with very little enthusiasm.

"Why?"

"I had to come back for something."

Sergio looked at him again.

Luka was quiet for a moment before saying, "I went to see a house."

"A house?"

"I just saw it online. I wanted to see it in real life."

Sergio frowned slightly, although he didn't move away. Luka's fingers were still resting against the back of his neck, absently touching the damp ends of his hair.

"And?"

"I put in an offer."

Sergio's hand stilled against Luka's back. For a moment he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that.

Luka already had a house. A house Sergio had never liked because it represented everything he didn't want to accept, but one Luka had nevertheless made into a home for the children over the past nine months. Another house sounded permanent in a way Sergio wasn't prepared for.

"Oh."

Luka watched him.

Sergio tried to smile and didn't quite manage it. "You liked it that much?"

"Yes."

"Good."

His arms loosened without him meaning them to.

Luka didn't let him go. Instead his hand moved from the back of Sergio's neck to his cheek, making Sergio look at him.

"It's a good house," Luka said, and there was something different in his voice now, something serious enough that Sergio stopped trying to pretend he wasn't disappointed. "I think it could be a good beginning."

Sergio looked at him.

Luka held his gaze.

That was all. No explanation followed. For several seconds Sergio simply stood there with Luka's hand against his face and the children running around below them, trying to understand why Luka was looking at him like that.

Then he did.

A beginning.

Not Luka's.

Not the children's.

Theirs.

Something in Sergio's chest seemed to give way all at once. Months ago Luka had stood in front of him and said he wasn't going back to that house. He'd said it again in Croatia, and Sergio had heard the same thing every time: I'm not coming back to you.

He hadn't meant Sergio. He had meant the fucking house.

The house where Sergio had found the papers. Where he'd screamed at Luka. Where the children had heard them. Where they slept apart. Where Sergio had later brought another Omega when the place was supposed to have been empty.

Of course Luka didn't want to go back there.

Sergio looked at him for so long that Luka's mouth began to twitch.

"You understand now?"

Sergio nodded.

He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't ruin it.

So he kissed him.

Luka made a quiet sound against his mouth, surprised for barely a second before kissing him back, and Sergio's arms tightened around him again. There was none of the hesitation from Croatia now, none of the uncertainty over whether he was allowed. Luka's hand slid into his wet hair and Sergio pulled him closer until there wasn't any space left between them.

He kissed him like he'd missed him.

Which was ridiculous after four days and entirely true.

When they broke apart, Sergio stayed close, forehead against Luka's, smiling in a way he couldn't seem to stop.

Luka was smiling too.

Sergio kissed him again.

This one lasted approximately three seconds. A shriek came from below.

"PAPA!"

They broke apart. Sergio looked over the railing. All three children were staring up at them.

Niko was jumping in place, apparently beside himself now that he'd discovered Papa had been standing above them the entire time. Mateo was pointing. Mia had both hands over her mouth, laughing. Then Mateo's voice carried all the way up to them.

"Ew!"

Luka started laughing against Sergio's shoulder.

"Oh, shut up!" Sergio shouted down.

That only made it worse.

Niko had started yelling Papa repeatedly, Mateo was still making exaggerated noises of disgust and even Mia had joined in now, shouting something Sergio couldn't make out through her laughter.

Sergio looked at Luka.

For the first time in days, the rain didn't bother him at all.

He kissed Luka once more just because the chorus of disgust from below immediately got louder.

Then he went to get his children.

Luka made it approximately halfway onto his side and away from Sergio in the dark of their new bedroom, before Sergio caught him around the waist and pulled him back.

He landed with a tired sound somewhere between a laugh and a complaint, finding himself underneath Sergio again before he had properly worked out what was happening. Sergio settled over him as though this had been his intention all along, chest against his, catching Luka's wrists and pushing them loosely into the pillow above his head.

"Sergio."

"Mh."

"It's really getting late. It's almost dawn."

"Mh."

"You have training."

