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Why they had to gather in Bobby and Dante’s room for a team meeting was absolutely beyond him. Okay, yeah, Bobby was taking his team manager position very seriously, and that was good. It made him happy, which ultimately did make Dante happy even if he didn’t show it.
But for fuck’s sake. He just wanted to watch the game.
Dante could have opted for the headphones route if he wasn’t being addressed vaguely every couple of minutes, and he would ultimately give Nick and Eugene credit for sliding on over every now and again to poke their noses over his shoulders and try to get a good view of the laptop. Who’s playing? Spain? Portugal? Oh, shit, this might actually be really good. Who are we rooting for? Bet, alright.
It was a Telemundo livestream, because Dante had someone else’s Peacock login and he wasn’t going to pay for the official thing. Besides, Spanish and Italian had such a jarring amount of similarities that he wasn’t entirely lost. Closed captions, even if delayed, helped quite a bit for the sake of him not having to crank up his sound too much.
“Eugene, Nick, can you come back over here?” Harvard asked. He hadn’t put the captain voice on yet, but he was wavering dangerously close to it.
“Hold on,” Dante said first, blandly. He’d even held up a finger for extra purpose.
“Spain’s got a penalty kick,” Nick explained. “Just… one second.”
“Wasn’t even a fair call. It clearly wasn’t intentional,” Eugene added on.
Nick mumbled, “I don’t think they give a shit about whether it was intentional or not.”
“Shut the fuck up a second,” Dante told them all, holding out his hands as he did.
Lined up, their goalie looked squared and centered, and…
“Fuck!”
There were two groans on either side of him intermixed with the call of a goal.
The bed shifted, a new presence behind Dante as he rubbed his face. “Who’s who?” Aiden inquired, close but not too close. Just enough to feel his presence but not him. “Are we rooting for Spain?”
Dante pointed to the corner of the room. His poster was framed, hung, but very clearly Ronaldo.
“So… yes? Spain?” Aiden clarified. “Real Madrid is a team from Spain, yeah?”
“Well, yeah, Madrid,” Eugene told him.
“We’re rooting for Portugal,” Nick explained. “Ronaldo’s team. When he plays international anyway, not club, he’s from there.”
Aiden hummed. “Okay. Who’s who?”
“The… colors. Next to the country names. That’s who’s who,” Nick said. “And Ronaldo’s number seven.”
“Guys, we’re trying to set up a training schedule over here,” Harvard tried again, seemingly more aware that it was a vain attempt. “Next week is going to be really important.”
Bobby, even, had meandered over to join the crowd behind the laptop. “We’re gonna have to go for the early time if we don’t get in our request soon,” he said. “It’ll probably be a morning gym session and a late practice if we’re not careful. And we still have to run this idea past coach, otherwise it’s just gonna be whatever she sees fit. But we could make an argument for this if it’s fully thought out.”
“Best I can offer is twenty five minutes at most,” Dante countered gently. “Half-time. ‘sides, you know your coach is gonna let you at least try out your plan.”
“Well, yeah, she might, but… oh! Oh is he hurt? Oh, I don’t like it when they get hurt.”
“They’re professional floppers,” Nick promised Bobby gently. “You’d know if he was actually hurt.”
“See? Look, he realized nobody was watching and got back up,” Eugene added on.
“Guys, are we really doing this?” Harvard asked warily. “It’s just soccer.”
“Football. And yes. As soon as you all decided to have this meeting in here during the game,” Dante pointed out. “During the Portugal game too, no less.”
“And Spain. Who’s up one,” Aiden tacked on.
“I’ll remove you from this bed.”
“Tempting.”
Dante huffed, but it was as close as he would get to displaying any sort of annoyance. He knew Aiden well enough after three years inhabiting surrounding spaces to him, he knew better than to feed into it. Besides, his attention was fixed on the screen, only to sharply inhale, clap once, and breathe out when they'd knocked the ball away from the goal. Still one-oh. They could come back.
Harvard sighed loudly and got up. He moved closer, standing next to the bed to watch with them. “What’re the odds here?”
“Most people favor Spain. Which is fair, they’re probably going to win, but it’s not over until the game ends,” Dante told him. “You get surprises sometimes. Belgium versus Senegal was a fantastic game.”
“Have you gone to any?”
“Yesterday, actually. The one at MetLife, Brazil and Norway.”
“Don’t you mean New York-New Jersey?” Nick teased, grinning as he did.
Dante didn’t have to look over to see it. He could hear it. “No. It’s MetLife and it always will be.”
“So, just to be clear,” Seiji started out of nowhere, still sitting in a corner that was barely visible from the bed, “we’re not going to be planning for this coming week right now?”
It admittedly did make Dante jump out of his skin. He’d wholly forgotten he was there, apparently preoccupied with scrawling something out in a notebook that he hadn’t cared to mention anything before.
“In… fifteen minutes we will,” Harvard promised.
“Twenty. They’re adding five to this half, I can tell,” Dante corrected gently.
Seiji sighed, getting up quickly. “I’m going down to the cafeteria then. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
“Can you get me—?” Nick started.
“No. Get it yourself,” Seiji returned blandly. “Apparently you think soccer is more important than fencing.”
“Football,” Dante corrected. “And at this very moment, it is.”