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Sometimes Franco feels like he didn’t grow into himself so much as he was pulled forward into it, like the world got to him before he had the chance to choose who he was meant to be inside of it.
It’s made up of things he went through before he had the time to grow into them, expectations placed on him too early and repeated often enough that they stopped feeling like pressure from the outside and started settling into him as something structural, something that, by now, feels like it belongs to him.
He learned quickly how to carry himself like someone older, how to absorb pressure without letting it show, how to smooth out the rougher, more reactive parts of himself until what remained looked controlled, almost composed. People call it maturity when they talk about him — like it’s something admirable, something inherent — but Franco is aware of what it actually is. He knows it’s the result of being pushed forward faster than he should have been, of learning how to exist under scrutiny before he had fully figured out who he was outside of it. And now, being part of this club, that version of him has only sharpened; here the expectations are heavier, the margins thinner, the consequences of not meeting them far more visible and scary.
He notices it in the way people look at him now, in the words they use when they talk about him, in how easily his age becomes something they forget rather than something that explains anything — and that, more than anything, is how he knows it worked, how completely that version of him has taken hold. And it’s heavy. It follows him onto the pitch, settles into the moments where instinct used to carry him without thinking, turning hesitation into something that lingers just long enough to matter. He knows he hasn’t been playing the way he should. He feels it in the missed decisions, in the split second delay that throws everything slightly off, in how things that used to come naturally now feel just out of reach, like something he can almost grasp but not fully hold onto.
People will say it’s pressure — and they wouldn’t be wrong. The weight of the shirt, the expectations, the constant sense of being watched and measured — it all builds, settles into him in ways that aren’t always obvious from the outside but still shapes everything he does.
But it’s not just that.
There is something else threaded through it. Something that follows him even when he tries to keep it separate, something that pulls at his focus at the worst possible moments, like a second presence he can’t fully identify but can’t ignore either. It shows up in the quiet spaces, in the seconds before he makes a decision, in the way his thoughts split between what he needs to do and everything else he is trying not to think about. It feels like carrying something invisible, something that doesn’t belong on the pitch but refuses to stay off it.
There is a version of him that exists almost entirely in control, composed in the way people praise, the kind of maturity that gets mistaken for certainty. But that version is built, not natural. It is something he reaches for, something he performs just well enough that even he almost believes it sometimes. Because underneath it, there is something far less stable. Something reactive, sharp-edged, still figuring itself out in ways that feel too messy for the life he is already living.
Because the truth is, he hasn’t really had the time to figure himself out properly.
Football didn’t leave room for that. It moved too fast, demanded too much, pulled him forward before he could sit with anything long enough to understand it. He learned how to be a player before he learned how to just be so now, all of that — the parts of himself that never had the space to grow naturally — are catching up to him at once.
In small, uneven ways. In how he’s still discovering what kind of player he wants to be beyond what’s expected of him, beyond what people already decided he is. In how he doesn’t always recognize himself in the versions of him that get talked about, praised, criticized, analyzed like they’re complete. In how his instincts off the pitch don’t always match the control he’s learned to maintain on it.
And more than that, in how he’s still trying to understand what kind of person he is when no one is watching — what he wants, what matters to him, what he’s willing to risk and what he isn’t.
He tells himself he’s past the stage where that uncertainty should show. That he should be more settled by now, more defined, less reactive. That the way people see him must mean something about who he actually is.
But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s still in the middle of it, still shifting, still learning, still making sense of things as they happen instead of after the fact.
He can see his age in the way it leaks through him, in moments he can’t fully control. In how his chest tightens over things that shouldn’t hold that much weight. In how quickly he spirals when something shifts, when something feels even slightly off, like he’s always reacting before he has time to understand why. In the way jealousy settles in immediately, quiet but insistent, circling back on itself until it grows into something heavier than the moment ever was.
He hates that part of himself — the lack of control in it, the way it disrupts the version of him he tries so hard to maintain. It feels careless, exposed, like proof that he’s not as steady as people believe him to be. And still, it doesn’t go away. It lingers beneath everything else, shaping the way he reacts, the way he clings too tightly or pulls back too quickly, like he’s constantly adjusting in real time and never quite landing where he means to.
With Jude, it’s worse.
