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They’re out of the Champions League on a single missing away goal that was right there at their toes so often during the match. Frustration is an understatement.
Karim knows that it’s pointless to blame only himself and that it doesn’t change anything, but that means it also doesn’t change that he could have scored just that one goal, after Hakan gave them hope with a free kick curled into the upper right corner.
When Karim enters the bus to the hotel after being held back by annoying interviewers, he’s greeted by the sight of his team mates, equally gutted about the loss. Karim squeezes past Leno, staring out of the bus window unmoving like a statue, and next to him red-cheeked Julian who looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin. Wendell and Chicharito behind them are both grimly gazing at their phones, and there’s no sound in the bus beyond sighs, one-worded grunts and the very low chimes of the radio.
Karim moves to the empty place next to Hakan, who’s sitting further back in the bus, and sticks his bag under the seat. When he slumps down, he breathes out and lets his head fall back against the cushioned rest.
“Annoying interview?” Hakan asks, toying with his phone and earphones in his lap.
“No, I had an absolute blast,” Karim replies monotonously, and Hakan pulls a face.
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. If anything you almost saved us. Next time, huh?”
Hakan shrugs, flashes his canines in a weak smile and puts in his earphones. “Next time.”
Karim wishes it was that easy.
They’re still waiting for Lars to enter the bus, the only thing keeping them from finally leaving apparently being some cross fire interview with the captain of the losers.
It makes Karim even more restless, just sitting here, waiting for the engines of the bus to start, replaying the worst scenes from the match in his head. Unintentionally, he starts jiggling his leg up and down. He doesn’t even notice that he’s doing it, until Hakan puts a hand on his thigh and pushes it down to hold it in place.
“Dude.”
Karim stills and sends an apologetic look at Hakan. He wants to be calm, wants to be able to just close his eyes and forget about his failed tackle at minute thirty-eight and the corner at minute seventy-three, but he’s never been the type to immediately drop to exhaustion after a match.
Around them, a couple of the guys have curled up in their seats, trying to make the best of the half-an-hour bus ride, and Karim glances at them enviously.
He tries to close his eyes, but the two seconds he has them shut feel like two hours, and Lars still hasn’t arrived. He must be doing a fucking glossy full-page spread of failure with how long it takes.
A minute later Hakan’s hand is still on Karim’s thigh, which. Okay.
Karim turns to Hakan to gauge why, but only finds him leaned back in his seat, eyes half-closed, limbs stretched out as far as the cramped bus lets him.
Out of curiosity, Karim gives his leg an experimental jiggle. Hakan’s fingers tighten for a split second, before he draws back his hand.
“Stop fidgeting, I bet Bernd can still feel it in the front,” Hakan says and sighs. He rubs a hand across his face, then he gestures for Karim to move closer. “Listen in and try to take a nap.”
Hakan hands him one of his earphones, and Karim gets to experience a playlist of songs no one can sleep to, but it blocks out his thoughts fine enough.
Hakan’s hands are folded in his lap now, as far as Karim can see in the dim light, and he’s not sure why he cares.
He vaguely registers that Lars finally arrives and the bus starts to move out of the parking lot, but it’s all muffled under the sound of hip hop beats that somehow even manage to make his eyes fall close.
Karim jerks from his light snooze when Hakan tugs the earphone out of his ear.
“We’re at the hotel,” Hakan says and points out of the window although it shows nothing but darkness and blurry yellow spots of light. “Move your ass.”
Even just from the couple of minutes of shut-eye, Karim is slightly disorientated. He’s never really been able to sleep comfortably in the bus or, hell, any type of transportation, so this is a welcome change coming out of nowhere. Hakan, however, doesn’t seem to see it that way and impatiently nudges Karim to get up.
“What, earlier you didn’t want me to move, and now I can’t be quick enough?” Karim complains, adding a yawn.
Hakan rolls his eyes, grab Karim’s bag and dumps it into Karim’s lap. “Just make sure you’re quiet when I want to sleep after this awful match tonight.”
The mention of the loss takes Karim down a notch again, so he nods and follows the others out of the bus and into the hotel, up to Hakan’s and his shared room.
“You gonna be able to sleep without my music?,” Hakan asks cheekily, and maybe, if Karim didn’t know him so well, the edge of seriousness under the taunting would be lost on him.
“I’ll try to manage without,” he snorts and turns around in his bed so he’s facing the wall. He can hear Hakan roughly breathe out, half a laugh, half a sigh, before Hakan switches off the light in their room and crawls into the other bed.
The cereal that Karim eats the next morning tastes like cardboard with syrup. Then again, the bread and the apples also taste like cardboard so he figures that it might not only have to do with the food itself, but also with his tiredness.
When Hakan walks into the breakfast room and grins at him, Karim knows he must look as awful as he feels.
“Don’t you dare say anything,” Karim threatens wearily and stirs the milk in his bowl more angrily.
He had slipped out of their room before Hakan had even gotten up to start his elaborate hair routine, so Hakan hadn’t seen him yet today, in full glory of eye bags and bed hair.
After the short nap on the bus, Karim had barely slept the last night, just turning in his bed and kicking the sheets, going right back to his after-match state. He’d never give Hakan the satisfaction of admitting that the music might indeed have helped though.
Hakan opens his mouth to comment on Karim’s state, but Karim shoots him an angry look, so Hakan shrugs and gets some bread and salad before joining Karim at the table.
He starts talking to Karim about some scrambled stuff, like their next match and this one rapper he wanted him to listen to - even though he’s not getting much back in the conversation.
Karim lets Hakan talk and catches himself thinking how nice it would be to just sleep right here, right now, just dropping his spoon and leaning against Hakan. There aren’t many people in the breakfast room yet and no one from staff, so Karim could totally just… for a second...
“You look like shit,” Jonathan says nonchalantly around whatever he’s chewing as he sits down next to Karim, startling him.
“Thanks you for saying it so I don’t have to,” Hakan replies, actually genuinely happy about it, so Karim gathers his energy to whack him across the head with his spoon.
Karim manages not to fall asleep during breakfast, check-out or their way to the airport, but as soon as the team finds places on the plane, he’s basically gone.
He tries to read in the inflight magazine a bit, but the text swims on the pages and before he can realise it, his eyes fall close.
