Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time he sees the man he’s measuring out the base for his tower, bucket of sand in one hand and the other raised with his thumb out, turning it that way and the other with a squinted eye like he’d seen people who actually knew what they were doing do, but while not really knowing what he’s doing. There’s a constant noise in the background, people coming and going, carts being loaded and unloaded, abuela giving directions and all the grandkids following along, so he guesses that’s why he didn’t hear him approach, but one second he’s alone, save for the few passerby's who give his sand lines an approving if strained smile, and the next a man is standing beside him, looking at him expectantly.

He’s tall, taller than he is– though it doesn’t take much– and his dark face is half shadowed by a full head of dreadlocks, neatly tied to the side. His eyes are big and wide, as if he’s surprised to see Bruno, and it’s only when he takes a step back on autopilot, bucket of sand and raised thumb and all, that he shakes the surprised look away and he smiles a polite little grin.

“I could’ve sworn you were taller,” is what he says, and Bruno deflates a little, which doesn’t help in the height department.

“I get that a lot, yes,” he replies, a bit stiffly. He doesn’t know who this guy is or what he wants and he doesn’t particularly care to find out. Ten years of isolation haven’t done any good to his already shy and cagey personality, and it’s only politeness and gratitude that is keeping him from bristling like a cat whenever someone outside of the family decides to talk to him, “Can I help you?”

The man goes to reply but then he looks down, and then down some more, at where Antonio is holding onto his arm, tugging a little. He hadn’t even noticed him, he’s so little.

“This is Andrés,” his nephew tells him, and Bruno immediately relaxes. Whatever this guy’s deal is he’s a whole lot more comfortable knowing it’s orchestrated by one of the family, rather than him being just another one of the townsfolk come to ogle at the recently reappeared seven-foot frame man– which has unfortunately already happened a few times, thanks a lot, Camilo, “He’s a veterinarian,” Antonio continues, “Some of the animals have stayed, even after I lost my gift, and I can’t talk to them anymore, so I needed someone to tell me if something is ever wrong with them.”

His nephew’s voice breaks a little as he mentions his lost gift, and Bruno tries his best to give him a reassuring smile. Out of everyone in the family, he’s pretty sure only he and Pepa have felt somewhat liberated by the breaking of the encanto, a proper curse for him and an inconvenience for her, so his heart aches for the little kid. He won’t ever say it out loud, but he’s damn grateful to not be able to see the future anymore, to not be burdened with the knowledge of everything that will happen, yet he’d get it all back in a blink of an eye if it meant making that sad frown on his nephew’s face disappear forever.

“Of course, Tonito,” he reaches out and runs a hand through Antonio’s hair as he squishes his sad little face against the man’s arm. He pretends not to notice how his hand shakes all the way, not used to touching and being touched, and not used to the newest addition of the family just yet, “Anything for your animals.”

“He’s not here just for my animals”, Antonio continues, hastily brushing a hand over his eyes. Bruno can immediately tell where this is going, and he tenses. Oh, no. Not in front of the vet, “He can help with your rats too.”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. 

He just got called out for living with rats in front of a man who will probably be a somewhat constant presence in their lives. This is totally fine and completely not humiliating.

Thanks again, Camilo.

“He–“ the vet himself– Andrés?– cuts in, and he doesn’t seem to be showing any of the emotions Bruno had expected to see on him. He doesn’t look judgmental nor mocking, and the odd little sass he had shown when he first showed up is nowhere to be found– he just smiles reassuringly, swaying his arm a little so that Antonio is swaying with him, “He told me that one of your rats told him her eye itched a little, before–“ here he makes a vague gesture, as if not wanting to hurt Antonio further by mentioning the death of the encanto, “–before all that, and it sounds like it might be conjunctivitis, which isn’t too bad but quite infective, so I think–“

Taking pity on the poor man– who by the looks alone seems to be an upstanding member of society, helpful and smart, now dragged by an excitable five-year-old to talk to a man who until two days before had been living inside the walls of his own home– Bruno silently fights off the urge to empty the sand bucket and hide into it like an ostrich and instead sets it on the ground, reaching into his poncho for the few rats that like to hang around under it. He finds three of them, and very pointedly tries not to think about what this tall, well dressed, smart man might be thinking of him.

“Do any of these have conjunctivitis?”

To his credit, Andrés doesn’t look particularly put-out, or if he is he does a very good job at hiding it, and instead just reaches for the rats with the ease that nobody except Antonio has yet shown around them (or him, for that matter) and his whole demeanour changes. He crouches down a little, as if to accommodate for the rats, and though he’s still taller than Bruno by a long shot he seems less imposing, more approachable. No wonder Antonio immediately clung to the man if this is how he treats those smaller than him.

He’s so caught up in his own head that it takes Andrés calling him by name to drag him back to reality, and that in on itself is a shock of his own, since we don’t talk about Bruno for the townsfolk had somehow translated into we don’t even say his name out loud unless forced to by a catchy tune and a curious 15-year-old.

“Do they have names, Bruno? I wouldn’t want to be impolite,” Andrés is saying, and he’s not sure who he’s doing this whole act for– Bruno? Antonio? The rats?– or if that’s just who he is as a person, but he’s now kneeling down so that he’s closer to Antonio’s height, balancing the rats on his knees and looking at them one by one, carefully and attentively.

“They used to, but then one died and I decided to not get attached again,” he confesses, and the look Andrés gives him does something weird to his cardiovascular system, so he quickly adds, “Those are the Poncho Guys, because they like to hang around in my poncho.”

Instead of the disgust he expected to appear on the vet’s face, Andrés beams– properly beams– and that’s another thing that messes with Bruno’s internal organs, “That’s really cute. Rats are very cuddly, but they don’t really trust people that easily. You must be special.”

It’s Antonio’s turn to beam up at him, half of his attention on the little rodents and half on the two adults, and Bruno suddenly decides that he’s had enough social interaction for the day.

“None of these seems to have conjunctivitis, though this one might need some brushing, his fur is matting,” Andrés comments, lightly running a finger along one of the Poncho Guys’ belly and the traitorous little thing rolls over for him, begging for more attention, “Do you know where–“

“Antonio knows where the rest of them are, I have to go.” he cuts in, and without waiting for a reply he grabs his bucket and turns on his heels, marching towards the back of the not-yet-but-soon house, where he hears the least commotion. He’s careful not to walk on the sand line, stepping over it, though he hears one of the rats escape Andrés’s attentive hands to follow him and not pay the same respect, already crawling up his leg and back into his poncho.

Great. If his dramatic exit hadn’t been enough to turn the vet away from any sort of further conversation with him, surely a 20-inch rodent literally running up his back had to be.

As it turns out, dramatic exits and rats along his back aren’t enough to keep Andrés away, because the very next day he’s already back, sans Antonio this time.

He’s busy placing blocks of clay over the neat little line he has drawn the day before when the vet materializes himself in front of him, over the little wall he’s built so far, and Bruno all but jumps out of his skin.

“Madre de Dios–“ he squeals, clutching his racing heart as the man makes a sheepish calming motion with his hands, “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry! Sorry!” he says, and a smile is already spreading on his face despite having almost given Bruno a heart attack. His silver-streaked locks are tied up in a bun today, much like Dolores’s curls usually are, which makes him even taller than he already is, so he’s effectively shading Bruno from the sun, “I didn’t mean to startle you, I tried calling you but you seemed really focused.”

“Well, yeah,” Bruno fixes his askew poncho, pointedly ignoring the one rat that is sticking out of it, curiously looking at Andrés, and even more pointedly ignoring the little wave the man gives in return, “I am building a house after all.”

“That you are.”

The comment doesn’t sound sarcastic nor particularly marked, it’s simply a statement, and Andrés follows it by giving a wide gander to the foundation Bruno has put down so far. The wall of clay barely reaches his waist, which might not look like a lot to Andrés but it’s a lot to Bruno, and he suddenly feels very self-conscious.

He tries to hide it by picking up another one of the blocks of clay that Luisa and Mirabel have gathered for him, making an extra effort to not sound strained under the weight, and goes back to work, trying to ignore his awareness of the man’s presence. With no Antonio or animals in sight, he’s not sure what he wants from him, and he’s feeling particularly uneasy– not any more than he does with literally everyone he meets nowadays. His social skills have been completely shattered by his isolation and now even just talking to another person is physically exhausting.

He places the block down and goes to retrieve another, hoping that Andrés will take the hint and leave when the man himself shuffles a little, clearing his throat. Whatever little is left of Bruno’s social awareness tells him that he looks nervous.

“Do you… do you need a hand?”

His voice is as gentle as ever, with no tone or inflexion to indicate any ulterior motive other than mere politeness, but Bruno bristles nonetheless. This man is a vet, there’s no reason he should be doing manual work for them– for Bruno– unless he feels some sort of obligation towards the Madrigals, which is just another aspect that Bruno really does not want to deal with right now.

“I can do it, thank you,” is his short reply, though he tries to keep it as polite as possible. He’s just trying to help, he’s just trying to help, no need to go all antisocial on the poor man.

Andrés stills for a moment, and then smiles again. It’s a small little thing this time, just on the side of knowing, and Bruno falters under it, almost dropping a block of clay.

“Okay,” he’s already rolling up his sleeves and Bruno is momentarily distracted by the tattoos he reveals under it to put up much of a fight, “Would you like a hand, then?”

He considers it for a moment, clay heavy in his hands, eyes darting from Andrés to the foundations to his tattoos to the rat that has now crawled from his shoulder and onto his forearm. When it’s clear that no answer is going to come out of him Andrés just heads for the pile of clay, already grabbing one with ease, and motions for Bruno to direct him.

They work together in silence, side by side, through most of the morning, until the wall is up to Bruno’s standards and whatever it is that pleases Andrés and makes him nod in approval when the last block is placed. He never stops being acutely aware of the other man’s presence the whole time he’s there, his hindbrain never seems to relax enough to let him work in peace with another person, but by the times four hours have ticked by and they’re both sweaty and out of breath he allows himself to let his guard down, dropping into a haphazard pile against one of the walls that provides the most shade. He doesn’t even startle much when Andrés follows suit, dropping beside him with a satisfied sigh.

“See? It’s not too bad when there’s someone else to help you,” he says between one breath and another, and Bruno just gives him a look, indicating without words how they’re both very clearly exhausted nonetheless, “Okay, maybe it’s still bad, but it’s not that bad.”

“I suppose you’re right,” the Poncho Guy has gotten bolder now, tiptoeing out from the safety of Bruno’s frame and into the open ground and Andrés sticks out a finger for it, waving it back and forth and watching the little guy’s head follow the movement, “Thank you for your help. Though I’m sorry they sent you here to break a sweat on a Saturday morning; I don’t know who I have to blame– my mother, I bet, though my sisters can also be the culprits– but I’ll tell them to leave you be next time.”

“Nobody sent me, I just wanted to see what you were up to,” the vet replies, eyes still fixed on the rat and widening in delight when it makes a leap for his finger, grabbing onto it with its little paws. Which is lucky because it allows Bruno to stare at him in bewilderment.

“They– they didn’t?”

“Nope,” he pops the ‘p’ as he says it, as if it’s something inconsequential and trivial, and then for good measure adds, “I haven’t seen anyone yet, actually, I just came straight here.”

Huh. That’s new.

He’d expected the family to send someone to check on him every once in a while– that’s what they’ve done the last couple of days at least, as if needing to make sure that he was still there and in one piece, and not disappeared off into another hole in the wall for the next decade– and if’s not one of the family itself it’s one of the townsfolk, always looking like they’d rather be literally anywhere else, and always quick to leave when they could attest that he was still alive and there and well.

But someone that voluntarily seeks him out for no ulterior motive? Just to help, of their own will? That’s new. And Bruno isn’t really sure what to make of it.

Thankfully– or unfortunately– he doesn’t have time to sit and ponder it any further, or for Andrés to say something else as destabilizing as what he just did, because Isabela and Mirabel suddenly appear in what will be the entrance to his tower, a tray of food each and matching smiles on their faces.

“Tío Bruno, mum said you’re probably overworking yourself and needed a break so we–“ Isabela begins, but then trails off when her eyes land on Andrés. Who’s still sitting beside Bruno. Who’s still openly staring at him. Whose rat is in the vet’s hands. Huh.

Isabela’s smile only falters for a second, then, if possible, it widens, her younger sister following suit.

“Oh, sorry, we didn’t know you had a guest over,” Mirabel jokes, and it’s then that Andrés does something odd. His ease and cheerful attitude are suddenly attenuated by the girls’ presence, and he straightens up, as if to look more presentable, and though he doesn’t drop the rat Bruno can notice a palpable difference between this Andrés and the one from two seconds before. As if he was a completely different person when only Bruno could see. Huh.

“Isabela, Mirabel,” he nods to them, almost overly polite, and despite their properly shit-eating grins his nieces reciprocate the nod, Isabela even adding a little bow of her own, “Sorry for intruding, I was just helping Bruno with the construction here.”

“You didn’t seem to have an issue intruding before–“ Bruno begins saying, but is cut off by his excitable nieces, who for some reason are only smiling brighter and brighter the more seconds tick by.

“There’s really no intruding, there’s not even a door to intrude through yet,” Isabela points out, not unkindly, but it’s her sister that deals the finishing blow.

“You could’ve told us you were coming by again, Andrés. We only knew you were around here ‘cause Dolores saw you scurry by, said you looked like you were in a huge rush to get somewhere.”

Uninvited, unprompted, unforced and in a rush to help Bruno of his own volition? Yeah, he can’t deal with that right now.

“I got to go, I just remembered there’s a load of sand somewhere I need to bury myself into,” he announces, grabbing his rat before making a quick and totally elegant retreat from the not-yet-but-soon-to-be room. He grabs an arepa on his way out from Mirabel’s tray because it is noon and he is hungry, but he takes no notice of his nieces’ little giggles as he walks away, nor Andrés’s stuttered goodbye to him.

Huh indeed.

From then on Andrés is an almost daily presence in Bruno’s life. When he’s not with Antonio and the few animals he’s got left or helping around the others in the family he seeks him out, sometimes under the guise of helping him– his tower is coming along quite nicely and it is not in a small amount thanks to Andrés– but sometimes just to hang out. Bruno might be introverted and completely oblivious when it comes to social courtesies and norms, but even he can pick up on a clue or two, if well placed, so by the time two weeks have ticked by he can say that he and Andrés have somewhat become friends.

The routine is almost always the same: Bruno will wake up, he and the family will have a brainstorming session over breakfast to see how far along they are in rebuilding their home and they’ll set up a schedule for the day (which most follow through, though Bruno is the only one who sticks to it with an almost maniacal obsessiveness). The townsfolk will start to mill in around mid-morning– though sometimes Mariano gets there early, all wistful sighs and yearning glances– and Andrés will be one of them eight times out of ten. He’ll come in, check in with Antonio, ask Pepa and Julieta if anything needs to be done and follow through with it, and then he’ll seek out Bruno, ask him if he needs anything done, then ask again if he would like anything done, and then he’ll just. Hang around, until the evening sets in and he’ll head home, his unfaltering smile always soft on his face and a gentle word always ready.

He likes it. It’s routine, it works like clockwork, and there’s nothing he likes more than routine.

The routine gets interrupted one late afternoon, as he’s hammering a nail into a board that will be part of a spiral staircase that leads up into his room from the bottom floor, and he accidentally nails his poncho along with it. Andrés had wandered off to get them something to drink, which is probably the only reason why he even ends up doing something as stupid as yanking on the fabric to try and free it and instead ends up tearing it. It’s not a big tear, nothing a needle and thread can’t fix, but he still groans dramatically all the way to his mother, and keeps groaning as she redirects him to Mirabel’s supplies. He wisely decides to steer clear of her sewing machine, borrowing instead some thread and a needle, and heads for the first quiet room he can find.

