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It happened sometimes, your brain latching onto a particular scenario and playing it on loop. For Jude, most of the time that happened, it was related to football. He’d fantasized about Bayern’s defeat and Dortmund lifting the league trophy during his last season in Germany. He’d desired that outcome so bad he could almost taste it on his tongue.
The opposite had been the case, however, and Jude had been devastated. The world was his witness, those pictures of him sitting on the pitch looking dejected were everywhere.
But as much as Jude was someone who let his drive to be on the winning side take over, he was also quick to shrug things off when they didn’t go his way. His last season in Germany had been done and dusted. It was high time he moved on to something bigger and better.
And it did not get bigger and better than Real Madrid.
It hardly mattered whether playing for the team was your childhood dream or not, the second you put on that white shirt, everything changed.
You’re Cinderella, and your fairy godmother’s magic wand has done its thing. Your rags were nowhere to be seen. You’re golden now, and everything you touched shimmered.
King Midas had nothing on Jude Bellingham, not since the minute he became a Madrid player.
Jude didn’t even have time to disappear in his head and play ideal scenarios on a loop in a bid to will them into existence anymore.
Now all he had to do was have a particular image crystallize in his head and, bam! Before he knew it, it was his reality.
He’s been gliding on air since he joined Madrid. There were times when he hardly had a second to process one blessing before another fell into his lap.
When you’re on top of the world and your name is on everyone’s lips, why would you need to disappear in your head to make up ideal scenarios anymore? Such things should be left to mere mortals; it should be beneath a generational player like Jude Bellingham standing on the precipice of football history.
***
This was all well and good. Everything was fine, not spectacular, but fine. His career had taken off in a way he’d only dared hope. He wasn’t one to complain or fixate on the void he could feel growing inside him with every day that passed.
He wasn’t one to question the emptiness that stared back at him every time he gazed into a mirror. He knew how he was feeling wasn’t exactly normal. Nobody as successful as he was doing what he loved at his age should be feeling this degree of ennui.
But maybe that was exactly why he was feeling it. Maybe he peaked a little too soon. Maybe he wished he’d struggled more, had more challenges to overcome.
Which was a load of bullocks. This was the ideal scenario for any player his age.
So, he kept playing and he kept scoring and he kept celebrating and being celebrated as though nobody as good as he was had ever graced the football scene.
None of it was spectacular but it was fine.
And Jude could live with that.
***
His first-ever clasico came around and Jude was anything but nervous. Yeah, his love for Barca as a kid was no secret but twenty-year-old Jude wasn’t playing for Barca, was he?
He knew what he was here to do, show everyone that his genius was a constant and not a fluke. Barca or not, Bellingham would do what he did best; decimate enemy lines and cause irreparable carnage.
There wasn’t a single flaw in his plan, not until for some reason, his gaze fell on Gavi and he couldn’t look away. He didn’t understand the initial fixation on the shorter male. But that didn’t make it any easier to stop looking at him.
During the game, the so-called awarded Golden Boy of 2022 stuck to him like glue. Jude felt something then, something new, a feeling of exhilaration, and he was only too happy to chuck it down to the spirit of el clasico, and a worthy rival who was willing to do anything for the ball.
There was something about the way Gavi played, something about his barely controlled chaos, something about his unfairly pretty eyes that made Jude feel a foreign type of high.
For the duration of the game, they spoke sporadically. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual words footballers exchanged on the pitch.
But it felt special, every time he interacted with Gavi in that way, when Gavi pushed him out of nowhere, or when Jude had pulled him into his arms to scold or calm him down, he honest to God, couldn’t remember the reason.
He’d slipped into a haze, standing so close to the younger male, and in those precious seconds in which Jude had breathed him in, he’d felt it then, the very thing that had eluded him ever since he landed in Madrid.
Something spectacular had finally happened.
***
Jude wouldn’t lie. Winning his first-ever trophy as a Madrid player had felt fucking fantastic. The knowledge that this would only be the first of many to come floored him. This was Madrid after all. If there was one thing they were known for, it was hoarding trophies.
Perhaps there would come a day when Jude wouldn’t be as excited at the prospect of being a champion but that was definitely not today.
He only felt bad when he thought of a certain doe-eyed boy. And he as boarded the plane back to Spain, that feeling morphed into longing of the strongest kind. The adrenaline of their well-earned victory left him.