A louder sound from the row in front of them wakes Karim up when he hadn’t even know he had fallen asleep. They’re still in the air so he can’t have slept too long. He has to take a second to reorient himself, because his perspective is a new one.
Karim finds himself slumped over his own seat into Hakan’s space, head leaning against Hakan’s chest.
Karim awkwardly coughs with a voice rough from sleep, trying to hide his embarrassment over the situation, and Hakan flinches over the sound, but doesn’t laugh it off like Karim thought he would. He wonders why Hakan hadn’t pushed him away right when he had fallen asleep.
Karim pushes himself up, crawling back onto his own seat only, until Hakan holds him back and says something Karim didn’t expect at all.
“Stay,” Hakan says.
Karim reads it from his lips more than he actually hears the word. He blinks at Hakan sleepily, and perhaps, if he wasn’t as tired, he’d question the situation. But in that moment, he’s enveloped by the comfortable warmth and the soft fleece of Hakan’s warm-up jacket, so he lets his head sink back against Hakan’s shoulder.
“Okay,” Karim replies, because saying thanks would feel weird, somehow.
“It’s fine,” Hakan says softly, looking out of the small window, “it’s fine.” His face seems red, but Karim can’t tell whether it’s a blush or just the light of the air conditioner above them.
After a while, Karim starts timing his breaths to go along with Hakan’s, and it works surprisingly well to soothe him into sleep.
Karim wakes up with a faint imprint of the Leverkusen crest on his face where he had it pressed against Hakan’s chest, and although his shoulder is sore from the strange position he’s slept in, he feels more refreshed than he probably ever has after a flight.
When everyone gets up to leave the plane, Hakan brushes non-existent dust off his jacket. Karim smiles at him, and Hakan smiles back and lightly punches his shoulder.
Neither of them mentions the whole sleeping on each other thing again. It’s not like talking about dropping out of the Champions League is a particularly entertaining thing anyway.
Back home again, Karim sleeps just fine the next nights, which relieves him immensely. He can’t afford slacking off, not with this stupid loss in his bones and an extremely uncomfortable fifth place on the league table.
Thankfully, Chicharito scores two goals to win their next Bundesliga match and with that - an actual victory after two drowsy ties - it’s not quite as hard to pick themselves up and keep going.
“Legend you are, man,” Karim tells Chicha happily and slings an arm around his shoulders in the locker room afterwards. Chicha probably doesn’t understand the words, but his grin shows he got the message.
“At least someone here is pulling their weight,” Hakan chimes in, which, fuck off, Karim got the assist of an assist, so there’s absolutely nothing Hakan can complain about, and he can shut his pretty mouth to be honest.
Karim slaps Hakan’s butt with a towel when he walks into the showers, and Hakan gets back at him for it later with a smirk, shoving Karim into his seat on the bus.
Hakan also seems to take up more space than usual, bumping elbows and knees and leaning over Karim to look out of the bus window and whatnot, but Karim isn’t sure whether it’s to annoy him or because of excess adrenalin.
Someone from the back row starts playing a quick, loud song from his speakers, and Karim taps his fingers along to it until he, well - okay, it sounds strange if one says it like this. He falls asleep.
This time it isn’t because Karim is super tired and he really has to, this time it is more because he can, and Hakan is there, and they had just won together, and it’s the comfortable thing to do.
Weird.
But Hakan didn’t object to the usage of his shoulder as a pillow, so Karim figures that it was fine.
He’s just glad nobody drew a dick on him while he was asleep.
The thing about being a professional football player is that travelling a lot is point three or four in your job description. Karim isn’t a huge fan of it, but it obviously serves its purpose, so it’s whatever. In the past he’s just sat down and stared at his iPad or a magazine to pass the time, but ever since that unlucky Champions League match, it’s like there’s a whole new batch of possibilities that Karim never even considered.
Part of it is teasing Hakan, who freezes and rolls his eyes every time Karim incidentally lowers his head on Hakan’s shoulder, but then lifts his arm to make space for Karim anyway. But part of it is also the fuzzy emotion in Karim’s stomach that sometimes makes him feel like he’s about to throw up when he accidentally focuses on the intimacy of the situation. Can’t let a bro know you have feelings.
Karim’s guiltily looking forward to every bus trip, every flight now, even the evenings when they meet up for a round of FIFA. He doesn’t think that Hakan picks up on it, because it’s not like they’ve been at all distant before. Maybe he just thinks that Karim’s neck muscles have suddenly become very weak.
What, it could happen.
Sometimes Karim just pretends, but more often than not he does actually fall asleep, especially if he doesn’t plan to. There’s just something really comfortable about the warmth and the vibrations of Hakan’s chest, about Hakan scrolling down his instagram feed with his arm over Karim’s shoulder and talking at Karim without expecting an answer.
One day, when they’re all waiting at an airport for their flight back home, Ömer lets slip that he has a folder on his phone just for photos sneakily taken of Karim sleeping on Hakan’s shoulder.
“My girlfriend thinks it’s cute,” Ömer says defensively and is quick to add that the photos were taken by a number of different people on the team, not just himself. He doesn’t seem to see how that doesn’t really make it better.
“Your girlfriend thinks you’re cute,” Hakan replies, and Karim offers his hand for a high-five.
“How is that even - Oh. Uh. Whatever.” Ömer frowns and stuffs his phone into this pocket, before joining the conversation happening between Stefan and Lars at the other table.
“Does it, like, annoy you?” Karim asks Hakan, going for a casual tone, but fidgeting with the edge of his shirt.
“What does?”
“When I,” Karim clears his throat, “fell asleep on you a couple of times.” Fuck, that sounds dumb.
Hakan tilts his head and scratches his beard that’s starting to pass the stage of three-day stubble. “No. Should it?”
“No. Just making sure, because I know it’s been happening a lot.”
Karim omits the part of why exactly.
“I know I have a magnetic personality,” Hakan says with a grin and slips on his sunglasses.
“Yeah, it’s really narcotic,” Karim mumbles, but there’s no bite behind it. Mostly he’s just glad it’s okay. That they’re okay. He’s been worrying about all this feelings shit way too much lately.
However, that doesn’t really stop. Karim’s hit with it again right after the flight (that he spent guess how) when a bunch of reporters run up to them.
Karim knows he should ignore them like everybody else is, but the microphone that is stuck in his face is really plushy so he can’t help but slow down. And as applies to journalists and zombies alike, once you slow down, you’re dead.