He’s leaning against the freshly built kitchen counter when Andrés finds him, holding two wooden cups in his hand and wearing an amused expression. Said expression only grows when he sees Bruno’s tongue sticking out in concentration as he pulls the needle through the poncho fabric, and he makes a conscious effort not to flinch and hide it away. Andrés isn’t mocking him, he’s barely teasing, there’s no reason to feel ashamed around him.

“I leave you alone for two minutes…” Andrés sighs in mock exasperation, leaning against the counter beside him, and offers him his cup. It’s aguapanela, by the looks of it, and the vet tightens his hold on it as Bruno knock-knock-knock-knock-knock knocks on it before taking a sip. The amused expression goes just on the side of soft.

“Yes yes, I’m terribly uncoordinated, we’ve been over this,” he waves a dismissive hand after setting down his drink. Just the day before he had almost fallen off one of the higher structures, too busy trying to map out how he wanted his tower to turn out, trusty thumb out and doing its usual tilting this and that way business, and he hadn’t noticed that he had run out of space to pace back and forth until Camilo had grabbed his poncho, almost choking him in the effort to drag him back from the fall.

“I wouldn’t say uncoordinated, necessarily,” Andrés says, settling more comfortably against the counter, and then just. Stays there, watching Bruno work on his poncho.

That’s another thing he has noticed in the time they’ve spent together: he and Andrés will often lapse into silence at one point on another, either because they need to focus on something or because they just don’t have anything to say, and it’s never once uncomfortable. It feels natural, and while Bruno would often find silence oppressing in conversation and try to fill it up with aimless chatter or even just mumbling to himself to tune out the void, he doesn’t feel the need to do that with Andrés, and instead just prefers to exist next to him. Somehow, Andrés’ sole presence is enough to soothe him, and he doesn’t need his words to keep the overflowing of thoughts and muttering at bay.

“You know, without that on you’re even smaller than you look.”

Of course, he had to go and ruin it.

Bruno lets out an exasperated sigh, eyes not lifting from the sewing, and lowers his voice, as if what he’s about to confess is a well-kept secret he’s letting Andrés in on, “Well, food was scarce when Pepa Julieta and I were growing up. Mamá had to ration it out, and oftentimes I didn’t get as much as I needed to grow up healthy.”

Now the silence is uncomfortable, heavy and oppressing, and Bruno can feel Andrés tense beside him. He ties the thread on the poncho a couple of times before cutting it with his teeth, giving his patching a look over to make sure he hasn’t missed any holes. Giving enough time for the vet to boil in the awkwardness he has brought upon himself.

“Fuck, are you serious?”

Bruno looks over to him, and the smile is so big on his face his cheeks hurt, “No, I was just messing with you, but I’m glad I did because that’s the first time I’ve heard you swear.”

Andrés immediately deflates, and for a second Bruno is terrified he scared the man enough to make him pass out, but next thing he knows the vet is grasping his shoulder to hide his quivering face in it. His shoulders are shaking with laughter just enough that he blessedly misses the way Bruno tenses at the sudden touch, and how he subtly steps out of it under the guise of spreading his poncho out to admire his handiwork.

“Jesus, Bruno, don’t do that,” Andrés laughs, softly amused grin back in place, and that along with the touch is too much for Bruno at the moment so he busies himself with putting his poncho back on to have an excuse to not look him in the eye, “I literally felt my stomach drop to the floor, I wanted to die on the spot.”

“That’s what you get for making fun of small ol’ me,” he stretches out his arms, reaching for where the tear had been, and nods to himself in satisfaction at the patching, “Acting like you’ve never seen a short person before.”

The vet gives him a quick once over, as if assessing the smallness and shortness of the ol’ him, and his expression goes soft again. Almost too soft.

He shifts on his feet, the cup of aguapanela moving so that it’s being held between both of his hands, like he’s nervous, and Bruno tenses up automatically. Andrés is never nervous. It’s not normal. Something is wrong.

“Listen, Bruno,” he starts, and though his voice, too, gives away the nerves his posture suggests that it’s an odd kind of nervousness. It doesn’t look negative or wrong. It’s almost like… trepidation, and that only confuses and agitates Bruno even more because that is not normal, “I’ve been meaning to ask you–“

Whatever it is he’s been meaning to ask him Andrés doesn’t say, because he gets interrupted by someone entering the kitchen. The vet does the same odd thing he had done with Isabela and Mirabel, straightening up and standing up taller and like he wasn’t nervously tapping his finger against his cup literally two milliseconds ago, and Bruno is so fucking confused.

As it turns out, it’s abuela Madrigal herself who stumbles across them, and if Andrés’s posture was odd with his nieces it becomes nearly army-like with her, standing up and straight like a lamppost. Either way, Bruno is so thankful for the interruption he could kiss his mother because whatever Andrés was meaning to tell him he’s sure he wouldn’t have liked it one bit, if his posture and tone was anything to go by at all. He can’t imagine what it could’ve been, but he also can’t imagine it being anything good.

“Oh, hi Brunito,” Alma greets, with that odd, soft voice she’s been using around since the whole candle fiasco and the house falling down on them, like she’s fully aware of her faults and is actively trying to be better. It’s not necessarily fair on her, but it’s not a change Bruno dislikes. Her eyes move to Andrés at his side and she pauses for a moment, eyes darting between the two of them with an unreadable expression, “Andrés, it’s good to see you.”

“Señora Madrigal,” the vet gives a courteous little bow, and Bruno is so done with this respectful persona Andrés keeps putting on around his family that he bumps his shoulder, halting the act and earning himself an incredulous look.

His mother only chuckles, “He’s right, there’s no need for all this formality, I’ve seen you around more times than not,” she says, then her eyes dart to Bruno again, and she looks worried for a fraction of a second before the expression is wiped clean by routine politeness, “Plus, I’ve known your grandparents for quite a long time, there’s no reason to not be on friendly terms.”

She sounds polite, but the last part of the sentence is more stiff, like she’s saying something more between the lines that Bruno is capable of picking up on. Andrés seems to catch it without problem, because he stiffens even more, if possible, going back to looking nervous, and it’s time for Bruno to be confused again because what the hell is going on.

“Ah, yes, well–“ the vet stumbles over his words, now his eyes darting between Alma and Bruno and it’s like the two of them are having a coded conversation he just can’t decipher and it’s all extremely unnerving, “Of course.”

“Do give the Salcedos my regards,” his mother says, wrapping her shawl tighter around herself, suggesting that she’s about to depart, “I haven’t had the occasion to visit the farm in a while, though I’ve heard they’ve been keeping well.”

And with that she leaves, in the middle of the conversation, giving Andrés no time to reply and barely enough to wish her a good remaining of the day. He looks over to Bruno, nervous expression now back in full force– not the good kind, it’s not trepidation, it’s not normal and it’s wrong– and. Well.

Bruno needs a moment because–

Salcedo.

He knows that surname.

“You–“ he starts, voice cracking, and Andrés looks properly panicked now, which only makes Bruno’s brain spin even faster than before, “You’re Andrés Salcedo.”

The vet almost flinches at the mention of his own name, like it’s an accusation, and he just nods, eyes darting back and forth between Brunos’s, though Bruno isn’t looking at him, not really. He’s seeing something else, a memory of a man that looked just like Andrés, though he remembers him much taller and imposing at the time.

“Your father,” he states, not elaborating any further, and Andrés only nods, looking defeated, and Bruno needs a fucking moment.

Had it happened any later in his life he probably would have connected the dots sooner, without a worried mother looking out for her son literally ringing a bell for him to catch up. Andrés looks exactly like his father, same built and eyes, with the only difference that his face is always eased in a soft smile– when he’s not looking at Bruno with pure anguish like he is now, which is a look he wishes to never have to see again– while his father had been pained, devastated, desperate.

The memory floods back all at once, like a dam breaking and an unrelenting stream of deathly cold water drowning him. The Salcedos lived just at the edge of the Encanto, running a small farm that provided part of the food for the town. One of them, a young and sadly newly widowed man, had a son that was just a couple of years younger than Bruno, Pepa and Julieta, and when the son fell ill, he did the only thing he knew to do and sought out the help of the Madrigals.

The twins, around eight at the time, had barely just received their gift, and they didn’t know how to handle it well yet. Julieta tried her best, cooking what little she had learned to cook from her mother, but when it was clear that the son wasn’t recovering and was only progressing further into the embrace of death the father asked Bruno to give him a vision. And he did.

Bruno, barely too young to be able to recall anything he would do in those early years of his life but old enough to have this particular memory marked into his brain for the rest of his existence, saw that the man’s son would eventually recover. The illness wouldn’t take him like it had taken his wife, he would heal and grow up and grow older like he was supposed to, and the man seemed the happiest person Bruno had ever seen in his life, tears of joy gathering in his eyes as he thanked him profusely.

But, as it was back in those early days when he was still learning to use his gift, he overshot. He predicted the son’s survival, and in the same vision, he also predicted the man’s death.

As soon as he saw what he had done Bruno had cut the vision short, but it was too late. All in one moment, the man had been assured that his son would live, but the price would be his own life.

He had tried apologizing, explaining that he hadn’t learned how to domesticate his gift yet, he might have just seen something wrong and false, but the man had just placed a soft hand on his head, effectively silencing him. The happy tears from before were still there, but his expression was sombre. Mourning his own death.

Thanking him again, the man left, his walk meaningful in a way that spoke of predetermination. That same night, Bruno shattered the vision, throwing it against the curved walls of his room, and hid the evidence away, as if he could undo what he had seen. Not even a year later, he heard the news of the man's death, and his own son, now orphaned, behind left to be raised by his grandparents. 

It had been the first time Bruno had realized that his gift was actually a curse and that nothing good would even come out of it.

And now here Andrés is. Healthy and alive, just as Bruno had predicted. At the cost of his father’s life.

“Bruno–“ Andrés whispers, softly, as if he’s afraid to startle him, and Bruno realizes he’s close to passing out, chest heaving in hyperventilation, “Bruno you need to take a deep breath–“

“Your father is dead because of me,” he gasps out, before crumpling on the floor like a wet rag. He pulls his knees closer to himself, hiding his face in them, hot breath heating up his skin as his lungs fight for clear air against the panic rising in him, and he’s just barely aware of Andrés crouching down beside him, his cup forgotten on the counter while Bruno’s has fallen and spilt all over the floor, and his father is dead because of him.

“Bruno, please, you need to breathe, you’re going to pass out–“ Andrés reaches out for him, worry evident in his voice, but all he can think is he was just a kid he was a kid and I killed his father so he darts back, head knocking against the wooden drawers with a loud thud he barely registers.

“Don’t touch me,” he hisses, and he’s not sure who the warning is for. How had he not realized until now? He’s been hanging out, chatting amiably, joking and laughing with the kid whose father his gift had taken away. His mother’s cryptic conversation from a few minutes ago suddenly makes sense, she had immediately recognized Andrés for who he was and wanted Bruno to know it too, maybe to warn him, or maybe to protect him from the pain of discovering it himself.

No reason to not be on friendly terms.

God, how has Andrés managed to stomach the mere sight of him, all this time?

“Okay, okay, I won’t touch you, but please listen to me–“ Andrés is more determined now, hands up in the air in surrender, barely visible over the curtain of hair Bruno is hiding behind, “You had nothing to do with my father’s death.”

“Yes I did!” he chokes out, and he doesn’t know when he started crying but tears are flooding his eyes now, dampening his cheeks. One of his rats comes out from its regular hiding spot, alerted by the commotion, but the sight of it isn’t enough to calm him down this time, “I saw it–“

“Yes, and that’s all you did: you saw it,” Andrés’s voice is low, probably to keep from making a scene and call attention to them, but still determined. He had been nothing but amiable the whole time he’s been with Bruno, so he hadn’t expected to turn around and become outright aggressive towards him, but he also had expected him to sound somewhat hurt, and yet there is none of that in his voice. All of his concern seems to be focused solely on Bruno, and he doesn’t know what to do with it, and is left struggling not to have it be a cause of another panic attack, “Shit, Bruno, you don’t cause anything to happen, you just foresee it. I don’t know how this concept hasn’t ever been explained to anyone in this place but you have no control over what does or does not happen, you just had the curse of seeing it.”

He knows Andrés is right, he’s fully and completely aware that he had no power to rule over who lives and who dies, but he still can’t not feel somewhat responsible for every death he had ever had the misfortune of predicting. It’s one thing to be aware of your own mortality. It’s another to have a green-eyed unearthly being show you exactly how and when it will happen.

“You didn’t kill my father, you gave him a purpose,” Andrés continues, and Bruno’s head is still hidden in his arms, his shoulders are shaking with silent sobs so he can’t be fully sure that Bruno’s actually listening to him but he persists nonetheless, washing him in that soft tone of his. There’s no judgment or accusation in it, only warmth and calm and that soft little lift Andrés’s voice sometimes takes when he’s talking to Bruno that he’s now too raw and pained to call it affection but that he knows has no other name, “I don’t remember much of it, but when my mother died he was devastated. And when I was ill, he was beside himself with grief. He lived in pain the whole time, and it was only after he came to you that that weight was lifted from him,” Andrés’s hand settles on the space between them, fingers curling and uncurling seemingly unconsciously in what looks like an effort not to touch Bruno, and he feels his chest loosen up, his lungs making it a little easier to breathe, “Knowing that I would be okay and that I would recover, it gave him a reason to get his life back, and the months between my recovery and his death, that’s the happiest I ever remember him being.”

Bruno finally lifts his head from the shelter of his arms, slowly, and Andrés visibly relaxes. His face is contorted in worry and empathy, but it all seems to be directed at Bruno rather than himself, and. Well.

Bruno suddenly feels very lucky to have Andrés in his life.

“You don’t bring bad luck or cause hurricanes or whatever the hell you’ve been accused of,” he says, firmly, “You’re just a poor man who could foresee it happening, but it was never your fault.”

His voice is so full of barely restrained emotion that Bruno thinks he might just burst into tears again if Andrés says another single nice thing about him so he just nods, sheepishly and self-consciously wiping away the few tears that are still stuck in his eyes. The rat from before crawls up his arm and settles on his shoulder, a comforting presence to keep him grounded.

“Sorry.”

His voice is raspy, but Andrés gives it no notice. He just gently shakes his head, looking down at where his hand is still between them, “You have nothing to be sorry for. If anything, I should be the one apologising,” his fingers drum against the floor, and Bruno feels like he wouldn’t mind their touch too much now, “I thought not telling you would be best, that we could be friends without you ever knowing but, well. It wasn’t a very well-thought-out plan.”

To be fair, he’s right. If Bruno had known from the get-go who Andrés was he never would have dared to let the man approach him. He would have probably found a tiny room to have a good cry over it and he would have moved on, never uttering a word to the vet out of fear and shame and regret. He doesn’t know how he could have found out the truth in a way that didn’t involve having a panic attack in a half-built kitchen at 5 in the afternoon, so in the end, it’s probably better this way. He’s grateful that he had the chance to properly get to know Andrés, and to be allowed to keep on knowing him despite their shared past, and. Well.

He’s just really fucking grateful for Andrés, full stop.

“Can you–“ he clears his throat, achy from the tears he had shed and the gulps of air that refused to go down it, and makes a little unspecified motion with his hand, “Can you hug me? Just a little.”

Andrés’s expression goes blank for a second, but it’s not long enough to make Bruno panic over it because he’s immediately smiling, opening his arms wide for him. His smile isn’t as bright as it usually is, concern and heartache lace it, and Bruno tries to hide away from it, tucking his arms into himself and his face against Andrés’s chest. The rat moves from his shoulder to crawl over the vet, probably seeking refuge in his hair– they like to do that, sometimes– and Andrés lets out a soft, happy breath.

