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The studio lights were hotter than Messi had expected.
He checked, for the third time, the angle at which his face appeared on the monitor beside the camera, and devoted some genuine thought to the question of why this chair was so tall. Beside him, Aguero was his exact opposite. Fifteen years of football together; boots hung up earlier than most; a man who these days looked more natural holding a microphone than a matchball. The owner of a channel with 1.2 million subscribers was rolling through his opening patter as comfortably as if he were on his own living-room couch.
"Tonight's guest. Needs no introduction. The best footballer I know, and the most boring friend I have — Leo."
LMAOOOO
most boring friend 💀
bro looks unreal on camera wtf
LEO?? on THIS channel??
"Boring is a bit much," Messi protested, without much force behind it. Because it was true. Interviews he could do. Fixed questions, fixed answers. But a livestream had no script, the right side of the screen ran with chat like a waterfall, and apparently one was expected to read the waterfall and speak at the same time. A heart that didn't so much as flutter in front of ninety thousand people on a matchday was, here, dropping beats.
"Relax. I'll carry the whole thing." Aguero whispered it at an angle the camera couldn't read, then turned back into frame with a grin. "So! We've prepared something. The guest-exclusive Mission Roulette."
"Mission?"
"Prank-call mission. The wheel gives you a phrase. You call someone, and you have to get them to say it. You can't say it yourself — it only counts out of their mouth."
The wheel appeared on screen. Aguero clicked; it spun with theatrical clatter and stopped.
[ ARE YOU INSANE? (Have you lost your mind?) ]
"Close variations count. Standard house rules," Aguero added.
free mission lol
this one's easy
just say something unhinged to literally anyone
"You got a gift," Aguero whistled. "Who are you calling?"
Messi scrolled his contacts. The manager — absolutely not. Paredes — entertaining, but the odds of a broadcast incident sat around ninety percent. Dibu — dismissed, same grounds as Paredes. Where his thumb finally stopped was, if he was honest with himself, the name it had been heading toward from the start.
"Rodri?" Aguero read the name off the screen. "Ohh. The bodyguard?"
THE bodyguard??
the guy who sprints straight to Leo at every final whistle lol
cameras catch him staring at Leo from the bench like every single match
we gave up asking what those two are years ago
"Easier with someone I'm comfortable with," Messi said, switching on the speakerphone. The dial tone didn't survive two rings.
— Hello? Leo?
"Hey, Rodri. What are you doing."
— Recovery pool. Why, is something wrong?
"No, it's just..." Messi glanced down at the mission card once. He needed to say something absurd. The more absurd, the better. "I need some money. Wondered if you could lend me some."
The silence lasted less than a second.
— Oh, really? How much?
Messi blinked. Aguero blinked.
huh?
???
he didn't even ask WHY
wait hold on something is off
According to the plan, this was where the other person said what are you talking about? — at which point Messi would name a figure and harvest his are you insane. Caught off guard, Messi simply played his prepared next move.
"...About five hundred thousand dollars?"
This time the silence stretched a little. Three seconds, perhaps. And then:
— Ah... then I need to figure out which of the deposits to break first. Hang on, let me open the app. Leo, can you send me your account number?
The stream detonated.
?????
IS HE INSANE LMAOOO
why is he breaking his CDs 😭😭
he's dead serious right now
I actually got chills
Aguero had both hands clamped over his mouth and had rolled backward, chair and all. Messi looked down at the phone. On the screen, the call timer went on counting, faithful and indifferent. This was a mission; that was a speakerphone; and the voice on the other end was, at this moment, earnestly opening a banking app.
"Wait — wait." Messi asked, the mission half-forgotten. "You're not even going to ask why?"
— Why? From the other end came the sound of a man genuinely puzzled by the question. — You have more money than I do. If you're coming to me anyway, there's obviously a reason. If it's something you can't talk about, better I don't ask. Or wait — Leo, have you been kidnapped or something? Then I should send it faster. You pay first and tell them to let you go, no?
bro
the KIDNAPPING theory 💀💀
his logic is broken and flawless at the same time
he's so real for this
just get married already
Aguero was pounding the desk without a sound. Chat was climbing ten lines a second. And Messi — before any of that could reach him, Messi failed to stop his own brow from folding.
"Are you insane? Have you lost your mind?"
His voice came out louder than he intended.
"You can't send that kind of money without even asking why. How do you know it's really me and not a scam — voices get cloned now, you know that. And even if it is really me, you don't just hand over money like that!"
Only after he finished did he register how strangely quiet the studio had become.
Aguero slowly raised the mission card. [ ARE YOU INSANE? (Have you lost your mind?) ] One finger traveled back and forth between the card and Messi's face. The phrase was supposed to come from the other end of the line. The person who had just delivered both versions of it, in flawless enunciation, was Messi.
LMAOOOOOO
HE SAID IT HIMSELF
mission failed successfully
why is him being genuinely angry the funniest part
he's yelling because he's WORRIED I can't 😭
From the phone came a voice one beat behind.
— ...Well, the lecture confirms it's really you. Oh — wait. Leo, you're in the middle of something? A stream? What is it, what do I do?
"You've already done everything, De Paul." Aguero recovered the microphone along with most of his breathing. "Thanks to you the mission has failed gloriously, and a hundred and twenty thousand viewers just watched a man break his savings in real time."
— Ah, Aguero's channel. Hello. ...But Leo, so you don't need the five hundred thousand? I had two deposits picked out to break.
"Hang up." Messi pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Don't break anything. Hang up."
— Okay. Leo, see you back at the lodge.
The end-call tone rang through the studio. Aguero tidied up the segment, read an ad, drank some water. Around the time the chat slowed back down to a speed the human eye could follow, he swiveled his chair toward Messi, the laughter not yet fully drained from his face.
"You are genuinely terrible at this."
"...I know."
"Who plays a prank mission that honestly? You should've just called and said I love you, cold. You'd have gotten your are you insane in one shot. One!"
Messi shook his head. Two hours under unfamiliar lights, the whole commotion on top — a dull ache had started at his temples. That was probably why. Why a sentence that would normally have passed through at least one filter went out with no filter at all.
"No. He'd just say I love you too, Leo right back."
Messi reached for his water glass and added,
"It's dangerous."
?
wait
WAIT
oh he absolutely would
dangerous?? what do you mean dangerous
he knows EXACTLY what he means lmaooo
"Dangerous?" Aguero echoed — then glanced at the monitor, found something there, and burst out laughing. "Hold on, I have to read this one. 'bro if he says it back on stream that's a confession with no take-backs 💀'"
LMAOOOO
no take-backs 😭😭
That Time I Tried a Prank Call and Ended Up With a Boyfriend
so THAT'S why he didn't do it (understandable)
A confession with no take-backs.
The phrase was so uncomfortably accurate that Messi felt heat gathering somewhere in his face. The lights. It was the lights; they ran hot. Having settled on that ruling, he lifted the glass to his mouth to smooth his expression down. Which was, precisely, the moment.
Ding — a donation alert, and a bright synthetic TTS voice filled the studio, enunciating beautifully.
[ $10 · "De Paul": YOU'RE the one who seduced ME first?! ]
The water went down the wrong way.
While Messi folded in half coughing, Aguero lay collapsed across the desk laughing hard enough to clip the microphone, and chat surged to twenty lines a second. Somewhere in the coughing, Messi organized his thoughts: the sting in his eyes was the choking, and the color in his face, all of it, also the choking. Before the ruling could be finalized, his phone buzzed. De Paul.
[ Just opened the stream. Did you choke? Drink slowly. ]
...And whose fault, exactly, was that.