"I look so good."
Balde said it the way people say things they genuinely believe — not fishing for disagreement, not performing confidence, just stating a fact about the universe that he felt deserved acknowledgment. He was leaning toward the car wing mirror, one hand on the door, the other moving across his face in slow appreciative circles.
His afro was immaculate. Round, full, perfectly shaped, the kind of hair that required either significant effort or significant genetics and in Balde's case appeared to be both.
Fermin's hand came from the side without warning.
The flat of his palm connected with the top of Balde's head — not hard, just enough, the specific force of someone who had identified a target and had committed to it — and the afro scattered. Not collapsed, but disturbed, the careful spherical perfection giving way to something more chaotic, individual strands going in individual directions.
"HEY—"
Fermin was already three steps away, laughing.
Balde spun around with the expression of a man whose property had been vandalized, both hands going immediately to the damage, fingers working to restore the shape, the urgent patting and pulling of someone performing emergency maintenance.
Gavi and Casado were gone. Completely gone — bent forward, hands on knees, the full physical surrender of people who had been waiting for something and had just received it.
"Dude, be fast," Casado managed, between breaths. "We are waiting."
"I would be done," Balde said, with great dignity, still working on the afro, "if not for that guy."
He extended one leg and kicked Fermin — not aggressively, the long lazy reach of someone registering a complaint through their feet. Fermin swatted his leg away without looking, which produced another round of laughter from Casado and Gavi.
The afro was coming back. He could feel it finding its shape again under his hands, the natural resilience of something that had been through this before.
He checked the mirror.
Acceptable. Nearly there.
He checked again.
Good.
They started moving toward the apartment building — the four of them crossing the small distance between the car and the entrance, the easy movement of people who had been in each other's company long enough that walking together required no coordination.
Fermin and Casado went first. Gavi and Balde drifted to the back.
"Didn't they say Fati also stays here?" Casado asked, turning slightly toward Fermin as they walked.
"Yeah." Fermin thought about it. "I haven't been able to talk to him in a while. You?"
"Same." Casado paused. "Maybe we can check on him later."
Fermin nodded.
Behind them, Gavi had been looking at Balde for several seconds with the expression of a scientist examining an interesting specimen.
"So," Gavi said. "Who is it even for?"
Balde looked at him. "What?"
Gavi gestured — a full up-and-down gesture that took in the baggy jeans, the small gold chain sitting against his collar, the bead on his wrist, the general presentation of a person who had applied considerably more thought to their appearance than the occasion of watching football at a friend's apartment typically demanded.
The others in front had heard. They were already turning around.
"Yeah," Fermin called back. "Is it the one you like — Mateo's cousin? Or her friend?"
Balde raised both hands.
"Gentlemen." His voice took on a quality of patient instruction — the tone of a professor addressing students who had not yet grasped the fundamentals. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen."
He waited until he had their attention.
"You all," he said, "are still not cultured enough to understand what I am doing."
He rolled his shoulders slightly, the small adjustment of a man settling into a position he was comfortable in.
"What kind of man chooses between two beautiful women?" He let the question sit for a moment, genuinely rhetorical. "If A doesn't move, we go to B. And if both A and B happen to be interested—" He smiled. The specific smile of someone who had thought about this and was pleased with where the thinking had landed. "Two beauties competing for one man. I'm just saying. You have to play the field."
Four faces looked at him.
The silence had a specific texture.
Gavi turned away first.
"I don't blame you," he said, already moving, increasing his pace. "I blame myself for thinking I was talking to a normal human being."
He reached Fermin and Casado and fell into step with them.
"Your friend," he said, gesturing back, "has completely lost it."
"OI—" Balde broke into a jog to catch up, his chain bouncing slightly. "I will show you who has lost it—"
He reached them and they all kept walking, the laughter running through the group in the comfortable way of people who had been doing this for years and had gotten good at it.
The stairs.
Fermin looked up at the building as they started climbing.
"I still can't believe they actually let us spend the night out."
"Well," Balde said, "it was Mateo who called to ask. Even Alejandro said yes."