“Don’t– don’t do that,” he says, when he feels Andrés’s thumb running small circles on his back. It’s sweet, obviously an effort to try and soothe him, but Bruno is so overstimulated he might just jump out of his skin if anything else at all happens in the next five to fifty minutes, “Just– just hold me. For a few seconds.”

He can hear Andrés’s smile in his answering “Okay”, and the motion stops, and then he’s just holding him. 

The embrace lasts for far longer than a few seconds, in fact long enough for his mother to tiptoe around the entrance to the kitchen to check on him, her worried face relaxing when he sees the two men embracing, but he doesn’t let himself feel guilty for it.

It’s not every day someone cares enough about him to chase away the demons that have been haunting him for 45 years, and he’s not going to take it for granted.

It takes about a month and a whole village, but the house eventually gets built. Bruno’s tower is a nice little thing, a spiral staircase leading up into a living room filled with everything he felt would bring comfort, including all of his rats and their toys– because like hell he's putting them back to live in the walls– and it’s not much, but it’s his, it’s something that makes him happy to look at, once he’s done with it and has a chance to properly look at it from all sides, and that’s all he needs.

Andrés helped him pick most of the furniture for the room, and even gifted him with a boxful of books when he pointed out that he probably needed a bookshelf, and he, too, seems happy with how it turned out. 

After the revelation of who he really was and his own consequent breakdown, Bruno had expected him to somewhat disengage, to seek him out less, to put some distance between them. Instead, Andrés has only grown closer to him, if possible. If before he could guess that the vet would come around and help him out or just have a chat eight times out of ten, now he’s an almost constant presence for Bruno. He has other vet-ly duties to deal with besides helping Antonio, of course, so there are some days that he doesn’t show up at the Madrigal’s house, but it’s no bother. Those days his family will usually shoot him odd glances, Isabela might give him a meaningful look that actually means absolutely nothing to him and Pepa might even make a rainbow while passing him by, but he takes no notice.

His family has always been weird, it’s nothing new.

Then the encanto returns, and Bruno is forced back into the mortifying ordeal of knowing the future.

For the most part, he’s grateful that everyone has their powers back. Antonio looks absolutely ecstatic when his jaguar friend comes back barreling towards him, and Luisa looks ten times less tense when she realizes that she can lift up whole boulders again, but at the same time, he’s still bitter. The two feelings can coexist.

Especially when he goes back to his tower that same day, and finds that casita has rearranged it.

He takes a deep breath as he stares down his door, his own face staring back, and takes a step inside. Just like he had dreaded, his living room is completely gone, replaced by a smaller and less creepy version of his old vision cave. 

For starters, it’s still very much a room, not a cave, so that’s a point in his favour if he’s ever seen one. Some of the rats' toys and his own trinkets are still around on the walls, though his books– Andrés’s gift to him– are gone. It makes sense, considering the circular pool of sand in the middle of the room, it would be a nightmare to pick out sand from a book, but he still mourns the loss of his old room nonetheless. It hadn’t been much, but he had liked it, and Andrés had helped him pick out most of the things, as well as Mirabel, and Julieta and Pepa, and most of the family, and really it’s just unfair that he keeps on being cursed nonstop by that damned candle.

He has about half a minute to mope when he notices the hatch on the ceiling, just over the edge of the sand pool, and his eyes light up.

“It’s very… dark,” Andrés comments on it the next day, as soon as he has time to come by and visit Bruno. His entire first day of the encanto had been spent with Antonio who, despite what might be assumed, ended up needing him even more now that he can speak with animals again. As it turns out, some animals are hypochondriacs, and if before Andrés could just assess whether one of them was ill or not, now he’ll also have to work with what the animal itself says it feels, which only seems to make Andrés’s work harder rather than easier.

“Trust me, it’s a huge improvement from my old room,” Bruno tells him, watching him and he paces around the space. He’s tiptoeing around the sand pool, utter confusion visible on his face, so he keeps talking in hopes of explaining, “The old vision room was a vault– a literal vault– and I’d close myself in there whenever I needed to have a vision,” Andrés gives him a sickened look at this, so he hastily adds, “It wasn’t too bad! My visions make light of their own either way so it’s not like I was in complete darkness, I guess it was just– pragmatic, I don’t know–“

“Bruno,” the vet interrupts him, and he shuts his mouth with a loud click, “No offence, but what the fuck?”

His tone is teasing, but there’s still a trace of worry in his eyes, something unsaid left out of his sentence that probably sounds something like what is your family’s problem why would they make a five-year-old close himself inside a lightless vault, so Bruno just sort of shrugs.

“Honesty, Andrés, I don’t know either.”

The vet lets him drop it, for which he’s grateful. If he wanted to unravel the severe traumas he and his family went through he’d need to sit down with a therapist, preferably several times a month.

“And the sand?” Andrés asks, warily touching it with the tip of his shoe, as if scared it might bite. All Bruno can offer is another shrug.

“Beats me.”

The vet snorts then walks up to where Bruno is leaning on one of the walls. He carefully avoids walking over the sand, which he finds amusing, and once he gets there his eyes stray from Bruno to something behind him on the wall, his gaze doing a speed run from soft and affectionate– the look Bruno is fully aware is only reserved for him but that he still doesn’t allow himself to think about– to curious and inquisitive, the same look he’s worn since he’d set foot in the tower.

“And what’s this?”

There’s a small sign on the wall, taped to it with as much attention to interior decorating as Bruno ever possessed– through still taped instead of more formally framed because the house had just decided to switch out his carefully picked up room with a facsimile of the vault he’d cried in more times than he can recall and he’s still quite bitter about it. Written in Bruno’s handwriting, it reads, no prophecies for or about the Madrigal family.

“A well-needed warning,” he gives the sign a tap, maybe a bit harder than necessary, but as mentioned before he’s still quite bitter, “For several reasons.”

“What reasons might those be?” Andrés leans against the wall next to him, lowering his height a little as a consequence, and it’s in moments like these that Bruno is reminded of just how tall the man is.

“They just never end well,” he explains, gesticulating as he talks. Casita or the encanto or whatever is in charge of the interior designing had the good grace of allowing him a singular window in his vision room, to be closed when said room needs to be operational, and with it wide open they’re still mostly in the shade, so his hands end up making complicated shadow puppets on the opposite wall, “Mirabel’s vision being a prime example of it. Also, Mariano wouldn’t stop harassing me, asking me to see how many kids he and Dolores will have and when they’ll have them and that’s just… annoying, as well as a spoiler.”

“You have to admit it’s sort of cute, though,” Andrés pushes his shoulder into Bruno’s, teasingly but lightly. He’s a quick learner and it hadn’t taken him long to understand what sort of touches Bruno tolerates to what degree and what is off-limits. Friendly bumps and brushes are okay. Hugs only if Bruno is the one initiating them. He then seems to be thinking the sentence over and he frowns, momentarily forgetting to pull back to his side of the wall, “Wait, what happened with Mirabel? Did you have a vision about her?"

Bruno debates whether to explain the whole vision fiasco that led to his disappearance for a whole decade or whether confessing something of the sort might make things awkward, uncomfortable. Andrés is still looking at him, a small frown on his usually clear face, where the only lines to be found are near his eyes and mouth, dug in there after too many years of smiling, and very quickly comes to the conclusion that he could probably tell the man anything, at this point, and he would never in a million years turn his back to him.

“Remember when I left, about ten years ago?”

Andrés’s face does a complicated expression, something between pain and nervous anticipation, “I do recall something like that happening, yeah.”

“Well,” it’s Bruno’s turn to bump his shoulder against the vet’s, trying to ease the tension that is so clearly written in the line of his body all of a sudden, and it sort of works, until he opens his mouth to keep talking, “The night when Mirabel didn’t receive her gift, my mother asked me to look into her future, and what I saw– it was not good,” he makes a vague hand gesture, and the shadow puppet on the wall goes crazy, “The miracle dying, the house falling apart, and Mirabel looking like she was the cause of it all. So instead of showing it to the family, I shattered the vision and sort of… vanished.”

He ends his shadow puppets show by clasping his hand on his leg, in a that’s that sort of gesture, and dares a glance at Andrés. For once, his expression is unreadable.

“You left to protect her,” the vet murmurs, and Bruno tenses, avoiding his gaze. Mirabel had said the same thing, and while it is true to an extent– a pretty big extent– he doesn’t like it being addressed so openly.

“I mean, it’s one thing to see death and catastrophe, you know it’s not your fault, logically, but people will still blame you for seeing it, it’s whatever– but to be the cause of that same death and catastrophe? To see someone you love and care about be the cause of it?” he shrugs, it seems to be his reply to most things today, and looks down to play with the hem of his poncho, “I knew what the others would do, what my mother would think, and I couldn’t let that happen to a kid. I could endure it, but I’d never make one of my nieces or nephews suffer the way I did.”

Andrés is silent for a very long time, which is unusual for him. Normally he’d be commenting on Bruno’s various rambles, either agreeing with him or straight up telling him what he’s saying is bullshit– which happens more often than one would think, and always leads to the two of them starting whole public debates on trivial matters like whether a hot dog is a taco or if foxes are actually canines or just really weird felines– but a blank expression and no comment? That’s really out of character.

He’s just about to open his mouth and try to somehow fix what he just said, go back to the safety of their usual daily conversations rather than this, but Andrés beats him to it, with a raspy voice that startles Bruno in its rawness, “I just want you to know that I really want to give you a hug right now that lasts for like, the next century or so.”

He doesn’t, because he’s Andrés, and he cares, and he listens to Bruno and cares for him to a degree that in his most dark days he’s not even sure his own family possesses, but he still looks like he’s vibrating with the effort to not sweep him up in his arms so Bruno chuckles under his breath, letting his head cant forward until he’s leaning against Andrés’s arm, relieving some of the tension. Breathing out shakily, Andrés reciprocates the touch, leaning down enough to bump his own head against Bruno’s. His neck must hurt from the way he’s bent down towards him, but he doesn’t complain, and just wringing his hands together, trying to shake off some residue of that surge of affection.

“I think I mourned for you, you know?”

The words are so quiet Bruno is almost sure he’s imagined them, but when he whispers back “What?” Andrés takes another breath, his locks dancing over Bruno’s neck with the motion.

“When you left,” he clarifies, “I mourned for you, just a bit. I know we didn’t know each other back then, I don’t think you ever even saw me, but I’d still come around with my grandparents every celebration your family would hold, and I’d see you,” Andrés’s hand absent-mindedly reaches down to take a hem of Bruno’s poncho between his fingers, rubbing them back and forth on the fabric in thought, and Bruno suddenly really wants to reach out and lace their fingers together, just to see what they’d feel like. But he doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare even breathe, “And, well, you were a Madrigal, so I’d constantly hear about you, even if oftentimes it was about how you killed some girl’s goldfish or made some priest go bald, and we’re basically the same age, so I felt like I had somewhat grown along with you, and then one day you were just–“ here Andrés lifts his shoulders, and Bruno’s head with them, and makes a helpless little gesture, “gone. Nobody in the family would tell us what happened, Alma basically told us to never even mention your name again, and everyone in town obliged, because of course they did, and through it all… I don’t know,” he can feel him looking down at him now, but Bruno is still too raw from what he’d just heard to meet his gaze. He pushes his head further into his shoulder to compensate, and Andrés pushes back in reply, “I missed you, in whatever parasocial way one could miss someone they never even truly knew.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruno ends up choking out, torn between sympathy and pain and the unbearable effort of voicing a fucking feeling out loud, and Andrés just pushes his head a little more against his own.

“Don’t be,” the vet’s voice is back to his usual soft tones, none of the raw emotion from before, and it’s like a weight has been lifted off of Bruno. He’s the first one to advocate for people to speak their minds instead of bottling it all up, but god is it hard to be on the receiving end of it, “I just wish someone had actually told us what had happened, instead of leaving us to think that you had died or something.”

“Oh, well, you know how it is with this family, generational trauma and all that,” Bruno scratches the back of his neck, suddenly nervous, and disengages from the lopsided half leaned embrace they’re having. He paces to the other side of the room, needing to put some distance between himself and Andrés, but when he looks back the vet doesn’t seem too troubled by it, and is already looking at him, familiar expression back on the previously blank canvas, “Have a feeling? Want to talk about it? How about just repressing it until the day you die under your house falling down on you?”

Andrés winces, “You do make a valid point.”

He just hums. He really doesn’t want to talk about his family issues and incapability in discussing them. He doesn’t want to talk about his issues either, and his almost close to vague but not really there yet capability at somehow externalizing them. He had other plans in mind.

Thankfully, Andrés seems to be on his same wavelength, because after a quick breath he composes himself, and gives the room another sweeping look, “I’m sorry, but where exactly are you supposed to sleep? And please don’t say the sand.”

Bruno lights up at the question, excitedly bouncing on the tip of his toes a couple of times, “I’m glad you asked,” he says, then theatrically points to the hatch on the ceiling. He gives Andrés just enough time to follow his finger before pulling on its string just as theatrically, opening the entrance to the upper floor as a ladder elegantly unfolds in front of him. The vet looks intrigued, eyebrows raised up to his hairline, and Bruno can’t help but chuckle, disappearing up through the hatch.

All the trinkets and personal belonging he had thought had been swept away by the impromptu redesigning of his tower are all stored in its upper level, as neatly as he had carefully placed them on the lower floor. Andrés’s books are on a shelf to the side, next to a little stuffed rat Mirabel had made for him and a succulent Isabella had grown just for him– both of them looking equally proud of their handy work as they had presented it to him– and so are his gramophone and a few little nests and beds for the rats. In the middle of the room, just under a huge circular window that has already offered Bruno more sunlight in one day than he’d seen in ten years, lays a bed, covered in all sorts of blankets and pillows and it all just screams comfort and safety from every angle and nook he almost teared up the first time he had seen it, and then had promptly fallen face-first into the mattress to have the best sleep of his entire goddamn life.

Andrés doesn’t do any of that, but he does let out a cheerful whistle as he follows Bruno up the little ladder, looking around the room with a sort of curiosity that is a lot more open and gleeful than the one he had shown for the vision room, “All your stuff! I thought it was all gone!”

“So did I!” Bruno matches his tone, sticking close to him as the vet pokes and prods at every little knick-knack he can find, “And you haven’t even seen the best part yet!”

With no warning or second thought, Bruno grabs Andrés by the arm with both hands, one over his biceps and one around his wrist, and gently tugs him towards the bed. He feels him hesitate a little, but it’s just for a second, and then he’s following Bruno, laying on the mattress with calculated movements, as if he’s afraid he’ll break it if he’s not careful. Bruno lays right next to him, far enough that they’re not touching but close enough that he can feel the heat of the other man’s body, and points to the ceiling with both hands spread open, “Look at that!”

Up on the ceiling, just over their heads, is another window. It’s smaller than the one of the wall, though it, too, has a little lid to block out the sunlight if needed, and Bruno thinks it’s the most delightful thing ever. Andrés must too because he hums in contentment, “Perfect for stargazing.”

“That’s what I thought too!” he’s close to squeaking at this point, and one of the rats lounging on one of the shelves gives him a worried look, but he can’t contain his excitement. A decent room all for himself! And with windows! “God, it’s such an upgrade from my old room.”

“If it was anything like the vision room downstairs I agree wholeheartedly,” the vet hums, folding his arms behind his head to lay down more comfortably. It hits Bruno just then that they’re, well– they’re laying on his bed, side to side, pretty close too, but the panic that such intimacy would have normally arisen in him is absent, and only joyful comfort fills him, “Where were you even hiding all this time? Everyone assumed you were dead, it must’ve been a good spot.”