The boisterous display of his teammates merely amused him but he didn’t join in. He saw the look Vini threw his way. It was questioning but he didn’t press when Jude remained mute. He couldn’t have been more grateful to be left alone.
When he reached home, the first thing he did was shower and eat. After that, he collapsed on his bed and slept for hours.
He woke up feeling rejuvenated, but the feeling of longing persisted. In fact, it has intensified. He grabbed his phone then, and dialed a certain number.
“Hi,” the voice on the other end said. His tone of voice was soft, and Jude felt the urge to just close his eyes and sink into it.
“Hey, how are you?”
“I’m okay. Nothing’s changed since the last time we spoke.” Jude could tell he’d just shrugged, and was probably chewing on his bottom lip after replying.
Jude missed him. Fiercely so. He ached with it. And he didn’t want to bloody pretend otherwise. Since the clasico, he’s only seen him through the grainy screen during their weekly video calls.
Calls that have become so important to both they were now added to their calendars. They both loathed to miss them, despite how crazy their schedules got sometimes.
Tonight, Jude felt like he needed more. He didn’t think the restless longing that had taken root deep inside him would be satiated otherwise.
“I miss you,” Jude said, tone soft, a desperate edge to it. “You’re all I thought about during the trip back.’”
Jude felt him exhale a sharp breath on his side of the line. He was silent for a beat or two and then he said, “Do you want to switch to video call?”
“I want to see you. I want to hold you.”
Jude slapped the side of his leg after saying this. It was a little too much too soon. But it was how he felt. It was how he’s been feeling for at least the past month. And did they not promise to always be honest with each other?
“You know where I live. I’ll be expecting to see you in a few hours.”
He hung up before Jude could get in another word, not that he even needed to. That was the go-ahead he’d been praying for. He scrambled out of bed and got dressed in record time.
Jude already knew the person he was going to encounter when he reached that particular apartment in Barcelona. He’d already been cautioned beforehand.
When Gavi’s mother buzzed him in, Jude stood in the doorway, not really sure what to do with himself. He wanted to walk inside but his legs would not cooperate.
He tried his winning smile and uttered a greeting in his broken Spanish but the woman continued to regard him behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Her gaze was piercing and Jude couldn’t shake the feeling he was being examined to determine whether he was worthy of being here or not.
Jude only wished he knew the metric she was using. If he knew, there was no way he was going to fail. He was an overachiever through and through.
“You have some nerve,” she began in heavily accented English, “showing up here after what our team just suffered at your hands,” she finished in slowly enunciated Spanish, as though she wanted Jude to understand every single word.
“I’m not sorry for doing what I had to do to ensure my team’s victory,” Jude said in English, holding his head high, and maintaining eye contact.
“I guess you wouldn’t be the kind of boy my Pablito would be interested in if you were,” she said, her speech still slowed but Jude only understood the gist of that. Some words had still flown over his head. “For the life of me, I can’t tell what he sees in you… A Madrid boy no less.”
“I guess that would remain a mystery to the both of us,” Jude said, with a self-deprecating shrug.
That succeeded in getting a smile out of her and Jude felt incredibly accomplished, like he’d just slain a dragon that had been terrorizing an entire kingdom.
“Por favor, do come in,” she said, and Jude finally got a move on and walked into the apartment. It was a cozy space, its aesthetic was a bit difficult for Jude to define, kind of like the boy who lived in it.
There was a little bit of everything but somehow, it still came together beautifully.
“He’s in his bedroom,” Gavi’s mother informed him. “His mood took a turn for the worse thanks to Barca’s defeat.
“I would be surprised if it didn’t,” Jude commented drily and they both burst into a series of giggles.
Jude felt immensely proud of himself. He seemed to be a natural at this after all.
“His room is right there,” she said, pointing to a door that was left slightly ajar. “He’s been on pins and needles since you told him you were coming, downright insufferable.”
“Really?” Jude whipped around to look at her so fast, smiling like an idiot, his heart almost beating out of his chest.
“Dios, you’re just as bad,” were her last words before she pushed Jude towards her son’s bedroom.
Dear Lord, a love of violence ran in this family, didn’t it?
***
When Jude walked inside the bedroom and leaned back against the door, he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. It seemed as though there had been a part of him in disarray since the last clasico, and it was only settling now, upon finally gazing upon Gavi again. The longer their eyes were locked in a staring contest, the longer Jude felt a strange sort of contentment.
