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I.
They've finished training for the day and they are just listening to of their organisers who lists off the last details about their match tomorrow. They will be leaving early in the morning and Erling is already mentally preparing himself for this trip. It never gets old to play in the Champions League and he's feeling a rush of excitement running through him at the thought about standing in a foreign stadium tomorrow night.
He's pulled out of his thoughts when he feels something touch his hand. He looks down at it, a little confused why someone would hand him a piece of paper.
"It's a packing list," Jude says.
Erling hadn't even heard him approach, and it still doesn't make any sense. Why would Jude give him a handwritten packing list? Erling can barely read the words that are written on it in an almost illegible scrawl.
"That's all the shit you borrowed from me when we were away last season," Jude continues when Erling obviously still doesn't get it. "So you don't forget about it this time."
By now, Erling has managed to decipher some of the words. Phone charger. Toothpaste. Deodorant. Socks. "I never borrowed socks from you."
"Yeah, who knows what you'd come up with this season."
When Erling looks up at him, Jude is grinning. He forces the note into Erling's hands once again. His grip is surprisingly strong, but Erling also wants to marvel at how nice and warm his hands feel.
"Sure. Whatever," he hears himself say, even though it is the opposite of what his rapidly increasing heartbeat is telling him.
The next day, he enters the team plane and puts his bag into the overhead compartment, knowing full well that his phone charger is still sitting on his nightstand at home. It looks like he'll have to go up to Jude's room to borrow his charger later. And while he's there, he also wouldn't mind hanging out with Jude for a bit.
II.
Erling likes how Jude moves through his apartment like he lives there. Jude has been over here many times over the past year, and the shy boy who would barely dare to speak up when Erling asked him what he'd like for dinner has turned into someone who will rummage through his fridge without second thought and boldly claim that Erling's food choices are horrible.
Jude's lack of taste becomes apparent once again when Erling walks into his kitchen after Jude has left for the day. He's had a grocery list stuck to his fridge for days, but he's become good at ignoring it. He'll just order everything after he's truly run out and he can't put it off any longer. At least that's what he was planning to do before he sees that something has been added to his list.
It has been done with sharpie so it sticks out against his own orderly handwriting. Erling doesn't even know where Jude found that sharpie or if he's brought it just for this purpose, but there is no doubt about who has made the addition.
Because down where it just used to say 'milk', there is now a bold addition of 'normal!!'. Erling can't help but grin to himself. Jude can get a little annoying at times with his insistence that Erling should buy normal milk "instead of that raw milk crap" - as if raw milk isn't the most normal and natural milk there is. But this time, Erling feels like he should let it slide.
Just seeing that note on his face has lifted his mood tenfold, even after Jude has gone home. He takes the grocery list off his fridge impulsively and puts it into a drawer where a handwritten packing list is already collecting dust.
He'll forget to order groceries for a few more days after that, but he doesn't care about that at all. And he'll even remember to buy normal milk for Jude if he comes over to hang out with him again.
III.
It feels wrong to enter a stadium without Jude. Erling gets why Jude has been left out of the squad and didn't travel with them for this match due to a minor injury. It's better to take precautions now and have him back for the next one. Erling still kind of misses him, though.
He goes through the motions of warming up as usual. Missing Jude won't keep him from playing his best, he knows that, and while he loves playing with Jude, there are other players who work with him just as well. He just doesn't like them as much, but that's a totally different story.
He doesn't like anyone the way he likes Jude, and the more he realises that, the more he gets the sense that Jude might be feeling the same way. He just doesn't know what to make of it. If anything could ever be made of it at all.
However, Erling won't be able to get to the bottom of that when he's about to play and Jude isn't even here. They are back in the dressing room before the match and he's searching his bag, wondering if he's packed another hair tie. He's pretty sure that there must be at least one spare one at the bottom of his bag.
He doesn't find a hair tie, but he ends up finding something else. It's a scrap of paper, looking like it'd been torn out of a notebook. As Erling unfolds it, he recognises the untidy scrawl immediately.
'You can do it! Score a few goals for us today, yeah?'
Erling finds himself grinning at the note until one his teammates elbows him and tells him that it's time to go. He has no idea how Jude has managed to smuggle the note into his bag, but he stuffs it back in there carefully, intent on thanking Jude for it later.
After he's gone and scored a few goals like Jude told him to. He hopes that Jude will be happy about a hat-trick.
IV.
There is something unfamiliar in Erling's locker that comes tumbling at him when he opens it, as if somebody had stuffed it in there haphazardly. He doesn't manage to catch it and he has to pick it up off the dressing room floor. There, he discovers that it's a takeout flyer, and once Erling recognises the name of the place, he has no doubt anymore who put it into his locker.
After all, it would be highly unlikely that anyone else would care enough about Jude's favourite Indian takeout place to give Erling one of their flyers. Anyone else would have probably just ordered online. Erling turns the flyer in his hands, already smiling to himself at the gesture itself, when he finds that a little note has been scribbling onto the bottom of it, right below the allergen declarations.
'Tomorrow, 7pm, your place?'
It's so in character for Jude to just invite himself over to Erling's place for Indian food. With anyone else, Erling might have been bothered by it, but with Jude, he's too excited to care about anything else. Jude has been coming over more and more over the last few weeks and Erling has got the feeling that something might be happening sometime soon.
