american dream || pulisic

sixteen

10:25 is what his phone read when he checked on it.

He had just woken up, still groggy and sleepy, but he's awake. It takes him a good two seconds to realize that he was in Paris, in Ellie's apartment.

And right next to him was Ellie.

Well, the back of Ellie. They were spooning, after trying to find a comfortable way of sleeping last night without awkwardly being apart in the same bed, they resorted to this position. And if you asked Christian, he liked it quite a lot. Even though her hair is in his face, he liked the idea of holding her.

It was late last night after Christian had yet another small breakdown, but Ellie shut him up by pulling him into her bed and kissing him.

Not like he was complaining about it...unless it was about how many time Ellie moved during her sleep last night, then he'd complain about that (the girl literally elbowed him in her sleep).

He could see she was still sleeping by the way her chest rises and falls steadily, her small snores coming from her parted lips. Her hair was a mess, tangled and disheveled in front of him as he pressed his body close to her, keeping the covers over their bodies.

"Fuck, it's cold," he shivered under the blanket. Christian went to bed wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, and he was freezing. "Paris weather."

"Tell me about it," Ellie started to move a little, scratching the top of her head.

He leaned forward to kiss her temple. "Morning, babe. Sleep well?"

"Yeah," she turned around to face him, kissing him. "Better than the night before. At least my migraine is gone."

"God, how do you make it in this weather?" he pulled her closer but fuck, he was freezing here, and the blanket at least a thousand times thick. "How do you even play in this weather? Is it this cold back where you're from?"

She laughed at how much of a big deal he was making out of this. "It's not even that cold back in California, but you kind of get used to the cold. Especially when you've lived here for a few months now."

"It's only October—shit, that means it's gonna get even colder once it becomes winter." Sure, Christian came from the East Coast, basically the opposite of Ellie, but he hated the cold. Whenever he had morning training, he's always bundle himself up in layers and it's didn't matter how many—just as long as he was  warm enough to function.

While Ellie thought that was the funniest thing since the mocking Spongebob meme, Christian didn't. Only because he felt like it degraded his Captain America status.

His hand went to her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb, her ocean eyes almost piercing through his chest like an ice pick in the middle of December. "How do you say you're beautiful in Albanian?"

"Miremengjes bukuroshe."

"Oh God, uh—" He pretended to wipe a sweat off his forehead. "Is Albanian hard to learn?" Because he actually wanted to learn a few phrasess—no one ever really talks about Albania these days, and with Ellie being Albanian, might as well.

She showed him her forearm which had words he presumed were in Albanian tattooed. "What do you think?"

Well, Christian was mortified. Nevermind about learning Albanian—that shit looks way too hard for him to learn.

Instead, he takes her arm, looking at the tattoo himself. "Why have I never seen this?"

"Maybe because all I ever wear is sweatshirts and long sleeved jerseys? I got it the day of my eighteenth birthday, that and some on my shoulder."