The boy was sequestered under a mountain of blankets. His injured leg was propped up by what Jude assumed was a hidden pillow. He was drowning in a plain-looking grey hoodie. He had to push back the endearingly cute sweater paw on his right hand to run his fingers through his curls.
His eyes were wide and unassuming as they continued to gaze into Jude’s.
Pablo Gavira was all soft and pretty, in a way that would drive any boy crazy, and Jude didn’t think he was well-equipped to handle any of this.
“Hey,” he finally said after what felt like an eternity.
“Hey,” Gavi said, smiling softly, and the simple action overwhelmed Jude. “Por favor, lock the door and bring your ass over here.”
Jude’s heart lurched in his chest at the sound of those words, but he still didn’t move, continued to lean against the door, and took Gavi in.
Gavi rolled his eyes, and let out an exasperated sigh. “Any day now, Bellingham.”
“Just give me a minute, you little cretin,” Jude bit out, holding back a smile, and the dozens of pet names he’d wanted to call him instead.
He needed to pace himself. He couldn’t come on too strong too soon. He couldn’t lay all his cards on the table, not giving a damn about circumstance and consequence.
“Did you come all the way here to spend the night standing at my bedroom door?” Gavi was smiling now, the kind that made his unfairly pretty eyes light up, the kind that Jude could easily lose himself in.
It was then that Jude realized he could no longer fight the urge to be near him. He locked the door as demanded and shuffled over to the bed.
Gavi pulled back the heavy blankets and gestured for Jude to climb in. “Come cuddle me, you asshole.”
Jude chuckled at that because the entire sentence had been said in heavily accented English and he didn’t know how Gavi managed to sound both endearing and threatening at the same time. He was practically fluent in English but he refused to speak it all the time because according to him, Jude would never learn Spanish that way.
Whenever Gavi chose to hold a conversation in English, Jude knew the younger boy couldn’t be bothered to struggle through the hurdles of communicating with a language barrier.
So far, he’s only spoken in English ever since Jude stepped foot in his bedroom; something that boded well for their night.
As Gavi moved back from the center of the queen-sized bed to make room for him, Jude didn’t hesitate to climb in. Once he was settled in against the headboard, long legs stretched out comfortably, he pulled Gavi in his embrace, his smaller body practically sprawled on top of Jude’s.
His injured leg was indeed propped up by a pillow. It looked nasty, as heavily bandaged as it was. Jude would have hated having to be the one dealing with it.
He remembered how worried he’d been when it happened. The anxiety that had gripped him during the surgery even though it was pretty normal for footballers at this point. He had felt such a need to go to him.
But that had been merely one month since they started talking and given the fact that he was a Madrid player, how the hell was he going to justify his presence? It wouldn’t have been a good idea, period.
But that didn’t stop him from constantly calling or texting whenever he could spare the time. He didn’t even care if he came off desperate, Gavi didn’t seem to mind his overly emotional state.
In fact, Jude had a feeling the younger boy had reveled in the care and attention even when he rebuked him gruffly.
“Jude.”
“Hmm?’
“Quit staring at my leg,” Gavi said, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“I won’t take your word for it,” Jude retorted, at the same circling his arms around Gavi’s midriff, pulling him even more snugly against his body.
“What’s your problem?”
“Zero,” was Jude’s smooth comeback. “I just won a trophy.”
Gavi exhaled sharply, his uninjured leg kicking Jude’s under the covers. “I do not need the reminder, thank you very much.”
“But most importantly, I’m in bed with you,” Jude whispered the words against the shell of his ear, and then felt the shiver that went through the younger boy. The evidence that he wasn’t the only one in too deep was always nice to behold. “I’ve been dreaming of this for so long.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“It’s gotten me exactly where I am right now.”
“You’re not as smooth as you think you are,” Gavi said, but his actions contradicted his words, as he was placing his hands right above Jude’s where they rested on his lower abdomen.
Jude wasted no time in entwining their fingers, and the completeness he felt then made him think.
I finally get it now; what all the bloody love songs and poems are about.
“I’d prepared a lot of colorful insults for you,” Gavi confessed in a soft tone.
Jude chuckled at that, gazing at the boy in his arms with a fondness that was downright disgusting. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”
“I was also going to punch you at least ten times.”
“Right.”
“And I was going to make it hurt. Bad.”
“Kinky.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bellingham.”
