Chapter Text
Barça had officially announced the transfer of Ferran Torres to PSG for around fifty million euros. The club presented it as a necessary operation. A good opportunity. A sporting decision. A way to recoup the investment they had made, which they felt hadn't yielded the expected results. It wasn't that they didn't want Ferran; it was simply that there were cheaper players who could do the same or better job, and now that Fermín López was returning from injury, nothing justified keeping a striker who missed more than half his chances.
Yes, that was Barcelona's stance on the transfer, which they communicated both internally and externally a few weeks ago, but Pedri summed it up in a way that seemed much more fitting.
"What a load of crap."
Fermín, who was sitting next to him in the locker room, slowly raised his head.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You said 'what a load of crap.'"
"Well, that's it, this whole thing is a load of crap."
He continued tying his boots under the questioning gaze of the new number 7, who couldn't understand what on earth this was all about. He knew Pedri could sometimes have a difficult temper, but he wasn't usually one to talk nonsense, much less swear.
He shrugged and decided to let it go, but made a mental note of it, to be on the lookout.
At first, no one paid much attention to the matter. Pedri was sad, and that was relatively normal. He had lost a very close teammate with whom he spent almost all day and whom he considered his best friend. It could affect him, and everyone expected that.
What no one expected was that, three days after returning to training, he was still exactly as irritable, and that not only had he not calmed down, but the intensity had increased.
"Who put this music on?" he asked, looking with disgust at a wireless speaker on the pitch.
"I did," Lamine said, raising a hand.
"Well, turn it off."
"But we just…"
"Lamine," he interrupted, his voice sharp and harsh. "Turn it off. Now."
The striker looked at him strangely and glanced around to see if he could get any support, but no one dared say anything to the Canary Islander when he…
"Okay."
The music stopped, and they could never train with it again. Which was odd, because when Ferrán was there, he was the one who usually asked for it to be played.
Hansi Flick began to suspect that it wasn't sadness a week after the midfielder's attitude hadn't changed. He knew that the Valencian's departure would be a turning point for several of his players, but he hadn't factored in this small collateral damage.
This wasn't sadness. It was anger, tinged with rage, like a kind of deep-seated resentment.
"Pedri, can you come here for a moment?" he called after the afternoon's training session.
"What?"
He trotted over, his face red, but with a sour expression. It wasn't new; it seemed to be his default expression lately.
"I wanted to talk to you."
"Well, talk."
Flick looked at him. The boy was usually very polite and respectful to everyone on the coaching staff. The key was that, "used to be," in the past tense.
"About Ferran."
Pedri closed his eyes and shook his head repeatedly.
"No."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"I know what you want to talk about."
"So you know that…" he was interrupted.
"I'm not going to talk about it. I've already said everything I had to say."
"He's gone, Pedri, and you have to accept it."
"I know."
"And we can't…" He couldn't finish the sentence because he was interrupted again, and the coach was already starting to lose his temper.
"I know we can't do anything."
"So what are you trying to achieve with all this attitude?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He left, leaving Flick speechless and staring at the door. He ran a hand over his face in exasperation and let out a long sigh.
This season was going to be tough.
The situation worsened when each team's first match arrived. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—PSG and Barça debuted almost simultaneously. Pedri watched the entire match anyway, right after his own game ended.
He watched it all, the full ninety minutes, even though he knew the Valencian player wasn't in the starting lineup. Without taking his eyes off the television, he waited patiently until his teammate appeared as one of the substitutes. The score was against them by two goals, a difficult deficit to overcome in the remaining minutes.
"But didn't you say you didn't care about PSG?" Gavi asked.
"I don't care." And yet, he still didn't look away.
Ferran scored the second goal, securing the draw for his team.
Pedri slammed his phone shut and threw it forward, not caring where it might land or the damage it was sustaining.
"Son of a bitch," he muttered angrily.
Gavi blinked several times before regaining awareness of how sounds were transmitted through his vocal cords.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you insulting him? He scored, and a good header, by the way."
"I saw it."
"Then why are you angry?"
"Precisely because he scored."
"Didn't you want him to do well? You said so yourself."
He looked at him as if he had just asked the stupidest question in history, and with a touch of indignation. Of course he wanted his best friend to do well; he wasn't a monster.
