[Football] Bad Boy Batty

“I felt like I was on a girls’ night out.”

The bedroom was dark and all the curtains were drawn. Batistuta was lazily leaning against the head of the big bed, one leg stretched out and the other leg swinging under the bed. There was a circle of pillows and various snacks around him. Neymar was on his right, also lazily. Between them was a large bucket of popcorn that had just come out of the pot and was still steaming.

Opposite the big bed is a huge display screen, almost a smaller version of a movie theater, showing the hottest movie in Brazil at the moment, a melodramatic love drama that incorporates all the clichés.

The progress bar was more than halfway through, but the hero and heroine were still abusing each other physically and mentally, slapping each other, and crying bitterly in the middle of the night while holding each other's clothes. Batistuta yawned, reached into the bucket to grab some popcorn, and then squeezed Neymar's hand, who was also holding some popcorn, with the back of his hand.

"I didn't know you were into this," he teased.

"You mean the bad movies?"

"No, I mean this kind of lousy, lousy romance with no sexual tension between the protagonists." Batty gave the film countless bad titles. "I think we should watch action movies, preferably ones with a strong sense of technology, where people drive battleships with mechanical prosthetics and fight with laser guns."

Neymar threw a piece of popcorn in his mouth and couldn't help laughing: "Why don't you just say the name directly."

"Just say it directly. Innocence deserves the best." Batty said proudly, "All of Edmundo's movies are good, except Innocence and the remake of Gunfire. That's the only movie he appeared in, and it also helped him get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor."

Neymar watched Batistuta talk about how perfect his godfather was with a smile on his face, and he was not angry. In fact, at this moment, the fact that the boy in front of him could be in Barcelona, ​​in his home, and in his bed was already a surprise beyond his expectations.

"Why are you always staring at me?" Batistuta snapped his fingers twice to wake up Neymar's attention. He reached out to pick up the cup from the bedside and shook it. There was only the sound of ice cubes colliding with each other. "(Orange juice) is finished."

Neymar turned over and got out of bed: "I'll get it."

What he didn't see was that after he walked out of the room, Batty on the bed put away his lazy expression and looked in the direction he left for a long time with an ambiguous look in his eyes.

The refrigerator on the second floor is full of various low-fat desserts (Neymar likes them, but Batistuta only has a special liking for chocolate), so he has to go to the first floor to get them. In addition to orange juice, he also wants to get more ice cubes and a smaller bucket for popcorn. The current bucket is so big that it can fit a third hand.

This took him about 10 minutes.

"This thing is really heavy, come and help--"

Neymar's words were stuck in his mouth because he saw through the gap between the things in his arms that Batistuta was curled up on the bed and had fallen asleep.

Batty looked more like an angel than ever when he was asleep.

He climbed onto the bed, moving lightly, trying not to let the mattress shake so much that it wouldn't wake the other person up, and he moved over little by little.

Batistuta's sleeping face was so close that Neymar could feel the steady and warm breath hitting his nose. He lowered his head and slowly moved closer. He could see Batistuta's eyelashes trembling, and could even imagine the scene of the blue eyes covered underneath looking at him with hazy water vapor.

Sudden--

Overly ambiguous and corny music started playing, and Neymar quickly turned his head to look at the source of the sound, then jumped off the bed with a start.

The sound is from a movie, and the hero and heroine are experiencing a wave of warming feelings: after an inexplicable bloody plot, the hero takes the heroine home, and after scolding her for not taking care of herself and casually marrying a scumbag, the hero runs a bath for the heroine. Coincidentally, the heroine in the movie also fell asleep, but the hero does not carry her out of the bathtub, but takes off his coat instead.

Stop!

Neymar hurriedly grabbed the remote control and pressed the pause button. The music stopped, but the picture was frozen at the moment when the male and female protagonists' lips were about to touch.

That's really outrageous.

Neymar uses his hands to fan himself to cool down, and steals kisses while others are sleeping. Only children would do that.

But having said that, the lights in the room were dim, and on the big screen there were two lips with only a few millimeters left between them, and Batistuta was lying less than 2 meters away from him, his lips still smelling of orange.

So, there's nothing wrong with a kiss.

No one saw it anyway.

Neymar's eyes were wandering around, and he didn't know where to look. When his gaze fell on Batistuta's face again, he found that Batistuta's originally closed lips were slightly opened like a shell.