One of the reporters, with a particularly annoying voice, asks in English: “Any comment on the Calhanoglu transfer talks?
“His what now?” Karim asks back, before catching himself and putting stone on his face. “No comment.”
The reporter tries again, but Karim keeps silent and pushes his way back to catch up with the rest of the team that managed to avoid the press. Hakan is walking at the front, chatting with Julian.
There’s that feelings shit again. Worry or whatever. But Hakan’s never seriously had transferring on his mind, he’d have told Karim. It’s probably just one of those countless Manchester United rumours, nothing else.
Karim doesn’t manage to confront Hakan about it until after their evening training the next day, because he doesn’t want to bring it up in front of everybody else like some loser.
Hakan invites him to come around to hang out and play a bit of FIFA, and they take Hakan’s motor bike back to his apartment.
Hakan’s been playing suspiciously nice all day, first during training and now giving Karim reign over the remote and being the one to get up for new snacks. At least that’s how it had seemed to Karim, but it’s obviously all just been show before his merciless slaughter of Karim on FIFA.
“Oh, just go fuck yourself,” Karim complains and petulantly throws his controller on the carpet when Hakan scores his tenth goal on him.
On screen, the animated version of Höwedes is celebrating his header, because Hakan is an asshole and had chosen to play with the German national team. It doesn’t make Karim feel any better that his own cyber twin scored a goal as well.
“Sore loser,” Hakan replies, smugly propping up his feet on top of Karim’s feet on the floor. He uses Karim’s absence in the game to put in his eleventh and twelfth goal one after another.
“Kick a man while he’s down,” Karim says, as he melodramatically lets himself slide off the couch, digging his fingers into the armrest, which causes Hakan to lose balance as well, “just mercy kill me.”
“Don’t wipe your dirty chips fingers on my couch,” Hakan reprimands him, so Karim pointedly rubs his hands over the fabric and, as payback, over Hakan’s adidas shorts as well.
Hakan shallowly kicks off Karim’s hands and passes the controller back.
“Another round?” he asks, and Karim has no fucking idea why he says yes.
The result isn’t better, but at least the score isn’t in the double figures this time around, and Karim manages to score with the virtual Calhanoglu.
They dick around a bit after that, putting Götze into Germany’s goal and Babacan as a striker, and by the time that gets boring, quite some time has passed and it’s nearing night time. They’ve both gradually slid down the couch and are slouching around with their controllers in hand.
When Hakan lazily starts looking for other teams to screw with and picks Barcelona and United, eyes sometimes slipping closed from tiredness, Karim figures it might be a good time as any to bring up the reporter from the day before.
Maybe Karim googled the whole thing, maybe it did nothing to appease him. Whatever.
“By the way,” he says casually, playing it as laughably as he can, “this journalist dude asked me about your transfer.”
Hakan stops fumbling with the game and looks up at Karim. “Wha’?”
For a second, Karim’s heart drops and he tenses. “Your transfer to, haha, England.”
“England.”
“Uh, I don’t know. Rumours or whatever. But you gotta plan your future, too, so I thought... Forget it.”
“I’m not transferring,” Hakan says amusedly and so matter-of-fact, as if Karim just asked him what colour the sky is, then he yawns. “Stupid.”
Karim breathes out in relief and collapses back onto the couch.
“Okay. That’s good.” Karim looks at Hakan from the side, where he’s tiredly rubbing his eyes. “I’m not either, by the way.”
Hakan crinkles his nose and cracks an eye open to look at Karim. “Good. I wouldn’t let you. Now turn the game off, it’s late enough.”
“How about you turn the game off, huh?” Karim replies and rolls his eyes.
Hakan groans, but gets up and walks to the TV to quit FIFA. On his way back, he grabs his phone and, like it’s not even worth a discussion, he stretches out on the couch with his head in Karim’s lap.
Well, not his lap really, it’s more a strange half leaning against the back of the couch, half putting his head on Karim’s thigh and half sprawling limbs off the couch.
That’s three halves. Fuck it. It still makes Karim’s head spin.
Hakan checks his phone for something, so Karim does the same with red cheeks, because what else is he going to do? Kick Hakan off his lap? Of course not.
After a while, Hakan puts his phone away and yawns again.
“We should go sleep,” Karim says and wipes his sweaty palms on Hakan’s couch.
“We don’t have training tomorrow.”
“Still.”
Hakan grimaces, then nods in acceptance, but doesn’t get up.
“Uhm,” Karim starts, but Hakan interrupts him. His voice sounds sleepy and he rubs his eyes.
“I’m not gonna move an inch. I have every single one of those twenty-seven goals I scored burning in my muscles.”
“You were sitting on your butt the whole time, dumbass.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Hakan simply mumbles in return and pats Karim’s thigh placatingly, before wiggling into a more comfortable position and closing his eyes on Karim.
Just like that, Hakan starts softly snoring a couple of seconds later, as if he can fall asleep by flipping a switch.
If this is what it feels like to slept on, Karim kinda gets why Hakan keeps letting him do it.
In turn it’s hard to sleep sitting up, with Hakan’s heavy head on his leg, but Karim manages just fine.
When he wakes up the next day, Hakan is already up and making coffee, his usual wolf grin on his face.
Nothing out of the ordinary, but that’s why it’s nice.
The call-up to the national team comes as a bit of a surprise.
Karim hadn’t been playing badly, but also not extraordinarily wonderful or anything. He hadn’t been called up the last time, so he wasn’t sure whether Löw would take notice of him this time around.
He’s grateful for the opportunity, and he’s glad Hakan gets his call-up again as well, so it should be all hunky-dory. Except for the part where it’s not.
Karim has a room for himself on this trip (he was assigned a room with Sami at first, but that arrangement didn’t last long before a move to Mesut’s single room was prompted) and if there’s one downside to the whole sleeping-on-each-other-because-uh-that’s-what-friends-do business, it’s certainly taking effect now.
Karim has trouble sleeping.
He can force himself through a night and he will get a couple of hours of genuine rest - enough to perform fine in training - but he will wake up at least three times a night and dazedly turn to try to reorient himself by Hakan’s bed that should be on the other side of the room.
Of course the bed isn’t there. There is no second bed at all, and no gentle sounds of Hakan breathing and no sight of his chest rising and falling under the blanket.