“Oh, you know,” Bruno says, as casually as he can, “The walls.”

Apparently, it’s casual enough for Andrés to gloss over the information for a second, and he just hums and nods in understanding. Then the nodding ceases all at once, “The what now?”

It’s around two weeks after the encanto comes back that Bruno begins to be made aware that maybe his relationship with Andrés’s isn't exactly what one would describe as platonic. And because it’s Bruno we’re talking about, it happens in the most painful and infuriatingly annoying way possible.

It’s breakfast time, it really is just meant to be breakfast, the usual business, with the table in the garden and Julieta’s food and Camilo trying to steal more than he should– as he said, the usual. But then, just as Bruno is busy enjoying his tamales, it begins.

“So… Andrés has been around a lot recently,” Mirabel drawls out, an odd tilt in her voice suggesting nothing but mischief, and Bruno pretends to not hear her.

“Yeah, he’s great!” Antonio jumps in, offering some of his juice to a couple of curious hummingbirds, “The animals love him too, which is lucky considering he’s a vet and animals don’t always like vets and–“ here his nephew trails off, apparently having some sort of silent communication with his brother that mostly consists of meaningful glances and raised eyebrows, and when he speaks again his voice is different, a clear– but cuter– imitation of Mirabel’s tone, “Yeah, he really has been around a lot, hasn’t he?”

“He really has,” Dolores agrees, cutting into her arepas with a fork and knife held like surgical tools. She’s quiet for a moment, then she stops to nudge Mariano at her side, another meaningful glance shot between the Madrigals. 

“Yeah! I wonder what he’s up to, all day,” her boyfriend comments, his tone unnaturally calculated like he’s the weak part of an underfunded high school theatre club, and Bruno is now fully aware that something iffy is afoot.

He looks up, and sure enough, most of the Madrigals are looking at him. His mother pretends to be overly interested in the little pots of flowers and cacti Isabela had decorated the table with, and Luisa is straight up looking at the sky rather than be involved, but it’s clear his family wants something from him.

He sighs, swallowing a piece of tamale, and pulls his lips into a lopsided scowl, “What about Andrés?”

The Madrigals shoot each other not-so-furtive glances again, the gaze moving from Mirabel to Isabela to Félix to Julieta back to Mirabel, and it’s only when Pepa sighs that it stops its zig-zagging, “We’ve noticed that you two spend a lot of time together.”

She’s trying to sound even, like she’s talking about something trivial like the weather, but she’s failing, because said weather is going crazy over her head right now. There’s a tiny breeze sweeping through her hair, a nervous little thing carrying a couple of excitable grains of hail with it. Bruno lifts both eyebrows.

“I suppose. We’re friends.”

He doesn’t know why his family wants him to justify who he spends his time with all of a sudden, but apparently, that wasn’t what Pepa wanted to hear, because the breeze only blows stronger, “That’s good! That’s good, but– eh– you see, we were just wondering–“

“Cálmate, Pepi, you’re gonna flood the whole table,” Félix cuts in, picking up the few grains of hail that have fallen on her plate and throwing them behind his shoulder. Bruno gets the sudden urge to throw something over his shoulder, too, but there’s no salt on the table near him, so he resorts to plucking a handful of dirt from the closest cactus pot and swiftly mimicking Félix. Isabela’s look from her seat opposite to him is both dumbfounded and vaguely offended.

“It’s good to hear that,” Julieta comments, and he can hear the affection and love in her voice clear as day, and he relaxes a bit, offering her a small smile. She returns it, but it, too, tilts a little to the nervous side, so he sobers his expression immediately, “We’ve just been wondering if there’s anything more to that.”

Bruno blinks a couple of times. This has to be the most confusing conversation he’s ever taken part in.

“Like what?”

“Oh for fuck’s–“ Camilo groans, dragging his hands over his face in an exaggerated dramatic fashion, “Tío, do you like this guy or not?”

Pepa’s hair is suddenly swept up in a rush of wind, and Félix runs off to fetch her bow, cursing all the way. Half of the table looks like they’d rather be anywhere else than there to witness this train wreck of a conversation, while the other half is intrigued, almost enraptured by it. What is it that they say about train wrecks? Horrible things, but you just can’t look away.

Bruno just gives his nephew a level look, smiling thinly, “Camilo, I am 50. I don’t 'like' anyone.”

He knows exactly what Camilo is asking. He’s not stupid. But, come on, really? Like? That’s what not being comfortable talking about your feelings does to three generations of people, he muses, makes them talk about grown men liking each other.

“He’s avoiding the question,” Mariano points out, and now what exactly does he want to do with any of this–

“You’re avoiding the question,” Dolores parrots, still the picture of unbothered table etiquette, working her way through an arepa con huevos.

“There’s no question!” he splutters, “I do like Andrés, I already said we’re friends! We wouldn’t be friends if we didn’t like each other, would we?”

“You know damn well that’s not what I asked–” Camilo grumbles, and this time his mother does speak up, for the first time in the entire odd interaction, but it’s only to tell her grandson to watch his tone and his words.

“Alright, alright, let me have a go at it,” it’s Agustín’s turn to barrel into the conversation with the ease and grace that nobody could ever possess in a situation like this because it’s already on three different levels of awkward, but he gives it no mind, and instead faces Bruno with his hands clasped and a small smile on his face, “Bruno, did you know that bees are harmless, for the most part?”

The sudden change in subject throws him off for a second, but he gladly welcomes it. It’s better than whatever the previous conversation was, “I did, actually.”

“Oh, you too? That’s good to know,” his words have an undertone of amusement, as he shoots his wife and daughters a look, but he guesses that’s some sort of inside joke he’s not part of, “Andrés told me all about them. They’re gentle beings, they just like to buzz around and fall asleep in flowers, drunk on pollen. They only attack if provoked, and if I’m more careful around them I shouldn’t give them any reason to sting me.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Antonio points out. He’s got a lemur draped around his shoulders like a scarf and his plate is almost empty, because like a smart normal person he’s been minding his business and eating instead of tormenting his poor uncle with a nonsensical game of 20 questions, “I think bees just don’t like you.”

“Noted,” Agustín points to his nephew, before turning his gaze back to Bruno, “You know what else Andrés has told me a lot about? And I mean a lot?” he does a complicated motion with his hands and almost knocks over a jug of juice with it, but Julieta is quick to catch it, “You.”

Bruno doesn’t really know how to reply to that. I mean, he’s flattered, really, that Andrés thinks of him even when they’re together. Who wouldn’t feel at least a little bit flustered knowing they unknowingly occupied another person’s head enough for them to voice their existence out loud? It’s sweet, it’s–

It’s something he’s not sure what he’s supposed to feel towards.

“Huh,” is what he settles on.

“Huh indeed,” Agustín nods vigorously, like Bruno is right on track on his train of thoughts and not at all trailing off into the bushes and tripping over unused tracks, “It’s all a ‘Bruno did this’ and ‘Bruno said that’, the man is always raving about you.”

“He’s right, he’s always going off about you,” Mirabel cuts in, and then Isabela follows closely.

“And when he’s not talking about you, he’s looking for you, asking if we know where you went.”

Luisa doesn’t speak, is still looking like she’d rather be throwing donkeys across whole football fields than partake in the conversation, but she does a little twitchy nod.

“Okay!” Bruno raises his hands in a placating manner, hoping to quiet down his nosey family. If Andrés ever walked into the garden right now and overheard this whole debate he’d have no choice than to just walk straight to the nearest cliff and jump off of it, and he’d really rather not, “Okay, so what? My friend likes to talk about me. That’s what friends do, last I checked.”

He’s not completely certain on that statement, he can’t recall ever having a friend that wasn’t Julieta and Pepa first and foremost, then Félix and Agustín when the time came, and the idea that Andrés is actually the first person outside of his family to care about him enough to be called friend and to talk about him a lot, like– a lot, isn’t a good combo for all the information the Madrigals keep shovelling onto him.

Which they immediately go back to doing after a collective choir of groans.

“That’s not– we’re saying we think he has a crush on you,” Félix explains over the noises of frustration, then immediately adds when he sees Bruno open his mouth to object, “He has a thing for you, or whatever, call it however you like, I don’t care, but he does. What did you think I was doing back when I was courting my Pepa? I wouldn’t shut up a single second about her, I’d rave all day about her to everyone I’d meet, drove people up the wall with it, I’ve been told.”

Bruno splutters again, “Andrés is not courting me!”

Félix raises his hands, eyebrows so high they almost disappear in his hairline, “Your words, not mine.”

“They are very much not–“

“You said it, I didn’t.”

“Did not!”

“Did too.”

“Félix si no te calles ahora mismo–“

“What we’re trying to say is–” Julieta cuts in, loud enough to be heard over the two men, but still as soft as ever, “We think his intentions might be more than mere friendship, and we wanted to see if you were on the same page,” the ruckus over the table settles, and so does Bruno. He hadn’t even realized that in his back and forth with Félix he had stood up from his chair, “You’re not always the best at picking up social cues, we know, and we don’t want you to get hurt.”

He wants to argue that he would never get hurt because it’s Andrés they’re talking about, and Andrés would never hurt him, but. Well. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Andrés cares for him on a deep, personal level, that much he can admit, he tried to protect him from his past and chased away the demons when said past came back to haunt him, he stayed by his side, has since the very start, he mourned for him. And apparently, he talks about him to every single member of the family frequently enough for them to pick up on his affection quicker than Bruno himself.

Fuck. Is Andrés in love with him?

Almost instinctively, he looks over to his mother for help, at a loss of what to do. She’s already looking at him, and her gaze is a perfect mirror of the expression she wore that night weeks ago, when she’s seen him and Andrés hugging on the kitchen floor, raw and wounded. Soft concern and hopeful expectation.

“Mum, you’ve been suspiciously quiet this whole time,” Pepa points out, and Alma snaps out of her reverie.

“Ah, well,” she fiddles with her fork and knife, lining them up perfectly on her napkin, “I’ve… I’ve been reflecting, lately, on how overbearing I’ve been all my life, with all of you. Forcing you into things without even realizing it, without any of you ever feeling comfortable enough around me to tell me. And, well, I just only recently got my Brunito back, and I really, really, don’t want to lose him again.”

“That is incredibly comforting to hear and we’re all grateful for that and for you,” Mirabel says, and both Luisa and Isabela nod somberly at her words, “But, if you were to express an opinion on this, what would that be?”

“Oh, Bruno should figure his feelings out already,” his mother has absolutely no hesitation saying it, like she had been secretly hoping for someone to green-light her two cents on the whole matter, and Bruno can only look up at the sky. It’s pretty today, no wonder Luisa was so transfixed with it, “I’ve seen that boy moon over him every time we held a celebration, he’s been probably pining after him for whole decades now.”

Her comment is met with various hums of delight, Camilo’s finger-snapping, a spontaneous rainbow by Pepa, and a whole cherry tree blossoming a bit too close to the table. Bruno just hangs his head down into his hands, hiding from the world and from the revelation it had decided to throw upon him this day.

Pining after him for whole decades, his brain keeps repeating back to him, and he shakes his head a little to try and lose the through in the haze that follows. He only ends up meeting Antonio’s eyes, and the little boy smiles, holding out his hand. One of the usual Poncho Guys is sitting on it, chewing on a bit of cheese while seemingly uninterested in the emotional turmoil his owner is going through.

“Do you want me to tell you what he told me about you and Andrés? He had a lot to say.”

Traitorous little things. The both of them.

He needs some time to metabolize the revelation the family has decided to shove on him so out of the blue. Like, a lot of time. Thankfully for him, the universe decides to oblige, for once.

For the following week or so Andrés appears to be busy with one of Antonio’s animals, something about a capybara not feeling particularly well, so the time he would usually spend buzzing around Bruno, both of them basking in each other’s presence, is spent away in the youngest Madrigal’s room.

It gives Bruno time to ponder his relationship with Andrés, and whether Andrés actually might feel something more for him or if his family was just making assumptions. He doesn’t have any major breakthrough, and apart from the epiphany he’d involuntarily had at breakfast that one fatal day he’s no closer to getting to a definitive answer to if the man is in love with him.

It’s just– he’s aware that Andrés is overly affectionate with him. He obviously cares, and every moment they spend together he’s always attentive and listening and interested in whatever Bruno has to say, but does that necessarily translate to love? He has no clue. He has no frame of reference to compare this to, no chart or form to fill in and see what the results say, so most of the time he just ends up groaning with his head in his hands, or throwing himself on his bed to look up at the sky through that one window he’s so fond of. Whenever he does the latter, though, he’s immediately reminded of when he had shown Andrés his room, and how the man had laid beside him to amuse him and had looked genuinely delighted at every little detail in Bruno’s room, so hiding his head in his hands is usually the safest route.

There’s also a second question that needs answering, one that is actually much harder to figure out for him and that needs more time for introspection, random groaning, and throwing himself onto beds: is Bruno in love with Andrés? He’s not sure.

He feels so much, all the time. Every little thing is expanded beyond comprehension in his brain, and he feels and feels and feels until his little heart can’t take it anymore, at which point he doesn’t feel anything at all. He doesn’t like those days, when he finds himself holed up, hidden from everyone, refusing to go down to eat with the family or offer his foreseeing services to the people of the village, but they still happen. Andrés doesn’t try to push him out of them, he just lets Bruno know he’s there, but gives him space, never forcing him into anything he’d be uncomfortable with. Then he’ll get over it and he’ll go back to feeling everything, all the time, and it’s all rinse and repeat from there.

Which is just a long-winded way to say that he’s bad acquaintances with his emotions. He knows what love feels like, can feel it pumping blood through his veins whenever he’s with his family, but at the same time can’t tell if that’s the same level of love he should feel for Andrés, and if he feels it for him at all. He knows he cares for him, that much he can’t deny, but he’s not sure how deeper the feeling runs.

And, if he’s honest, he’s too scared to find out.

For said week or so, Bruno only sees a few glimpses of Andrés, either as he’s trotting around following an overexcitable Antonio or as he stops during lunch to eat with the Madrigals and the rest of the townsfolk that usually mill around the house during the day. Every time he has nothing but soft smiles and kind words to offer, and every time Bruno feels all of it.

“I see the animals are loving you,” Bruno greets him one day as he comes down to the garden to eat. He’s sitting propped up against a tree, sitting on his poncho in a facsimile of a picnic blanket, and had been delighted when Andrés had immediately beelined to him when he had spotted him. With one hand he’s holding his own plate of food, while his free one is hanging down his side, sleeve rolled up to his elbows to reveal dark skin and even darker tattoos and three long gashes. They don’t look too deep, are barely bleeding, but Bruno still winces when Andrés raises his arm to show them off with an exasperated look on his face.

“Had to give the jaguar her flea drops,” he explains, dropping down to sit beside Bruno against the tree. He doesn’t knock their shoulders together, waiting for Bruno to be the one to initiate the contact, but also doesn’t falter when Bruno doesn’t follow through with it. He’s still feeling rather raw and exposed with all the thinking and pondering he’s been having over the last few days, and he’s not sure he can handle physical touch right now, “It’s literally just drops, they don’t hurt, I just have to put them in her fur, but she was still angsty and wanted to hold onto me– or so Antonio says.”

He sighs in dismay, but whatever mock exasperation he’s trying to convey doesn’t work because he’s smiling down at the gashes nonetheless. He clearly loves his job, and considering how prone someone with such a job is to getting bitten or kicked or scratched, Bruno has to give him credit for that.