Just like when Batty kissed him when he was drunk, he just kissed him back, and no one would remember it except himself.

So he went back to the bed, maybe a little more violently than before, but it didn't matter, he reached out and gently patted Barty's cheek.

"Buddy, Buddy?"

The boy did not wake up. Instead, he slapped his hands away like a lazy cat, and then lay down in a more comfortable position, which made it easier for someone to do what he was about to do.

No wonder those people describe you as a rose, Neymar thought. He had to agree with the thoughts of those people on the Internet. Maybe it was a little obscene, but part of him also wanted to see the roses in the snow being trampled to pieces.

Feeling uneasy and nervous, he moved closer.

Just as the shadows grew darker and the distance between their lips was about to surpass that of the male and female protagonists on the screen, the familiar Apple ringtone came from the gap in the pillow, and the sound was ridiculously loud.

Neymar was visibly panicking. He quickly distanced himself from the bed and fumbled around for his phone.

Damn it! How could he forget to mute it?
"Uh, Ney?"

Batistuta's nasal call stopped Neymar from rushing out the door.

"Sorry, I fell asleep again." He brushed his hair and sat up, opened one eye to look at the screen, then looked at Neymar, "Don't mind me, I'm awake, answer it."

It's really not the right time.

Neymar muttered to himself and sat back on the bed, then answered the phone reluctantly. This was not the kind of call that could be hung up easily.

"Hi, Rafina," he said, perking up. "What's up?"

"Where is your usual cell phone? I called you 10 times but you didn't answer." Rafina sounded very anxious. "Your friend Pumpkinhead (one of the followers) told me that you were in a bad mood and kicked them all out. I'm worried about you, Junior. Are you home alone now? Where's your dad?"

Rafina loves to ask questions just like her brother.

I don’t know if it was because the volume of the Apple computer was too loud or what, but Batty next to me could hear it clearly.

"He's fine!" Batty couldn't help but answer Rafina's question from a distance, "He can still watch cheesy and melodramatic stories and eat a whole bucket of popcorn, don't worry!"

Neymar had no time to stop it.

"You're not alone?" Rafina also heard Batistuta's voice and became alert instantly. "Who's there? Neymar Junior, tell me! Who's there with you!"

Neymar pinched his nose with a headache: "No one."

"Hi, Rafina, we haven't met yet. I'm Batistuta!" Batistuta saw through Neymar's helplessness and deliberately continued to talk to his sister. "He is stronger than you think. It's just losing 4 goals. It's no big deal."

There was a puzzled gasp from Rafina. "Bati? You are Batti? That Batti?"

"Yeah - but I don't know if I'm 'that' Batistuta." Batistuta drawled out his response, nudging Neymar's elbow with his foot. "How many Batistutas do you know?"

Neymar was caught between his sister and Batistuta, feeling upset and not knowing how to start.

"Oh my god, Junior, are you finally going to do it?" Rafina's voice was filled with excitement. "I can't believe you brought Batty home. Is it because you like..."

Neymar hung up the phone with a "click", cutting off the second half of his sister's unfinished sentence at the other end of the line. After putting down the phone, his fingers were shaking. I really shouldn't have told Rafina everything. It was almost there.

"Why did you hang up?" Batty was fully awake. He pushed his hair back and kicked Neymar's calf with a raised eyebrow. "She sounded very excited and had something to say."

"Girls are easily excited. Just ignore her." Neymar made up a random excuse. He picked up the remote control and resumed the movie. "The signal here is not good. I'll send her a message later."

Batistuta said "hmm" and stopped caring about the other's family affairs. He adjusted the pillow behind him and returned to the original position. Neymar also lay back next to him, and the two of them ate popcorn and continued to watch the bloody movie.

"How far has it progressed? My impression is still that they had a big fight." Batty suddenly asked, "Why are they kissing now? Is this the clichéd plot where no matter what setbacks or problems they encounter, they can be solved by just having angry sex?"

Neymar paused with his hand holding the popcorn. "Almost," he said.

He doesn't care about the plot of the movie, he only cares about the process of watching the movie.

Batty: "Okay, I still don't understand why you want to watch this kind of movie. The plot is obvious and even the ending is..."

Suddenly, he stopped the second half of the sentence as if realizing something.

Neymar chewed popcorn nonchalantly: "Huh? What's wrong? What do you want to say?"

