Harbinger Of Glory

The window shade was already down by the time the plane levelled out.

Leo had pulled it shut almost as soon as they got into the air.

If he was going to spend the next couple of hours in a metal tube, he might as well try to sleep through it.

Unfortunately, sleep wasn’t interested.

He shifted slightly in his seat and glanced across at Carlo in the pod beside his, who was out cold with his arms folded across his body and head tilted back.

"He could have at least shut his partition," Leo said as he tried to shut his before stopping a second later.

"Carlo," he said after a second, but no response came.

"Carlo," he said again and this time, the latter’s head moved slightly.

"Are we the only ones going from the group?"

At that, a single eye opened.

Carlo looked at him for a few seconds, clearly deciding whether the question justified being awake before sighing and then nestling further into his seat.

"I spoke to Udogie yesterday," he said eventually.

"After your call."

Leo nodded.

"He’s coming?"

"Yeah."

Carlo yawned.

"He called to ask if I’d got the letter. Asked about you too, but he said the others hadn’t really made that much of an impression on the new coach, so it seemed they’d have to work other!"

Leo nodded at that while Carlo closed his eye again and immediately resumed his relationship with sleep before opening his eye a second later and then shutting his partition.

"This guy," Leo muttered before busying himself with the screen in his pod.

A flight attendant stopped beside them a few minutes later.

"Can I get you anything?"

Leo looked up thoughtfully, but a second later, he shook his head.

"No, thank you."

Hearing that, the flight attendant smiled and then moved on.

By the time two hours had passed, Carlo had barely changed position once.

Leo, meanwhile, had discovered at least seven new ways to fail at sleeping.

When the plane finally began its descent, he was still awake.

Rome greeted them a little later beneath clear skies and a steady afternoon traffic.

They came through arrivals in the stream of passengers and emerged into the afternoon with their luggage.

A second later, they found the curb where Leo sat on his suitcase while Carlo stood a few paces away scanning the road, and trying to place whatever their mode of transport was going to be.

Yet after a quarter of an hour passed, nothing remotely close to their transport had passed.

"They couldn’t have forgotten, could they?" Carlo said, and it wasn’t entirely a question.

Leo didn’t answer because he was looking at his phone, which was showing the Wigan versus Gillingham match that had just kicked off.

The stream looked slightly pixelated from the airport WiFi, but it was functional enough.

Carlo came around behind him and looked at the screen over his shoulder.

"That’ll pass the time," he said as on-screen Jake got the ball and ran it into a blockade of defenders.

"This guy really can’t dribble for his life," Carlo muttered, earning a deep, agreeing groan from Leo.

Before either of them had settled into watching it properly, a voice came from behind them.

"You two have been sitting here the whole time?"

At that, they turned and found Udogie, standing there with his luggage.

On his face was a smile that told he’d been standing there for some time and watching the two.

"Did your plane just arrive?" Leo said as he glanced at his watch.

"Nope. We were all on the same flight," Udogie said. "I saw you both boarding."

"Really," Carlo said as Udogie nodded.

"I just bumped myself up to first class," Udogie said simply, "that is after I paid the difference. I just wanted to experience it, and I must say, I understand it now!"

Leo and Carlo looked at each other, then at Udogie again, who came up to stand beside them, right as a dark van pulled up to the curb.

The driver’s door opened, and a man came around it and looked at the three of them with the assessing glance of someone checking a list.

"Welcome back to Rome," he said a moment later and then opened the side door.

A few people nearby glanced over as the group gathered at the curb, drawn by the sight of several young men arriving together with matching luggage.

The driver noticed the attention, smiled to himself, and gestured toward the open door.

"Inside, please, before any of you get recognised. Marco’s expecting you!"

Leo got in and looked at Carlo.

"He said Marco?"

"He said Marco," Carlo confirmed.

Udogie looked between the two of them as he settled in.

"Guess your Italian blood is really waking up since you understood that? He said it in proper Roman slang."

"His Italian is getting better," Carlo said, with the mild pride of someone claiming partial credit.

"I never really stopped learning," Leo said.

"My teacher says it’s key!"

"And I am guessing that teacher is..."

"Tori, yes," Leo answered Carlo.

Hearing the conversation between the two, Udogie turned to Carlo with an investigative look on his face.

"Tori?" he said as Carlo smiled at the window and said nothing.

"So you won’t tell," Udogie said before turning to Leo, who was also smiling.

Before Udogie could say anything, Leo slipped on his headphones, causing Udogie to nod as he also focused his attention on his phone.

A while later, the van pulled away from the curb, all while Rome moved past the windows as they began the journey to Coverciano.

....

The coffee was good, and the weather was fine, so Vittoria had no reason to be sitting outside a coffee shop in Manchester looking like someone had taken something from her, and yet.

"He’s only been gone for half a day," Gianna said from across the small table.

Vittoria didn’t look up from her cup.

"It’s not that," she said.

"It is that."

"Forget it. You wouldn’t know," Vittoria said, earning a shocked look from Gianna.

"You know my boyfriend went too, right?" she said, but Vittoria ignored her.

Gianna, annoyed, shook her head until another sigh irritated her again.

Before she could speak, Vittoria’s phone lit up on the table.

The latter ignored it, but the moment she saw the name on the screen, she answered so quickly that Gianna almost choked on her drink.

The latter then watched her transform across the table, acting like a whole different human.

At the same time, she received a text from Carlo, talking about how they’d arrived in Rome.

She replied before looking back at Vittoria, who was now drawing circles on the edge of the table.