“Poor kitten, you and your scary tools terrified her,” Bruno hums, and stops his chewing to look over to Andrés as he takes a bite out of the fresh bread Julieta had baked that day. The gashes disappear almost immediately, the few droplets of blood they had drawn getting reabsorbed into André’s skin, and his tattoos go back to looking immaculate as always. He’s seen Julieta’s gift work thousands of times, hundreds if you count the times she had to use it on Agustín alone, but it’s still fascinating to witness.

Andrés lets out a relieved sigh, then starts to properly eat his meal, “Lucky, I thought it was going to leave a scar. I would’ve had to scold a jaguar on how not cool it is to mess up someone’s tattoos.”

Bruno just hums back in agreement, and then they just sit in amicable silence for a while, each enjoying their food. He’s never not been aware of Andrés's presence when he's near him, always knowing exactly where he is or what he's doing or if he's looking at him or whose turn in the conversation it is, but now he’s even more aware, to a degree that it’s almost overwhelming. He chews into an arepa con queso a bit more aggressively than necessary. He can’t let the family’s words get to him like this, he needs to relax or he’ll go insane with worry before he can even begin to figure out his own feelings.

The hyperawareness does turn out to be useful, though, because it makes him notice that there’s some underlying tension in Andrés’s body. He’s slouched against the tree, legs crossed underneath himself and his eyes closed as he basks in the midday sun, but his shoulders are tense, his jaw just on the side of clenched, and there’s a little furrow between his brows. Bruno mimics the last one almost perfectly.

“Everything alright?”

Andrés opens his eyes and turns to look at him. The furrow is gone, but the expression he’s offering him isn’t any better. He’s trying to seem relaxed, but failing badly, and now that he’s properly facing him Bruno can see a little tinge of blue under the man’s eyes, not unlike his own. Has he not been getting enough sleep?

“You’re the one to talk,” the vet murmurs, not unkindly, and Bruno flusters as he realizes he had spoken the last question out loud. Andrés sighs, then seems to come to the same realization that Bruno comes to every time something bothers him, which is that he can tell the other man anything, because he continues, tone lower as if trying to not be heard by the others in the garden, or possibly even Dolores, “Between you and me, I’m having some trouble with one of Antonio’s capybaras. It’s nothing too serious, she’s probably gonna be fine, but she hasn’t been responding to her medicine the way she should and it’s just… it’s been throwing me off, I guess.”

He’s not sure if he’s trying to reassure himself or Bruno, but it sure sounds like it’s not working particularly well. The tension is still very much there and, well, can he blame him? This isn’t just an animal Andrés has been tasked to care for, this is Madrigal business. If he somehow fails, he’s not just letting down the animal, but Antonio too, and the whole family as a consequence. 

Bruno knows a thing or two about being a family disappointment and trying his best not to be. For once, the everything he feels is the everything he needs.

Scooting slightly closer to Andrés, he nudges his shoulder against his, just a light touch to draw his gaze away from the grass and towards him. His brown eyes are looking almost golden in the sunlight, and Bruno gets lost in them for a brief second, “Hey, I’m sure it’s gonna be alright,” he touches their shoulders together again, and this time he doesn’t disengage from the contact, and stays there, offering moral support through what little means he has. 

Andrés, he had discovered, is a particularly tactile person– all draped arms around necks and hugs and fist bumps– and while Bruno isn’t touch averse, he’s not on the same wavelength, and doesn’t enjoy physical contact if unprompted or too rough. As with all things when it comes to human beings, they have to meet in the middle, and just like Andrés never touches him without consent, always looking for an invitation or for an explicit request (which aren’t rare, though they do make him blush to just think about), Bruno reciprocates by offering said touches when he feels like that’s what Andrés needs. Somehow, a touch that would usually make him itch feels comfortable and right when it’s done for Andrés.

The vet doesn’t look too convinced, his gaze moving from Bruno’s eyes to the place where their shoulders are touching, so he continues, “You’re a great vet, you’re good at your job, and I’m sure you’ll figure out what’s not working and why. Plus, you’ve always been great with my rats, always managed to figure out what was wrong with them even without Antonio’s interpreting, and what are capybaras if not just very big rats?”

“They’re more closely related to guinea pigs,” Andrés replies, a fun fact that is delivered almost on autopilot, and he smiles at Bruno. He still looks tense, but less haunted. More at ease. He doesn’t really know what more to say to reassure him so he pushes his shoulder a little harder against Andrés’s. He pushes back.

“You’ve got this. I know you do,” he says, his voice cracking with the effort of being as openly honest as he can, and Andrés’s eyes crinkle in a small smile, “Also, please, do take a nap sometime in the near future, bags aren’t a good look on you.”

“Not all of us can look handsomely rugged when sleep-deprived,” Andrés shoots back, and Bruno splutters. Handsomely rugged? Him? He splutters even more when the vet pokes him in the chest, just once. He’s just wearing his shirt, poncho still very much on the ground being used as a blanket, and the touch is magnified with the little fabric there is between their skins, “I’ll take a nap when you take a nap.”

Bruno pointedly avoids mentioning that he really would love nothing more than to take a nap, but unfortunately, he tends to get pretty bad nightmares pretty damn often, so it’s not a privilege he gets to have. So instead he pokes Andrés back, just to be annoying, “You know what would solve this conundrum? Having a nap together.”

It’s a joke, he means it as a joke, but sure enough, he hears a high pitched squeak from the other side of the garden, followed closely by Dolores rushing off into the house looking like she just heard some hot gossip. Fortunately, Andrés laughs, his chest shaking against his fingers, and that’s really all that truly matters.

He’s woken up the following night by soft knocking on his door. He’s a light sleeper, and that’s probably the only reason why he even notices the noise because it doesn’t repeat itself. He stays stills for a few seconds, curled up on his side, Mirabel’s stuffed rat between his arms and real living rats all around him, and strains his ear until all he can hear is his own heartbeat and the leaves of the trees outside the tower and he gets up, warily climbing down the stairs. It’s probably not a family emergency– the family wouldn’t have had any qualms about bursting through his door firemen style if that was the case– but that somehow only worries him more rather than reassure him.

He almost expected whoever it was to have left by the time he manages to climb down his ladder and the circling staircases down to the bottom of his tower, but when he opens the door Andrés is standing on the other side, swaying slightly from side to side like a palm tree. Waiting.

He looks awful. The bags under his eyes have doubled in size, and the faint light from the moon and the lit candles in the corridor don’t make them look any better. His hair, usually tied up in elegant arrangements, are a mess of knots and his clothes are askew, as well as the same from two days before.

He hadn’t had a chance to see Andrés all day, he had been too busy trying to heal that one capybara of Antonio’s that only seemed to be getting worse instead of improving, and that information plus the state the man is in and the late hour give no room of interpretation as to why he’s seeking Bruno out.

“Oh, Andrés…” he murmurs, already knowing what he’s going to ask. He probably would have sounded defeated, had it been anyone else, but when the words come out his voice surprises him with the clear worry written within it. The vet takes a deep breath, and his whole frame shudders with it, the palm tree swaying in the tempest.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks out, and his usually suave voice is all cracked, like he hasn’t even had time to grab a glass of water the entire day, and it takes Bruno all of his willpower to not reach out and squeeze him to his chest, “I– I know you don’t like giving visions, and I know you have that rule about them not being about the Madrigals, but I–“ he almost breaks off here, sounding close to crying, but he persists, sniffing a bit, “Daya– the capybara– she’s gotten worse, and I’m so, so scared that I might not be able to save her.”

He doesn’t voice the request out loud, but Bruno hears it nonetheless: I need you to see if she will die or not. He closes his eyes and sighs, which apparently wasn’t the right thing to do because Andrés shakes again, opening his mouth to apologize, probably, because this is Andrés we’re talking about, so he reaches for him before he can, gently tugging him inside, “Come on, let’s get you some tea.”

Andrés lets himself be herded up the circular staircase and into the vision room, and then onto one of the small comforters Bruno had managed to fit into it without them getting in the way of his vision-ing. He never would have thought to use the term in reference to Andrés, all tall and broad as he is, but Bruno effectively manhandles him until he’s settled all nice and snug, wrapping a light blanket around him for good measure, before wandering off to put on some tea water in the little kitchen he had Luisa bring in for him.

The second he comes back into the room Andrés’s eyes fly to his, and he looks close to tears once again, “I’m sorry, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, I would never force you to, I just–“ he heaves out a shuddering sigh, like he’d been crying for hours and is still being rocked by the aftershock of it, and Bruno instinctually kneels next to him, putting a placating hand on his shoulder when he hides his face in his hands, blanket and all. He feels hot to the touch, almost feverish. How long has he been awake for? “I don’t know what to do, Bruno, I’ve tried everything, all I can do is wait for her to get better but I need to know if she ever will or if I’m just giving Antonio false hope. I wouldn’t be able to take it if she died on him.”

“Okay,” Bruno makes small shushing sounds, the ones he used to make when cradling his newborn nieces and nephews then, and that sometimes still does now when he notices one of his rats is having a nightmare. He’s not sure how much help it is but he doesn’t think he’d be able to pull away from the shivering man even if he wanted to, “Okay, I’ll look in the future for you.”

Andrés’s head whips up fast enough he ought to have pulled a muscle, “You don’t have to,” he says, but his eyes look desperate. Even on the brink of exhaustion and breakdown, he’s still looking out for Bruno, trying to protect him.

Maybe the family wasn’t so far off in their assumptions.

“I know,” Bruno whispers, moving his hand from Andrés’s shoulder to his face. It’s not a touch he’s normally comfortable offering, it feels too personal, too intimate, but when the vet all but melts into it, leaning into his hands, all feelings of awkwardness disappear, and only concern remains, gripping his heart and making it hard to breathe, “But I will, for you.”

The vet’s face almost crumples then, like he’s truly about to burst out crying, and that is too much so Bruno busies himself with fetching their tea. They sit in silence for a while, each sipping their own mug, engrossed in their own thoughts. Andrés looks like the warmth from the tea could be enough to make him fall asleep, right there on Bruno’s comforter, in Bruno’s room, wrapped in Bruno’s blanket, but he made a promise to him so he gently shakes him awake as he sets to prepare all the necessary for the vision.

By the time he’s arranged the small piles of sand within the sand circle, each with their ingredients and ready to be used, he turns to Andrés, trying to look determined and reassuring and not at all like he knows this might be the unravelling of their friendship. Sure, he had already caused one bad vision for Andrés, and he’s still there, but who’s to say this one won’t do the trick, pushing him away from Bruno like every other vision in his life had done with everyone else? What if come morning Andrés has already grown to resent him and his gift? It would be pretty ironic, that it takes a capybara for him to realize just how rotten everything about Bruno is.

He doesn’t have time to self deprecate any longer because Andrés suddenly downs the last sip of his tea and stands up, looking by every right like he’s about to pass out and fall deadweight on the floor but still enduring through it all. Gingerly, he comes to sit in front of Bruno, mirroring his position, and looks up at him, his shoulders set.

He truly looks awful. Whatever the outcome will be, at least he’ll get to rest afterwards.

“You sure you want to do this?” Bruno asks, just to be safe.

Andrés cracks one of his soft smiles, but it’s wobbly, like it’s holding back a dam of unrelenting emotions, “You tell me, you’re the one who hates doing these things.”

“It’s not the things that I hate, it’s how the people react to the things,” he shifts, already reaching into his pocket for a handful of salt, “Anything I’ll predict, people will assume I caused it, somehow, and end up hating me for it. I just–“ I just want you to be aware of what you’re asking for, “I just don’t want you to hate me.”

The other man is silent for a long moment, looking at Bruno openly. For a second all of his turmoils are gone, replaced with something indescribable soft in his eyes, and he reaches out, palm facing the ceiling. Bruno catches on the hint and he places his own hand in Andrés’s. He’s still shaking, though not as much as before, and Bruno instinctively tightens his hold, trying to stop the quivering. Andrés squeezes back.

“I’d never hate you,” he says it with so much confidence he gives Bruno pause. How is it possible that the tables have already turned, that Andrés is the one comforting him and not the other way around, “I don’t know what you’ll see, but I know for a fact that there’s nothing you could do that would make me hate you in any way.”

He’s not sure what to reply to such a confession, so he just squeezes Andrés’s hand again, and sets himself to work. He refuses to loosen his grip, does the whole thing one-handed, but it doesn’t matter. Holding hands isn’t anything actually required for the vision, he sometimes tends to do it when the vision might be too much, and he wants to offer some sort of support to the one who sought the vision, and– well. He doesn’t think he’s going to let go of Andrés until absolutely necessary.

When the sand starts swishing around them in the circle and Bruno starts feeling his power flowing inside him he reaches for Andrés’s other hand, surprised with how quickly the other man makes a grab for it. He looks up at him, expecting to see fear, or at the very least apprehension in his eyes, but instead, there’s just fascination. And still, that inherent layer of affection he’s started noticing more and more each passing day.

“Last chance to quit,” he warns, while his head is just a constant mantra of please don’t hate me please don’t hate me please don’t hate me.

“Green suits you,” is all Andrés’s says, his gaze moving between Bruno’s left and right eye like he’s undecided where he should be looking, and the sand hiccups around them. That’s new.

Rather than dealing with the odd reaction his stomach gives at Andrés’s compliment, Bruno focuses on channelling his power through, and, unfortunately for the vet, has to close his eyes to concentrate.

When he opens them again they’re completely surrounded by the flowing rush of greenish sand, like two little snowmen in an odd and most likely cursed snow globe, and Andrés is looking around them in amazement, his hands never leaving Bruno’s. Soon enough the vision starts to set in, taking shape around them, and Bruno points to it with an elbow, just as adamant about breaking their contact.

“There,” he says, as the sand takes the shape of a capybara, laying down on its side. Antonio filters into view, crouching next to the animal and trying to soothe it, caressing its fur, and Andrés’s grip tightens almost painfully on Bruno’s hands.

He pushes a little further into the future, dreading what he might find, and trying to ignore as best as he can Andrés’s little whimpers as the capybara stays laying on its side, no sign of improvement in sight. Then, just as he had almost given up and is prepping himself to try and console Andrés– if he will even want to be consoled by Bruno or if he will be already despising him, that is– he yelps in surprise as the capybara comes back into view, slowly but surely getting up one its short little legs.

“She’s standing up!” Andrés nearly shouts over the blur of the sand around them, “Is she– will she live?”

“It looks like she’s going to be better, it–“ Antonio appears once again, talking animatedly with the animal, and an Andrés of sand follows closely. He doesn’t need to know to speak to animals or how they function to interpret the happy little scene that plays before them, “She will live! I think– I think it will take a bit longer, but she will eventually recover!”

Andrés laughs then, a happy and open sound that makes Bruno’s heart sing, and before he can react he pulls their hands towards himself, kissing the back of Bruno’s hands quickly, almost thoughtlessly, before going back to admire the vision still playing in front of him. The capybara is trotting around now, rejoining with its herd and being welcomed back by the other animals, but Bruno is too busy trying not to short-circuit to partake in the good news.

He’s just about to end the vision– Andrés saw what he needed to see and Bruno needs a fucking second and also it is three in the morning– when he sees it. It’s a yellow little thing, just over Andrés’s shoulder, coming more and more into view.

Mariposa.

“Huh,” he says, not loud enough to be heard over the sand. Andrés is still enraptured by the happy ending of his vision, something that Bruno rarely gets to witness, so he does something he really, really is not supposed to be doing.

He pushes.

The butterfly immediately explodes in a flurry of yellow sand in front of him, and he sees– well.

He sees himself.

He frowns, confused. What is he doing in Andrés’s vision? In his future? Does he have anything to do with the capybara’s recovery? Does he play a role in it? Visions have no chronological order, he knows, but he can’t make out why he’d be in a vision about a capybara if he didn’t have something to do with it.

