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The sudden, harsh knocking startled Pedri, making him pause the video he was watching to answer the door.
“You’ve ran out of time. We’re doing this now,” Ferran said.
“What?”
“What what? Pedri, I’m fucking done with whatever this is. I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow,” he said, walking past him and into Pedri’s house.
Oh.
I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
Pedri’s ears started ringing. He closed the door and followed Ferran inside on autopilot, his mouth dry.
“I can’t believe this,” Ferran let out an humorless laugh as he stepped into the living room. “Are you really not gonna say anything?”
I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
He pushed his hair back, exasperated. “I just handed over the keys to my house! This is real, you know? Fuck, Pedri, I’m fucking leaving for real, and I haven’t heard a word from you since the fucking World Cup celebrations. Why?! Why have you been avoiding me?”
“I haven’t,” Pedri said before he could think against it.
He had. Pedri knew damn well he had been avoiding Ferran ever since he’d told him about Paris, but admitting it meant admitting all of this was real.
Ferran huffed sarcastically. “The fuck you haven’t. The least you can do is not lie to me now, Pedri, please.”
Pedri thought of a thousand other least things Ferran could be doing. But he said nothing. He couldn’t.
I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
The pads of Pedri’s fingers started tingling.
“Do you really don’t give a shit?” Ferran asked, his brow furrowed in a way it never was, desperation and heartbreak written all over his face.
Pedri’s vision blurred.
“I found out about your injury from fucking twitter, Pedri, what the fuck? I know you’re angry, okay? Well, I assume you are… That’s why we need to talk, Pedri, please,” Ferran said as he stepped toward him, a little bit softer this time.
I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
Pedri felt his grip on control slip.
His lungs suddenly felt empty, the beat of his heart deafening, pounding in his ears like a hammer. The world around him began to tremble, the sounds muted, dulled, and a sharp twinge of pain in his chest made him fold in on himself. His head felt heavy and his knees weak like never before, forcing him to surrender to whatever this was, until he fell limp onto his ass, his back against the wall.
“Fuck, Pedri, are you alright? What’s wrong?” Ferran was all over him in a second, kneeling beside him.
Pedri couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t—I can’t,” he managed to say in between gasps.
Ferran seemed to understand what was going on, even if Pedri couldn’t.
“It’s fine, Pepi, hey, look at me,” he said, taking Pedri’s clammy hands in his and placing one on his chest.
“Try following my breathing, okay? Come on,” he said softly, like he was talking to a baby. Pedri would have felt embarrassed if he weren’t too busy feeling like he was dying.
He nodded helplessly, trying to do as Ferran said.
“Inhale… exhale… like this,” Ferran said, his eyes locked on him.
Pedri did exactly as he said. One time, two, three. And after a while, his heart rate seemed to settle, his breath more even.
Ferran was sitting in front of him, and when he noticed Pedri had calmed down a bit, he scooted closer, taking both his hands in his and starting to trace soothing circles on his wrists, all previous anger gone.
“Pepi, talk to me, please.”
That did it. Everything Pedri had been holding back, everything he’d been avoiding, refusing to even think about, came crashing down on him.
“Ferri…” It came out as a sob.
Pedri broke like he’d never broken before, his face completely crumpled in pain and heartbreak. He felt breathless again, the only thing that seemed to ease the pain was weeping, letting out cries and sounds that he’d never heard come out out his mouth.
“Fuck,” Ferran said, crawling over to him and enveloping him in a hug, the position uncomfortable but everything Pedri needed. “It’s fine, Pedri, everything’s fine.”
That only made Pedri cry harder because it wasn’t. Everything wasn’t fine because Ferran was leaving for Paris tomorrow.
He let out another broken sob, clutching at the back of Ferran’s shirt, hiding his face in the crook of his neck, heaving. He wanted to hide there forever—in Ferran's familiar, comfortable warmth—until this passed, until someone tapped his shoulder and told him everything had been a very bad dream.
Ferran kept tracing circles on his back, rocking them back and forth and whispering sweet, comforting words Pedri didn’t have the strength to decipher.
When he felt a little bit more like a person, Pedri tried to speak.
“It’s not.”
Ferran startled at the words, leaning back a bit to face him.
“What?”
“Nothing’s fine,” Pedri said. “I’m... I'm sorry.”
