Chapter Text
Jude Bellingham has been my best friend for quite a fair enough time.
We signed the same year to Dortmund. It was our first time making it into a famous, successful team.
The pride I felt to be gifted with such trust from this team was bigger than I expected. It was my fuel, my never ending source of motivation. I wanted to return the favour I was granted to the people who believed in me. I wanted to win every match, to score every goal I could.
I wanted to follow my father's footsteps.
The friendships I forged, the laughters I had, the rare parties were a plus I appreciated immensely.
I remember every one of my teammates. Late at night, when I can't sleep, I work myself up trying to remember the training sessions and the words we exchanged. I try to remember the useless rumours, the funny stories, the ushered words.
I don't want to ever forget the time I spent in Germany, for it was the best.
But somehow, when I think back to that time, now, the first thing that comes to my mind is a pair of brown eyes, full lips and a tanned face, stretching just enough to let appear a bright smile.
When this image floods my mind, I know this smile is destined to me. But a second later, I know it's not anymore, and the world blurs.
With him, there's no point staying awake at night to not forget a single piece of my life. I know I'll remember everything that comes to this man.
I remember when I entered the locker room on my first training session. I walked to this brunette guy, asking if he'd know where the toilets were.
He eyed me before answering.
"Haaland, we're both transfers, I'm as lost as you are," he said with a small smile, as if testing grounds.
I had blinked once, twice, before heading off to another corridor, trying for the bathroom.
I felt stupid for days.
I never paid much attention to the press and rumours before. What my community manager told me weren't exactly things I prayed to remember, either. God, I didn't even know Dortmund had signed two new players that year. Was there more?
But Jude did know, or he wouldn't have known my name.
Now, I pay attention, too. I listen to the news. I note down what concerns football. I remember other transfers' name.
I also remember our first game. I had had a chance to introduce myself properly in between, thankfully, and I was surprised to find how easily we had gotten along.
We both entered the field in the second half of the game. We clapped hands, then ran to our positions: he, midfield, while I was up as striker.
We scored two goals. He was an excellent assist. I was good to put the ball deep in the net.
The crowd had roared and, somehow, through every match we played, it never ceased.
We started playing all game long, scoring more and more goals.
I think it was that, really, that got us friends. The tactics we put in place in order to score, the late nights we spent in the gym, the early morning on the field to work that specific connection the coaches had found worked out well between us.
We slowly began talking about our personal life. I talked him through all the girlfriends he had, while he scolded me through all the ones I didn't have. Funny.
But I always found he wore an amused look on his face when we were speaking.
"Do you think I'm stupid," I asked once, with more anger than I expected, after an especially long training session of drills.
He looked surprised. "No," he shook his head. "You just look like you don't give a fuck for anything."
Which I probably did. Which was my goal, really. To score, make my father proud, make the people happy. This was all that mattered.
The end of our first season with Dortmund was close, when he made me realised I had feelings of my own. Feelings that were not imbued with expectations of others.
Maybe this is what I admired most about him. His willingness to do it all for the sake of the faith he had put in himself. He didn't want to play football because of the weights people put on him. He wanted to play because he enjoyed it, because this was what he loved above all.
When I realised that, I came knocking to his hotel room's door while we were on a trip to play in Spain.
When he answered and his eyes scanned me over, I realised how late it was and how I must look: only in my pyjama's pants, my hair unraveling on my upper back and, for sure, an hagard look on my face.
"I think I lost myself," I whispered.
He pressed his lips into a thin smile.
"I know," he moved to the side of the door to let me in. "I saw it in your eyes, for the last few weeks."
"Jude, what am I going to do?" I walked to his large bed and flopped down on it, face down.
I could feel him sit on the edge. I turned my face to see him, my right cheek flat on the soft covers.
"What you've always done before a match: pull yourself together and figure it out," he shrugged as if it was that simple.
"I need to find a way to enjoy it again. To play for myself, not to fulfil anyone's expectations or to answer the statistics," my voice was tight, I remember. As if I was about to cry, but my eyes were dry.
"Ok," he sighed. "Ok, Erling. We'll find a way."
And we did.
Slowly, I enjoyed it more and more. I've played football since I was five, and I returned to playing for that little boy, before I had to get selected for Norway's national team, before I had to work harder and harder for scouts to notice me; before it started to get so serious.
But with Jude, it never seemed so. It always seemed like the field was ours, like the ball was magnetic to our feet. And with him, I stopped tensing when our coaches talked strategy and hopes for a future championship I couldn't even fathom. With him, I learned to laugh in interviews instead of giving brief, studied answers. I learned to feel at my place in a world everyone believed I belonged, but in which I never did before him.
In my bones, I know I've played football all my life, but in a way, I can't help but feel like I've only started when I joined Dortmund by his side.
The man I am now would have never existed if we had never crossed paths.
I would never be able to think badly of him, no matter the emotions he was about to put me through. I admired him, loved his train of thoughts. He was my star.
I couldn't be more grateful to anyone but him. For the mindset, for the laughters. The confidence late at night, the snickering behind our coaches's back. The failed interview because he'd snuck in to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. The celebration after every goals we scored. His eyes locked with mine in a stadium full of hundreds of people, but his eyes on me. The hugs. The smiles. Everything. Him.
Sometimes, when I look back, it think it's because we had such good years, that I now feel like a fool. I should've known. I should've braced myself for what was about to come. Nothing good ever lasts. Even for us, professional footballers thought as untouchable. But we're just human. Things go bad in our life, too, just like normal people do. We hurt, too.
And Jude and I were about to have a lot of that.