Teenage Fever // Jude Bellingham

43

Sunday, 26th of April

"That's a lot of people..." I trailed to myself as I continued scrolling through my following requests on instagram.

They've been piling up since over a week now, which resulted into me now having to look through thousands of accounts that I could care less about. But it had to be done, because they wouldn't just disappear on their own.

Besides just random people, I also recognized some news outlets or sorts of gossip pages. I had hoped that I wouldn't be interesting enough to them since I've only attended one public event that they could run their mouths about, but apparently not.

After staring at the list for another few minutes in utter disbelief, I just decided that the simplest decision was to just make my account public.

Why did it matter anyways? After all, this wasn't about me.

And that's exactly what I did. Because if people were going to pay attention to everything I was doing, I might as well try and make the best of it. Who knows, maybe something's in for me?

Our lives were changing rapidly lately - probably due to them being more and more interconnected with each other everyday - so one inconvenience more or less wouldn't hurt either.

But I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. And I knew he wouldn't, either.

I was going to figure this out somehow, and he'd be there.

Monday, 14th of November

"Are you gonna be there?" Jude's tired voice asked from the other line, followed by a small yawn which made me stupidly smile to myself.

"Yes, Jude. I've told you, like, five times in the last forty-eight hours." I replied, making sure to not sound too serious because I knew he'd take that personally.

"My ego needed to hear it again." He replied, the smirk being audible in the way he said it.

"Traveling isn't good for you." I ignored his antics, "did you even sleep yet?"

"I tried." He mumbled, and I heard another yawn. He seemed pretty tired to me, so I don't know why he couldn't sleep.

"What do you mean 'you tried' , just close your eyes and sleep." I said a bit dumbfounded, as if it was the most obvious thing on earth which to be honest, it was.

"Oh, really?" He said mockingly, "didn't know that."

"Then stop being annoying and go to sleep?" I replied just as sassily as him, making him groan in frustration at my petty behavior.

"You're missing." His voice was suddenly softer and more sincere than before, when we were just fooling around with each other.

I had to bite my lip to hide my grin, even though he couldn't see me. Just the fact that he just admitted to sleeping better with me beside him made me want to giggle. It was stupid since we had now been together for about eight months; but I still felt the same butterflies as I did in the beginning.

I might even go as far and say that each day, I fall for him a little more.

Which had made being apart for the past two weeks even more dreadful. He had been with his family before leaving for Qatar yesterday, and I had been busy with school and my friends; to distract me from missing him.

We had been apart before -back in the summer because we both went on different vacations, and whenever he'd go to England - but this time, it somehow felt different.

Maybe because even before he left, there hadn't been many opportunities for us to spend time together. We had somehow always missed each other.

"I know, baby." I sighed, snuggling my head further into my pillow, "I'll be down there in less than a week."

"That's so long." He complained, my ears perking up at his wording - but just as I was about to comment on it he interrupted me. "Don't, it's not funny."

"Alright, fine." I rolled my eyes - which again, he couldn't see, but I hoped he could distinguish that i had been offended by that from the tone of my voice.

I glanced at the time on the top left corner of the screen; 03:45 a.m. Automatically, I let out a yawn.
I felt Luz stretch somewhere next to me, releasing a audible yawn as well.

It was even later for Jude, there was a time difference of an hour between us. Considering that he had just gotten to the hotel a hour ago, it was a mystery to me how he could voluntarily still stay awake.

"You should sleep." I broke the silence we both seemed to not have noticed. We could just sit in silence, knowing that the other was there. Even if they were hundreds of miles away.

"With you." His ambiguous answer caught me off guard, and I could hear a small chuckle from the other end of the line following shortly after.

"Oh...?"

"Got ya." I noticed some shuffling in the background, before I heard the sound of a light switch being flipped. "Good night, Tia."

"Good night, Jude." I got up to turn off the small lamp on my desk that I had kept on to hinder me from falling asleep, before picking up my phone from the sheets again where the call was still going on.

I had expected him to hang up, but whatever.

"I love you." I said quietly, but I didn't get a response. Instead, there only was the lightest sound of breathing on the other end of the line. He fell asleep.

big time jump lol
actually had a "bonus" chapter in my drafts but whatever 😍 dunno if I should continue this extra story line (World Cup) so lmk

last week was draining so excuse the absence 💋