The next second, the movie screen in front of him was occupied by the enlarged blue.

Batty rolled over and straddled him.

"I say, are you hinting at something, Ney?" He narrowed his eyes, pushed the popcorn bucket away, leaned over and whispered to Neymar, "Just like many protagonists, they reach the bottom of their careers, meet someone special under pressure, and then a lot of things happen. In the end, they have a sweaty workout to untie their knots, get through the crisis, and have a happy ending."

Things seem to be off the rails.

How did it come to this?

Neymar was completely petrified. He looked at Batistuta's eyes and the light-colored hair hanging in front of his eyes. His upper and lower lips seemed to be glued together. Not only his lips, but also his brain and heart were directly overloaded.

Some people want to do something but their bodies are frozen and won't allow it. But he is not like that. Even his thoughts are frozen, just like one of those old-fashioned gear clocks that can't move at all after being stuck by debris.

Seeing that Neymar did not respond, Batistuta tilted his head and patted his face.

"Ney?"

No response.

So Batty looked down.

It was really strange, how could there not even be the most basic physiological reaction. The movie on the screen had already begun, and the room became darker. Batty pursed his lips and said, "Okay, maybe I overestimated you."

Neymar finally regained some sense, "What?" he asked, waving his paralyzed tongue.

"I overestimated you. It seems that the 4- loss to Paris Saint-Germain had a more serious impact on you than I thought." Batistuta muttered as he turned over. "Maybe you didn't mean that."

What does that mean?
Which one means?
How do you know he didn't mean what you thought?
But Batistuta moved too quickly, and before Neymar could react, he was pulled up and leaned against the mat. Batistuta sat cross-legged beside him, controlling the TV to turn on the projection screen and projected the video of the match between Barcelona and Paris.

"Come, analyze the opportunities you missed. The defenders do have to take the blame, but that doesn't mean you played well in this game." The boy said seriously, "Now, let's look at the things you should have done but didn't do."

The charming atmosphere in the room disappeared in an instant, and in a trance, Neymar thought he had come to the club's analysis room.

How did it become like this?

He clearly——

It’s not that there is no reaction, it’s that there is not enough time to react.

"Hey!" Batty tapped him on the forehead, "Don't be distracted, Paris Saint-Germain is strong, but not ridiculously strong. You still have a chance."

He paused the game like Guardiola did, then picked out a moment, circled it with a red pen and drew a tactical diagram.

Neymar took a deep breath and then let out all the frustration in his stomach.

He glanced at the young man beside him who was seriously doing tactical analysis and sighed inwardly.

Forget it, next time.

……

Despite helping Neymar with the analysis, Batistuta still subconsciously believed that Barcelona's chances of advancing this time were slim, until the beginning of March, when the second leg of the match between Barcelona and Paris was held at the Nou Camp.

Manchester City happened to have a game that day, the 27th round of the league, at home against the Black Cats Sunderland.

Prior to this, Manchester City had a fantastic month. In the busy early February, they remained unbeaten in the league, advanced in the FA Cup, and beat Dortmund 2-3 at the Etihad Stadium to secure a place in the Champions League quarter-finals.

Aguero also came to the game that day. His treatment has been completed and he is about to start the maintenance phase. Miraculously, his body recovered quickly. The team doctor and physiotherapist said that he would be able to return to the field in less than 8 weeks.

"You did a great job while I was away! Keep it up, come on! Take down Sunderland!"

Before the game, Aguero came to the locker room, shook hands with everyone, and even hugged a few of his closest friends.

But Batistuta noticed one thing, when he passed Jesus, he just quickly bumped fists with the opponent and then went to find the next one.

Sometimes micro movements and micro expressions can say a lot.

"Kun him, there's a sense of crisis." Batistuta whispered to De Bruyne, who has been almost inseparable for the past month. "Jesus is doing well in his position."

"This is inevitable. Every injured player will go through this." De Bruyne analyzed rationally, "When the team performs poorly without you, it means you are important and they can't do without you; but when the team performs well without you, it means you are not irreplaceable, that is, you have taken off the sign of not for sale."

Batty was silent for a moment.

"I think Kun is more suitable in that position," he said. "At least he doesn't stick to the ball."

"You stick to the ball too."

"But I can score goals." Batistuta raised his chin and snorted, "If I dribble past someone at the edge of the penalty area and just don't pass the ball, will you be angry?"

