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It had been about hours since the match against Fulham had ended. Liverpool had secured three points, which helped their position and confidence going into the end of the season. The team would be driving back to Merseyside later, but for now, all of them were resting in their rooms.
That included Robertson, who was absentmindedly scrolling through the TV channels. He was waiting for Alexander-Arnold, who'd been away for half an hour under the premise of "checking on the lads". By now, Robertson was sure that only one teammate was involved, and that said teammate happened to be a certain twenty-three-year-old Hungarian midfielder. But if his best friend thought he was being slick, he was happy to let him have his moment. He would rib him endlessly over it, anyway.
Robertson had just settled on a channel carrying old soap opera reruns when his phone vibrated in his pocket. One look at the caller—the on-loan Fabio Carvalho—told Robertson that it was serious while confusing him as to potential reasons why.
"Fabio? What are you calling me for?"
"Shh!" Carvalho hissed from the other end. "Don't let Harvey hear that I'm on the phone. Set me up on Zoom, okay?"
Robertson raised an eyebrow at Carvalho's strange request. Yet, he opened his laptop and started connecting Carvalho to a Zoom call. "Don't you usually call Harvey for your schemes?"
"Never mind that. Listen, could you get Ali in the room and close the door?"
"Okay, then." Robertson shrugged and opened the hotel room door. He stood out from the opening, glancing around the empty hall. Alisson was nowhere to be seen, which wasn't a surprise considering that most of the team was probably resting in their rooms. Still, Carvalho was waiting, so Robertson decided to get Alisson's attention more boldly.
"Ali! Get yer perfectly tanned Brazilian backside over here!”
Alisson ran into the room and directly to Robertson, touching his forehead and neck as if he were a nurse and Robertson was the patient. "Are you okay? Is there an emergency?”
"Gee, I'm fine!" Robertson batted Alisson's hand away. "Fabio's on the phone, that's all.”
Alisson stared at Robertson, unimpressed. "And that was your reason for making me panic-run up three flights of thirty-degree high stairs?”
Robertson shrugged. "You could've just taken the elevator.”
"It was occupied! And based on that scream, I didn't want to risk getting stuck between floors.”
"You could hear me from that far?”
"Oh, never mind. Who's calling?”
"It's Fabio. He doesn't want Harvey to know.”
Alisson smiled at the mention of Carvalho, but it dropped immediately when he heard the last part. He turned to Robertson's laptop, waving at Fabio's image in Zoom. "You'd better not be up to anything illegal.”
"Oh, relax! I don't want Harv involved because I need two responsible people. No offence to Harvey, but the only responsibility I've ever seen him show around an animal was looking at a pet store fish tank without scooping the goldfish out with his bare hands.”
Robertson's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "Why would anyone do that?"
Alisson, meanwhile, didn't seem concerned at all. "When you go fishing and forget your net, the last resort can be surprising."
"Anyways." Robertson felt, for the sake of his sanity and his stomach, that it was best to switch the subject. "What's up, Fabio?"
Carvalho leaned back against the headrest of his bed. "Well, I need a favour from both of you. Are you busy tomorrow?"
"Nah, tomorrow's a rest day. We're good." Robertson glanced at Alisson with a smirk. "Unless Ali has to rescue a drunk Marcinho from a flock of pigeons again."
Alisson grunted, annoyed at the reminder. "Let's not discuss that more than we need to.”
"Thank goodness. I'm visiting my parents tomorrow, but my usual pet sitter is out sick and I can't find another one willing to sign the non-disclosure agreement.”
Robertson was beginning to see why Carvalho hadn't called Elliott for this job. "Did you say pet sitter? As in for your rabbits?"
"Yeah, that's what I meant. Two of the does just gave birth three weeks ago, so the bunnies are starting to explore. And there are dogs next door, so I don't feel safe leaving them alone.”
Alisson's eyes lit up. "Baby bunnies!"
Robertson, meanwhile, was back to his previous confusion. "I thought you were raising rabbits, not deer.”
"Adult female rabbits are called does, Robbo." Alisson turned back to Carvalho, smiling widely. "Tell us when and where, and we'll be there quicker than Divvy scored against Everton in 2018.”
Robertson's eyes narrowed. "But that was at the last minute! Did you forget everything that happened?”
Alisson shrugged. "Knowing fate, there'll probably be a roadblock or something. I'm allotting time for the queue.”
*
As it turned out, there was no queue or other holdup. Alisson and Robertson rang Carvalho's doorbell at exactly eight o'clock the next morning. A fully dressed Carvalho opened the door and blinked confusedly, before seemingly remembering their conversation and waving to them with a yawn.
