Bewitched (Neymar Jr) ✔

#11, Preparations

For the next few days, Avalon was focused on her main job: taking care of Davi. Despite her and Neymar's concerns regarding his latest going-to-bed ritual, the boy had taken a liking to Avalon tucking him in; more and more with each passing day. Of course, knowing that his dad was only a call away was helping matters immensely.

So were the actual video calls that helped the boy fall asleep.

And those calls, oddly enough, usually ended with Avalon and Neymar talking after Davi had fallen asleep.

After Zelo's curious and all too knowing look when he'd caught her during one of their phone conversations - at which she'd shooed him away and blatantly refused any explanation afterwards, mainly because she didn't have any herself -, she'd decided to not think too much about it. Lest she'd interpret too much into it. Which she definitely shouldn't. They were just conversations over the phone, after all. And they weren't all that long, either. What were ten, fifteen minutes every night? Nothing. That's what.

"I gotta tell you," Neymar had said during one of their video calls. "I can't fathom how you could've known. But I did see red yesterday."

Davi had already been sleeping soundly, so Avalon had quietly left his room and headed for her own. There, she'd settled on her new comfy lounging chair on her balcony (it had been a rather mild night). A tiny lamp on a small stand next to her chair and the phone's lit up display in her hand were the only sources of light, casting her face in a mix of orange and blue. Neymar, from what she could tell from the video chat window, was sitting on his hotel bed with his back leaning against the head post.

Avalon raised her eyebrows at his words. "You did?"

"Yeah. Got a nasty cut from a defender's elbow. Bled like a pig." There was an amused and slightly proud gleam in his eyes and a half-sided grin on his face when he pointed to the small white band-aid right above the trimmed curve of his eyebrow. He even held up the phone closer to it for a second so she couldn't possibly miss it.

Men and their inexplicable need to show off their injuries. Like battle wounds from a war they'd hands down won despite the harm they'd endured.

My premonition from a few days ago in the kitchen, Avalon remembered. So Neymar had seen red, after all. She made an admirable sound to cater to his manly ego. Which was obviously seeking approval.

"My, it's a miracle you survived that!" she exaggerated, widening her eyes and putting a hand on her cheek. "It looks indeed pretty nasty. Could have knocked you out and made you forget your name, I'm sure. Quick, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Ha ha," was his dry response. He waved off her comment, though still visibly happy that she'd acknowledged his "battle wound". "It actually looked far worse than it was. Just a scratch, is all. I don't presume you saw it. The match?"

That would have to be a definite No. Her care for football - or lack thereof - hadn't changed ever since that match she'd gone to at the Camp Nou a few weeks ago. Never mind who her employer was. Football just wasn't for her.