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Jude closes his hotel room door, and finally the wall of sound stops. His ears are still ringing, his skin buzzing from their heart-attack finish against France. He’d looked across the pitch at halftime, past his cautiously optimistic squadmates, caught Kylian’s eye, and thought “Uh-oh.” He’s played alongside Kylian at Real Madrid, has seen that look up close, and he’d known that with Messi’s record so close at hand, there’s no way El Dictador was letting them off without a fight.
Against all odds, the thrashing pace of that second half seemed to have cheered up both teams - Mbappe got his record, England got her win, and Jude got to charge in like the cavalry when they’d started to fear for the worst. Now his work is done, and it feels like he’s glowing from the inside out, sore from the top down. Jude pulls his shirt over his head, and flops backwards onto his bed. He is also, most of all, fucking exhausted.
His phone vibrates beneath him, and Jude allows himself a petulant whine. What more could anyone possibly want from me right now, he thinks, I’ve given you all I’ve got. He shuffles to pull it out, with every intention of shutting it off, throwing it across the room, and sleeping for the next 48 hours - but the photo on the screen is of a clumsily assembled snowman he once saw with the end of a mop for hair, snapped on a walk in Dortmund. It’s Erling. Settling back into the pillows, grinning like an idiot, Jude swipes to accept. And there’s Erling’s big stupid face, a little too close to the screen. He’s in bed too, distractedly shirtless, and a glance at the time tells Jude it’s nearly 4am in Oslo.
“Jude!” he says, and with such urgency that Jude is already sitting up, concerned that something’s wrong. “Jude, listen, those last 20 minutes, they were beautiful! The way you ran, the way you dribbled through those defenders! You have to marry me.”
Jude laughs, relieved, and lets himself crash back into his pillows. “Shut up, you absolute muppet.”
Erling pouts. “You think I am not serious?”
Jude decides there and then that the next time they’re in the same country, he is going to lay Erling down, wear his Norway kit shirt to bed, and ride him so hard he’d forget his own name if it wasn’t emblazoned across Jude’s shoulders. But all he says is, “Piss off, you love a grand gesture. If you were actually proposing you’d hire a helicopter to take us out to the fjords or something, or go riding in the mountains with wild horses or whatever.”
Erling looks intrigued, and like he may start taking notes. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”
“Mate, I don’t even know how to drive a standard.”
Erling waves a hand, as if swatting away his protests. “Yes, all of this. I will take you to fjords and it will be very beautiful and you will think I look incredibly handsome in the snow-” Jude rolls his eyes, “I will do this all later, but I knew there was no time to waste. You will be receiving many of these calls now, I needed to be the first.”
“Oh yeah, the proposal hotline’s been running off the hook around here.” Jude does have 87 missed calls, but somehow he doesn't think that’s what James Corden is calling him about. “Anyway, it was Saka who scored the hat trick.”
“And it was you who gave him the penalty to score the last one, everyone will see and think ‘What a good man, so generous, such good calves-”
“Wait, what have my calves got to do with-”
“Jude, you are a midfielder, and you’ve scored more than any Englishman ever has in a world cup! All of these little journalists who talked when the team was announced all ‘Why did they pick Bellingham, this is not correct, blah blah blah, they are now eating their words. But I have always known you are world class!”
“So you’re asking me to marry you… to beat the rush? Laying claim before anyone else can?” Jude points an accusing finger. “Pissing on a tree?”
Erling sits up a little and gives him his best serious face. “A tree with the best calves I have ever seen.”
Jude wishes he was here, so he could whip a pillow at him. He wishes he was here for so many reasons. He sighs.
“You know why we can’t.” Erling slumps back down, loose strands of hair falling about his face as he mashes it into the pillow, only his eyes and furrowed brow still visible. “The fans would crucify us.” A relationship, they can hide from the press, but legal paperwork, not a chance. And they’ve both been on pitches when the fans have turned - whipping bottles at players, screaming slurs, breaking down barriers to rush the pitch. They might feel like heroes now, but they’ve seen how quick it comes crashing down, every mistake a black player makes a carte blanche for racist abuse. Jude’s been up against that kind of shit since he was 17. There’s nothing he wants more than to kiss that dorky post-goal grin off Erling’s face after a game, right there on the pitch, but he’s under no illusions that it wouldn’t rain absolute hellfire down on them. The tabloids would get over it sooner or later, but the football “fans” would never let them forget it, and many would not forgive. Erling growls, but only because he knows Jude is right.
“I did not say we have to get married right now,” Erling barters, “but you must promise that it will be me. We can wait until we retire, wait 20 years-”
“There’s a keeper on the Bulgaria bench who's like 50.”
“Jude,” Erling says, and he’s dropped the teasing, the lightness. “Tell me that one day you will marry me. I will wait, I will wait until it is safe or we can leave the pitch and go back to Oslo or Birmingham or wherever, and be left alone. I will not ask you to choose me over the game, but tell me that you will wait for me too.”
Jude’s smiling so hard it’s beginning to hurt, just one more ache to throw on the pile, and he rolls onto his side so it feels like they’re face to face in bed, whispering under the covers, just for them. “Erling Haaland. I promise, one day I will marry you.”