There’s a strange pull in Karim’s body, a feeling of… incompleteness that he can’t quite put a name to. He’s never had problems with the habit of rooming with Hakan on Leverkusen team trips before, so the explanation can only be found in that one thing that’s changed.
And that, of course, is that Karim feels best sleeping on or at least near Hakan when they’re traveling with their team now.
Karim folds back his blanket with a sigh and gets up, giving up on falling asleep right away again. He avoids looking at the time on his alarm clock, it would disappoint him anyway.
The moon is shining through the curtains from outside, and Karim pulls on a pair of sweatpants, before he grabs his key card and stumbles out of the door as quietly as he can.
Unsurprisingly, there’s no light or sound coming from the other rooms, so Karim can tiptoe across the hotel corridor without anyone noticing.
He has no place to go in mind, just wants to leave the stuffy atmosphere of his room for a moment. His feet lead him down a flight of stairs to the low-lit ground-level room that opens up to the garden behind the hotel.
Karim steps out of the terrace door into the night. The fresh air sends shivers across his arms and he hugs himself to get rid of them.
He does realise how stupid this situation is.
Karim’s standing in the backyard of a high-end hotel in what is basically pyjamas, and if Löw happened to look out of his window at night, he’d be so absolutely fucked, it wouldn’t be funny -- it’s not a difficult task to evaluate that particular level of desperation.
“Properly romantic,” a voice from behind him suddenly says, and Karim turns in shock to spot Bastian leaning against the frame of the terrace door.
“Sorry?”
“Romantic. The moon and everything. A young man freezing out here to watch the stars,” Basti says, twinkle in his eye. He’s only wearing sweats and a thin shirt that says STRASSENKICKER in bold letters, so he must be cold, too. “Me telling Jogi that you’re not sticking to the curfew.”
Karim crosses his arms. He does feel kind of caught, but he’s not going to let Bastian know that.
“You’re not sticking to the curfew either.”
“Captain’s privilege.”
“What else is?” Karim asks back before he can bite his tongue.
Bastian raises his eyebrows, smoothes his hand over the print of his shirt, and throws a look over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to be there.
“Do you want to talk about anything?” he asks. “Why are you out here? Any problems?”
For a second, for a tiny moment, Karim seriously considers telling Basti, but it would sound pathetic and fond and rash, when he can’t even quite place it himself anyway.
“I just had trouble sleeping, nothing else. Figured I’d get a breath of fresh air down here.”
“Alright,” Bastian drawls and sends a quick look up to where Löw’s window opens up the backyard. “If you ever want to, I’m here to talk. About football or… whatever.”
‘Whatever’? What the fuck, thinks Karim, since when does Bastian think he ate up wisdom with spoons?
“Yeah, no,” Karim replies, squeezing past Bastian through the door back into the hotel. “Thanks though. I’m not going to ask how you noticed I was here when it’s in the middle of the night for you as well.”
Bastian shrugs, knowing that Karim can probably guess why he was up (or more precisely, for whom), and lets Karim pass.
“Good night then.”
“Good night,” Karim repeats and leaves Bastian to find his way back to his room alone.
He shakes his head. This team is a mess sometimes, lovable sure, but every other guy is puttering around with his own personal drama. Karim had kinda hoped he’d be exempt from that.
Back in his bed, Karim turns from side to side a couple of times more and scratches at a mosquito bite he caught outside. He’s mostly not sleeping out of pure stubbornness now, because fuck Bastian, and reaches for his phone.
damn mosquitos, Karim texts Hakan pointlessly, and he’s about to close the app when he suddenly sees the two tiny checkmarks in the corner of the message turn blue.
buzz buzz mthrfckr, Hakan sends back five seconds later.
awake?, Karim replies, incredulously holding the glowing phone screen close to his eyes. He knows Hakan’s national team schedule and he’s knows they’re an hour behind him at most which is still pretty damn late at night.
so are you dont play lol
i can’t sleep. capitano just tried to give me life advice. don’t even ask
schweinsteiger?, Hakan asks, like that’s important in any way.
yeah
At first Hakan doesn’t write back, so Karim thinks the conversation is done, but just when he’s about to put his phone away, it vibrates again.
can’t sleep either, Hakan writes, i bet it’s the full moon
it’s not even a full moon dude
whats ur excuse then?
i slept on your shitty hard shoulder for so long i couldn’t remember what an actual soft bed felt like
haha you love it
For lack of idea what else to say, Karim writes back, haha and then good luck with your match tomorrow
it’s not until the day after tomorrow! disappointed u don’t know!!
it’s already past midnight so. tomorrow.
There’s a delay again, where Hakan presumably checks the clock and follows the logic.
oh fuck
Karim laughs quietly, then just sends sleep well, before finally putting his phone down and turning around to try to doze the last couple of hours left.
In the morning, Karim checks his messages to see Hakan wrote back u too last night, before going offline.
Karim feels kind of wrecked, climbing out of bed and putting clothes on, and he’s sure Bastian sends him taxing looks at breakfast, but they don’t talk about it again.
Karim gets to be in the starting eleven against Sweden and is subbed out around the 70th minute. He doesn’t score, but he has some good runs and they win, so all in all, it’s an okay match.
He’s still really glad when the break is over and he gets to drive back home with Bernd and Christoph.
All national players join the team again the day afterwards, and when Karim sees Hakan already standing on the pitch with his back towards him, he decides to do the childish thing and runs and jumps on Hakan’s back from behind.
Hakan almost topples over with a surprised yell, but somehow manages to catch Karim’s legs and hold both of them upright.
“Well, hello to you, too,” he laughs, craning his neck to look at Karim.
Somebody else awwwws, it might actually be Chicha, and this might be silly, but - it’s good to see Hakan again, elsewhere than just on his instagram feed.
It was like, what, a week? Karim needs to get a grip on himself.
Karim is about to tease Hakan back about the full moon thing, when Hakan loosens his arms around Karim’s legs and drops him back on the ground, because Schmidt has turned around the corner.
“Since you all seem to have a lot of energy,” Schmidt calls, causing everyone to fidget because they have an idea of what he’s going to say now, “use it properly. Stop gossipping and start jogging. Now, preferably.”
Karim groans and Hakan theatrically swoons, but just a minute later they’re racing each other around the pitch and they have to be whistled back to order.