"Of course I did."
"So..."
"Well, that's it, leave me alone."
The Sevillian sighed and decided he wasn't going to get involved in this particular battle. His teammate, ever since the transfer, seemed to be constantly making up excuses to argue with people, and while he might have a short fuse, he was getting fed up with it. Sometimes you have to choose which battles you fight, and this was one he didn't feel like fighting at that moment, so he left him alone.
A week later, in the next match, Ferran scored again. And just as it happened, Pedri broke a spoon. Nobody knew how; it just happened. It was probably the first time in their lives they'd seen someone break a piece of cutlery.
"How the hell did you break a spoon?" Cubarsí asked.
"I don't know."
"You were eating yogurt. It's impossible to break a spoon accidentally."
"Well, it broke. It must have been in bad condition or something."
"Spoons don't just break for no reason."
Pedri glared at him. Pau felt a chill run down his spine, and his most primal instincts told him he was being stalked by a predator.
"You want to argue with me about a spoon? Seriously?"
Cubarsí decided against it; he didn't want to be devoured that day.
What was truly worrying was when Ferran didn't score in the next match, even though he started.
PSG 0 - 0 Monaco.
Pedri finished the match in a worse mood than after one of his own defeats, and there was a murderous aura around him, dark and heavy; he looked like a lake spirit about to go hunting for the souls of the helpless in the forest.
"He didn't score," he said.
Fermín sighed.
"Yes, we saw it."
"He played badly, he didn't make good runs and he lost the ball."
"It can happen, we all have bad days."
"No."
"Not what?"
"It can't happen. Not to him."
"Why is that? It's football, man, it happens. It happens to us too."
"He needs to play well, that's what he has to do."
"And what do you want him to do? Seriously, Pedri, the other day you were angry because he scored, and now you're complaining that he played badly. Nobody can understand you."
The Canary Islander stood up abruptly, the sound of his chair interrupting his teammate's conversation. His body was tense and hot, and his hands were clenched into fists at his hips.
"I'm going home."
"It's 4:30p.m., we have a meeting at..."
"I don't care, I'm not going."
The striker brought his fingers to his temples and gently pressed them, making small circles. A spa, a massage, anything, but he needed something if he wanted to put up with his friend like this all season.
The locker room began to develop a theory: Pedri had become obsessed with the void left by Ferrán's absence, and he wanted to fill it with anger and rage, because it was the only way he could process the fact that he no longer had someone by his side following him around like a dog all day long.
Furthermore, without realizing it, he started talking about him constantly, although it didn't go unnoticed by the others at all. "Ferrán did this better," "Ferrán positioned himself there," "Ferrán understood that move," "Ferrán wouldn't have made that pass."
Ferrán, Ferrán, Ferrán.
It seemed to be the only word his brain remembered; the rest of the dictionary had been buried deep within.
"It's just that Ferrán..."
"Pedri," Eric interrupted him one afternoon. "Can you stop talking about Ferrán for five minutes?"
Pedri looked at him.
"I'm not talking about him that much."
Dani let out a skeptical laugh.
"God, it's clear you haven't been listening to yourself lately, have you?"
"Well, that doesn't change what I'm saying, because I'm right."
"It doesn't make sense."
The number 20 rolled his eyes as he looked up, giving them the impression that he thought they were teasing him. They looked at each other and shrugged, knowing that the name that was clearly going to be called again would come up sometime that afternoon.
It took exactly two minutes and forty-three seconds before he said his name again.
The first serious meeting came a month later. Deco was sitting across from Pedri, and Flick was next to him. Joan Laporta had decided to attend because someone had explained to him that this could become a problem. At first, he laughed at how absurd the situation seemed, but so much insistence finally convinced him to go.
"Pedri," Deco began. "We're worried."
"Well, me too. I don't know what I'm doing here."
"Because of your behavior."
"What behavior?"
Silence.
Flick began counting on his fingers.
"You argued with three members of the coaching staff."
"They were getting on my nerves."
Deco touched his forehead and slowly stroked it, knowing they were falling into the same endless refrain again.
"You were late to two training sessions."
"Five minutes."
