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"Ali? Ali!"
Alisson slowly awoke, barely able to make out the scene in front of him. He didn't wake up easily, but anybody would wake up when somebody was playing cymbals literally nine inches away from their ear.
He closed his eyes as he tried to figure out who it was. Robinson was chaotic, sure, but he wasn't sleeping in the same room as Alisson anymore. Neither were Firmino and Fabinho, who'd both departed for Saudi Arabia after five years of playing and living together. There was only one other person in the room now.
"Celo?" Alisson rolled over, careful not to roll off the bed. In the dark, he could only just make out Pitaluga's shape. "What is it? And for the love of the Selecao, put down the cymbals."
Pitaluga reluctantly put the cymbals down. "I can't sleep. I thought some music would help, but it only made me more awake. I even tried those extremely boring Mozart CDs that I found in the basement."
"So that's why I heard 'Le Nozze di Figaro' at one forty-six in the morning." Alisson rolled over to the edge of the bed and glanced at Pitaluga. "What are you waiting for? Come in."
Pitaluga hesitated, hovering at the foot of the bed. "I-I'm sure you don't want to deal with an insomniac at such an hour. I don't want to disturb you."
Insomniac? Where have I heard that before? Despite the insanely late hour, Alisson couldn't help but laugh a bit. Fabinho had struggled with mild insomnia, which had resolved itself a few months before he'd left the club. As a solution, Fabinho and Alisson would squeeze into Firmino's bed.
While Fabinho was a year and twenty-one days younger than Alisson--yes, they'd counted it--the two acted as if they were the same age. Firmino was only slightly older than the other two, but he alternated between preventing the others from causing mischief and helping them orchestrate it. They'd held each other together through the most chaotic and turbulent moments.
Now only Alisson was left, with the twenty-year-old that he and his actual brother had recruited from Brazil and brought to the Apex League. So while Alisson picked up the pieces from Firmino and Fabinho's departures, Pitaluga looked up to him like an older brother.
"Ali?" Pitaluga's voice broke his train of thought. The younger goalkeeper remained at the end of the bed, holding onto the footboard. "Anybody home?"
"Oh, sorry. It's just...I used to do this with the other guys. I got caught in thought, come in!"
Pitaluga remained still, fiddling with his pajama top. Alisson got out of bed, scooped up Pitaluga, and much to the younger's amusement, dropped him off on the other side of the bed. He climbed in, and the two were next to each other.
"I still can't sleep."
"It's been three damn seconds.”
"Tell me a story.”
Alisson rolled his eyes, exasperated yet charmed by Pitaluga's request. “ Bem . I'll tell you a story, but I'm going to warn you: it'll be terrible.”
For the first time since he'd woken him up, Pitaluga laughed. "It can't be that bad if you're telling it.”
This was only giving Alisson more and more deja vu. On the nights that he or Fabinho couldn't sleep and they climbed into Firmino's bed, they'd beg the older man for a story. Firmino would often start by saying that they were bad stories, but his wild tales of strange places and wacky creatures always did the trick to keep them entertained until they all fell asleep, Fabinho sandwiched in the middle like a tall, skinny burrito.
Oh, now he had an idea.
“Once upon a time, there was a ridiculously skinny burrito. It was so skinny that it was barely visible. If a slight breeze came around, the burrito was in severe danger of blowing away—”
“Make it a chalupa. They're cooler.”
“Fine, it was a skinny chalupa-burrito. The chalupa-burrito was best friends with a shiny tangerine. The tangerine's skin was so shiny, it reflected light off its skin. They also shared the cafeteria with a very, very, very pale Jammie Dodger. It was covered in the whitest powdered sugar, and even the strawberry jam inside was pale. Despite how awful it would taste with what the diner already had, a pale Jammie Dodger kept making its way onto everyone's lunch trays.
“The pale Jammie Dodger was best friends with a bottle of extremely low-sugar Ribena. The bottle of Ribena was an ancient relic from the Aztec civilization, and it possessed mysterious powers that prevented it from ever expiring.”
“Where's the MHRA when you need them?”
Does he not realize the glaringly obvious references to our teammates? “The pale Jammie Dodger's other best friend was a bowl of Scouse stew. The Scouse stew was best friends with a container of fish and chips, but the fish and chips bolted to a faraway land.
“Coincidentally, the tangerine was already in that land. It was so deserted, that the tangerine—”
“Shriveled up and died?”
“NO! The tangerine was preserved in a refrigerator, just like the fish and chips and the chalupa-burrito.”
"I don't see much plot development for the bowl of Scouse stew."
“ Furthermore , there was a frankfurter who was best friends with a Dutch stroopwafel. They had all sorts of grand ideas for world dominance, but they were always foiled by the lack of resources from the over-stingy kitchen suppliers. They were always kind to the other foods in the kitchen, even though the frankfurter and the stroopwafel had the cooking abilities of an asphalt strip.
“On the contrary, there were two plates of tapas. The plate of shrimp tapas happened to pair with almost every dish, including the pistachio baklava that usually remained in the corner of the refrigerator. The second plate of tapas was made of stir-fried baby sugar peas, an odd combination for tapas. The shrimp tapas and the pistachio baklava loved the baby sugar pea tapas like their own son.
“And there was also a brigadeiro who was good friends with a pair of caramel candies. The brigadeiro was also friends with the chalupa-burrito and the tangerine, and he’d also developed a bond with the pale Jammy Dodger. All the foods had developed some sort of bond, at least when they weren't trying to avoid getting eaten.”
Alisson waited for Pitaluga to comment on how ridiculous the story was. But all he heard was light, even snores. Alisson had been so absorbed in his story that he didn't even realize that Pitaluga had fallen asleep.