"Mhhm."

Luka gave him a look that suggested this only made his behaviour more stupid.

Sergio didn't care, feeling Luka's legs wrap around his hips again loosely.

They had spent most of the night finding reasons not to let go of each other. Luka could feel Sergio's heartbeat against his own, slower now, his weight warm and familiar over him. The room smelled overwhelmingly of both of them, their scents so tangled together that Luka couldn't have separated one from the other if he'd tried.

He didn't want to try.

Sergio kissed him again, softer this time, then moved along his jaw and down toward his neck. Luka closed his eyes.

Sergio had said some truly spectacular things tonight. Luka would give him that. Things that had made Luka hide his face against him, things Sergio had apparently been carrying around for months waiting for an opportunity to say them. There had been promises  and an embarrassingly sincere declaration concerning the rest of their lives that Luka fully intended to remind him of the next time Sergio left wet towels on the floor.

Sergio kissed just beneath his ear.

"Lukita?"

"Mh?"

"Wanna come running with me in the morning?"

Luka's eyes opened. For several seconds he stared at the ceiling. Then at Sergio.

"Ugh."

Sergio grinned.

Luka tried to pull one hand free. Sergio kept it exactly where it was.

"You've been saying beautiful things to me for hours and that's what you decide to ruin it with?"

"I'm thinking about your cardiovascular health."

"At four in the morning?"

"There's never a bad time to care about cardiovascular health."

Luka finally got a hand free and shoved it into Sergio's face.

Sergio kissed his palm.

Annoying man.

"No running."

"Fine."

Sergio returned to his neck with suspicious ease.

Luka knew him too well. He waited. Sure enough, Sergio lasted perhaps ten seconds.

"You need to start training again, though."

There it was.

Luka groaned and let his head fall back into the pillow.

"Sergio."

"I'm only saying—"

"You are always only saying."

"You love football."

"I know."

"And you're not finished."

"I know."

That stopped Sergio.

He lifted his head. Luka looked at him. They had gone around this particular subject so many times that Sergio seemed genuinely unprepared to discover there wasn't going to be a fight.

Luka had been thinking about it. More than thinking about it, really. There had been phone calls. A few conversations he hadn't mentioned yet. Nothing decided, nothing he wanted Sergio interfering with before Luka had worked out what he wanted for himself. But football no longer felt like something he had to give up in order to keep everything else together.

Things were different now.

"I can help," he amended.

"I don't need help."

"I know. I meant if you want it."

Luka studied him for a moment.

That was better.

Sergio's hands were roaming again- "Do you? Want it? he asked, rolling his lips into Luka's.

Then a thought occurred to him.

A terrible thought.

Luka smiled.

Sergio immediately narrowed his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Luka."

"I was just thinking." Luka moved his newly freed hand into Sergio's hair, smoothing it away from his forehead. "Maybe Vedran can help me."

The reaction was immediate. Sergio dropped his face against Luka's chest with a long, suffering groan.

Luka started laughing.

"No."

"He knows people!"

"No."

"He helped me before."

"Absolutely fucking not."

Luka was laughing too hard now to keep going properly, especially when Sergio lifted his head and looked genuinely betrayed.

"I'll retire and manage you myself."

"That sounds terrible."

"I will become an agent by tomorrow."

"You'd be awful!"

"I'd be incredible!"

"You'd fight everyone."

"Only Vedran."

That sent Luka off again.

Sergio tried to look offended for another few seconds before he gave up and started laughing too.

"You think you're very funny."

"I am."

Luka pulled him down and kissed him before Sergio could find another argument, still smiling against his mouth. 

When they separated, Sergio stayed close.

"No Vedran."

Luka kissed him again.

"Go to sleep."

"Promise me."

Another kiss.

"Sergio."

"Lukita."

"Go to sleep."

Maybe he'd go running with him after all. Probably not. Sergio could survive one disappointment.

"...I don't want to sleep." his mate only said. "Come here, conejito."