state of grace ✦ leon goretzka

+ one shot; the match against ajax

author's note; wowwwwn i forgot that i wrote this little one shot lmao,,, maybe i'll do what i did with flashes and randomly update one shots or smth but thank you so much for reading (and for 70k on this!) y i love you all con todo de mi corazón

FOUR+ MONTHS LATER
april twentieth

GRACE AND LIDIA WERE SAT on the premium leather blue seats of the Veltins-Arena, which was something very familiar to both of them alike. The number of games they had attended? Countless for Lidia and so much more than she ever thought she would attend for Grace.

"What do we do if Schalke lose tonight? Or even win and still not go through?" Grace sighed, chomping on her bottom teeth nervously, examining the steadily-filling seats as kick-off approached quicker and quicker.

"We let Leon do his thing, I guess," Lidia sighed, "You know, he'll brood for a while but he'll pretend everything's okay and we just have to pretend too. I think that's his coping mechanism- just pretend it didn't happen. How'd you deal last month?"

"I just tried to comfort him as best I could, really. I didn't do much; just whatever he asked of me," Grace shrugged, "I think he'll be a lot more gutted if they lose this. It's their only way of getting Champion's League next season, I guess."

The way Grace talked was as if she had been a football fan for years, but really, it was just down to one very long night that Leon educated her on anything and everything about football because she wanted to be knowledgable in what he loved; she wanted to understand.

It was the second leg of the quarter finals of the Europa League and on aggregate, they were losing 2-0 to Ajax, but Leon had a lot of faith. They could do this; he believed, and the team believed. The team believed even harder after suffering an unfortunate loss after drawing Bayern Munich in DFB-Pokal quarters. This—winning the Europa League was going to save their season; never mind that they were tenth.

Anyway, Grace and Lidia were nestled into their seats and anxious as ever. They had some kind of unnerving feeling about the night- good or bad, but they were experiencing it together.

Over the past four months, something nice had bloomed between the two and it was like Lidia had never been skeptical or doubtful of Grace and her relationship with Leon. Apparently, all it took for Lidia to stop being sketchy was for Leon to sit her down and rant about how he knew Grace was his future and that this wasn't going to change any time soon and that it would be the easiest if Lidia just loosened around Grace. The youngest Goretzka girl eventually warmed to Grace and she practically filled in the space in Grace's physical life that Eleanor left when she moved to Berlin.

In short, they were great friends and this made Leon the happiest in the world.

Leon and Grace's relationship grew from strength to strength over the last few months as well, which did not mean to say that it was without problems. What was a relationship without any hardship? There were some days that Grace was just too overwhelmed and some where Leon too needed a time out, but at the end of the day, they loved each other so hard that everything seemed so insignificant soon after.

To them, they were just your average every day couple, who went on picnics and coffee dates and date nights at candlelit restaurants and movie dates and everything in between. The only difference that set apart Leon and Grace was that they could afford to fly relatively frequently between Paris and North Rhine Westphalia, and sometimes even only for a few hours to visit the Lacroix's or Julian, who settled nicely at his new club.

Above all else, thy were still just Leon and Grace- the bumbling idiots who frustrated the hell out of one another, but more than made up for it with cliché lines and kisses in every possible square inch of each other's faces.