Unless…

The scene zooms out for him, and the background comes into view. He’s sitting in his upstairs bedroom, and Andrés is sitting next to him. They’re curled up next to the window, huddled together like a pair of hummingbirds, and he really doesn’t understand what any of this has anything at all to do with capybaras until he sees his sand-self move.

A sand-hand comes up to touch the side of sand-Andrés’s face, much like the real Bruno had done with the real Andrés not half an hour before, but the touch is different in the vision. It has none of the hesitation Bruno had had about it being personal and intimate, and is both of those things, very clearly. His sand-self cants his head forward, tilting into sand-Andrés’s face, closing the distance between them, and Bruno– the actual, current, and fleshy one– yelps, tearing his hands away from the actual, current, fleshy Andrés, cutting the vision short, but not before he sees it.

He’s kissing Andrés. His sand-self, that is. His future self.

He will kiss Andrés.

What the fuck.

Sand falls all around and onto them like a scratchy shower, and Bruno scrambles up, almost falling over when he feels that his left leg has fallen asleep, so he wobbles behind Andrés all the way to the fresh vision tablet that just appeared out of thin air and snatches it up, whirling around so that only he can look at it. He squints, looking for what he had just seen, making sure that he hadn’t imagined it.

Held upright, the vision looks just like what Andrés had asked for. There’s a capybara, clearly happy and healthy and alive, and there’s Antonio and Andrés himself, cheering next to it. But Burno has had to deal with these bastard little things too long to be fooled, so he tilts the tablet to the side, and sure enough, a different scene plays out for him, and he almost drops the vision.

He and Andrés. Kissing.

He overshot it again. Fuck.

“Everything alright?” Andrés asks from his place on the floor, and Bruno nearly jumps out of his skin. He looks down to where the vet is still sitting cross-legged, his early happiness and relief washed away by confusion and slight concern, and Bruno doesn’t know how to articulate a single sentence that makes sense that doesn’t include the word kissing in it.

He kissed Andrés. He will kiss Andrés. He saw it happen. It always happens.

“Y–yeah no, yeah that’s– yeah no,” he squeals, tilting the tablet back and forth, flinching every time he sees himself in Andrés’s vision. So much about him being in touch with his emotions. He’s feeling so fucking much right now and he doesn’t know what to do with any of it. He’s tired, it’s 3am, he had been woken up in the middle of the night and has just finished giving a vision– which for the record is exhausting– and had ended up somehow overshooting said vision to the point that he saw himself kissing his friend sometime in the near future and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with any of it.

“Yeah or no?” Andrés laughs, and it’s an awkward little thing, like he’s expecting Bruno to elaborate a bit further on what’s bothering him, which is usually what Bruno does. Except Bruno has no words coming out, and all he can do is keep tilting the damned vision back and forth. Andrés stands up then, now looking properly concerned, and his tone is tentative when he says, “Bruno? Everything okay?”

He reaches out as if to touch the vision, and Bruno jumps away far enough that he knocks his back against the wall, hard, and yelps at the contact. Andrés stills and raises both his hands up in surrender, eyebrows high and expression even more concerned than before, and Bruno rubs at his aching shoulder with one hand, keeping the vision close to his chest with the other.

“Bruno?”

“It’s– it’s not about the capybara,” he manages to say, backing further into the wall like a caged animal. A complicated expression plays on Andrés’s face, something like hurt flashing between the worry and apprehension, and Bruno holds up a hand in a placating manner as he navigates towards the upstairs ladder, sliding against the wall all the way, “The capybara is fine– will be fine, it’s– it’s something else.”

“Okay,” Andrés concedes, following him with his eyes but remaining where he was. He doesn’t attempt to reach for the vision again, though he looks like he very much would want to, “Is it– it is bad?”

I don’t fucking know.

“It’s not catastrophic,” he settles on. Distantly, he’s aware that he should be reassuring Andrés– it is his future he found this vision in, after all, he has every right to know what Bruno saw– but it’s also Bruno’s future, and right now Bruno wants nothing more than to hide away from his feelings and responsibilities for the next five to ten years, “It’s– it’s something, okay, and I need to ponder it. Alone. For a while.”

Andrés looks like he’s about to complain, looking borderline desperate now, but Bruno, coward that he is, gives him no time to react, and with the speed and agility he possesses and sometimes still surprises people with, he makes a run for the ladder, climbing it two pegs at a time and pulling it up with him once he lands on the upper floor, vision still clutched against his chest.

He waits in silence for a while until he hears Andrés heave out a worried sigh and leave, then allows himself a few minutes to feel like shit for making him worry before going back to his own concern.

He tilts the vision again under what’s left of the pale moonlight. The image of him and Andrés kissing plays back to him once more, and this time he shudders with it, pushing the vision away. In a quick burst of emotion, he shoves it into a random drawer, covering it with whichever article of clothing he can find, and then collapses on the bed.

He doesn’t go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

When the first rays of the sunrise start to filter through the window Bruno still hasn’t figured out a way to deal with himself, the vision, and Andrés. The tablet is still tucked away where he hid it, and though he hasn’t looked at it since– has actually only been staring up at the ceiling unmovingly after flopping down on the bed– he can almost feel its oppressive presence. Is this how people feel when he gives them a bad premonition? No wonder everyone in the village hates him.

Well, not everyone.

He groans dramatically and flops down on his front, hiding from the sun and the world and hoping to suffocate against his pillow. A rat scurries by him, giving his current predicament no mind, and he feels it burrow somewhere around his neck, between his hair, unaware of the turmoil of emotions Bruno is currently going through.

It’s one thing to be vaguely aware that he may possibly perhaps maybe be developing some sort of feelings for a man that apparently has said feelings already developed rationalized and ready to go, according to everyone around him. It’s another thing to literally see himself kiss the aforementioned man and to know without a shadow of a doubt that it will happen sometimes in the near future.

It’s not– he’s–

It’s not like he would mind. 

He’s not the best at articulating his feelings, and the ones he’s experiencing right now aren’t making a whole lot of sense, fueled by the fact that he’s been awake since three, but even someone with a thick head and a thick heart like his would add two and two together and realize that what he has with Andrés has gone out of the ‘platonic’ area of relationships and ventured off to something else. If given the proper time to process it, he concludes, he probably would have come to the realization that he has feelings for Andrés in his own time, by his own accord, and then acted accordingly.

But because he’s an idiot and the universe hates him a whole lot for no particular reason, he’s had that chance taken away from him. Literally spoiled his own love story.

Because, although admitting it right now makes him want to push his head even further into the pillow and completely cut out his oxygen intake, it is a love story. That much is certain.

It’s just. He needs time to process it. Alone. Away from Andrés.

With a weary sigh, he lifts himself up and gets ready to face another day. Andrés will probably be busy with Antonio and the still-recovering capybara for another few days at the very least, so avoiding him won’t be too hard. The question is how long he’ll be able to pull it off before he snaps or, more likely, before Andrés starts seeking out answers for what he had seen.

He hopes it’s enough to give him time to get on the same page as his sand-self.

Breakfast is a painful event. Everyone can immediately tell just by looking at him that something is up– his hair is a mess, for one, and the bags under his eyes are starting to look like proper bruises– and instead of giving an articulated answer to the questioning glances he gets he just squeaks, a perfect imitation of his niece, and scuttles away from prying eyes, hoping that the family will pick up on his mood and leave him be.

He doesn’t have such luck, because just as he settles down on his preferred seat six plates settle around him in perfect unison, and he’s properly surrounded by his nephews and nieces.

“What’s wrong, tío?” Mirabel asks, already starting on her breakfast. She’s trying to make the question sound casual but he can see the worry in her furrowed brows even as she pours herself some aguapanela, “Had a rough night?”

“Something like that,” he mumbles before filling his mouth with arepas. He’s not particularly hungry, he’s so discombobulated his stomach is literally turning with emotion, but he needs an excuse to not have to speak. Unfortunately, the kids around him don’t take the hint, and all huddle closer to him.

“Had a nightmare?” Luisa asks, and he just grumbles.

“Two nightmares?” Antonio tries, and he has to smile a little at that.

“Does this have anything to do with what I heard outside your door at three in the morning last night?” Dolores says, with no particular inflexion to her tone, and Bruno shoots her a properly menacing scowl.

“Oh, now I see it,” Camilo comments, pointing to his face, “That’s the look I remember.”

“Cállate, tú”, Isabela waves a hand in the general direction of her cousin, and Camilo suddenly finds himself toppled by a handful of sunflowers. She leans forward and puts her chin on her hands, her big doe-like eyes moving from Bruno to Dolores, who in the meanwhile have started a little staring contest between the two of them, “What happened at three in the morning last night?”

“Why were you awake at three?” Mirabel questions, but her mouth is full so it sorta sounds like wh ‘er ou a’ke a’ thee.

“Why were you awake at three?” Bruno shoots back, question pointed at Dolores, and his niece just gives him a little shrug.

“I sometimes get woken up by my gift if something unusual happens,” she states, her eyes not leaving Bruno in their contest. He’s afraid if he looks away for one second she’ll have spilt the whole conversation he’s now sure he overheard to the entire family, and his next best option is to physically tackle her to stop her, but that would involve dealing with Mariano and Pepa and he does not want to even begin to think about that, “I’ve learned to control it enough that routine noises and voices don’t bother me, but if something unfamiliar happens I hear it perfectly.”

“I thought it was weird that you could hear my eye twitch,” Luisa observes next to her, and Bruno winces as he thinks back to how thin the walls were in the old house. They’d taken the precaution to insulate every room this time around after the encanto had come back, and had Dolores try out every one of them to make sure their inhabitants could speak as freely as they liked without fearing for their secrets to be heard and spread by an overexcitable Dolores (he wasn’t present during the dinner accident but he could hear it going down from within the walls and it did not sound fun in the least), but that did not extend to the corridors outside said rooms. Meaning that his niece had perfectly heard Andrés begging for Bruno’s help last night.

He sighs and looks over to Antonio, who is already looking back at him, enraptured in the back-and-forth his uncle and sister are having. The vision involved him, too, it’s only fair that he’s made aware of it.

Dolores doesn’t start speaking the second he breaks eye contact like he had expected, but rather waits for him to wave her off, stuffing another arepa into his mouth and preparing himself for what’s to come, “Andrés came to him last night,” she says, all hushed, and her cousins and brothers huddle even closer into the little circle they’ve formed, like little cute lemurs– particularly annoying lemurs, but still cute lemurs, “He said that he was having trouble with one of Antonio’s animals, and he needed tío Bruno to look into the future for him.”

“Daya?” Antonio asks, his eyes enormous, and Bruno places a placating hand on his hair.

“She will be fine, don’t worry,” he reassures him and smiles when he sees the little boy’s shoulders drop significantly, like a weight has been lifted off of him.

“Hold on, he asked?” Camilo interjects, furrowed gaze moving from his sister to his uncle, “I remember him going on a whole tirade one day about how unfair it is that you’re constantly asked to look into people’s future, and he just did the same?”

“He what now?” he squeaks, and Isabela waves a hand dismissively.

“Yeah yeah, the man’s head over heels for you, always defending and protecting you, we’ve been over this.”

“Well, I didn’t hear him ask,” Dolores continues, “He actually immediately apologized before even asking, which is very Andrés of him,” very Andrés of– what does that even mean– “Tío invited him in and they stayed in enough for me to almost fall back asleep. I only heard Andrés come out a while later, but he said nothing more.”

“Huh,” Mirabel scratches her chin, thoughtful, “So you gave him a vision, I’m assuming.”

He nods silently, gaze looking anywhere other than the six curious pairs of eyes in front of him.

“And the vision was good, because you said the capybara will recover,” Luisa continues her sister’s line of thought, and he gives another short nod.

“Then why are you all–“ Dolores makes a vague hand motion, indicating all of him, and tilts her head to the side to voice her confusion. He can already feel his ears turning warm with a growing blush so he tries to play it off and act like nothing life-changing has happened, at all, ever.

“Nothing– nothing it’s just– I guess I didn’t sleep well, I don’t know why–“

“Tío,” Camilo drawls out, a hand on his chest in a theatrical display of stupor, “Did you see something else you weren't supposed to? Something about Andrés’s future?”

The blush properly explodes, colouring his cheeks until he’s sure he could cook an egg on them, and Camilo actually yells in delight, thumping his fist on the table as he points at him. He knows everyone in the family– previously content to mind their own business and let the youngest Madrigals mess with their uncle– is now looking at him, but he just pulls up his hood and hides his face in his hands, ignoring the little glees of delight that are escaping from Isabela and Mirabel.

Somebody please just kill him now. Literally, just do it.

“Camilo! What is this ruckus all about?” Alma calls out, and the whole table falls silent almost instantly, and that’s so much worse, because now everyone is even more aware of how flustered he looks, and his only hope is that his nephew will keep the revelation to himself instead of putting him on blast in front of the whole–

“Tío Bruno had a vision in which he smooches the sexy veterinarian that has been pining after him since forever!” Camilo bellows at the top of his lungs, and Bruno knocks his head into the table, tapping his forehead against it a few times– he’s not sure if it’s superstition or if he’s just very, very done with the entire day already. There’s no way he just guessed that on the first try, is his expression really giving away so much?

“None of those words is in the Bible,” Isabela mutters, but she’s soon overwhelmed by the adult voices at the other end of the table.

“Aw, Brunito, you spoiled your own first kiss for yourself?” Pepa coos, like she’s properly upset. Apparently, she and Bruno have two very different ideas of upsetting because that was not what has been making his stomach curl and uncurl for the last five and a half hours, “That’s okay, it’s gonna be special nonetheless!”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will be magical all the same,” Agustín adds, almost dreamily, and when he emerges from his hood Bruno sees that none of them looks even remotely confused by the notion. It’s like it was already a given for them. What the hell?

“That’s not what’s upsetting me!” he cries, and he knows he probably sounds deranged but he’s surpassed his limit of general family fuckery a while ago, “I didn’t know I was going to kiss Andrés! I didn’t even know I’d want to!”

There’s a moment of silence that stretches out for a moment too long.

“Okay that’s not ideal,” Félix finally breaks it, and though it’s an understatement it helps calm down Bruno. That’s a reaction he’d gladly take. Not ideal is certainly one way to look at it.

“Ay, Bruno,” Julieta winces, “You still haven’t figured your feelings out, have you?”

“Of course I haven’t!” he cries once more, and Mirabel reaches out to place her hand on top of his. It’s a light little thing, her hand, and it doesn’t feel oppressing, but rather grounding, almost reassuring, “You’ve all really overestimated how in touch I am with my feelings, and frankly it’s bold coming from a whole family of emotionally constipated people.”

That gets a few snickers from his nieces, and a few winces from his sisters and brothers-in-law, and it’s then that his mother steps in once again, all of her matriarchal attitude gone in favour of a softer, more motherly-like look.

“Brunito,” she begins, and part of his worry and agitation flows out of him like water in a stream. How predictable, that he just needs his mother to show him some compassion to start feeling better, “If I may, can I ask one thing? Was the vision upsetting?”

“I mean, sort of?” he scratches the back of his neck, feeling embarrassed for his previous overreaction. He should probably apologize to his nephews and nieces as soon as this whole conversation is over, he shouldn’t have lost his calm regardless of how much they were messing with him, “It was unexpected, and I guess I panicked a little, which only seemed to worry Andrés because he assumed it had something to do with the capybara and–“

“No, I mean,” his mother struggles with her words for a second, years of repressing and not voicing them evident in the few seconds of silence, then continues, still as soft as before, “The scene itself. Was it upsetting? Or was it something the you in the vision wanted?”

