.four. 

That night, Erik was at his apartment, relaxing after a good day of practice. He had finally talked to Arabella at least, he knew it was a good day. There was a knock on his front door and he got up off the couch and went to open it. He was met with the smiling faces of Mats and Marco. Mats had a few questions for his younger team mate and Marco had only tagged along to see how everything would turn out, he had theories of his own.

"Can we come in?" Mats wondered, looking into the apartment. There were bits of paper at random places of the apartment. Each of them contained words he had poetically written. "I have some things I want to ask you."

"Uh..." Erik began, and signaled for them to give him a second. He moved to close the door, but ended up leaving it slightly ajar. Then he ran around the apartment as quick as he could, picking up every single bit of paper in sight. Mats observed his friend through the crack in the door, finding it slightly amusing how Erik was attempting to hide something from them.

He thought he had gotten all of them. They were failed bits of poems he would never let Arabella read, much less anyone else.

After stuffing the crumbled balls of paper into a trashbag, he let his friends into the apartment. Marco and Mats followed him into the livingroom area and something caught Marco's eye. It was a crumbled sheet of paper wedged halfway under the couch. Marco knew it was something he didn't want anyone to see since he'd gone around the apartment gathering them all. He knelt down to pick it up and Erik's eyes widened in shock. He was certain he had gotten all the bits of paper, but he had been wrong. There was one in the possesion of his friends now. They were surely going to read it. "What's this?" He raised an eyebrow at his friend and opened the ball of crumbled paper.

"Nothing." Erik gulped nervously, reaching for the paper. 

If he could get it back and dispose of it, they would probably forget all about it. But Marco began to read the words written on it with curiosity. "My country is your eyes, I walk through them, they light the world through which I walk..."

"Give me that." Erik stuck his arm out, reaching for the sheet of paper once more. Marco paused in his reading and took a step back from his team mate, a smile playing on his lips. When Erik tried to take the paper once again, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment, Marco crumbled it into a ball again and tossed it to Mats, who ran away like a child. Erik chased him around the livingroom and then into the kitchen.

The two older footballers played keep away with the piece of paper until Erik took a seat on the couch and just stopped trying to get it back. Erik felt like the poems for Arabella were personal things. Things that should only be seen by her eyes and no one else's. But now that they had seen it, he felt he no longer had something special for his Bella.

Upon seeing his friend had finally given up, Mats climbed onto the couch next to Erik and read the note on the piece of paper.

Mats looked at his team mate, surprised, "Its actually a good poem."

"Who's it for?" Marco wondered.

"No one." Erik insisted.

But both Mats and Marco knew that was a lie, for the poems their team mate was writing were those that came as a result of an enamoured heart. 

-

this one's fairly short. but i thought an update would be nice, since i'm on a roll. i had thought up this great idea for the sequel. cause i had an idea originally, but then i didn't like it too much, so i decided to change it. and i forgot to write this new idea down and now i forgot what it was. hopefully if i listen to the song i was listening to when i got the new idea, then it will come back to me. so i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

thank you all so much for reading. i love you.

-clary xx