When Karim drops down on the bench after training, he is sweating waterfalls, but of course Schmidt makes them sit through a sermon regarding the matches coming up. As always, it’s boring as hell and Karim lets his shoulders and head fall forward.
“Just get in here,” Hakan says then, under his breath as not to disturb the coach, and pats his shoulder, causing Christoph in the row of seats next to theirs to snort into his energy drink.
Karim ignores it and leans against Hakan.
Karim realises he’s in love with Hakan during a TV evening at training camp.
It’s about as shit of a moment as any for that type of revelation.
They’re sitting squeezed together on a couch that’s too small for four people, much less the five who are trying to find their place on it now. Julian on the other end is probably going to spend the night with bruises he’d have a hard time explaining to his mother, but he still seems to prefer the limited space there to sitting on the floor with the other guys.
Karim isn’t interested in the show that’s on much, some reality trash about people finding treasures in their attics, but it’s entertaining with the dumb comments of his team mates and Hakan next to him serving as a pillow as usual.
Hakan is pouring the rest of a chips bag’s content into his mouth, making crumbs fly across the whole couch. He loudly chews and swallows the food, it should be pretty disgusting - especially since he’s violating about twenty diet rules - and suddenly all Karim can dumbfoundedly think is, Fuck.
Fuck.
It’s not like anyone flipped a switch or opened a locked door.
It’s more like Karim’s brain had been silently working its way through calculations for a year and a half, and now it had finally written down the result, q.e.d. and underlined twice.
It makes sense then (a lot of things do), how warm Hakan’s presence had felt when Karim had slept or not slept on him, how Karim had strangely missed him during internationals, how he somehow knows what Hakan’s flattering selfie angles are. How all of this sounds cheesy as fuck.
Karim stares at Hakan from the side, trying to take a step back from what had just happened.
Unsurprisingly, Hakan hasn’t magically changed in the past minutes - he’s still a messy asshole with a neat five-day stubble who has his sunglasses on indoors, because he knows they suit him. He’s said the last part to Karim once, like he actually needed to be told.
Karim can see himself in the reflective surface of the glasses, feeling watched, despite knowing that Hakan’s eyes are fixed on the TV.
“Are you okay?” Christoph asks from where’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of the couch. He’s eyeing Karim’s white-knuckled grip of his coke bottle, and Karim wishes he wasn’t so damn observant.
“Just. Really invested,” Karim says, and he knows it wasn’t the right answer when Chris looks from Karim to the TV where a man is in tears when he gets told that his porcelain cat collection is, in fact, worthless and no good to pawn.
Karim’s heart rate is speeding up - though actually only just a tad - and he’s letting Hakan throw an arm around his shoulders and pull him so close that Karim can feel the vibrations of his laughter.
Karim wonders how it took him so long to put the puzzle pieces of his crush together and whether he might in fact have been in love with Hakan ever since his transfer.
Video game evenings, sleeping on each other’s couches, going to basketball games together -- why does everyone focus so much on football all the time? Somebody could have, like, let Karim know.
Hakan starts waving a hand in front of Karim’s face, and Karim blinks out of his thoughts.
“You alright?” Hakan asks, forgetting the TV show, and Karim wants to answer, not really, unless you’re gonna start banging me right here right now, but that seems neither appropriate nor entirely true.
Christoph squints at Karim suspiciously, then his eyes widen a bit, and it almost looks like he’s going to say something, before Karim interrupts him.
“I’m fine, just a bit out of it. Training was tough,” Karim waves off Hakan’s question.
“Aw,” Hakan coos, which is never a good thing, “you want me to make you feel better?”
Nobody wolf-whistles, thankfully, because now that Karim knows, it would suddenly sound intentful, even though it’s obviously not.
“Nah, thanks, I’m going to head up, I think,” Karim says and wiggles out his seat on the couch. The others are probably happy about the free space. “How about you make Chris feel better?”
Karim knows that it’s mean to push Christoph forward, but he’s grateful for the headstart that it gives him, as he flees from the TV while Hakan violently ruffles Christoph’s hair.
When Karim arrives at Hakan’s and his room though, he realises that he’s not really escaped his problem. Probably won’t ever, really.
Their beds are pushed together, because the past nights Karim had fallen asleep on Hakan’s shoulder, and Hakan had sort of then also fallen asleep on Karim in return.
Because that’s apparently a thing they’ve become used to doing now.
Karim’s screwed. Not in the good way.
Strangely enough, Karim actually ends up sleeping fine.
Before that they talked a bit, and Hakan told him about the end of the TV show and how afterwards a sports show was on where they had new Bellarabi to Manchester rumors.
Then Hakan slept next to him and sometimes their feet touched, but that was nothing out of the ordinary.
Karim has probably subconsciously known about the love thing for a long time anyway, so there’d be no reason to freak out about it. It’s a little bothersome for the moment maybe, but nothing more.
Christoph, however, seems to be of a different opinion. He catches Karim on his way to breakfast and demands answers.
“What was that yesterday in the group room?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and Hakan,” Christoph replies. If he didn’t have such a baby face, he might even have succeeded with a triumphant look.
Karim carefully puts a blank expression on his face and doesn’t reply, trying to make Christoph do the conversational work.
“There’s something going on there, right?” Christoph indeed continues, and Karim’s face slips enough for him to go, “Aha!” cheerfully.
Damn it.
“How would you…,” Karim asks hesitantly, “know that just from yesterday?”
“I don’t,” Christoph says, matter of fact.
“How then...?” Karim ask, frowning. He throws a look over his shoulder, but the corridor behind them is empty.
“The cuddles are a clue… and I might have overheard Bastian talking to Sami about your night trip at national break. I put two and two together, easy.”
Karim sighs and rubs a hand across his face. There’s no point in disagreeing, because Christoph wouldn’t believe it anyway, so there’s no point in agreeing out loud either.
“So you’re into that whole,” Christoph gestures vaguely in front of his face, “beard burn thing?”
“What?!” Karim coughs.
“Just wondering.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the innocent one?”
“Whatever. You like ‘em young?”
“He’s twenty-two! Stop!”
“His vampire teeth then? Must be a pain to deal with during blow-”
“Anyway,” Karim interrupts Christoph loudly and very urgently, “Good talk. I’m going to eat breakfast now and you’re not going to visualise any of that any longer. If you say a word to anyone, you’re so dead.”