Because with Jude, he wants to be effortless. He wants to be the version of himself that doesn’t hesitate, that doesn’t flinch, that doesn’t second-guess. He wants to be fearless in it, open in the ways he knows he shouldn’t be, like love doesn’t have consequences beyond the two of them. And sometimes, he manages it. Sometimes he leans into it fully, lets himself exist in that space without overthinking, without pulling back, without measuring every touch or glance against the invisible weight of everything that surrounds them. Those are the moments he holds onto the most, the ones that feel real in a way the rest of his life rarely does.
He really hoped the tennis match could become one of those moments.
By then, Jude had already spent most of the week moving through those kinds of events, appearances stacked one after the other, each one shaped to look effortless from the outside while being anything but. It’s part of the job—show up, be seen, increase engagement. Franco understands that. He’s been around it long enough to recognize the pattern, the quiet choreography behind it. Franco knows how it works. He knows, too, that just a few days before, Jude had been at something similar with her — photos clean, expected, easily digestible in the way those things are meant to be. Something that fits the version of him people are comfortable with, the one that doesn’t raise questions or invite speculation.
Franco doesn’t resent that. He can’t.
But now he’s the one sitting beside Jude in a crowd, with nothing to anchor it to — no pitch, no training ground, nothing that explains the closeness as part of something else. At first, it almost feels harmless. Just an afternoon carved out of a schedule that rarely leaves room for anything unstructured, something that exists just outside football, where the expectations shift but never fully disappear. He tells himself it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s just time spent together in a place where the focus isn’t supposed to land on them.
But even then, there’s something in it that doesn’t settle right. They are here because they wanted to be. Because they chose to spend this time side by side without needing a reason that makes sense to anyone else.
And Jude’s mum is there too, woven into it so naturally that it changes the shape of everything. It softens the edges, makes it feel quieter, closer to something almost ordinary — like a version of normal that Franco has never really let himself consider for them. Not hidden, not rushed, not something that has to exist in the gaps between everything else.
For a few moments, it feels dangerously close to real.
It’s the way Jude exists in that space without seeming to fight it, the way he doesn’t hesitate to include Franco in something that looks, for all intents and purposes, like a version of a life they are not supposed to have. There is no visible calculation in it, no careful distance, no constant adjustment to make sure they are staying within the lines. And Franco doesn’t know what to do with that, with how easy it looks, with how natural it feels for a few fleeting hours.
But ease can be dangerous.
It makes you lean in without thinking, makes you reach for things you have trained yourself to keep just out of reach, makes you believe — if only for a second — that maybe this doesn’t have to be as complicated as everyone says it is. And Franco lets himself fall into that feeling more than he should, lets himself exist inside of it without the usual restraint, without the constant awareness pressing in at the edges. It shows in the small things, the unconscious ones. The way he turns toward Jude without hesitation. The way his body stays close instead of pulling back. The way he doesn’t stop himself from softening in the presence of something that feels safe.
It follows them out of the stadium, into the space where the outside world starts to press back in again, where things are no longer contained in the same way. Jude turns to him like he always does, like the rest of it doesn’t matter as much as this, and his hand comes up to Franco’s face with that same easy certainty, thumb brushing along his cheek in a way that is oh so familiar by now. Franco leans into it before he can stop himself. His eyes close briefly, not even fully, just enough to settle into the contact, to anchor himself in it for half a second longer than he should.
He doesn’t know when it happens, when it stops being something contained and turns into something that exists outside of them — something that can be replayed, paused, pulled apart. It just… builds.
A clip here, slowed down just enough to make it linger longer than it should. A photo there, caught at the exact second his expression gives something away he didn’t know was visible. Words layered over it, speculative at first, almost light in tone — the kind that pretends it isn’t saying anything outright while still guiding people toward the same conclusion.
Stripped of context, reduced to fragments, it still looks like something real. It still carries the shape of what it actually is, even if no one saying it understands the full weight of it. The way he leans into Jude’s touch. The way Jude reaches for him without hesitation.
The worst thing is, it feels right.
He catches himself going back to it, not once, not by accident, but deliberately, like he’s trying to understand something he already knows the answer to. And every time, it lands the same way — something in his chest tightening, something quieter underneath it wanting more. More of that ease. More of that version of them that doesn’t stop to think about what it might look like from the outside.
So he does the only thing he knows how to do when something starts to feel too big to control, and he pulls back.
By the time he gets to training the next day, the feeling hasn’t left him. It sits under his skin, quiet but persistent, shaping the way he moves, the way he thinks, the way he measures every interaction against something that didn’t exist this clearly before. It’s there in the background of everything, threading through even the smallest moments, making them heavier than they should be.