Fermin frowned slightly. "Why does it make a difference that it was Mateo asking?"
Casado looked at him. "Score two goals and make two assists in the Champions League semi-final. Then maybe you'll get treated the same."
Gavi started laughing before he had finished the sentence. "We're here," he said, still laughing, as they reached the landing in front of the door.
The four of them arranged themselves in the approximate shape of people waiting — which for this particular group meant Fermin leaning on the wall, Casado looking at his phone, Gavi standing normally, and Balde producing his own phone, opening the camera, and angling it toward his face.
The afro check. The face check. The general confirmation that the work he had done at the car mirror had held.
Fermin noticed. His hand moved.
Balde felt the air shift — some instinct, some frequency that long familiarity had tuned — and angled his head just enough that the press landed glancingly rather than fully. Still enough to disturb. He let out a low, controlled sound that was not quite a word.
"Dude—"
Fermin was already looking away, entirely innocent.
Balde started fixing it again, quickly this time, the practiced speed of someone who had been through this before tonight and expected to go through it again.
Gavi pressed the bell.
Pedri opened the door.
The greetings happened the way greetings happened between people in their early twenties who hadn't seen each other in a few days — quick, physical, the handshakes that became brief grips that became the shoulder-pull of people who were genuinely glad to be in the same place.
"You were here already?" Fermin said.
"Just got here, not long ago," Pedri said.
Casado and Gavi were already moving inside, and Pedri was already talking — something about the match, about yesterday, his voice carrying the still-slightly-stunned quality of someone who had been part of something the day before and had not yet fully processed it.
Then he looked past them.
Balde was still in the doorway, phone up, both hands working on the afro, angling the camera left and right to check the symmetry from different directions.
Pedri pointed at him.
"What's his deal?"
The others were already inside.
"Don't even mind him," Fermin said, not looking back.
Pedri looked at Balde one more time — the full, considered look of someone attempting to understand something and deciding the attempt was not going to be productive. Then he shook his head and stepped back from the door, leaving it open.
The balcony was set up properly.
A large projection screen along one wall, the image clear and bright even with the late afternoon light coming in from the side. Chairs arranged in front of it — the good ones, not the plastic ones from the kitchen, actual comfortable chairs brought out specifically. The PS5 sitting beside the screen with the kind of cable management that suggested someone had thought about this in advance.
"He said this is where we can watch the match," Pedri said.
"Nice," Casado said, looking around. The others made sounds of agreement.
"Mateo and Olivia — his cousin's friend — stepped out to get snacks," Pedri said. "They should be back soon."
People found their chairs. The PS5 came on. The familiar sound of FIFA loading filled the balcony.
Gavi was already leaning forward.
"I cannot wait to watch Chelsea knock Madrid out tonight."
Casado turned to look at him. "Wouldn't it be better if Madrid win and then we beat them in the final?"
"Yeah," Fermin said, "wouldn't that satisfy your sadistic heart more? Beating them in the final rather than watching Chelsea do it for you?"
Gavi considered this.
"You're right," he said. "That would be better. But I genuinely cannot bring myself to root for them even once. Not even strategically. It's a medical condition."
Balde whistled. "Through and through. A genuine hater."
"Thank you," Gavi said.
Pedri laughed.
Fermin looked around the balcony. "El Clásico final though. How are you guys holding up with that coming?"
Pedri tilted his head. "You know how it is."
"Especially with it being a must-win at this point," Gavi said. "Atlético haven't dropped a point."
"We'll get through it," Pedri said. Something settled in his voice when he said it — not bravado, just the quiet certainty of someone who had been on the Etihad pitch yesterday and had come out the other side of it with a particular kind of confidence.
Balde smiled. "After yesterday I'm not even worried. Genuinely not worried."
"I literally could not believe it," Fermin said. "Still can't."
"Surreal," Pedri said, laughing softly. "Still doesn't feel real." He shook his head. "Yesterday actually happened."
Casado leaned back in his chair. "And the talk around it is insane."
Gavi frowned. "Mateo and Ramos?"