They just need to take the next step. And maybe it's Erling's turn to take it after Jude has already played his cards by dropping him this flyer with his little message as an invitation.
Erling takes out his phone and opens his text conversation with Jude. He takes care that nobody is close enough to be looking at his screen when he types out: 'This sounds like a date.'
Jude responds within seconds, as if he's been waiting by his phone for Erling to text him. 'So are you saying yes?'
Erling has never typed out three letters this fast. 'Yes.'
V.
Erling doesn't want to get up. He wants to stay in bed and maybe live in its comfortable warmth forever. It must be miserable outside because he's heard the rain pounding against the windows all night, but it's warm and cosy in here.
Even though Erling is alone by now. He groans when he hears a noise somewhere else in his apartment and his hand finds the other side of the bed empty. This is what he hates the most about nights like these; the fact that they can't really have a lie-in because they need to get to training on time and they can't show up there together all the time.
There is another noise and this time it sounds suspiciously like the front door closing. Erling sits up immediately. He can't believe that Jude would just leave without saying goodbye.
Although, thinking about it, he probably should believe it because Jude had told him last night that Erling looked like he needed more sleep. Before Jude had gone and kept him up for a little while longer.
Erling can't fight the grin off his face. He gets up and pads into the bathroom. The air is still warm and steamy from the shower and Erling does not roll his eyes before he opens the window. Jude doesn't have many faults and that is one that Erling is able to look past as he breathes in the fresh morning air streaming in from the window.
When he turns around, he discovers that there's something on the mirror. He steps closer and he sees that someone must have drawn onto the condensation that the steam left on it. The writing has already started to disappear as the cold air is flowing in, but it's still legible enough that it makes Erling's insides flutter.
Two letters and a symbol, written on his bathroom mirror, saying something that none of them has dared to speak out loud yet.
'I <3 U'
It is the best message that Erling has ever gotten.
He reacts quickly, without really thinking about it. The writing is about to fade, but Erling needs to adds something before it does. He hopes that it's still visible enough on the photo that he takes so he can send it to Jude.
'I <3 U 2'
+1
Erling expects to be waking up alone. He doesn't like it, but he knows that there is nothing he can do about it. The fact alone that they were able to steal a few hours for themselves last night was already much more than Erling could have hoped for.
After all, Jude is still playing in the World Cup. Erling himself had been playing against Jude just last night. When he thinks back to it, it's not about the two goals that Jude had scored about them, though, or about the sting of their journey coming to an end. It's all about getting to hug Jude out on the pitch and about the soft touches, words, and kisses that they'd exchanged afterwards in the quiet of his hotel room.
There will be more of that, Erling has no doubt about it. Jude will go on to play in the World Cup, but he will return to Erling eventually. Like they always do.
When Erling thinks about it that way, waking up alone isn't so bad. And it gets even better when he finds that Jude has left something for him. He would have expected a note, but this is so much better.
There is an England jersey draped across the back of the chair in the corner, with Jude's name and his number 10 on the back. There is a message written on it as well and Erling laughs a little while reading it.
'To Erling. You are one of a kind. I love you brother. Keep going!'
It seems like Jude has added 'brother' almost as an afterthought, always careful about how people might perceive them. Erling knows that he doesn't mean it in that way, but he'll still have to tease Jude about it relentlessly later, when they are back to not acting brotherly with each other at all.
For now, there is something else that he's got to do, though. The shirt is a little tight on him, but it works for his intended purpose. He takes a photo in the hotel room mirror, making sure that the number on the back with Jude's little message on it is in focus while he's grinning back over his shoulder.
The picture turns out even better than expected. He's only wearing his boxers with it and he can imagine how Jude is going to feel about that, even beyond Erling wearing his jersey. Erling sets the picture so it can only be viewed once and then he sends it to Jude without further comment.
It doesn't even take five minutes for a facetime call to come through. "You bastard," Jude greets him, but Erling can only focus on how Jude's face fills the screen and how he looks at him just like he did last night. It's only been a few hours since he's seen Jude, but he misses him so fucking much.
Jude doesn't need to hear about that right now, though. Those words are better whispered late at night when neither of them can sleep on their own. For now, Erling flexes his shoulders where the fabric of the jersey is still stretching across them. "So I guess I should wear your name more often?"
"Yeah." Jude's soft smile isn't really what Erling was going for with this display, but he'll gladly take it when Jude continues. "I really like you wearing my name." There's a slight pause, as if Jude is trying to weigh his words, but then he seems to decide to keep pushing through. "I'm going to ask you about that one day, you know?"
Erling has had an inkling about Jude's intentions for a while, but hearing Jude say it like that makes it feel so much more real. It joins the long line of other forms of affection; an 'I love you' on a shirt, a time and place noted on a takeout flyer or the reminder that Jude's always thinking of him in form or an old packing list that Erling has kept to this day. "I can't wait."
They'll have to wait a little more, he knows that, but it doesn't hurt to dream when he sees his own smile mirrored on Jude's face. For now, he can't wait until he can hold Jude in his arms again and kiss his own little messages of love onto Jude's skin.