Quickly Gio dribbled between the feet, he tunneled a player, their face just a blur, but just as he wanted to pass them he felt a pair of studs slide in against his ankle. Legs tangled, he hissed in pain, lost his balance and fell over.
His hands snapped to protect his head when he felt an elbow poke into his side, scared to get trampled on by somebody. 
When the body next to him moved he slowly opened his eyes again and sat up.

A Union player had tackled him. The same guy who was now rolling around, whining about his knee or something.
Gio rubbed his - luckily not much hurting - ankle and then took the hand Mats offered him. Erling was jogging over already.

"Are you alright?", he asked, worried. He let Gio wrap an arm around his neck for support and pushed him back up to a standing position. The American carefully tried to put weight on his right foot. A little sting was there, but nothing serious.

"Yeah, should be good!", he answered and smiled at Erling thankfully, let his arm fall down and turned to the Union player to check on him.

"What an actor", he said, not even in a raised voice, but a teammate from that guy seemed to have heard it.
"What did you say??", the man with the 12 on his jersey spun around and came a step closer.

"Oh c'mon! I was the one hit, not him!?", Gio scoffed and made a gesture to the player on the ground still curled up in a ball. By now the medics of Union had arrived too.

"And that means he can't have hurt himself!?"

Gio couldn't keep serious at that broken English with German accents. He just wiped his sweaty forehead with his shirt, mumbling a little provocative "I'm sure he's deeply in pain...".

That seemed to have struck the line from 'Number 12'. His face flushed a dark shade of red and he caught Gio off guard by giving him a rough push.

"Yo what the heck-"
"Du denkst wohl du bist was besseres, huh!?"

"No?", Gio tried to get some distance, but when the player kept up he took the offensive, he raised his voice.
"It's not my fault! Your teammate was the one tackling me. He obviously didn't have the purpose of reaching the ball. I felt his shoes on my ankle and nobody fell onto him. He couldn't have hurt himself at his knee in any way, stop blaming me!"

"How do you know what he was trying to do!?", the 12 yelled at him.
"Because it's literally obvious, you have to be dumb to not see that?"
"Are you calling me dumb? Huh?"

His volume level was so high, their teammates got alert.

"Gio, are you good??", Jude called out.
"Hey, hör auf zu streiten! Was ist denn los?"

He had to admit that he loved to make other players blood boil and often paired up with Jude to call each of them specific swearwords. But in opposite to Jude he was more responsible and knew when to stop. Often Gio was the one to lay the weapons down first.

"This jackass be accusing me of things, because the donkey on the floor is faking like shi-"

Nevermind, let's screw the responsibility part.

Gio couldn't even finish the sentence as all hell broke loose. Five different players in red started to shove him in every direction possible. There were hands tugging at his shirt and pants, at the same time they were continuing to push him around. Gio felt himself loosing balance and stumbling backwards.

Suddenly a two meter figure, who he identified as Erling, pushed itself in front of him, cutting off all the arms.

Gio quickly realized his teammates came to back up, especially Emre, Daxo and the other tall guys were fighting back, building a sturdy barrier.

"Take your dirty hands off of him!!", Erling yelled over all the noise from the refs whistling and the screaming fans, as a player snook up from behind Gio. But the Norwegian quickly made him regret it, towering over the little guy with the deadliest stare ever seen on Erling's face.

Marco and Mats parted the Dortmunder players from Union's and shooed them further away, trying to avoid any violation or even a red card.

"Gio, are you alright? Is anybody hurt??", Marco went through the yellow crowd.
Erling didn't move an inch from Gio's side, watching intently as he rubbed his eye where somebody poked him.

"Verpiss dich doch endlich!!", Emre screamed at number 12 who still wanted to pluck out Gio's feathers one by one.

The ref whistled for the hundredth time and finally got in between the two cleanly split parties.

The 12 shook his head and sent him a last disgusted look from his team.
"Scheiß Schwuchtel!"

Everything froze. Gio's eyes widened.

"W-what did you just call me...?"

He felt his breath hitch in his throat.

"WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME!?", he repeated shook.

Nobody made a sound. Gio's words echoed over the field and no response came. Silence filled the pitch. Nobody moved for seconds.

"Ich-... nichts?" He seemed to shrink under all the eyes on him.

"Hat er-...?", Manuel swallowed beside him.
"What the fuck"
"Ehm..."

"Oh my god...", Gio sneered. "I can't believe you called me the f-slur because you lost in a fight. Get help! I mean it!"

He thought about the endless homophobes under his posts, the mean calls after him in public and even his own club's fans in the stadion.

"I wouldn't wish what I have to endure every fucking day on my worst enemy. But I think what comes at you now might do a little justice. Don't ever say that again. Don't ever-"

"Alright, that's enough!!"
The referee, who had been writing down something on his paper over Gio's whole speech, was finished.

He took out both his cards. A high whistle rang through the air. Then he pointed yellow and red at the number 12.

"Expelled for swallowing and unsportsmanlike behaviour! Get off the pitch! Now!", the ref screamed over the fans.

Nobody raised their voice. Number 12 looked at his teammates helplessly.
"Sorry bro, aber das war echt unnötig...", Union's captain shook his head.

Number 12 started walking to the cabins without a single word and Union's players were about to dissolve, when the referee whistled again.

"Yellow for starting a fight", he reasoned. Gio simply nodded. He deserved that one.

But then a third whistle echoed.

"This match is hereby aborted!"

"We can keep playing."

All eyes shifted to Gio, before the players could go nuts again.
"I'm not gonna cancel a match because of a stupid homophobe! Let's finish this!", he stated.

The referee took a deep breath. Then he nodded. "Alright. Free kick for Dortmund!"

-

Gio was listening to music when his shoulder got nudged slightly.

He quickly paused the tunes and took off his headphones. The atmosphere in the bus was loose after the 2-0 win. Rapha was joking around with Daxo, some people were watching Netflix on their phones, Thomas and Thorgan were playing on a switch.

Gio looked to his right.

"I thought you might want to see this..."

Erling smiled at him and held out his phone.

"'After making homophobic comments Union's number 12 got sent off the pitch. The DFB administered a reasonable punishment of 500.000€ for Union Berlin's defender. Union Berlin is publicly distancing themselves as a club from their players words.' ... Damn!", Gio couldn't help but grin a little while reading the article out loud.

"'Many german clubs posted support on social media for the assaulted, openly gay Dortmund player Gio Reyna.
On Twitter Borussia Dortmund called out a big fundraising for a LGBTQIA+ project to once again set a sign against homophobia in football.
Nobody should be judged by their sexuality. Sport should be a safe place for all kinds of people. And let's all work together to make sure that some dickheads won't overshadow the passion and love for this sport!'"

Gio scrolled through the screenshots attached at the end of the article. He was happy to see that every significant german club had tweeted something regarding their match today by now, even Schalke.

Erling put his phone back into his pocket.

"It's all going to work out!", the blond whispered.

Gio smiled and shifted in his seat. "I know. It always does. We're gonna be happy."
He layed his head down on Erling's shoulder and closed his eyes.

"One day..."