"Yeah," Fermin said. "Do any of you even know what actually happened between them?"
Pedri shrugged. He had his own sense of it but nothing confirmed, nothing he was going to present as fact.
"Hey guys."
The voice came from the balcony doorway.
Aina. She was leaning against the frame, looking at the group with the easy smile of someone arriving somewhere they had been expected.
The greetings moved around the balcony — Casado, Fermin, Gavi, each of them acknowledging her, the warm, slightly more composed version of the same energy they'd had with Pedri at the door.
Then Balde spoke.
The voice that came out of him was approximately one full octave below his normal register. Smooth. Deliberate. The voice of someone who had been workshopping this.
Everyone looked at him.
Fermin's mouth opened slightly. Gavi turned away and said nothing because saying nothing was the safest available option.
Aina looked at him.
Balde smiled.
"I'm taller," he said, in his normal voice now, "so I figured I should be the one to help you with the shelves."
Aina looked at him for a moment. Then: "Oh — okay. It's this way."
She disappeared back inside.
Balde looked at the group — the brief, triumphant look of a man whose plan had advanced to its next stage — and followed her, glancing back once as he went with a smile that communicated several things simultaneously, none of them humble.
Pedri watched him go.
He turned back to the room.
"We are the same height," he said, to no one in particular, with the specific confusion of someone who had just heard a statement that was factually incorrect and was not sure what to do with that.
Nobody answered him.
Gavi was already scrolling through FIFA teams. Fermin and Casado were arguing about something. The balcony had moved on.
Pedri sat back down.
"What really is his deal?" he said.
Gavi didn't look up from the screen.
"You seriously don't want to know," he said.
meanwhile a few blocks away
...
"Ha — stop—"
Olivia shoved him.
Not hard — the sideways, playful shove of someone who had been laughing for long enough that their body had started participating in it, her shoulder finding his arm, the contact light and instinctive.
Mateo stumbled a step sideways, laughing, the bags of snacks shifting in his arms with the movement. He recovered and drifted back toward her, still chuckling, the easy drift of someone who had been pushed away and was returning to the same radius without thinking about it.
The laugh was still on Olivia's face — the real one, the one that arrived before she had decided to let it, her hand coming up to cover it a beat too late.
"Stop," she said again, which accomplished nothing because Mateo was still laughing.
They kept walking.
The apartment complex stretched ahead of them — the familiar route, the late afternoon light doing what late afternoon light did to Barcelona, the particular gold of it settling on the buildings and the pavement and the general texture of the world outside. Mateo had a bag in each arm and was managing both with the practised ease of someone who had carried things while distracted before.
The laughter settled into something quieter. The comfortable quiet of two people who had just shared something and had arrived at the other side of it.
Olivia looked ahead. "On the plane I read the brochure."
"Hmm." He was listening.
"It said you can take a train from here to France." She paused. "Like — just a train. To another country."
"Oh yeah, the Eurostar." Mateo shifted one of the bags. "Been on it when I was younger actually."
"That's insane."
He glanced at her — at the specific quality of her interest, the way she was absorbing this rather than performing interest in it — and smiled. "And it's not just France. Once you're on the mainland you can go anywhere. Germany, Belgium, Netherlands — you can get almost anywhere in Europe by train if you want. Just keep going."
Olivia was quiet for a moment, the quiet of someone rearranging a map in their head.
"America has nothing like that," she said. "Nothing even close. Being able to just — get on a train and be in a different country." She shook her head. "That's wild to me."
"It has its charms." He thought about it. "But I'm sure America has its own things. I mean — it's America. I've always wanted to go actually."
Olivia looked at him. "If you ever come, just call me." She said it easily, naturally — and then something in her registered what she had said and she felt it, the slight shift of something that had come out without full planning. "I mean — like, I'll show you around. Tour guide situation. That kind of thing."
She was not entirely looking at him as she finished the sentence.
Mateo laughed. Quietly. Not the full laugh — the smaller, warmer version.
The walk went quiet again.
He let it sit for a moment, then found his way back in.