That gives him pause, and then he’s back to being flustered again. The me in the vision is the one who started the smooching, actually, and he seemed quite into it, he thinks, and only blushes harder.

He had started it– will start it, whatever. Whenever it will happen, it will happen to a Bruno who will want it to happen, and will actively make it happen.

He just needs to reach that point in the future when he’s that Bruno.

Apparently, his silence and accompanying blush are enough of an answer, because his mother just raises a hand and a side of her mouth, as if to say, well, there you go then.

“If something is meant to happen, it will happen,” she says, and the weight that had been oppressing Bruno since the fateful vision had been revealed to him is lifted much like Antonio’s own had, “And if it’s something good, please, let yourself be happy and let it happen.”

It seems like the simplest of advice, in retrospect, and he can’t believe he didn’t get there sooner. All he has to do, really, is wait for it to happen. And hopefully, it will happen at a time when the mere thought of it won’t threaten to make him fall over like it is now.

He lowers his eyes to his plate and notices that a few of his arepas are gone. Camilo is currently stacking them on his own plate, stealthily and mischievously, and he allows him the privilege of pretending he hadn’t seen it happen. He’s a little shit, but his over-enthusiasm served Bruno, for once. He’ll get back to him in some other way.

The capybara starts feeling better by the time a week has gone by, and Bruno is still struggling with his feelings. Despite the vision, Andrés had spent the last several days never leaving the animal’s side, continuously checking in with Antonio to see how she was feeling, and while it’s extremely heartwarming it also makes Bruno want to do nothing more than go to him and reassure him and then gently yet firmly manhandling him into the first soft surface he can find to let the poor man rest, which does not help in the feelings department.

Andrés, bless his soul, seems to have come to the realization that whatever Bruno is upset with, it has more to do with Bruno than it does with his own future, because he lets him be for the most part. He will still shoot him tiny glances when they pass each other, all lingering and concerned and enough to undo Bruno on the spot, but he doesn’t push for answers like others would have done. He doesn’t feel like shattering the vision and hiding into the walls of his own home for a decade, which he considers a win in his books.

What’s new is that the distance he’s put between himself and Andrés is doing something odd with his internal organs. Whenever he’ll see him– because again, he pretty much works for Antonio most days, they can’t exactly avoid each other even if they were putting proper effort into it– his heart will seize, jumping in his throat, and his stomach will clench almost painfully. If he thinks about Andrés at night the feeling will come back, strong enough to make it hard to sleep– which unlike what his looks might suggest it’s not something that he usually has issues with, he’s constantly so, so tired he could sleep almost anywhere for any stretch of time if his nightmares let him.

He voices this last concern to Isabela one afternoon, as they’re both busy cleaning up the kitchen after lunch, because his life has become a poor and sadder version of his imagined telenovelas and has gotten into the habit of asking his nieces and nephews for love advice. She just gives him one long, disbelieving look.

“Tío, you’re pining,” she deadpans, and Bruno splutters, a ceramic bowl almost falling from his grasp.

“I don’t pine!”

“You literally just described what pining feels like,” Isabela shoots back, then jumps when a flower blossoms in her hand, completely unprompted. She looks annoyed at first– it’s a small soft thing, all nice petals and cute shapes, too pretty and perfect and resembling too much what could be found in her old room– but then she lights up, presenting it to Bruno.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A pink flower?” he asks. He barely can tell dog breeds apart, he certainly can’t guess flowers names.

“It’s a camellia. A pink one, specifically,” she waves the flower in front of Bruno, smiling almost maniacally, “It signifies longing, because that’s what you’re doing, viejo cielito.”

“That is not what I’m doing,” he dodges away from her outstretched hand, and she makes a game out of it, trying to chase him down the kitchen with the flower as he ducks and scurries away, “Also don’t call me that.”

“I bet you’d rather have your vet call you that,” Isabela mutters, then corners him between the counter and the stove. She shoves the flower close to his chest, though not quite touching him yet, and he raises his hands in surrender, accepting his defeat, “I dare you to give this to Andrés.”

Bruno does take the flower then, but only to motion for Isabela to let him work it into her hair, “I double dare you to never tell any of this to anyone.”

She doesn’t reply to that, preferring to just give him a long knowing look, but she also doesn’t pull away from his touch, letting him braid the stem of the flower around a lock of hair. Maybe he had accepted defeat a bit too quickly.

Exactly two weeks after he’s had the vision– two weeks in which he and Andrés have barely spoken three words to each other in total, none of them ever going over the threshold of awkward and slightly detached– Bruno concludes that he’s going fucking insane.

If he’s pining, like Isabela said– which he’s not because he’s 50 and he does not pine– then it has only gotten worse, because now the odd seizes catch him off guard whenever Andrés is even remotely close to him, making him react like some sort of wild animal who just heard something move in the nearby bushes. The result is that he ends up staring after the poor man like a proper lunatic, until someone– usually either Mirabel or Camilo– not so gently snaps him out of it.

“Please just kiss him already, por Dios,” Camilo groans one day when he has to physically grab Bruno and tug him aside to avoid him colliding with a wall, too busy staring after Andrés’s retreating back to watch where he’s going, “This is painful to watch.”

“Yeah, honestly, I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” Mirabel adds, stealing a glance in the direction Andrés had wandered off towards, then rolling her eyes when Bruno does the exact same, “You literally saw yourself kissing the man, it’s not like you can avoid it.”

“I know, it’s just–“, they’re passing under a wooden doorway as they talk, and he holds his breath for a second, knocking on it, giving him some time to scream internally without having to worry his nephews, “I know I’m going to kiss him, it’s just– I think I still have to wait for the right moment, you know? Usually things just happen, when I see them, but this time I was the one making it happen, and I don’t think I can, yet. When I saw it I didn’t seem scared, I seemed to enjoy it–“

“Ew,” Mirabel and Camilo say in unison.

“Don’t you ew me, you’re the ones pushing for it!” he throws his hands up in exasperation and walks off in an unspecified direction to mope. Damn him and his gift, why can’t he just decide when to kiss people without actual literal omniscience shoving its way between his plans.

“We just want to see you happy,” Camilo says, easily falling into step beside him, “With that being said, you’re being sappy and that’s ew.”

“I bet he’s going to get even worse when they finally get together,” Mirabel nudges her cousin, who gives her a smirk in reply, and great now they’re plotting against him, “But in all seriousness, tío, you just have to allow yourself to be happy. There’s no losing in this situation, your visions are inevitable, and for once that it’s something good, please, please just embrace it.”

It’s easier said than done. Logically, he knows what he’s feeling could start to be tentatively referred to as deep affection– he dares not call it love, not yet at least– and it’s not the same affection he feels for his family. It’s a kind that keeps him up at night, thinking about Andrés and what he had seen, that makes him sigh when he sees the man pass by, and that makes Dolores stop him in his tracks one day to tell him to think all of his sappy feelings instead of expressing them out loud because “my god, tío, you’re worse than Mariano and it’s really distracting”.

The entire family tries to gently nudge him forward whenever the occasion presents itself. Julieta will spend entire afternoons with him, drinking iced tea and recalling old childhood anecdotes until the conversation eventually lands on their love lives, and Agustín will appear like he’d been summoned, and from then on it’s just one big monologue on love and devotion and affection and Bruno has to hope that Dolores is too busy to hear any of it because by god is it too much. Pepa won’t do the same– she has never been the best at emotional support, to be frank– but he has seen her corner Andrés one day, both rainbows and lighting strikes appearing over her head, and he’s not sure he wants to know what she told him to elicit such a reaction in her.

His nieces and nephews keep on being their annoying selves. Isabela and Dolores will mostly just coo and aww at the prospect of Bruno’s love life– again, he’s 50 and as in touch with his feelings as a cat is with water (leaving him spluttering and panicked whenever thrown bodily into them by other people), they really should find something more entertaining to do with their lives– while Mirabel and Camilo, well, are just little shits. Antonio and Luisa would be the only ones that could be saved in this situation, except Antonio seems overly excited at the prospect of Andrés becoming his uncle– the man has really grown on everyone, but on him in particular– and Luisa has gotten better and better at expressing her opinions and feelings lately, which is really good and a relief but also means that Bruno will oftentimes get an earful from her, and you don’t really want someone who could fold you in half like a camping chair to tell you to “just get it over with already”.

His mother is the only one that won’t express an opinion. He knows that it’s only because she still feels guilty for her past overbearing nature, and is trying to do better by not pushing her ideas onto people and rather only voicing them when asked, but she still will shoot him meaningful glances whenever Andrés is nearby as if to say, well? What are you waiting for?, and if he stops to think that this is probably the most supportive his mother has ever been of him in his entire life he’ll burst into tears, and with no Andrés present to console him it’s really not something he’d like to do.

In the end, the dramatic arc of his love life concludes itself the same way it had started. With that damned capybara.

After the fateful two weeks have gone by, and Bruno is sure he’s one step away from utter and irreversible insanity, Daya the capybara fully recovers from her illness, and Antonio is so ecstatic he wants to throw a little party for her. And really, who could ever say no to Antonio?

It’s nothing too big, definitely doesn’t attract as big of a crowd as a ceremony would, but everyone still gives a hand in the preparations, and by the time evening rolls around there’s a little crowd milling around the house. Bruno– whose last family celebration was Mirabel’s ceremony, and the memories it brings back aren’t something he wants to ever think about again– is hesitant at first, peeking out from behind his door as he watches the townsfolk come in the main yard.

He can see Andrés too, being dragged around by an excitable Antonio, and it’s only when their eyes meet, brief but still expressing that unspoken fondness between them, that he takes the courage to step out and make his way towards the heart of the party.

A few people stop mid-sentence when they see him, then do a very bad job of trying to go back to their previous conversation without throwing him obvious glances and poorly disguised side-eyed stares, but he tries not to let it get to him. He only just recently reappeared after a self-imposed 10 years exile where he had effectively become the local boogeyman, it’s fine. He’s fine.

Luisa passes by him, carrying a large plate of appetizers as well as several children, and he scurries close to her, using her towering frame to make his way across the yard and towards his family. He does get another few glances, even the occasional glare, but soon Julieta has her arm around his, Agustín his hands on his shoulders, Félix is doing his best to look menacing and Pepa is throwing lightning bolts after anyone she sees side-eyeing him, and nobody tries to mess with him again. It’s kind of an excessive reaction– it’s fine, he’s fine– but he gladly accepts it, setting back against his sister’s shoulder in a silent thank-you.

Andrés does come around too, by the time he’s done being herded around by an excitable 5-year-old and several large wild animals, and the moment his eyes settle on Bruno his face goes all soft, though he seems to be making a conscious effort not to let it. Bruno’s stomach does a complicated quiver that isn’t a million miles away from what Isabela had described as pining.

“Hi,” Andrés says, and even his voice is soft, almost painfully so, and Bruno’s knees almost go weak with it. God, what is he even doing? He’s a grown man, and this other grown man has him acting like a proper loon, “You okay?”

He doesn’t elaborate any further, but Bruno can guess that he must’ve seen the way the townsfolk were looking at him. Sometimes a furtive glance will be still thrown his way, but so will one of Pepa’s lighting bolts, so he feels a lot more confident now than he did half an hour ago, “I think so,” he settles on, “I’m just not used to… all of this.”

He makes a vague hand gesture, indicating everything around him– the party, the people, the dancing some of the people got going, Andrés himself– before offering a shrug. The vet hums, apparently unfazed at being included in the all of this.

“Let me know if it gets too much,” Andrés tells him, swaying a little, as if he wanted to bump his shoulder against Bruno’s like he usually does, but then aborted the motion at the last moment, and Bruno’s stomach kicks its tantrum up to the second gear, “You can sneak away and if anyone asks I’ll tell them you had very important vision business to attend to.”

His tone is light, almost tentative, like he’s testing the waters, trying to see if Bruno is ready to go back to their usual chemistry, if he’s allowed to tease and be teased or if he still needs time. It’s casual, almost would have passed under the radar as natural if Bruno wasn’t so attuned to Andrés and his way of being, but since he very much is he can see the tension in his shoulders, poorly hiding his concern and hesitation. In lieu of a reply to the unspoken question, Bruno sways to the side, all the way, and bumps their shoulders together, like two cats getting each other. He can both hear and feel Andrés exhale, the tension leaving him in small degrees, and it’s an intoxicating display. To know that he’s able to have this kind of effect on the man, with such a simple touch.

His knees are threatening to buckle under him again so he presses a little stronger against Andrés’s shoulder, partially to keep himself up, partially because he’s not a coward and can admit that he just wants to because he missed him, “You’re my hero,” he says, and Andrés pushes his shoulder back against Bruno’s.

They stay like that for a moment, just basking in each other presence’s, each other’s touch, and just looking at one another, until Camilo walks by with a tray of warm arepas and a knowing smirk, and Agustín runs past them after a lemur that appears to have stolen his glasses, and they’re both effectively distracted.

“Hey,” Andrés stops him as they’re parting, lightly touching his wrist, and the touch is so unexpected that Bruno doesn’t have the time to suppress the shiver it causes. The vet’s eyes widen significantly at the reaction, but has the good heart to not point it out, bless him, “Can we talk? After, I mean.”

There’s another unspoken question there, but one that Bruno hears nonetheless: can we talk about your vision, about why you’ve been avoiding me for two weeks?

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough. He does pull away from Andrés then, too overwhelmed all of a sudden, and retreats his hands underneath his poncho, away from view and from any more lingering and loving touches. Andrés doesn’t seem hurt or offended by it, so he continues, a little more confidently, “Yeah we c– we should.”

The vet smiles, a tiny little thing that is halfway between hesitant and hopeful, and then he’s off, running after Agustín and calling after the lemur. Bruno watches him go for a second, like a maiden in a period drama seeing her betrothed being sent off to war and what in the hell is that metaphor– and when he turns around Andrés is also right there, tray of arepas in hand and making obnoxious kissy faces at him.

He grabs an arepa and shoves another one in Camilo’s mouth, making him choke on a laugh, “Oh, give me a break.”

The rest of the evening goes considerably smoothly, the people who have come to the celebration seem to be having fun and Julieta’s food is as good as ever, soothing the anxiety-induced headache that has been building between Bruno’s eyebrows during the past few hours, and soon they’re all gathering around the main hall of the house, his mother standing in the middle of it ready to make one of her usual party speeches.

Her stance is as proud as ever, but the sight of it isn’t as oppressing as it used to be. It feels more motherly now, safer, like all that pride and unwavering confidence is protecting them all instead of oppressing them into their designated duties and fates. It’s nice. It’s also helped by the fact that a couple of hummingbirds have decided that Alma’s hair is soft enough to nest into, and are currently dozing off on a braid.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming by tonight,” she starts, moving her head to nod at every friendly face she recognized, though not enough to disturb the two sleeping birds, which makes for a frankly silly yet adorable image, “Our Antonio’s gift keeps growing every day, helping every creature around him, and we’re happy to celebrate it every chance we get,” she motions for her grandchild in question, beckoning him to her, and he doesn’t hesitate to scurry over to stand next to her, proudly upright like a little boy scout, a small pack of animals on his heels, “In this instance, Antonio’s gift has allowed him to save one of his animals, altering him of the danger the capybara–“ Antonio whispers something quick to his grandma, and she smiles, nodding to him solemnly, “Daya was in, allowing him to act before it was too late. It’s something that will no doubt serve everyone in town, from the littlest of mice to our sturdy donkeys.”

Of course, she had to go and mention the usefulness of the gift. Some things never change. Bruno just sighs, biting into another arepa ruefully. He knows it’s the whole point of the encanto to serve and protect the community, but pushing that idea on a child? Eh, he’s not the biggest fan of the concept. But maybe it’s just jealously talking. His gift has never actually been useful to anyone, ever, so it’s not like he can relate to the righteousness of it all in any way.

