Chapter Text
Boisterous and loud – watch out people, Haaland’s coming round.
Couldn’t count the amount of times someone had said that about him. Goddamn teammates went blue in the face, laughing and jeering whenever he walked past them in training. Not that it got under his skin; it didn’t, but when it was all you hear day in and day out (mind you it’s not even that funny), it can get tiring and Haaland was already tired.
Preparation for the incoming match day was brutal. The days were long, the remarks and critiques were biting, and with the heatwave rolling in, his shirt was sticking to his back as he squeezed his water bottle.
Lukewarm – yuck.
He turned his face away with a sneer and huffed as he dropped it to the ground. The thing had been boiling in the sun like a bottle of piss and even having his hair tied back into a ponytail wasn’t keeping it from sticking to the back of his neck. Everything was getting to him and the only place he wanted to be was a nice, cool, air conditioned room.
A hand hit the back of his head and he heard a laugh as his head tilted forward. He turned with such vigour he’d thought, for a moment, that he might have snapped his own neck but quickly quelled when he heard a light tone call out, ‘You good, mate?’
He turned to see Jude standing behind him, forehead shiny from his own workload and a bottle of water in his hand. The younger man was grinning ear to ear, sucking up deep breaths through his nose as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand before glancing at the water bottle in his hand. Jude held it up, he squirted some of his water at him.
It hit him right in the face. And he snapped, but not for the prank, rather, something else. ‘Where the fuck did you get cold water from?’
Jude clicked his tongue and looked over his shoulder to the entrance of the pitch near the changing rooms. ‘There’s a little thing called a water fountain,’ he chimed. ‘Believe it or not, they have cold water in them.’
Haaland waved his hand in the air, ‘Fuck off.’
Jude had been the only one who had never sung along to the song, not that he’d be bothered if he had done so. He was just happy that he’d never done it. Wouldn’t have sounded good leaving his mouth, anyway. Or maybe he had been and he’d just not noticed because his little quips and biting remarks towards him always had him wondering if he’d said that stupid rhyme. If they had ever been on his tongue, though, he washed them away with a big gulp of water before holding his water bottle out to him.
‘Go on, princess.’
But just because he never sang the song didn’t mean he wasn’t a tease.
Haaland gawked at the bottle. ‘Seriously? I’ve got legs.’
‘No way, really?’ Gasped the other, nudging his hand with the bottle, ‘Go on.’ Haaland glanced at him before taking the bottle from him. ‘What? You’re acting like I’ve spiked it or something. Take it.’
Haaland raised an eyebrow and said, ‘You said it, not me,’ as he grabbed the bottle off Bellingham and squirted the water into his mouth. Finally, something refreshing. The bench beside him creaked slightly as Jude took a seat beside him, leaning forward to fix the knotted lace on his shoe. He’d have rather him to have left with his water bottle; he had a habit of making his skin hot to the touch whenever he was around. But he quenched that thought with another gulp of water before placing the bottle beside Jude’s boot.
‘How’ve you managed that?’ he said with a snort, watching as Jude attempted to thread his fingers between the tightly woven laces. On occasion, he’d noticed how Jude would tie his shoes and could never quite wrap his head around why he insisted on knotting them until there was barely any lace left. He wasn’t a beginner either, anymore, so he couldn’t blame it on his youth.
‘You don’t want them to come undone mid-match; you can’t have your mind anywhere but the game,’ he mumbled out between frustrated breaths. Haaland continued to watch, noting how he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he fought a vicious battle against his shoelace. The only issue was, he was losing. Badly. And so, he slid off the bench and kneeled on the floor in front of him, shooing his hands away as he took hold of his laces and began to attempt to unravel them. ‘I can do this–’
‘Think of it as payback for the water,’ he quipped as he managed to undo the first knot, ‘Plus, watching you doing that was killing me, kid.’
‘Two years difference, by the way,’ Jude huffed, crossing his arms across his chest as he looked out onto the pitch. ‘You excited for tomorrow?’
‘Damn right,’ Haaland said, ‘Worked too hard not to be.’ He untied yet another knot, ‘You?’
‘Always,’ said Jude with a little grin, looking down at him as he finally undone the last knot in his shoe. He, however, didn’t get the chance to retie it as Haaland beat him to it before moving onto his other shoe. ‘I feel like royalty right now. Is this how the one per-cent live?’
‘Only the ones who don’t know how to tie their own shoes properly,’ he said in response. Fortunately, with his practice untying his first shoelace, the other one unraveled quite quickly and he was sure to tie it up, but this time, properly.
He lightly slapped Jude’s knee as he rose from the ground, ruffling his head as he smirked. ‘There you go, princess,’ before heading off in the direction of the water fountain.
He left not knowing how hot Jude’s face had gotten, nor that his eyes were trained on him as he walked away.