Teenage Fever // Jude Bellingham

50

Wednesday, 23rd of November

"Just forget about it for three hours, you can cry yourself to sleep later." I tried to lighten up Jamal's mood with a joke, while patting his shoulder to show my support.

Convincing him and Karim to go out after losing their first game hadn't been easy, but me and Khai somehow managed it, saying how it'd get their mind off of things.

"Exactly." Khai pointed at me while nodding, "not everyone can do ten out of ten performances all the time. Y'all aren't french."

"That's foul." I complained, Jamal dropping his head with a head shake as well while i heard Jude giggle next to me.

"Hey, what are you laughing at?" i raised a brow at him, "that's bad karma, before you know it you're gonna end up being grilled by Mbappe."

He stopped laughing and pressed his lips into a flat line to show his displeasure. I patted his thigh in return, and snuck a quick kiss onto his cheek to make sure that he knew i was only joking; that i'd support him no matter what.

Jude ingulfed my hand on his thigh with his own, absentmindedly using his thumb to stroke over the back of it while he continued talking to Karim across from us.

I blended out the butterflies in the pit of my stomach that told me to just keep looking at him talking, and turned to my left instead where Jamal was still sulking.

Just as Jude, he had started in his first world cup game. But sadly unlike him, he didn't win.

Which i personally imagine to be really hard to get over. He was probably dealing with self doubt and with blaming himself, especially since he had been praised so much lately. In Germany, they all counted on him as their future in international football.

"You alright?" I laid my hand on his shoulder, to which he reacted with snapping his head into my direction. Just as i had expected, he had been in his own head again.

"Hm?" he looked a little lost as he looked back at me, "oh, yeah sure." He nodded, rather unconvincingly, before turning away and pretending to listen to what the others were taking about.

"Jamal."

"What?" He mumbled, taking a sip from his drink to distract himself from my prying eyes.

"You're doing it again." i whispered, although no one paid attention to us anyways. Jude's thumb was now drawing circles on the back of my hand.

"Doing what?" he acted clueless, still avoiding my eyes. He knew what i was talking about. Even though we've only known each other for roughly seven months, we had grown close enough to being open with each other.

"Shutting us out." I stated as a matter of fact, glancing around us at our friends to make it clear what i meant.

He sighed, and my eyes dropped to his hands. He was fidgeting with a ring on his thumb, a habit of his i've picked up on, since i did a similar thing when i was nervous or overwhelmed.

"I'm not doing it on purpose, i swear." He laid a hand on his heart, to underline the swearing part. "It's not that deep anyways. We fucked up, nothing to talk about there."

I had to sigh as well. At least he said 'we' and not 'I'.

"You know i can tell that there's a lot you have to say, idiot." I furrowed my brows at him, and used my finger to gesticulate around his face. Anyone could tell by the expression that he had been wearing the whole evening.