Well, not anyone, ever.

Alma steps slightly aside, giving the floor to Antonio, to allow him to have a little speech if he so desires– and if the way he’s literally shaking in his little shoes with excitement is anything to go by he does desire– but before he starts talking he makes a little grabby motion towards the crowd, motioning for someone to come over. Andrés, more specifically.

The vet walks into the open floor as a few murmurs spread through the crowd (the townsfolk are really gossipy, it seems) and comes to stand by Antonio’s side, who immediately grabs his hand. Well, not his hand. Andrés is too big and Antonio too small for them to actually hold hands, so what the kid does is just sorta hang onto Andrés’s index finger, holding onto it with an absurd amount of solemnity and seriousness. It’s an adorable image and one Bruno wishes to treasure forever.

“I’d like to thank our local veterinarian, Andrés Salcedo, for helping me,” Antonio begins, and it sounds like it’s something he had written down and then learned by heart, and now Bruno is imagining an ecstatic Antonio being sat down by Pepa and Félix to write a little speech to deliver in honour of one of his animals recovering and it’s all so unfairly adorable, “I can talk to animals, but I can’t cure them. Andrés can, and he has been offering his services to our family the whole time since the encanto has been back. Daya wouldn’t have been able to make it without Andrés’s help, and I’m grateful that he has decided to work along with us.”

Andrés is smiling down at the kid like a goon, obviously enraptured by him, but when it’s his time to speak he sobers up, standing a little straighter to address the crowd, “Yes, it’s been an honour to help the Madrigal family, and it’s an even bigger honour to be able to announce that starting from today, Antonio and I will put our collective talents to use for the entire community and its animals. If any of your animals are ever in need of care, don’t hesitate to come to us,” another murmur spreads through the crowd, but this time it’s one of stupor and interest, and Antonio properly beams at it, tugging onto Andrés’s hand in excitement.

Then, Andrés meets Bruno’s eyes, and his gaze– previously all professional and business-like, save for when he had been looking at Antonio– goes soft all over, utter affection and adoration clearly written in the lines of his face, and Bruno has to wonder why he even felt the need to run and hide from a man like this, “Before I let you go back to your party I’d like to thank another person without whom Daya’s recovery wouldn’t have been possible: Bruno Madrigal,” the crowd goes quiet at once, and Bruno can feel dozens of eyes on him. Only a pair of those eyes matter to him, though, so he keeps on focusing on them, ignoring the rest. Julieta brandishing a rolling pin out of thin air menacingly does help, too, “When Daya was ill and I was sure she wasn’t going to make it, I sought out Bruno for a vision, hoping to find out whether she would make it or not. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving Antonio false hope, of trying to save what could not be saved, and I needed answers,” he briefly looks down when Antonio squeezes his finger, and that soft little smile is back on his face, “Bruno gave them to me, and told me that Daya would make a full recovery. And she did.”

The crowd erupts in a choir of murmurs once again, stupor and amazement zig-zagging through the townsfolk faster than any gossip had so far, but Bruno hears none of it. He’s too busy staring at Andrés, who’s already staring back. At the man who seems to be the only one to truly understand how Bruno’s gift works, that he’s not making things happen, he’s just foreseeing them, that accepted Bruno for who he is and what he has to offer, and who now is using everything that has ever been used against him in his advantage, and he’s left speechless.

They both know this isn’t how Bruno’s visions work. Daya made a full recovery because she was simply meant to, he just saw it and reported it to Andrés to calm his nerves. The townsfolk, however, seem to be still convinced that he somehow has the power to make things happen, to seal one’s faith with a prophecy, to turn visions into reality. And if they believe what Andrés just told them, from now on they’ll be convinced that he magically cured a sick animal with his gift alone. It might not be able to make them trust him like they trust the rest of the family, or to even make them like him, for the matter, but it’s already a step in the right direction.

He can see some of the people throwing glances at him, but they’re different now. They’re not wary or judgmental, but rather full of wonder and amazement, though he meets none of them, too busy staring right at Andrés, who’s already starting back and–

Well, he really wants to kiss him right now.

“Now, I think it’s time for some celebration,” his mother claps her hands, snapping him out of his little moment, and the crowd reanimates itself, freed from the odd stupor-like trance they’d been forced into by Andrés’s praise for Bruno, “We should have some of the good wine in the back, yes? Let’s bring that out, shall we?”

Someone cheers at the prospect– it’s Camilo, who immediately gets a scolding look from his father– while Luisa moves towards the kitchen to retrieve said wine and Bruno takes the opportunity to slip away towards his room. He has a limit when it comes to social situations, and that limit has well been surpassed the second Andrés addressed him as the saviour of that capybara openly in front of the village, cleaning a lifetime of bad reputation with a single sentence, and he really needs to take a breather somewhere quiet, in peace.

Not necessarily alone.

He sneaks up his stairs and into his room in silence, furtive like one of his rats, then up the ladder that leads to the upper floor. The sight of his room is a blessing, a warm cocoon in which he gladly seeks shelter, and he crawls over his bed until he’s curled up against the window, looking down at the ongoing party. Agustín had Luisa bring out the piano and he can see almost everyone is dancing along to his tunes, even his mother, being led into slow spins by Dolores as Mariano takes Pepa out on the dance floor. It’s a nice scene, and one he’s not unhappy to just observe, rather than participate in.

A soft knock sounds on the door downstairs before it creaks open, and he can hear soft footsteps hesitantly trail into the lower room before they stop, just shy of reaching the ladder to the bedroom. He already knows who it is with the kind of certainty that he saves only for his visions, and he takes a deep breath, calming himself. Just let yourself be happy.

“Hey,” Andrés’s voice sounds from below, and it’s almost a whisper, like he’s scared of breaking the calm in Bruno’s room, “Mind if I come up?”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

“Not at all,” he replies, his voice rough with emotion, and after another moment of hesitation he hears the ladder creak as Andrés climbs up. He stops when he’s halfway into the room, only his torso and hands visible, and he just sort of looks at Bruno opposite to him, still curled up like a little lemur. His gaze is also hesitant, as well as slightly worried, and Bruno wants nothing more than to wipe that look away from his face forever– it just doesn’t suit him.

“Was that too much?” Andrés asks, and Bruno has to chuckle. Of course he’s worried about him. He really doesn’t deserve this man.

“No, no, it–“ he wracks his head for the right words, but can’t find any, so he just offers a smile. It comes out wobbly, but part of Andrés’s concern seems to fade away, “I don’t think anyone has ever done something like that for me. My sisters used to when we were younger, but then I started giving them bad visions and they just sort of stopped, but you–“

He breaks off, not knowing how to properly express how grateful he is for this man, so he just pats the space beside him on the bed, inviting. Hoping. Andrés’s face goes through whatever the opposite of the five stages of grief is, and he closes the remaining distance between them, approaching the bed. He has the care to tip off his shoes before settling on it next to Bruno, which is oddly adorable.

The light of the moon and the still ongoing party downstairs is illuminating half of his face and he looks painfully beautiful next to him, “I’m sorry, I’m really having trouble trying to find a way to reply to that in a manner that doesn’t include insulting your family, who I don’t particularly wish to be fired by,” Bruno has to laugh at that, and Andrés chuckles in reply, settling more comfortably against the windowsill. He’s curled up with his knees underneath himself but even then he’s still significantly taller than him, which is just unfair, “You never should have gone through anything you did. Nothing you see is your fault, and I’m sorry you weren’t told so enough.”

He can’t do anything more than nod, too overwhelmed to reply, and just scoots closer to Andrés until their knees are touching, not missing the way the other man’s breath hitches at the contact. They look like a pair of hummingbirds, all huddled together, and– oh. Right. It’s about to happen.

Andrés seems to sense the shift in Bruno’s mood because he continues, “I don’t know what you saw, that night, that made you freak out, but I’m sure you had a good reason to,” his voice is odd, almost feeble. He sounds hesitant. He sounds scared, “Julieta approached me one day and told me that it was nothing bad, it was just something you needed to metabolize, which I had already sort of assumed. But then Pepa cornered me the same afternoon and pretty much threatened to send a hurricane after me if I ever hurt you, so I kind of got mixed ideas about what you could’ve seen.”

Bruno chuckles at the thought of a furious Pepa trying to give her big sister talk to a poor and unaware Andrés, and he reaches out to set a hand on the vet’s arm. Andrés properly shivers, and oh, it seems like he wasn’t the only one struggling with the so-called pining, was he? “They’re a bit overly protective since I got back, but they usually mean well,” he brushes his thumb back and forth on Andrés's skin and marvels as he closes his eyes at the contact, almost like he’s pained by it. He’d pull away, but Andrés had- seemingly unconsciously, grabbed his wrist to keep him still where he is, so he persists, scooting closer still and eliciting another tiny shiver with the motion, “I swear it was nothing upsetting, what I saw. I just needed to think it over.”

Andrés opens his eyes then, and the light from the party downstairs is dancing in his eyes. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more beautiful than in this moment, “If you saw me do something you’re uncomfortable with, or that you don’t want–“

He cuts off when Bruno curls his other hand around the side of his neck, and his eyes are wide, afraid and hopeful at the same time, and Bruno is suddenly struck with the realization that the family was right, this man has probably been longing after him for god only knows how many years, loving him despite his curse, and had most likely immediately connected the dots and realized what it is that Bruno must’ve seen in his future that had upset him so. And here he still is, next to him, under his hands, practically trembling with built-up tension, like he’s struggling to keep himself still from reaching out for Bruno.

For once, Bruno is one step ahead, and just marvels at the way Andrés closes his eyes with a tiny inhale as he moves his hand closer to his jaw, angling him towards him.

“Bruno–“ he starts, choked up, but is cut off by the press of Bruno’s lips on his. It’s a brief touch, butterfly-soft, and it feels like an electric shock at the same time. Neither of them dares move, just basking in the closeness and the contact of skin against skin until Bruno pulls away to lean his forehead against Andrés’s. The vet’s eyes are screwed closed, and he looks as tense as a violin string, threatening to snap at any moment’s notice.

“Please–“ he chokes out, his hand on Bruno’s wrist tightening almost painfully, but Bruno doesn’t care. He pushes his wrist into the grip, just to see what reaction it will cause, and chuckles a warm breath of air across Andrés’s lips when he effectively shudders with it, “Please tell me you’re not doing this only because you saw it in the vision.”

Bruno shuts him up with a second kiss, just on the corner of his lips, and the little whimper that escapes Andrés almost undoes him, “That’s not how it works, silly,” he mocks, because Andrés knows exactly how it works, he seems to be the only one who knows exactly how it works and Bruno just really really wants to kiss him again, but also would rather not give him a heart attack while doing so, “I saw it in the vision because I’m doing this.”

Andrés finally opens his eyes, and the molten chocolate of them is shining with unshed tears and the light of the moon. Bruno has only one moment to marvel at how utterly, insanely beautiful he is before Andrés takes a hold of his shirt collar and pulls him into a kiss.

It’s the sweetest thing Bruno has ever experienced, passionate enough to transpire the obvious pining– yes, alright, it is pining– both of them have gone through, but not enough to overwhelm either of them. He had expected Andrés to kiss him as softly as he speaks and looks at him, like a gentle caress and a lingering touch, but it looks like was wrong in that regard. Andrés kisses him like his life depends on it, little adorable whimpers escaping him as he does so, and Bruno can’t help a surprised yelp when two strong arms circle around his waist and pull him close, settling him on the vet’s lap, changing the angle but not the man’s desperation.

“Hey,” he soothes as he pulls away just enough to look into each other’s eyes, still giving Andrés little lingering pecks because apparently now that he finally worked himself to the brink of insanity and kissed him he doesn’t seem to want to stop any time soon, and neither does Andrés, “I’m not going anywhere.”

He meant it as a joke, but Andrés stops in his tracks, looking up at him– oh that is quite nice actually, to have him look up for once– and tightening his grip on him just slightly, “Promise?”

His voice is again that mix of hopeful and scared and Bruno just wants to kiss him until he forgets about why he was even worried in the first place. Then, rather brightly, he realizes that now he can, is even encouraged to, if Andrés’s warm hands on his hips are any indication, and he saves enough time to utter a solemn, “Promise,” before they’re kissing again.

Eventually, the initial desperation wears off, and they’re just exchanging kiss after kiss, so soft it almost hurts in its tenderness, until they pull away just enough to embrace each other more properly, Andrés’s face squished into Bruno’s neck and Bruno’s leaning against Andrés's forehead. He feels the vet leave a little kiss on the side of his throat and he can’t help arch up into the touch, Andrés’s hand on his back keeping him close, and he just feels so protected and cared for and loved in every way he thinks he might just burst from happiness.

They stay like that for a while, just enjoying each other’s touch, leaving lingering kisses on each other’s skin and watching the party continue on without them downstairs. It’s only when a yawn catches him off guard that Bruno gets a brilliant idea and he tries to shift off of Andrés’s lap to try and lay down. It’s pointless, because the vet has him against his chest so tightly he’s effectively trapped– in a good way, like one would be by an overly affectionate bear– and he just gets a hum of query in return. Andrés doesn’t even lift his head, the hedonist, and Bruno just sort of has to tug at his sleeve.

“Just– will you lie down with me for a while?” he asks when he finally manages to pry Andrés off of him enough to look him in the eye. There’s no other way to describe the look he’s wearing: he looks like he’s drunk off kisses.

“Bruno, I will lie down with you forever,” he says solemnly, and Bruno thinks he might just love him.

“That is incredibly sweet, but I think enough to have a proper sleep will work for now,” he starts leaning backwards, pulling Andrés with him as he goes. He groans in pain when his aching bones touch the soft mattress, and then chuckles as he sees the vet above him trying to figure out how to relocate his limbs still tangled up with Bruno’s and how to make them work properly.

“Just– just slide down,” he tugs at him, trying to get him to lie down on top of him, but Andrés huffs distressed.

“Bruno, mi vida, I’m three times your size,” he tries to slip in the endearment in a casual manner, but he blushes furiously, and Bruno has no choice but to kiss that ridiculous face of his, postponing the rest of the sentence for a little while, “I’m going to crush you.”

“I need you to press my errant soul back into my body,” he explains, and Andrés lifts his head long enough to give him a disbelieving and slightly put-out look.

“That has to be the most deranged thing I’ve heard all week,” his love mutters, but he does comply, and Bruno sighs in relief as he feels every inch of Andrés pressing down on him like an overly lovable weight blanket. And his errant soul, as predicted, is pressed back into his not so errant body.

“Really? You mustn’t have spent as much time with my family as you were supposed to, then,” his voice comes out a bit strained, and Andrés rearranges himself enough to let him breathe properly, while not declining his apparently deranged request. His head ends up nestled somewhere in the nape of his neck, and Bruno reasons that this is probably the happiest he’s been in a long, long time.

“Hey, can I just say something?” he whispers after a while, pressing a quick kiss to Andrés’s temple where he can reach. The vet gives an answering hum, to let him know he’s listening, and the vibration makes Bruno shiver– which in turn makes Andrés smile broadly against his skin, “I think you’re my favourite person.”

The smile widens at that, and Andrés’s arms tighten around him. A firework shoots up and explodes into the sky from somewhere in the back garden, and the green light of it filters through the window, throwing a momentary emerald blanket over them, “You’re also my favourite person.”

Beaming like a lunatic, Bruno settles closer to Andrés and closes his eyes, feeling nothing but safe, cared for, well-cocooned and loved. For the first time since he can remember, he doesn’t have a single nightmare that night.