Jude buried his face in Gavi’s lustrous locks, giggling like a fifteen-year-old teenager with his first crush. If there were levels to being whipped, he was damn sure he’d just unlocked the highest one, and he still couldn’t give a flying fuck.
“You keep speaking as though you’ve decided to spare me.”
“I have,” Gavi said.
“Why?”
Instead of replying immediately, Gavi cuddled even closer to Jude’s broad chest. He placed his ear right above Jude’s beating heart, and the purity of the gesture was almost Jude’s undoing.
“Pablo?” Jude prompted.
“I just… I can’t really be bothered about football,” Gavi murmured against his chest, “not when you’re holding me like this.”
Jude brought their entwined hands to his mouth and took his time kissing Gavi’s knuckles one by one. “I get how incredibly frustrating this situation must be. Having an injury that puts you out of commission for so long must be hell to deal with. The absolute nightmare of any player. On top of that, the thought of where you were during the last super cup final compared to this year would fuck anybody up.”
“I was the MVP of that game,” Gavi said, a nostalgic smile playing around the corners of his lips, lips that have been haunting Jude’s dreams for the longest time now.
“You were unstoppable.”
“And this year, I had to helplessly watch on TV as your team destroyed what’s left of our dignity.” Jude was surprised Gavi didn’t sound angry or resentful, merely resigned.
“You seem surprisingly Zen about all of this,” Jude commented carefully, not wanting to rock the boat.
Gavi gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t do well to be combative all the time. Sometimes, instead of swimming against the current of life, you’ve got to trust that the waves will carry you where you need to go.”
“Say what now?” Jude was pretty sure his jaw was hanging wide open.
“It’s philosophy, dumbass,” Gavi insulted, jostling his good leg against Jude’s. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”
“Am I tripping or did you just say philosophy?” Jude said, ignoring the way his heart skipped a beat at the casual compliment.
“Did I stutter?” Gavi sassed. “Or don’t tell me you don’t know what philosophy is.”
“Of course, I know what philosophy is,” Jude said, sounding offended. “What I want to know is, since when are you well versed in any of its concepts?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately to pass the time.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And someone recommended certain famous philosophers.”
“Who is this someone?” Jude was aware he wasn’t exactly the epitome of unbothered with that question but he hardly cared.
“Nobody you should concern yourself about.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me well enough, Bellingham.”
“I think I deserve to know.”
“Why’s that?”
“If someone’s influential enough that they could get my boy to be interested in bloody philosophy, then…” Jude trailed off when he realized what he’d said.
He’d just called Gavi his boy.
His.
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. In his head, that was how he thought of Pablo, but then he was a delusional idiot.
“Your boy, huh?” Gavi removed his head from Jude’s chest and gazed up at him. For once, his face was a blank mask. Jude couldn’t read him, and that made him panic.
“I didn’t mean to…I mean you aren’t…we haven’t talked about—”
“Jude,” Gavi cut him off with a soft smile. And then his hand came up and cupped the side of Jude’s face in the gentlest of touches.
Jude had to remind himself that grown men didn’t weep over something seemingly inconsequential, but as he leaned into the touch, he knew in his heart of hearts that it was anything but.
Gavi’s face inched even closer to his, until their lips were almost touching, until their breaths were mingling, and Jude felt his stomach flip violently.
God, did he want the boy in his arms.
“Bellingham,” Gavi whispered his name, his tone almost reverential.
“Yeah?”
“Kiss your boy.”
Jude let out an exceptionally ungodly curse before closing the little distance between them and doing exactly that.
When his lips finally met Gavi’s sinfully soft ones, it felt as good as the ideal scenario that had been playing on loop in his head ever since the clasico, if not even better.
It felt like ascending, and then being welcomed into heaven by the open arms of benevolent angels.
This first press of one pair of lips against another was sacred. It was everything to him.
When they pulled back and gazed into each other’s eyes, both of them spotting a grin so wide Jude was forever reassured he wasn’t the only lovesick idiot in the room.
He bumped their noses in a tender Eskimo kiss, and started chanting spectacular under his breath.
“What are you going on about?” Gavi questioned, tone curious.
Jude shook his head. “You wouldn’t get it,” he murmured gruffly, right before capturing his lips in a dizzying kiss he was more than happy to get lost in.
Because Pablo Gavira was his boy.
And if that wasn’t enough to make a man lose his head, he didn’t know what would.