Christoph throws up his hands apologetically, but Karim should have know anyway that he wasn’t going to let it go.
Karim feels like he’s being watched at breakfast, like Christoph is wagging his eyebrows suggestively with every single grape Hakan steals from Karim’s plate.
Luckily, it ebbs down during the training session, because Schmidt doesn’t allow for much distraction.
Afterwards Hakan and Karim dump themselves across a couch in the hotel lobby, exhausted, sweating and muscles score.
Hakan takes a photo of them to update his social media and posts it on half the internet, and only after lunch does Karim notice how freshly fucked he looks in the pic, blushing face, dishevelled hair, satisfied smirk.
Of course, Christoph also shows Karim the pic on his own phone soon enough and raises an eyebrow at him. Karim just says, “You wish,” although it might as well be ‘I wish’ and bangs his head against the nearest wall.
Schmidt only gives the team a day off a week later, and it feels like paradise.
Hakan and Karim are lying on their bed (beds, technically, but still pushed together), lazily checking stuff on their phones, and Karim has his head on Hakan’s crossed legs.
Karim wonders who exactly he’s fooling by falling back into this, but hey, Hakan is offering, and Karim is so not above taking.
The door to their room is open, and there is music coming from somewhere further down the corridor where some of the guys are having an illegal football tennis tournament inside.
Later, all players are scheduled for sponsorship interviews - because there is never truly a day of rest in training camp - but for now there’s no one from staff going on their nerves.
Karim sighs blissfully and stretches out his legs on the fluffy bedspread.
Sometimes Hakan reads a funny post out loud to him, all the while gently tracing the anchor tattoo on Karim’s wrist.
It feels comfortable, and Karim has to put his phone away, because his eyes slip closed so often. He’s probably started to associate the contact of Hakan’s skin with sleeping anyway, Pavlov-like.
He’s lain there for a couple of minutes, eyes shut, when he suddenly feels a hand in his hair, fingers carefully drawing through the strands. This is new.
“You should let your hair grow out more,” Hakan says in a low voice, gracing his thumb over the short hair on Karim’s neck.
A shiver runs down Karim’s back, the feeling cats must be having when they’re purring. “Yeah?”
He cracks open one eye and finds Hakan staring right back at him with dark eyes, phone discarded to the side.
Hakan’s hand never stops moving in Karim’s hair, and there’s that fucking feeling again in Karim’s stomach. That incompleteness, that tug, but he has a name for it now.
“Yeah,” Hakan says.
“Okay. I - yeah. Yeah. Sure,” Karim replies, and he knows he’s talking nonsense, but he can’t really stop himself.
One corner of Hakan’s mouth draws upwards a bit, turning into a hidden smile, one that only Karim can see looking up at Hakan.
Karim props himself up on his elbows in the same moment that Hakan leans down, so their faces end up way closer to each other than either of them expected. There’s maybe ten centrimetres between their noses. Karim breathes out shakily.
Hakan doesn’t pull back, although he probably should, by all laws of their friendship. Karim almost wishes he still didn’t know he was in love with Hakan.
The voice of Admir calling, “That ball was out!” carries into the room like it’s coming from another planet and not the football tennis match down the hall, and then Hakan and Karim almost kiss.
Suddenly courageous, Karim moves a tiny bit more forward, and now he can not just feel Hakan’s breath, but also Hakan’s lips ghost over his own.
As if Karim pulled a knife on him in that moment, Hakan suddenly blanches, his eyes widening. His mouth hangs open and there’s nearly a type of fear on Hakan’s face. Before Karim can do anything, he gets up.
Karim’s head hits the bed in an unpleasant way, but that’s the least of his concerns right now. He’s made a huge mistake.
“I’m-” Hakan starts shakily, but when Karim crawls off the bed, he stops and tenses - then he turns and hurries out of the room, slamming the door shut behind himself.
“Fuck,” Karim whispers into the empty room, although there’s no one there to answer or even listen.
Karim shouldn’t have-- he shouldn’t have, period.
It always comes back to him taking more than he actually deserved, just assuming more than Hakan was giving, simply because for a moment there Karim had an unbelievable kind of hope.
If this stupid misjudgement ruined their entire friendship, Karim would never forgive himself. Worse, he’d have been the person to put that fear on Hakan’s face.
Of course Karim runs after Hakan after he had slammed the door, but Hakan is nowhere to be seen anymore, not the corridor, not the lobby, not the immediate outside area.
Karim feels like he’s searched the whole hotel when he comes upon Christoph reading a book in a corner on the balcony of the fourth floor.
Christoph looks up with a expectant look on his face. “Hey.”
“Do you, uh,” Karim says, and he knows it won’t help with keeping Christoph out of his business, “know where Hakan is?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
Karim breathes out in relief.
“Where is he?”
“He came up earlier, asked me whether he could stay in my room for a bit. He looked spooked.”
Shit. But at least Karim knew where Hakan was now.
“Thanks,” Karim tells Christoph curtly and turns on his heels to hurry to Christoph’s room on the same floor.
“I want the details afterwards!” Christoph calls, and Karim flips him off without looking back.
In front of the room, Karim hesitates for a moment, his fist hanging in the air a centimetre from the wood of the door, before he decides to knock twice.
There’s still no answer after a number of seconds, so Karim tries to open the door, which doesn’t work. Locked. Maybe Hakan wasn’t here after all.
“Hey. Uhm. Hakan,” Karim tries and knocks again. He glances left and right to make sure nobody sees him standing in the hallway like a rejected suitor.
“Leave,” Hakan’s rough voice sounds from the other side. Hakan must be much closer than Karim expected, maybe a meter away from him behind the door.
“I’m sorry!” Karim says honestly, putting his hand flat on the door, as if it could give him any kind of connection to Hakan. “I wish I… Can we just.. talk about it?”
“Like it isn’t obvious,” Hakan says bitterly, and fuck, Karim can imagine the face he’s making.
There are sounds coming from the other side then, sounds of footsteps. Hakan has probably walked away from the door now.
When Karim knocks again and again, there’s no answer anymore.
He could wait here, pathetically in front of the door, because at some point, Hakan would have to come out. But Karim feels like pressuring Hakan more isn’t going to help either of them, so he sighs and walks back to their room.
There, Karim finds a jersey lying on his bed.
