A/N: I was too lazy to translate everything into German, sorry🥺

"Thanks for picking me up" I smiled at Laura as I was getting into her car, knowing her driving skills would once again make me fear for my life.

"Absolutely no problem," the blonde German said, concentrating on backing out of the small parking spot in front of my new apartment complex that Barça had organized for me. Just after the international break was over, I finally found the time to move my stuff and now the training grounds were finally within walking distance, allowing me to sleep longer in the mornings. However, for games, I unfortunately still needed a ride as getting my driver's license was just not something I had the spare time for. Quite frankly, I was also lacking motivation as it just seemed unnecessary after I had already made it to 24 without ever seriously needing one.

"We're almost neighbors now" I remarked as Laura only lived a few blocks down the street just like many of our other teammates. Especially the internationals lived scattered throughout the area, Frido and her boyfriend even in the exact same building as me.

Suddenly, a loud honk sounded, causing Laura to make a full stop in the middle of an intersection, just centimeters away from a small red car.

"Fuck, I think I just ran a red light" Laura panicked as the driver of the car that she almost crashed into rolled his window down, the walls of our car luckily drowning out his screaming almost completely. "What the heck do I do now?"

After quickly scanning our surroundings and noticing that the angry man was getting out of his car, I nervously nudged Laura in her side. "Just speed away so you don't get a fine for the red light. No one is injured anyway and we need to be at the Johan in five minutes."

Laura threw me an anxious look. "You can't be serious, right?"

"I am, Laura. For fuck's sake just drive" I urged her as the man had almost reached us, looking even more furious because we had been ignoring him.

With her hands still shaking, Laura backed away, before taking a sharp right turn, leaving the man standing alone in the intersection. By the time the angry driver would have gotten back in his car and turned around, we'd already be in the safety of the parking garage of the Estadi Johan Cruyff which was only accessible to players and staff.

"I can't believe I just did that" Laura mumbled absentmindedly, making me wonder what she was thinking about. Even though her driving skills could generally use some improvement, she'd normally never run a red light. At least not at a relatively busy intersection. All of the sudden, I realized that I had never asked her about her possible loan.

"Me neither" I chuckled before looking at her with a worried expression on my face. "What were you thinking about? Did Jonatan say anything else about the loan?"

"No, he hasn't. It's not that..." the German stuttered, her hands still shaking nervously as we pulled into the garage of the stadium. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course, anything," I replied without giving it a second thought. All that mattered was that as of now Laura would hopefully stay at Barca.

"H-how did you realize that... Uhm... that you l-liked... girls?" Laura mumbled quietly, the last word being basically inaudible.

Being openly gay meant that I had heard that phrase many times in my life as anyone who was questioning their sexuality always came to me for advice. However, out of everyone, I would never have thought Laura to be the next one as she always just dated men. Very questionable men if you ask me though.

"Who is she?" I grinned, turning my head in the blonde's direction who had a shocked expression on her face as she desperately tried to pull into a small parking spot.

"It's no one" she defended herself a little too fast for my liking, finally parking the car. "I was just curious, nothing else."

"Laura, I'm not stupid. A little curiosity doesn't make someone almost crash their car" I laughed, reassuringly grabbing my friend's hand. "Look, I won't pressure you to tell me anything, but I'm always here if you wanna talk. I know it might seem scary, but trust me, in the end, it doesn't matter who you fall for as long as you're happy."

The tall German quietly looked at me, probably debating whether she should keep her cover story up or come clean when she suddenly released a big sigh. "I- I'm not sure, but there's this one girl... I wanna be with her all the time and when I'm not with her, I can't stop thinking about her and I'm always on the lookout for her. Around her, I'm always happy and can't stop smiling, even a text is enough! This has never happened to me before! At least not with a girl, you know?"

"Laura, you literally just described the way I feel about Mapi. You're so in love" I chuckled, supportingly squeezing her hand. "Does she know?"

Terrified, the former Frankfurt player shook her head. "Of course not! She can't know, we're just friends, and judging by Mapi and your current state, dating your teammates doesn't end well anyway."

"Hey! Not fair" I protested while mentally trying to create a list of all the possible girls who could be the reason Laura was now playing for the other team as well. Which was ironic, because said reason seemed to be playing for our actual team.

Suddenly, the scales fell from my eyes. "You've got the hots for Ingrid!" I yelled excitedly, grabbing Laura by her shoulders and shaking her as I did so.

"Shut up!" the blonde quickly shushed me as she nervously looked out of the car, worried someone could have overheard.

"My lips are sealed" I grinned, unbuckling my seatbelt as it was time for us to leave for the warm-up. "However, don't keep yours sealed. Literally."

Laura laughingly buried her face in her hands. "You're so weird, but I'll think about it. Honestly, it's all still kinda new and I'm still not sure what it means for me. And then there's the whole loan situation..."

"Don't rush into anything, but I'm sure it will all work out in the end" I reassured her as we both got out of the car, making our way to the long dark hallway leading to the changing room.

"I hope so! The fact that this is my first time starting in ages just makes me even more nervous" the tall German complained, opening the door to the player's area with her batch.

"You'll be fine!" I reassured her as I entered behind her. "And maybe you can impress a certain someone."

Just when I had almost shut the door close, someone reopened it and an exhausted-looking Ingrid rushed into the hallway. "Who are we impressing?" She panted, throwing Laura a questioning look.

Why did she still understand German perfectly?

"H-hi Ingrid" the blonde stammered panicking as she was looking at me with an angry and helpless expression at the same time.

My gaze wandered from the confused Norwegian international to the panicking Laura and at that moment I decided that I would help Laura to make this work. If my love life was miserable, the least I could do was prevent my friend from ending like me. "We're trying to impress Jonatan, so he forgets about putting Laura up for loan" I chipped in, earning a thankful glance from Laura.

