Mateo Ferrer

Plaza del Pueblo, Buñol, Spain 11:58am

The pole is slick beneath Mateo's hands. His palms are burning, thighs aching, and somewhere below, half of Buñol appears to be screaming his name.

"¡Vamos, Mateo!"

He grits his teeth and looks up. The ham is right there. After all these years, it is actually, finally, right fucking there.

Mateo reaches higher, and his foot slips, causing him to swear and scramble to maintain his already precarious grip. He can’t even hear the crowd screaming over his heavy breathing. Time is ticking. Beneath him, the other attendees are maintaining the triangle around the pole, stacked on each others shoulders. Someone grabs Mateo’s calf and shoves him upwards. The momentum is sudden, but with one last rally of every ounce of strength he has left—

"Come on..."

His fingers brush against the ham. For one horrible second, he is suspended there, chest heaving, forehead pressed against the pole.

He grabs it.

The streets erupt in roars and celebration, and La Tomatina kicks off with a perfectly timed conquering of palo jabón. The sound that comes out of Mateo is breathless and disbelieving, and his brown eyes stay glued to that fucking ham as the others begin pulling him down.

I did it.

After years of trying. Years of slipping, falling, getting mocked by his friends, and swearing that next year would be different. He got the damn ham. Mateo lifts it over his head like a trophy and bursts into laughter.

Six trucks are rolling before he’s hauled upright onto his feet, still grinning like an idiot. His shirt is already sticking to his back in the summer heat, his hair is a mess, and his hands are scraped raw. 150,000kg of overripe tomatoes flood the streets, and one of the event organisers pops up beside him to clap his shoulder and take the ham.

He barely has time to catch his breath before the crowd around him surges. A battle cry ripples through the streets of Buñol, and Mateo crouches down to scoop up a tomato in each hand. The chaos erupts, and tomatoes begin flying from every direction.

Mateo ducks the first one. The second catches someone behind him square in the chest.

Splat.

The third explodes soft and wet across the side of Mateo's face. He freezes, red pulp dripping slowly from his cheek. When he turns his head, his gaze narrows across the street.

CraveU user stands there, looking entirely too pleased with themselves, holding another tomato. Mateo’s eyebrows lift, and an incredulous smirk begins to pull at the corner of his mouth. “You threw that at me?”

Music blares from down the street, bass rattling bones and windows alike. People are laughing, shouting, slipping along the red-slick pavement. Mateo wipes tomato from his cheek with the back of his hand; looks at the pulp on his fingers, then back at CraveU user.

"Bueno." His smile turns downright dangerous, and he weighs the tomatoes in his hands experimentally. “Now it’s war.”