"Morning, you two.”
"Are you okay, Fabio?" Alisson worriedly checked Carvalho's forehead for a fever. "You look tired, pequeno girassol. ”
"Don't worry, I'm fine. Harvey's always been the morning person between the two of us." Carvalho yawned again, rubbing at his eyes. "That's why he's the getaway driver.”
A long silence ensued. Alisson shook his head firmly. “Yep, I’m not even going to ask about it.”
“No judgement, mate, Trent’s the getaway driver between us.” Robertson raised an eyebrow at Carvalho's sleepiness. "Are you sure you should drive like this?”
"Oh, I'm not driving. My mom's going to pick me up," Carvalho explained. "But enough about me! How are you two doing?”
The anxious frown melted off of Alisson at the question. "What do you expect? We're spending the day with twenty fluffy rabbits!”
"Actually…it's not just twenty anymore. Between the bunnies and the rescues, forty-seven rabbits are in the kennels." Carvalho opened the door wider, stepping aside. "Come on, let's go out back. The schedule and everything are out there.”
They walked out to the sun-drenched backyard. Multiple wooden kennels and nest boxes were lined up alongside the house wall, and a wire-covered enclosure stood close to them. Stones lined the fence, decorating the yard and covering up potential holes, and there were rabbits everywhere.
Alisson was one second away from bursting. "Robbo, hold me back before I rush out and hug them all.”
"Forget it!" Robertson jumped onto the lawn, picking up a cream-coloured rabbit and holding it up. The rabbit continued chewing its blade of grass, confused and disgruntled as to why it had been pulled so rudely from its breakfast. "Look at this one! I'm going to name it Lord Andrew McEnroe of Kiltland the Sixty-Sixth! Who's a good Lord Andrew McEnroe of Kiltland the Sixty-Sixth? You are, yes you are!”
Carvalho glared at Robertson, utterly unimpressed. "Was that a House of Pain reference? In MY backyard?”
"And the issue being...?”
Carvalho shook his head and took the schedule down from the wall. "Here's the schedule. They'll nibble at the grass until eight-thirty, then they'll want the hay and the pellets in those bags. There's a portion chart on the wall, too, as well as the water schedule. The three Angora bunnies are due for grooming at noon, and then you can let them loose in the enclosure. It shouldn't rain today, so you don't need to worry too much about that.”
Alisson wrote the information down on a piece of scrap paper. "That's all?”
"Oh yeah! There's one more thing." Carvalho glanced towards the fence and shuddered. "Do not leave the door open. The last time that happened, everything went to—”
"Fábio!" A voice yelled from the other side of the house, accompanied by a blaring car horn. "Hora de ir, filho!"
"And that's my mom now. Gotta go." Carvalho dashed towards the back door, but stopped in his tracks, waving back. "Bye Ali, bye Robbo! Bye, Beulah and Roger and Dinah and Lilah and Henry and Florenzia and Jamie and Andrea and Ed and Holly and Beri and Monique and Annie and Lisa and Beverly—”
"Fabio, leve sua corona para o carro ou podemos passar o dia juntos no meio de uma fila!"
*
Thankfully, the rabbits were as easygoing as Carvalho had said they would be. Carvalho hadn't had time to give Robertson and Alisson specific instructions on the house, but he'd left a note on the fridge.
Feel free to help yourself to anything in here. My bedroom's locked, but there are emergency keys under the sofa if something happens where you need to open it.
So, after taking down a bale of timothy hay for the rabbits to munch on, Robertson and Alisson were inside Carvalho's kitchen, watching over them from the window while making breakfast. Robertson scrambled eggs and rummaged the pantry in search of sausage, while Alisson filled lined baking sheets with small dough balls from a large bowl.
Robertson watched on as Alisson placed ball after ball on the baking sheet. Eventually, Robertson's curiosity got the better of him, and he tried to sneak a spoonful of dough from the bowl.
"Careful, Robbo!" Alisson moved the bowl away from Robertson before he could eat any of the dough. " Pao de queijo has eggs in it, it needs to be baked first."
"But I'm hungry!" Robertson whined, dramatically flopping onto the counter next to Alisson. "I can't find any good Lorne sausage in here."
"Lorne sausage?”
"Yeah, it's sort of like regular sausage except without casing. It's common in Scotland, but I can't find it in Fabio's pantry. What kind of well-equipped pantry doesn't have Lorne sausage?”
