Chapter Text
If there was one thing that Gavi hated more than cold showers and parallel parking, it was socialising with people more than he had to. Currently, the situation he was in would be described as just that, socialising way more than he wanted to. But he had drafted up a little list before the preseason and he had no intention of backing down from completing it.
It had started the way most of his stubborn decisions tended to, by whining to Fermin about how unstimulated he felt. They had been on vacation and he was the only one out of them who couldn’t find a girl to hookup with. He had felt defeated and frankly annoyed at how nobody seemed to ever interest him. Not when he was busy playing 3 matches in a week and neither when he was left to do whatever his heart desired. He had whined and whined and the only conclusion he’d come to was that he needed to challenge himself further, which had resulted in the coveted list.
- score ten goals in a season and ten assists ( doesn't count if it's just 10 g/a’s it has to be 10 goals and 10 assists )
- stop biting my nails
- talk to more people
- give more interviews
- stop calling your dad at the smallest inconvenience
stop getting yellow cards( mission impossible fermin )fall in love
The season had only just started so he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to meet his goal quotient yet. And, he sucked at getting himself to stop biting his nails, it looked like the only thing he could do was to start doing more interviews. He knew the fans wanted to see more from him and it couldn’t have hurt to reveal more of his personality. Except the prospect of speaking in front of a camera while he had no idea what the hell he would be asked made him way more uncomfortable than it should have.
If there was one thing Gavi was, it was intensely self aware, sometimes a bit too much for his own good. He knew he wasn’t made for cameras, not in the way Pedri seemed to effortlessly talk to interviewers and not in the way Fermin laughed his way out of every situation. And, especially not in the way that Bellingham seemed to spew whatever “charming” bullshit came out of his mouth and somehow win everyone’s hearts effortlessly. As if he was born with that function built within him.
Gavi hadn’t had that same luck, so getting in front of a camera for such a long time meant sweaty palms, 5 missed calls to his dad and shaking his legs so he wouldn’t bite his nails atleast. Despite his dramatics though, he persisted, almost feeling a little proud that he’d be able to check off one thing from his list atleast. In hindsight the interview had been pretty standard, questions about his idols and biggest influences, his aggressive play style (typical), his experience growing up in La Masia and his hopes and aspirations for the new season.
The problem had started after that one question.
“What do you think about Real Madrid’s new signings?. Are any of you over at Barca scared?.” The interviewer’s tone had been casual enough, as if he was joking but Gavi knew more than anyone that it was a clear trap. And he walked right into it.
“I don’t care who Real Madrid sign. They can sign Bellingham but it doesn’t affect us. We have a strong, young team that’s growing too and we’ll do our best to compete like we always have.”
The interview ended soon after with some quick open ended questions that Gavi frankly blanked out while answering. Immediately after he’d reached home he rushed to check his phone, another bad habit that he had to get rid of but he couldn’t help himself, not after that. He knew the interview was supposed to go live within an hour so he camped under their Instagram page to check the comments. Just as he’d suspected they’d uploaded a small clip of his quote.
The comments were naturally a mix of hate comments coupled with ones admiring his mentality. However, after scrolling through them for about 20 minutes it wasn’t the comments that caught his eyes anymore. It was who had liked the post.
Liked by Jude Bellingham.
trent
[ video attached]
loll have you seen this
jude
?
let me see
oh?
trent
LOLLL
jude
i literally didn’t even react yet
stop laughing
thats crazy
trent
thats all?
?
WHY DID U LIKE IT
jude
oops
anyways
thats hot no
trent
?
you’re a lost cause
jude
your job here is done thank you
Weirdly enough; according to all his teammates at-least , Jude actually loved being on media duty. Especially, when it involved doing fun stuff like opening up football cards. Usually, the normal long form interviews were far more intimidating but this was the fun stuff. It was why he loved doing his ad campaigns with Adidas and all the media stuff for the England team. He enjoyed it to the point that even the slight stiffness of his shoulder when he woke up that day couldn’t get him down. It was nothing a session with his physio couldn’t fix anyways. Getting in front of the camera had been easy, the interviewer being pretty helped made it easier. The banter seemed to flow easily, the way it always did as Jude went on about how he used to collect football cards when he was a child and trade them with his friends during recess.
“So, how do you feel when you see yourself in these cards?.“, the interviewer asked.
