How on earth did it come to this?
Jude sat on the bed of his hotel room in Marbella, staring at his phone in disbelief where some TikTok edit of a shirtless Erling Haaland was playing. He scrolled and another video of the norwegian popped up. And again and again and again.
It all started a few weeks ago after he had a talk with their team captain, Marco Reus who was insanely addicted to TikTok and wanted to convince him to install the app. Jude had laughed and refused at first, but somehow the rest heard about it, too and within a short period of time they all tried to persuade him until he finally gave in and downloaded the app. A few weeks afterwards he had to agree TikTok was probably the most addictive thing on planet earth right now and his screen time shot up pretty soon.
It didn't really bother him until the start of the world cup. Slowly but surely, the videos became more and more football-based than they already were, shifting from the best goals to the never ending Messi or Ronaldo debate or just some edits of a player. And at some point, the first video of his Dortmund teammate Erling Haaland showed up. Jude didn't think anything of it at first and kept liking the tiktoks until the blonde norwegian was all over his ForYou page.
"It's cuffing season and all the girls be needin', I need a big boy, I want a big boy, gimme a big boy~"
Jude sighed, dragging his hand across his face as SZA's voice filled the room. Again. Ever since that song got popular on TikTok, fans seemed to think Erling was the literal embodiment of the lyrics, editing the refrain under almost every tiktok the brunette saw of him. But they kind of weren't wrong either. And because Jude had seen the norwegian shirtless thanks to the videos multiple times, he slowly started to agree with all the fans, realising how hot his teammate actually was and it didn't take long for it to affect his play. During training, he'd often caught himself stealing glances at Erling or even stared shamelessly whenever he pulled up his jersey which caused him to mess up some exercises.
"Ugh, I can't keep watching that or I'll go insane... Fucking algorithm." he cursed, throwing his phone somewhere on his bed before getting up and heading to the bathroom.
Jude quickly hopped under the shower, sighing as the hot water met his skin, slowly washing away the sweat from today's training session. However, his thoughts immediately wandered back to Erling just like they always did whenever Jude had nothing else to think about. Resting his head against the wall, he dragged his hand over his face. He felt like a teenager who just developed their first crush on someone and he was madly embarrassed, especially that it turned out to be Erling who was one of his best friends here at Dortmund.
Shaking his head, Jude reached for the shampoo bottle and started his shower routine, knowing that those embarrassing thoughts wouldn't go away anytime soon. Whilst he was in his own world, the door to his hotel room opened which went unnoticed by Jude.
"Jude? Are you here?" none other than Erling asked whilst taking off his shoes.
He walked inside and quickly heard the sound of the shower running. Deciding to just wait for the Brit here, the blonde walked over to his bed and sat down, pulling out his phone when a familiar song caught his attention. The sound was quiet and Erling had to rummage around the sheets for a bit but after a few moments he held Jude's phone in his hand, SZA singing in the background of a tiktok edit of him, walking around shirtless.
In the meantime, Jude was done with showering and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his waist before applying some creams. Looking at himself in the mirror, the brunette silently told himself once more to stop those thoughts as they were pointless and Erling wouldn't even want him anyways. After repeating it a few times, Jude took a deep breath and opened the door, walking towards his suitcase to fetch some clothes.