Alisson chuckled, amused at Robertson's theatrics. "A non-Scottish pantry?"
Robertson pried himself off of the counter, arms crossed. "Our pantry is in Mersey, and we have Lorne sausage."
"We're from all over the world, Robbo, and we all live in one place." Alisson slid the baking sheets into the oven, setting the timer as he did so. "We have Scottish sausages in there because of you and the others who like them, but Fabio wouldn't because he's living alone and he's never been partial to them.”
Robertson pouted. "But somehow he's got tapioca flour for your pho-daqueerios."
Alisson burst into laughter at Robertson's botched pronunciation. "It's called pao de queijo , and you like it, remember?”
"Doesn't erase the fact that I have to wait almost half an hour for them." Robertson's gaze travelled across the kitchen until he spotted a can of baked beans in the pantry. “Baked beans?”
“For breakfast?”
“You guys eat that big, tasteless nut at Christmas! This should be a godsend to you!”
“Your Scottish tea tastes the same way!”
“What about your grass water in the fake coconut?”
“Excuse you?! Respect yerba mate!”
“ You respect Irn Bru!”
The kettle whistled before either could say anything more. They exchanged glances, immediately thinking the same thing.
“Coffee?”
“Coffee.”
The pao de queijo was still baking, so Alisson and Robertson settled down to eat at the kitchen table in the corner of the room. As they ate, the conversation travelled from food to their respective childhoods.
“I don’t know how you enjoyed fishing so much as a kid,” Robertson mused, his voice made to echo by the mug he held over his mouth. “I hated anything to do with fish, fishing, or even scales.”
Alisson couldn’t help but smirk at that. “Says the Pisces who grew up in Scotland. Does it rain there all the time like in England?”
“Nah, not really. It’s mainly just damp there. Not helpful when trying to play street footy, so we’d move the game inside. Mum was never too happy with that, though. When I was nine, I broke three figurines in a month due to footy alone.”
“Three?!”
“What can I say? I had too much energy for Scotland.”
The timer rang. Alisson set his teacup down to the side and got up to take the pao de queijo out of the oven, setting the trays onto the counter to cool.
“When Muri and I were kids, we’d also play football inside. But instead of a football, Muri would take our socks and bundle them up into a football-sized lump for us to play with. Whenever anyone was missing a sock, they had to ask Muri.”
Robertson couldn't help but laugh at the thought of a much younger Alisson using a bundle of laundry as an indoor football. “I think I’m going to start doing that with our socks. Can you imagine how happy the kids will be when they find out they can play football inside?”
"All I can think about is how many grey hairs we're all going to get from Florrie and Kairo kicking a whole bunch of socks everywhere. Even Moneta will join in." Alisson suddenly seemed to remember something. "Speaking of pets, how are the bunnies doing? I know Fabio said they should be fine, but the bunnies will need grooming soon."
Robertson glanced outside the window, expecting to see the rabbits. But, to his surprise, he couldn't see a single tuft of fur anywhere. "I can't see the bunnies anywhere."
Alisson froze midway through lifting his coffee cup. "I'll go check on them."
"Good idea," Robertson agreed. "Maybe we just can't see them from the window because they're somewhere else."
That made sense. "Alright, I'll go outside and check on them."
"Make sure to wash your hands when you come back, okay? Doorknobs are one of the household spots most likely to carry viruses."
"Why would I need to touch the doorknob when I left it open?”
Robertson's face blanched until he was almost paper white, which wasn’t too far from his average complexion. "You left the back door open?"
"So? There's a screen on it, so we don't have to worry about insects or anything." Alisson shrugged, walking towards the back door. "And remember, Fabio warned us about leaving the fence door open."
"Are you sure that's what he was talking about?" Robertson wondered aloud. "I mean, don't they usually call fence doors gates?"
"But if he wasn't talking about the fence door…" Alisson's eyes widened as he remembered exactly how Carvalho had looked over his shoulder after mentioning the doors. "Robbo, we have to move now. There are at least four doors leading into this house, if you count the garage. We have to find them before one of the precious fluffballs gets hurt somehow!"
"Uh, Ali?" Robertson held up the bowl in which Alisson had mixed the pao de queijo dough. Inside the bowl were the Angora bunnies, sleeping without a care in the world. "The Angoras are in the mixing bowl.”
Alisson looked down at the screen door, which had a large hole chewed in it near the bottom. He slowly turned towards the living room behind him, which had rabbits on almost every soft, bunny-hair-collecting surface.
“Fabio is going to kill us.”