Ingrid pityingly put her arm around the German to pull her a little closer. "Don't worry about that, okay? You're a fabulous player and he'll definitely be reminded of that again. Additionally, if one of our midfielders really leaves for Arsenal, you have nothing to worry about anyway."

"You're probably right, thank you" Laura blushed when we finally reached the empty changing room, all of our teammates having already left for the warm-up. "And now, let's win this!"

"It's only Alavés. What could possibly go wrong?" I joked as I threw my bag on the floor, quickly getting dressed appropriately.

If only someone had told me that it definitely would go wrong.

Almost 90 minutes later, the first half was already fully underway and just like I had prophesied winning against Alavés wouldn't be too difficult. Halftime would begin in a little under 10 minutes and we were already leading 3-0, meanwhile, Alavés hadn't even gotten close to our penalty area.

Currently, I was in the possession of the ball, easily making my way past two Alavés players due to their terrible defensive attempts. "Claudia!" I yelled to get the attention of the small Spaniard who was standing close to the goal. When she turned around, I shot the ball in her direction, and the center forward beautifully finished with a goal, making it 4-0 in under 40 minutes.

What a perfect game.

I ran over to the small forward, pulling her into a hug, but she had other plans in terms of celebrating. "Come with me" Claudia ordered, already running to the middle of the pitch, her eyes searching for a certain brunette who was watching the games from the stands with the other injured players. Having found Alexia, the forward lifted her finger to point at her role model, gesturing me to do the same.

"As long as Alexia is injured, I score for her" Claudia explained as we were returning to our position. "It gives me extra strength."

"It's definitely working" I grinned, watching the Alavés players start the game. They seemed determined to score, but within a few seconds, Geyse brought the ball back into our possession, our formation moving forward again. I ran to the other side of the pitch, Geyse passing the ball to me and then sprinting even closer to the goal. It only took me one shot in her direction for the Brazilian international to put the ball where it belonged, the back of the other team's net.

"Two assists within 5 minutes, I want what you had for breakfast" Geyse laughed as I hugged her on our way back.

"I just put the ball close to the goal, you guys do the real work" I brushed it off, once again returning to my starting point as I wondered if we could possibly make it to 10-0 if the game continued this way.

However, you shouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched. Or goals before they're scored.

This time, Alavés successfully started the game and made their way to Sandra's goal, neither of us prepared for them to attack in the last few minutes of the game. Irene managed to shoot the ball away, unfortunately rewarding Alavés with a corner kick by doing so. Just when the one minute of added time was announced, we were all getting ready for what would probably be the last action in this half. The Alavés player who would take the corner, a small, dark-haired girl, hurried to the corner of the pitch while the rest of us huddled together in front of the goal. Her corner kick landed not too far from the goal, and Sandra ran outside to catch it. However, in the heat of the moment, she missed it and therefore the ball was back in the messy huddle of players, eventually leading to an Alavés player placing a perfect shot at the goal. Sandra had no chance of catching it as she was still standing among us in the huddle, doing god knows what.

Normally, the ball would have definitely gone in. But here in Barca, things weren't as easy for one simple reason; we had the best defender in the world.

Mapi was already near the goal when she saw the ball flying there, so she rushed to the net and jumped to deflect the ball with a header so strong that it dropped her back into the net.

What a save!

I watched as Sandra went over to Mapi to thank her for basically doing her job, the tattooed blonde still occupying the goal as she laid on the floor. Suddenly, a bad feeling overcame my whole body and I instinctively knew something couldn't be right because normally Mapi would get up right away. Heck, she even played while her nose was bleeding.

Luckily, at that moment the referee's whistle sounded as a sign that the game was over, so I rushed over to where the blonde defender was curled up on the ground, unbothered by the fact that she probably didn't even want me there.

"What happened?" I slightly panted when I arrived, instantly kneeling to get a better look at Mapi. "Are you okay?"

"She says she can't get up" Sandra informed me, desperately trying to get the medic's attention, but they were already leaving for their halftime break. "I'm gonna get them!"

My gaze followed the goalkeeper dressed in bright green running after the medics before it wandered back to Mapi, tears streaming down her face. I frowned when I saw what body part she was holding.

"Please don't tell me your knee hurts" I begged her, as I gently grabbed her free hand in support.

"It hurts so bad, Emi" the Spaniard cried.

Fuck.

At that moment Sandra came running back with the paramedics in tow. "Emilia, we need to go back inside," the goalkeeper told me. "Jonatan needs to go over the tactics with us one more time."

I could feel Mapi's grip around my hand tighten at Sandra's words, so I firmly shook my head. "I'm staying with Mapi, so tell him to take me off, please. I wasn't supposed to play a full 90 minutes anyway today, so it should be fine."

He would be furious, but I didn't care.

"If you say so" Sandra shrugged, sprinting back inside while the medics were talking to Mapi and palpating her knee.

"Can you try to stand up?" one of the paramedics, an older man wanted to know.

Mapi nodded tentatively, throwing me a helpless look. Hastily, I jumped up, helping the paramedics to pull the injured blonde up without letting go of her hand.

"It will be okay" I whispered as she limped off the pitch with the help of the medics and me, the fans in the stands cheering in support of her.

"I'm so scared, Emi" Mapi admitted, tears still streaming down her face. "Do you... do you think you could stay with me?"

"Of course" I sent the injured defender an encouraging smile, our differences of the last month suddenly seeming far away. All that mattered now was that Mapi would be okay and if my presence helped in any way, I wouldn't leave her side for as long as she needed me.