It’s a red smudge in the otherwise white hotel room, and although it’s folded very neatly, it’s a flaw in the design.
The jersey is one from last season, and it’s not one Karim brought with him on the trip. It also isn’t one that Karim actually still owns, which he knows, because it’s the one he gave to Hakan after a Cup match when they swapped shirts with each other, instead of any of the opposing players.
So apparently, Hakan made the effort to go back to their room to get rid of this jersey while Karim was-- Karim doesn’t want to think about it.
Instead he drops onto his bed face first and tries to forget what Hakan’s lips had felt like.
When it’s his turn to give an interview for the team’s youtube channel an hour later, Karim is still rattled. He manages to smile through it as well as he can, and tries to catch a view at the guys that were called up at the same times as him, but Hakan isn’t one of them.
You’d think considering that they’re all stuck in a hotel together 24/7, it’d be hard to avoid a person for a day, but Hakan makes it look easy.
Karim doesn’t notice him at lunch or dinner, and he’s nowhere to be seen when almost everyone hangs out for a couple of rounds of FIFA in the group room.
When Karim asks Stefan and Lars whether they’ve seen Hakan, Lars says he saw him in the fitness room some time earlier but not again after that, and Stefan just eyes Karim like he’s trying to look through him.
Karim walks up to Christoph’s room again before going to bed, but only finds Christoph and Julian getting ready to sleep.
Hakan doesn’t come back to Karim’s and his room that night either. Although Karim almost expected it, because he knows Hakan can be stubborn when he wants to, it’s still a stab in the heart.
Karim can’t sleep, keeps flipping the thoughts in his head around. Wishing Hakan was here to touch his wrist again, to understand that this stupid awful almost kiss doesn’t have to be anything.
After Karim has turned his pillow to the cold side for the twentieth time, he realises he won’t get any sleep again, so he does what worked well last time.
He grabs his jacket and shoes and makes his way outside to breathe fresh air.
It’s quiet in the hotel, of course, and it calms Karim when he steps into the half-dark outside.
He notices almost right away that there’s light coming from the training area, which is unusual in the middle of the night. It makes Karim curious, and he walks around the bushes and trees to check it out.
A look at this phone tells Karim it’s a little after midnight, so he’s very surprised to find that it’s Hakan standing on the lighted field.
The pitch is only illuminated by one of the floodlights, and he wonders how Hakan convinced one of the employees to switch it on for him at night.
Hakan is small, alone there on the far end of the green turf, but despite it, he doesn’t look fragile. He seems the complete opposite of who he was when he had Karim’s head in his lap, now standing outside of the penalty box with his back turned towards Karim. A steadfast figure in training shorts, bright neon boots and a grey hoodie with the hood drawn low over his head.
Karim can see five footballs and, further back, four football mannequins lined up between Hakan and the goal. The floodlight is throwing long shadows that are anchoring Hakan’s feet, the equipment and the goal posts to the earth, and Karim has the sudden cognisance that he’s intruding on something incredibly intimate.
But he can’t turn away from the itching hope that he’s a welcome audience despite everything, and he slowly edges towards the scene in front of him, his legs carrying him mechanically.
Hakan squares and rolls his shoulders - even under the cloth Karim can see his muscles curve - then he hunches forward and takes four steps before shooting the ball with the inside of his foot.
It’s the same sequence before every kick, a smooth, rehearsed motion and not at all desperate if not for how the net shakes when four of the five balls land in the goal.
As Hakan goes to collect the balls, Karim purposefully takes his time to step forward.
He doesn’t say anything when he’s so close that Hakan must have noticed him, but Hakan doesn’t say anything either, doesn’t walk away. Doesn’t come so close that Karim can feel his breath, can see his throat move when he swallows.
Instead, Hakan continues his routine square-roll-hunch-run-shoot without a sign of hesitation about the situation changing - but then he leaves out the next ball in line. He doesn’t come back to it with the next shot either, just ignoring the ball like he’s ignoring Karim.
He slowly walks to pick up the four balls that he’s shot, carefully making sure to walk around the penalty box instead of crossing it directly.
Karim gets it, then, even through his bleary mind, what Hakan is offering without words, and he’s never been more grateful.
Unlike Hakan, he isn’t wearing appropriate football shoes, so he shoots sloppily, and the ball smacks against the yellow plastic of one of the football mannequins and bounces back. The sound echoes strangely across the deserted pitch.
With his heel, Hakan stops the ball in the process of rolling away.
“You need to use the inside of your foot,” Hakan says in a neutral voice, looking into the distance like the navigator of a ship.
“Hakan,” Karim simply replies, because this isn’t about football. If it was, Karim would know how to deal with it.
“Get the drill just right,” Hakan continues, sounding weaker now, breathing in and out like he’s having trouble keeping it together. “The curve, ah, around the, the defenders.”
“Hakan,” Karim repeats, and Hakan draws the hood from his head and looks directly at Karim.
“I can’t sleep,” he says honestly, and it shows in the red around his eyes.
It’s not what Karim expected him to say. He figured there’d be a lot more accusations than that if what happened is causing Hakan to keep up at night and train.
“I’m so sorry,” Karim replies, which makes Hakan squint at him and shrug.
“It’s hardly your fault. I shouldn’t be so dependent on-”
“No, listen,” Karim interrupts him. He dares to cross the few steps between them and touch Hakan’s arm. It’s a small success when Hakan doesn’t pull away. “I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you.”
Hakan furrows his brows. “What?” he says slowly, his eyes flickering over Karim’s face.
“I shouldn’t have, okay? I get it,” Karim replies. “I’m sorry. I took advantage of you indulging me, like… like some asshole. You avoided me the whole day and I feel like shit! I’m sorry! Just don’t ignore me!”
After Karim finishes speaking, it’s silent on the pitch, just the occasional chirping of bugs.
Hakan opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again to say, “That’s not what happened.”
Karim feels like he walked into the wrong conversation, or at least like the late hours and the tiredness are playing a joke on him.
“Uh, yeah, it kinda is,” he says, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I was there, in case you forgot.”
“No, I mean…” Hakan meets Karim’s eyes for a second, before staring at his feet. “I tried to kiss you.”
“What?”
“I tried to kiss you.”
“What,” Karim stutters again, his working mind coming to a halt.