"——No." De Bruyne gave the answer after a pause, "Because I know what you are thinking. If you don't pass the ball, it means you are sure to score."

"Don't explain, I know you love me." Batty smiled and pinched De Bruyne's face, "I love Kun too, so I hope he can recover soon."

De Bruyne had a complicated look in his eyes.

At this time, captain Kompany, who had finally returned to the game, waved to them and said, "What are you waiting for? Come on, it's time to start."

Batistuta responded and quickly ran to the team. The Belgian midfielder moved his neck a little uncomfortably, suppressed his thoughts, and quickly followed.

……

The game went smoothly, Manchester City beat Sunderland 2-0, Jesus scored the first goal with a follow-up shot, Gundogan scored with a header, and Batistuta also got an assist to score twice.

Although Sunderland created some chances in the first half, they failed to seize them, and Manchester City's frontcourt played steadily as always. According to the data, Manchester City's possession rate was as high as 73%, so this was a typical Guardiola victory.

In this way, Manchester City returned to the top of the standings with 5 consecutive wins after Batistuta's return, while Chelsea tied with Liverpool and Burnley at the same time. However, the score is still very close. In the next few rounds of the league, Manchester City will face strong opponents such as Liverpool, Arsenal, and Leicester City. It is too early to judge the champion now.

After the game, a little fan about 7 or 8 years old rushed into the field, hugged Batistuta's waist and asked for his jersey. Batistuta was always gentle to children. After waving away the security guard, he not only gave the jersey to the little fan, but also hugged him back to the audience seats, took a photo with him, and then returned to the locker room.

As soon as he entered, he realized something was wrong.

Because there was no music playing in the locker room today.

"Why did you forget about the music? Is it because you didn't win enough and you're not that happy?"

Batty walked in jokingly, but few people noticed him. They were discussing something excitedly, their eyes wide open, as if they had just learned something incredible.

Aguero was also there, and everyone gathered around him. De Bruyne was not there, and it seemed that he was dragged by the media for an interview again.

"What happened?" Batty asked, raising his voice. "Someone explain it to me."

Now Aguero finally noticed him. The injured Argentine striker poked his head out of the crowd and waved his mobile phone wildly at Batistuta.

"Come here, Batistuta! Look!" Aguero's voice was trembling with excitement, "The game between Barcelona and Paris is over! Oh my God, I can't believe it--"

Oh, it's that game.

Batty understood.

"What's the score?" He walked over and picked up the bottle of water and drank it. "Who won?"

Although he asked this question, he actually tacitly acknowledged that Paris would advance.

Come on, 4-0, it's too difficult even if we return to our home court.

"6-1!!" Aguero roared, "F**K 6-1!!"

Batty was choked by the water, and his first reaction was -

No way, Barcelona wouldn't lose so badly at home, 4-0 plus 6-1, both rounds were in double digits.

Then he realized that he had probably guessed wrong again.

Batty suppressed his increasingly rapid heartbeat and asked, "Who's 6 and who's 1?"

"Of course it's Barcelona 6, Paris 1!!" Aguero was already crazy. He threw the phone to Batistuta. "I knew they could do it! Damn it, he promised me, see you in the final! I knew--"

Batistuta took the phone and checked. Aguero's screen saver had been changed to Messi, and it was a GIF. The Barcelona king, whose gray hair had faded, was so excited that he even jumped onto a billboard and punched the air to celebrate with the fans. The camera was in an aerial shot, circling around him, and with the lighting, it somehow felt like an epic movie shot.

This is really——

Hard to imagine.

Batistuta couldn't help but think of Neymar. He really did it, turning the tide in such a difficult situation and advancing, which proved the saying "the game is not over yet, we still have the second round."

Perhaps Batistuta's expression was too funny at the moment, Jesus stood on a chair, then took out his mobile phone and took a panoramic selfie of the locker room.

"Smile!"

……

At the same time, the locker room at Camp Nou has fallen into madness, in a state of chaos.

Neymar wiped his sweat and took out his mobile phone to share his joy.

However, when he opened IG, the software automatically refreshed and brought the most recently updated pictures and texts to him.

It was Jesus, and Manchester City also won the game.

But that's not the point.

The point is-

Neymar took a screenshot of the picture and enlarged it again and again.

“&*%￥#…Hijo de puta!!”

Who can tell him why Batistuta set Messi as his phone screensaver?
(End of this chapter)