"You left a session because you didn't like an exercise."
"I didn't need that stretch, my thigh doesn't need it."
"You insulted the cook!"
Pedri frowned.
"The omelet was cold."
Laporta ran a hand over his face.
"That doesn't justify calling the cook a 'murderer.'"
"I didn't say that to him."
"You called him a 'culinary killer.'"
"Well, if it's undercooked, it could kill me with Salmonella."
Deco took a deep breath, clasped his hands in front of his face, and rested his forehead against them. Flick shook his head, unsure if he wanted to continue with that exchange. And Laporta? Well, he was just trying to hold back his laughter.
Yes, that was serious.
Things got so bad that one morning Gavi stormed into Deco's office without knocking, slamming the door behind him.
"Something has to be done."
"With what?"
"With Pedri! He's driving us all crazy. If I hear another single complaint about something so trivial, I'm going to jump out of a window."
"We're trying, I assure you—"
"No, no. I'm serious."
"So what do you propose?"
Gavi sat down.
"Bring Ferran back."
Deco looked at him and burst out laughing.
"Impossible."
"Or get rid of Pedri."
"Nope."
"Well, one of the two, if you don't want the locker room to implode."
"Gavi, be serious."
"We can't go on like this!"
"What's happened now that you're coming in with these demands?"
Gavi pulled out his phone.
"He called the physio 'incompetent.'"
"Why?"
"Because he asked him if he wanted ice."
Deco remained silent.
"And what did he reply?"
"If I needed ice, I'd ask you."
Deco sighed.
"That's not so bad... I've heard him say worse."
"Yeah, well, then he told him Ferran knew how to apply ice better."
Deco slumped his head on the table, and the wood scraped. This guy was going to be the death of him, and he still had a contract until 2030; he should have thought twice before renewing it.
The final straw was a match against Atlético. Pedri was warming up and Ferran had just scored for PSG. Dani showed him his phone.
"Ferran again."
He looked at the screen and watched as the Valencian celebrated. He smiled for exactly two seconds, as if he'd forgotten he must be angry about something. It didn't last long, because then he frowned.
"He's too thin."
"What?"
"He's thinner."
"Pedri, please... Don't start a fight again."
"He must be eating badly. The food in Paris isn't agreeing with him."
"He's a professional footballer, I think they have a good cook on the team."
"Luis Enrique isn't giving him enough food, they probably haven't calculated his calorie needs correctly."
The blond sighed very slowly and extended his hand, with almost calculated patience.
"Do you want to give me back my phone?"
"No."
"We have a game, like, you know, right now?"
"I don't care."
And then Flick appeared behind him.
"Pedri."
"What?"
"We're going on in five minutes."
"Okay."
"And put your phone down."
Reluctantly, he gave Olmo his phone back and went to warm up alone, cursing everyone he passed.
Flick looked up at the sky and asked God to give him patience, because if He gave him strength, he'd probably end up killing him. He felt he'd been patient. Much more so than he would have been with any other player. He'd talked to him, tried to figure out what was wrong, allowed him to be in a worse mood than usual… But after Pedri told a member of the coaching staff to get lost because he'd been asked to put on a bib, Flick decided that was it.
"Pedri."
"What?"
"You're not playing. Stop warming up. You're going to the bench."
Pedri looked at him as if he were seeing someone with three heads.
"What?"
"You're going to the bench."
"Why?"
Flick studied him for a few seconds.
"Because you need to calm down."
"I am calm, very calm, actually."
Flick closed his eyes, not wanting to turn this into some kind of debate. It was already decided; as much as he might have wanted to, the best thing right now was for him to stay away from the team.
"Bench."
"But…!" he tried to protest.
"Bench, González, and I hope I don't have to repeat myself."
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes until you calm down."
Pedri stared at him and puffed out his cheeks slightly. If Gavi had to describe him, he'd be an angry squirrel.
"I'm perfectly calm."
"Perfect." Flick smiled smugly. "So it'll be easy, right?"
The canary kicked his leg and sat down in the last seat on the bench, in the corner, in near darkness. His teammates looked at him with pity, but deep down they thought this could be a good lesson for their friend.
Now the key was this: how much time on the bench would he need to calm down? Only time would tell.