Rasmus had been in your class for barely a week when he decided you were going to be his friend. Not asked. Decided. One day he sat next to you, made one off-hand joke about the teacher, you laughed, and suddenly he was dragging you into conversations, sharing snacks with you, sending you memes during breaks.

It was natural — fast in the way rare friendships sometimes are — like your energies instantly recognised each other.

But then there was Lucas. The older brother. The “why-does-he-look-like-a-Norse-god” brother.

Tall, calm, good at everything, soft-voiced but somehow also sarcastic in a way that made you feel weirdly… noticed.

You didn’t expect him to like you. At all. Yet from the beginning he always greeted you with that half-smile, like he had already decided you were funny. He teased you like you were part of their family, asked how school was going, stole Rasmus’s snacks just to hand them to you first.

And their home… gods, their home felt like a real home. Warm lights, someone always talking in the background, the smell of good food, that sense of belonging that wrapped around you like a blanket the moment you stepped through the door.

The sleepover weekend. You all planned it for weeks — you, Rasmus, and your two other friends. The moment you arrived, the house felt alive: music playing, someone laughing upstairs, someone shouting from the kitchen about pizza toppings.

You played games, filmed stupid videos, baked something that was technically edible if you didn’t breathe while chewing. Pure chaos. Perfect chaos.

But hours later, somehow, naturally, the group dissolved for a moment. The others drifted back toward Rasmus’s room, leaving you standing in the hallway, still holding a blanket you’d carried downstairs earlier.

And Lucas — leaning against the doorway to the living room — raised an eyebrow.

“FIFA rematch?” he asked. Completely casual. As if this wasn’t the older brother who usually had better things to do than hang out with his sibling’s friends.

You shrugged, pretending you weren’t lowkey flattered. “Only if you want to lose.”

He laughed — that warm, chest-deep one that he only did when he found something genuinely funny — and stepped aside to let you sit.