Jude gave a light smile before speaking freely, “ It’s just a bit surreal isn’t it?. Cause, I grew up collecting these cards so now it’s just really crazy honestly.” He spoke before going back to the cards displayed in front of him. “This is a decent pack, isn’t it?. Yeah, absolutely solid.” The interview carried on like that before Jude noticed a weird pattern that he simply couldn’t help but make a quip out of,
“Too many Barca players here huh?. Feel like I’m being set up.”, he tried to make it sound casual enough that it’d come off as a joke, because it was. One of the cards caught his attention however.
“Gavi, pretty yeah?.”
“What?”, the interviewer questioned.
“Oh, these cards are pretty aren’t they?. They’ve got a bit of a shiny blue layer, what’s that?. Are they special or something?.”
“I think that’s just the design mate.”
“Hmm, yeah. Cool material, that. Solid card too.”, he spoke before moving onto the next card hoping that his tangents about Zidane and how much he admired him would distract from the fact that he had put Gavi’s card in the pile that he wanted to keep.
In his defence, the card had indeed been shiny and a very pretty shade of blue. And Gavi had accurate passing to boast, something that was very useful in the game. The fact that he was pretty, as Jude had initially blurted out helped his case too, Jude didn’t consider himself easily smitten but the picture on his card had been way prettier than it had any right to be. His messy brown hair looked good, curling towards his forehead in a way that was just right. And he had nice teeth, despite the fact that he wasn’t smiling in the picture. Jude remembered from memory how his smile looked when he’d spotted Gavi during preseason, how his teeth were a bit jagged around the edges; almost like a bunny’s teeth and how they portruded when he smiled too brightly. And this thighs , yup Jude was definitely getting carried away now.
Either way, even if he was still into trading cards he didn’t think he’d be trading this one anytime soon.
Gavi was starting to give up on his stupid fucking list. The first few weeks of the season had only just passed by and one of his teammates had already gotten injured. He knew he shouldn’t have been complaining, considering it meant more gametime and responsibilities for him but he had always admired Frenkie, even boldly stating in an interview that when he had heard rumours that the Dutch man could leave the team he remembered thinking that he was “fucked”. If he sat down and thought about it, he wasn’t even doing that bad. He had already scored 2 goals and was starting to find some rhythm in his play. He truly had the feeling that if things went his way this would be his season.
But yet something felt missing, even if he didn’t wanna admit it it was definitely the social aspect of it. Even Fermin had found a girl he was hanging out more with, which meant less time with him that he was getting busier. And that left only his teammates apart from his hometown friends, who he saw everyday. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t just go out and find a random girl, hook up with her and end up liking her like the rest of his friends, the problem was that he’d tried and that never seemed to be enough. He always lost interest and ended up ghosting them, that was one of the habits he was trying to get rid of too albeit it was left unspoken because it seemed to be the hardest one.
Right now, all he wanted to do was lay in his bed and scroll on TikTok, even the half eaten chicken on his plate felt exhausting to look at. So, he put it in the fridge and jumped straight to bed. It didn’t take long before he comfortably settled in, the cycle of doom scrolling on his phone being something he knew he was never going to get rid of. He had practice early in the morning anyway so he didn’t need to feel too guilty about it. Until, he stumbled on one clip; it wasn’t exactly uncommon for him to get edits of fellow footballers considering how much football content he liked watching.
But this one was different, initially he had thought it’d be a Jude edit considering the clip started with the Real Madrid player opening up EAFC card packs, muttering something about there being too many Barca players ( no shit dumbass they’re the best in their positions ) and then zooming in on Gavi to keep his card. That part in of itself wasn’t what caught him off guard, Gavi wasn’t too prideful to admit to himself that he’d keep Jude’s card too considering how good he was. Rather, it was a one second clip of Jude saying the word “pretty”. That made Gavi sit up straight in bed, all the exhaustion seemingly forgotten.
His heart was beating a 1000 miles per hour and he didn’t even know why. There was no way Jude was calling him pretty, right?. He had to have meant the card. The edit faded out to clips of Gavi on the pitch but he had long forgotten about that. He had a new mission now and so he typed in Jude’s name in the Youtube search bar, all before turning off his search history even if no one but him would know. The video showed up soon enough and Gavi found himself watching with way more interest than he should have had. He rolled his eyes at Jude’s way too friendly interactions with the interviewer but couldn’t bring himself to do the same for his objectively attractive accent and laugh. And then he said it, unmistakably. Pretty.
Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty. Pretty.
And if he spent the entire night thinking about that one word and managed to fuck up during the entire warmup session because he still couldn’t get that stupid clip out of his head then no one but him needed to know.