"Isn't America genuinely massive though? Like — I read somewhere that if you took the whole of Europe, not including Britain, and put it inside the US, it would fit."
Olivia laughed. "That sounds right actually."
"That alone is mind-boggling to me."
"Back home everything is just big," she said. "Everything is spread out and far and you need a car for everything. But it works out in its own way."
He nodded.
They kept talking.
The walk that should have taken four minutes from the gate took eleven. Not because they were lost or slow but because neither of them was particularly trying to get there quickly, the conversation finding its own pace, the playful shoves returning periodically for no particular reason, the laughter arriving in waves and settling and arriving again.
The rest of the afternoon had its own rhythm.
Everyone on the balcony, the projection screen showing whatever was on, the PS5 set up and in use, snacks distributed, the particular organised chaos of eight people in their late teens and early twenties occupying a shared space with full commitment.
Aina lasted approximately forty minutes of FIFA before she put the controller down.
The score was nine-nil.
"You don't treat a lady like that," Balde said immediately, already reaching for the controller with the energy of someone who had been waiting for this. "I've got you."
He lost three-two. The laughter was not brief.
Then fighting games. Injustice 2, characters selected, the button-mashing beginning with the chaotic energy of people who were playing to have fun rather than to win, the screen filling with special moves that nobody had specifically intended to trigger.
Mateo had Blue Beetle. He had been winning consistently. He was perhaps slightly too aware of this.
Olivia had Enchantress.
The cheering when she finally won — when Blue Beetle went down for the last time and Enchantress stood over the wreckage — was substantial. It was not, to be precise, quite at the level of the Etihad after Piqué's second header. There were approximately five thousand fewer people, no stadium commentary, no fifteen-plus professional footballers screaming themselves hoarse. But directionally? The energy was comparable. Relative to room size, some might argue it exceeded it.
Mateo sat back from the controller with the expression of a man processing a defeat he had not prepared for.
The afternoon continued like that — the six boys and two girls filling the hours with the specific, aimless, completely satisfying energy of young people who had been given a free day and were using it correctly. Jokes that only landed because of who was in the room. Arguments about nothing that became loud and resolved themselves within ninety seconds. Fermin doing something that made Casado laugh so hard he had to leave the balcony briefly to compose himself.
For Mateo and Pedri — coming off ninety-three minutes at the Etihad the day before, the post-match press conference, the airport, the flight, the accumulated weight of a day that had been extraordinary in every direction — this was exactly what it needed to be. Not a debrief. Not a celebration with any formal shape. Just this.
Night came and the match started.
"GOALLLLLLLL—"
Mateo and Gavi found each other immediately — the hug arriving before either of them had consciously decided to hug, the pumping of arms, the back-and-forth of two people who had just watched the thing they wanted to happen happen.
They released each other. Both of them vibrating slightly.
"Yes, yes, yes—"
Balde was laughing, settling back into his chair, reaching for something on the table. "One-one — I was already scared when they scored early."
"Initial nonsense," Mateo said, dropping into his chair, still grinning. "That's all it was."
Gavi grabbed a bag of chips. "Nothing for them," he said, with the calm of someone delivering a weather forecast. "Nothing."
Casado leaned forward. "So it's three-one on aggregate now. This should really be over."
"There's still thirty minutes," Fermin said.
"Nothing is happening," Mateo said, at a volume that suggested he believed this completely.
Across the balcony, Aina and Olivia had been watching all of this. Olivia was laughing at the general energy of it — the chips, the shouting, the way Gavi had said nothing for them with the absolute serenity of a man unconcerned about outcomes.
"Okay — what's the story here?" she said.
Several heads turned toward her.
Mateo reached into the chip bag. "Pardon?"
Aina nodded toward the screen, where the team in white was currently reorganising after conceding. "Those guys. The hate seems — specific. You were more excited about them losing than you were about winning your own match yesterday."
Mateo made a sound — the recognising sound, the oh, this sound.
"Because," Gavi said, before anyone else could speak, "they are bloodsucking, government-helped, cheating—"
"They're Barcelona's rivals," Fermin said, over him.