“I thought I had it together, but you kept sleeping on me, being so close, I couldn’t sleep without you anymore! And I let you come back, because I’m a masochist apparently! I like you! Okay. If that freaks you out, then. I don’t know.”
Hakan gets louder and louder as he keeps speaking, and the words echo across the dark field.
Karim takes a deep breath, trying to ground himself. Obviously things are different than what he figured they were. And the naive hope is coming back, maturing.
“You’re kind of sending me mixed signals here,” Karim says, and makes sure to smile when looking at Hakan.
“Fuck,” Hakan groans, and weakly kicks the ground which doesn’t budge.
“You like me?”
Hakan shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, when it really, really does. “Yeah.”
“I like you, too,” Karim continues, “and, uh, until a minute ago, I was sure I was the one doing the… kissing.”
Hakan immediately stops hitting his boot into the ground and stares at Karim. “You’re joking. Tell me you’re not joking.”
“Going with the mixed signals again, I see. I’m not joking. I swear.”
“Since when?” Hakan asks urgently.
Karim didn’t expect that question, to be honest, and he can feel the heat rising on his cheeks. He hopes Hakan can’t see it in the dark.
“Uhm, I’ve realised like a week ago,” Karim says helplessly, and raises his hand to Hakan’s shoulder because he really needs to touch him again. “But it’s probably been a lot, uhm, longer. I just didn’t - understand, I guess. So. Yeah. Since when do you, uhm.”
The following moment is a strange one. They’ve put their feelings out in the open now, in the middle of the night, and on a football pitch of all places, although Karim supposes it’s fitting.
But neither of them knows how to proceed exactly, how to make the final step out of the grey zone and towards each other.
It’s Hakan who decides to take care of that, but not by directly answering Karim’s half-uttered question.
Instead he fists his hand in Karim’s shirt collar, and for a moment it seems like neither of them is sure what Hakan is going to do. But then he pulls Karim forward into a hug so forcefully that it almost hurts when their chests crash against each other.
Hakan digs his fingers into Karim’s back and puts his head on Karim’s shoulder. Karim can feels Hakan breathe against his skin and it takes him a moment to realise that Hakan is laughing softly.
Karim hugs him back, and joins the relieved chuckles like Hakan’s are contagious.
“Since when?” he repeats, staring over Hakan into the goal behind them.
Hakan nudges his head against Karim’s neck and says in a muffled voice, “Barcelona, probably.”
Karim digs through memories to work out what Hakan means, until it hits him.
“Barcelona? You mean… when we played them in group stage? That’s. Wow. Some time ago.”
“Shut up,” Hakan says, whining defensively.
So Karim does, a bit flattered.
They stand on the grass for some time, embracing tightly and timing their breaths with each other, because this is the start of something they can’t hurry.
Hakan smells like his adidas aftershave and sweat from his free kick training, and Karim wants to hold onto him forever.
There’s something he wants to do even more though.
“Can I kiss you?” Karim asks, and Hakan laughs again.
“Yeah,” he replies, straightens himself and takes Karim’s face between his hands.
Karim has a few centimetres on Hakan, which never held any importance until now, when Hakan has to go on his toes to lay his lips on Karim’s.
The kiss is surprisingly soft and warm. Karim sighs and lets his hand sneak into Hakan’s hair, which Hakan answers with a grin into the kiss - and yeah. Maybe Karim is into that whole beard burn thing.
When Hakan drops back onto his feet and breaks the kiss, Karim is a little light-headed and bro-punches Hakan in the shoulder, because he has no idea what one is supposed to do after kissing one’s best friend.
Hakan bares his teeth in a wolfish smirk, and it fills Karim’s heart to be on the receiving end of it again. Then Hakan turns, spooning the ball that’s still lying next to him on his feet. He juggles it on his knee a couple of times and shoots it into the net, easy as that.
Above them, the floodlight turns off.
“Oh. That would be the two hour mark. The woman I woke up for it put a timer,” Hakan says with a sheepish grin.
“That’s how long you’ve been out here?”
“Yeah, well. I couldn’t sleep, like I said.”
Hakan looks so helpless when he says that, that Karim can’t stop himself from leaning over and kissing the corner of his mouth again. It feels awesome to just be able to do that.
“Let’s go back inside. Maybe we’ll actually be able to sleep again if we’re in the same room,” Karim jokes and takes Hakan’s hand.
Hakan nods and follows Karim easily back into the hotel to their room.
“I don’t want to sleep,” Karim clarifies, and he can feel Hakan’s grip on his hand tighten.
“Oh.”
“Unless you do.”
“No. That’s not. Necessary, I think.”
As soon as the door behind them falls shut, Karim tugs at the way too many layers of clothes Hakan is wearing. It becomes a wobbly exercise to take them off at the same time as his own, while Hakan is also struggling to unlace his football boots.
Somehow they manage, and Hakan kisses Karim, less softly now, more determined. Karim almost feels like a teenager again.
Karim’s old jersey is still lying on the bedspread, and when Hakan looks at him, red flush on his cheeks, Karim knows they’re considering the same thing.
But Karim decides, not today, it would take too long. He’s having trouble with his patience anyway, so Karim throws the jersey on the floor and crawls on the bed.
He pulls Hakan down with him by the collar of his shirt, and Hakan breaks his fall with his hands on either side of Karim’s head.
“Wow,” Hakan says, staring down at Karim, a mirror of the situation they found themselves in earlier that day, before Hakan bolted.
“Wow,” Karim replies, grinning, and then rolls on top of Hakan in one swift motion that presses their bodies together. “Stop talking now, dude.”
Hakan does it the effective way - he silences both of them by sticking his tongue into Karim’s throat.
The next morning, they oversleep by several hours.
Perhaps Karim purposefully turned his alarm clock off after just one ring, and cuddled back against Hakan’s chest, perhaps they just failed to hear it the ten times it went off, who knows.
Schmidt, however, isn’t amused at all and makes them do penalty exercises as well as an additional training after dinner.
But Karim doesn’t care much, because when Hakan lands the eleventh free kick into the goal perfectly, he turns to Karim with the brightest, toothiest smile and kisses him later when they’re alone in the locker room.
Karim joins the rest of the guys for another TV evening just to be able to doze on Hakan’s shoulder.
He figures Christoph probably gets the message, when Hakan throws his jacket over Karim when he pretends to have fallen asleep.