Golden days☀️

Chapter three

As soon as they arrive at the center, Handanovic and Skriniar are there to greet them.
Chris feels at peace, finally starting to unwind. He talks and asks them about their night, and they are all more than happy to answer his questions and listen to him talk.

Barella joins them, and starts talking loudly, like he always does.
Chris tenses up a bit, the new addition to the group being someone he doesn't know if he can trust yet.
D'Ambrosio immediately sees this change in Chris' behaviour and places his hand on the dane's back in a friendly and hopefully incouraging gesture (he's trying out his previous theory about Chris and physical contact).

Chris relaxes in to his touch and tentatively talks to Nicolò.
People don't give Nicolò enough credit, Skriniar thinks to himeslf.

He's really smart and observing; he noticed how the blonde reacted to his arrival, so he lowers his voice and jokes back calmly to Chris who, to everybody's surprise, bursts out laughing.
All of them soon follow and D'Ambrosio thinks that as long as one of them is with Chris, he will do just fine.

They walk together to the meeting point, where they find the other guys.
Conte tells everybody to go and unpack in their rooms.
"See you in 40 at the field, we'll start with some individual exercises."

Some annoyed noises are heard, apparently nobody likes individual training.
At least they have a match against each other in the afternoon.

Everyone goes to the reception to find out what room they are in and Chris is relieved to discover that his and Brozo's room is just two rooms away form D'Ambrosio and Skriniar's one.

The number is 28.

When he opens the door he finds Brozo laying on one of the beds, using his phone.
Chris greets him, starting to unpack.
"Morning...How are you?"
"Shut up blondie. I'm busy here"
Brozo says, not even looking at the dane.
Not a good start.
Chris tries again.
"Do you mind if i open the window?" He says shyly, afraid of the other's reaction.
Brozo gets up quickly, and goes to stand in front of the blonde.
He takes a step forward, to which Chris takes a step back, finding himself with his back against the white wall just beside the door.
He lowers his gaze and Brozo says with disgust:
"Don't try to pretend you wanna be my friend. I know you're here to steal my place. I wanted to be your roommate just to show you who's in charge here. And if you think that a weird and worthless guy like you can-"
His rant is interrupted by the sound of a knock, and the midfielder leaves Chris to open the door.

It's Bastoni, who's here to take Chris with him and give him a tour of the place.
Apparently it was D'Ambrosio's idea, but the young defender offered to do it.

Alessandro decides not to talk about what he heard and saw, thinking that he should just tell it to his friends later.

He talks to Chris:
"Hey Chris, i wanted to show you around. Are you up for it? You should change, our tour ends where we'll have our individual session"
He smiles calmly, trying to make the blonde feel as safe as possible.

Chris just nods,still visibly shaken by what happened, and goes to change.
An awkward silence falls in the room, during which Brozo sends the fakest of smiles in Bastoni's direction and returns to his spot on the bed.
The two players leave with not as much as a word to Brozo.

Bastoni tries his best to distract Chris and calm his nerves, and he's quite happy when he sees the dane smile softly at one of his lame jokes.

At the end of the tour, Chris is called by Conte to talk about his training and Bastoni goes where Handanovic, Skriniar and D'Ambrosio are chatting happily to tell them about what he witnessed just outside Chris's room.

He's sure that they won't like it any more than he did and that D'Ambrosio will be the one to confront Chris and Brozo about it.
They all noticed how close the defender and the blonde were getting, and they knew how protective D'Ambrosio could be of his friends.