Olivia looked between them.
Pedri tried. "Since both clubs were formed there's been a rivalry between them. It goes back a long time."
"Hate and rivalry are different things though," Olivia said.
"Well—" Pedri started.
"Not with these two," Casado said plainly. "Both clubs. From top to bottom. They genuinely hate each other."
Fermin tilted his head. "Well. Maybe not the top."
Everyone looked at him.
He let it land for a second. "Our president is currently working on a deal with Pérez. Clearly some mutual ground has been found up there."
"That—" Gavi pointed at him.
"I heard there's a massive protest happening at the club because of it," Mateo said.
Casado shook his head. "Massive is an understatement. It's a sea of people. All around the club, even at Gamper."
"We had to leave through the back yesterday just to get out," Gavi said.
Aina's eyebrows went up. "Was it that bad?"
Fermin looked at Mateo. "You remember a few years back — the independence referendum? The Catalan thing?"
Mateo sat up slightly. "Yeah?"
"It's worse than that."
Mateo stared at him.
He wasn't exaggerating. In 2017, when the independence referendum had torn through Catalonia and Barcelona had stood at the centre of it — the flag in the stands, the political tension bleeding into every matchday, the club as both symbol and target — the atmosphere around Camp Nou had been unlike anything in recent memory. The idea that what was happening now exceeded that sat in the room for a moment.
Olivia, who had been following the conversation with the particular attention of someone who didn't have full context but was assembling it quickly, leaned forward.
"Why is this happening though? There has to be a real cause."
"Yeah," Aina said. "What is it actually about?"
Pedri answered first. "Something called a Super League."
Balde frowned. "What's that exactly?"
Casado straightened in his chair. He had been reading about it since yesterday, piecing together what the press conference questions had been pointing at. He explained it — the structure of it, the breakaway, the twelve founding clubs pulling themselves out of the existing European competitions to form their own closed league. The money behind it. The logic behind the money.
Mateo listened. Then: "Wait — so that would actually destroy the Champions League?"
"Not just the Champions League," Gavi said. "The top five leagues in Europe. It would cripple all of them. The whole pyramid."
Mateo turned. Aina and Olivia were both watching, their expressions carrying the specific look of people who have been following something and have arrived at a question.
He thought for a second. Then:
"Okay — you know the competition we played yesterday? The Champions League?" He looked at Olivia. "The way it works — clubs from different countries across Europe qualify through their domestic leagues. Then they play each other across the season. The best ones make it through. The whole point is that any club can reach it if they're good enough."
Olivia nodded.
"The Super League would mean the same twelve clubs — the biggest, richest ones — play each other every year. No qualification. No chance for anyone else to get in. It's just them, permanently, by themselves."
Olivia was quiet for a moment.
Then: "It's kind of like when Taylor pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify."
Aina pointed at her immediately. "Yes. Exactly. I remember — so many people just didn't bother subscribing anymore."
"Same energy," Olivia said. "The fans wouldn't watch those leagues. It would just doom them."
Mateo opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Yeah," he said. "I guess you could put it that way."
Pedri had been listening to all of this quietly. Now he looked at Mateo.
"We shouldn't overthink this," he said. "The club has asked us—" He glanced at Mateo. "Has asked both of us to say nothing about the league. Not supporting it, not denying it. Nothing."
Mateo nodded. "Yeah." He sat back. "And honestly — it doesn't change anything we have to do this season. Whatever they're doing up there, whatever's happening outside — we have a final to get to. That's it. That's all I'm thinking about."
He said it simply. No performance in it — just the flat, settled certainty of someone who had decided where their attention was going and had pointed it there.
The balcony was quiet for a moment.
On the screen the match was still going, the score sitting where it was, the night outside the apartment carrying the particular distant quality of everything that was happening in the wider world while eight people sat here and watched football and talked about things that mattered to them.
While they did — while the group of friends discussed the Super League in a quiet back balcony in Barcelona — the rest of Europe was considerably less calm about it.
A/N
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