“Pedri…”
Pedri gulped. It was about time he faced this. He owed this to Ferran, and to himself as well. He’d been avoiding it for too long.
“I’m sorry for avoiding you, for avoiding… this.”
They were still tangled up in each other on the floor, Pedri’s hands on Ferran’s hips. He clutched them tightly, needing the physical proof that Ferran was still there.
“When you told me you were leaving, I… My world stopped in a way that—it terrified me, Ferran, you don’t understand. I just couldn’t, I can’t—” he looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears at bay. He needed to stop crying for just one fucking second.
Thankfully, Ferran never stopped caressing his sides, encouraging him to keep going.
“It was terrifying because it made me realise I really didn’t want you to go. But this fear I felt, it wasn’t… It wasn’t that I didn’t want you changing teams, it was more than that. I didn’t want you to leave me, Ferri. Like, in a physical sense. My chest…” he lifted one of his hands to clutch at it. “It hurt everytime I thought about it, it still does. I’ve never felt anything like—”
He had to stop, losing the fight against his tears once again. He felt embarrassing, pathetic, so, so bare and vulnerable.
“You don’t just feel this way towards a friend, you know? I don’t think so, at least… That’s why I… Why I never said anything. I didn’t want to face this. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t even tell you I didn’t want you to leave because how could I? I’d just be holding you back.”
The tears kept coming, but they were tamer now. He wiped them with his wrist.
“And then I started seeing you all over the news, first Ibiza, then New York, and I…” he let out a pitiful laugh. “You were the only thing I was thinking of, and I realized it had always been this way. That I had always felt this way about you, and I didn’t even know. I felt so… pathetic.”
Pedri let his head fall down, defeated.
But Ferran tilted it upwards, cradling his face in his hands. “No, no, no, don’t say this, Pedri, joder,” he held him by the back of his neck and pulled him in, making him rest his forehead on his shoulder.
Pedri only sighed, basking in Ferran’s warmth.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me now,” he heard Ferran mutter above him.
“What?” Pedri craned his neck to look up at him, confused.
“Pedri, fuck,” Ferran said with a self-deprecating laugh, resting their foreheads together. “I’ve felt this exact same way for a while. You're all I think about, too.”
Pedri’s heart stopped.
“I’ve always assumed you wouldn’t… That you’d never feel the same.”
I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.
Pedri felt the tears coming back at full force now. He clutched at the neck of Ferran’s t-shirt.
“Fuck,” he said, looking at Ferran’s equally glassy eyes, realizing how badly they’d fucked up. How badly he’d fucked up.
“Yeah, fuck,” Ferran replied, half crying, half laughing.
“Can I kiss you?” Pedri asked, his heart on his throat.
“Please.”
So Pedri did, drawing him in by the back of his neck, posessive and hasty, wanting to make it good because they’d already lost so much time. Ferran met him in the middle, mouth open and ready, pulling him in by the waist as he swallowed Pedri’s breathless whimper, his tongue sliding in like it belonged there. Pedri hummed, his heart breaking with the certainty that they could’ve had this long ago if he hadn’t been so stupid.
But he couldn’t think about this right now, so he forced his mind to only focus on the taste of Ferran’s lips, on the sound of his ragged breath, the warmth of his touch. Ferran was leaving for Paris tomorrow, but they still had tonight, and hopefully, the rest of their lives as well, even if miles apart.
Ferran was the one to draw back, catching his breath. He grabbed Pedri by the sides of his face, softly caressing his cheeks with his thumbs.
“Do you think we can make this work?” he asked, his voice turning high-pitched at the end.
“Do you want to?” Pedri asked, feeling weird and undeserving and overwhelmingly scared, but so, so in love with this man who had been his anchor through every setback, his rock, his entire world.
“Of course, Pepi,” he said, smiling with his eyes in that way that always made Pedri’s heart skip a beat. How could he have been so fucking blind?
“Okay, then we’ll do it,” Pedri said, forcing himself to smile through the fear and heartbreak, and letting the warmth and fondness take over instead.
“Okay,” Ferran said before kissing the top of his head, just like he always did before entering the pitch.
That single gesture was what grounded Pedri. It always had that effect on him, in a way few things ever could.
We’ll be okay, he told himself. Paris was only two hours away.