He tells himself to let it go, to narrow his focus back down to what actually matters, to the things he can control. But it doesn’t work like that — not when the thing he’s trying to push away is tied so closely to the way he moves through all of it.
Because Jude doesn’t hesitate. He never has, not with him.
There is a moment between drills, something brief and unremarkable on the surface, where the rhythm of training loosens just enough for instinct to take over. Jude reaches for him the way he always does, arm coming around him, pulling him in close and for a second, Franco almost lets himself fall into it again.
His body moves before his thoughts catch up, already leaning into the familiarity of it, already settling into what has become second nature in private. But then the awareness crashes back in, immediate and overwhelming, layered with everything he saw, everything he read, everything he now knows people are capable of noticing, and more than that — how quickly he knows he would lose control of it if he let himself lean in again.
He pulls away instead.
It’s subtle, controlled enough that it doesn’t draw attention from anyone else. But it’s there — in the way his body shifts out of Jude’s reach, in the way he steps back instead of forward, in the way Jude stills for half a second.
And that’s enough. Enough for something tight and ugly to twist in his chest, enough for him to catch the brief flicker of hurt that crosses Jude’s face before it disappears again. And he hates himself for it the second he sees it — for being the one who put it there, for not stopping himself before it got to that point.
Jude doesn’t say anything. There is no space for it here, not really, not in the middle of drills, not with people moving around them, voices overlapping, the constant structure of training leaving no room for something that would require them to stop and look at each other properly. So he lets it pass, outwardly. Steps back into position, refocuses, lets his body fall back into the rhythm of it all like nothing has shifted.
But his attention stays on Franco. Not obvious. Not enough to be noticed. Just there, steady and persistent, tracking the smaller details that most people wouldn’t think to look for. The way Franco avoids getting too close again, how he adjusts his positioning just slightly so their paths don’t cross as easily. The way he doesn’t look at him as often, or if he does, it’s quicker, more careful, like he’s measuring something before letting it happen.
It’s subtle, and it would be easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for, but Jude knows.
He has spent enough time learning the difference between Franco as he presents himself to everyone else and Franco as he actually is beneath that, enough time recognizing the small shifts that signal something is off even when everything looks fine on the surface. And this — this is one of them. He doesn’t need to ask to understand where it’s coming from.
And Franco—
Franco hasn’t learned how to carry that yet. Not like he has.
He still reacts to it in real time, still feels it as something immediate instead of something to compartmentalize and push aside. Jude recognizes it in the way he pulled back just now, in how instinct had almost won out before something else overrode it at the last second. It’s not rejection. That much is clear to him, instinctively, without needing to think too hard about it.
He’s afraid, and he can’t blame it. But Jude is not really used to seeing this version of him.
If anything, it has always been the opposite. Franco is the one who leans in first, who closes the distance without overthinking it, who moves through that line between private and public with a kind of quiet boldness Jude has never fully managed to replicate. He’s the one who doesn’t look over his shoulder as often, who doesn’t hesitate as much, who acts like the world around them is something secondary rather than something constantly pressing in. Jude has spent more time than he’d like to admit trying to keep up with that, trying to match it, trying to exist inside that same kind of fearlessness even when it doesn’t come as naturally to him anymore.
And now, it’s shifting.
He’s been fearing this moment since the first time they kissed.
Not the headlines, not the speculation — not even the possibility of being found out in some definitive, irreversible way. Those are things he has already learned how to manage and how to survive. This is different. This is quieter, harder to fight against. This is the part where the pressure doesn’t explode outward but instead turns inward, reshaping things from the inside until they don’t look the same anymore.
He had always known Franco was stepping into this without fully understanding it. Jude had seen it coming, in some distant, inevitable way, so it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. But it does.
There is no clean way to fix it.
If Franco were pulling away from him — really pulling away, deliberately creating distance, choosing something else over this — Jude would know how to respond. It would be clearer, easier to understand, even if it hurt in a different way. But this isn’t that. This is Franco reacting to something external, something that exists around them and presses in without asking, something Jude can’t just remove or argue against or make disappear. This is Franco learning, all at once, what it actually means to be with him.
And Jude hates that.
Hates that this — this weight, this constant negotiation between what they are and what they are allowed to be — is part of what comes with him. Hates that Franco is starting to carry it now too, that it’s settling into him in ways that are already changing how he moves, how he reacts, how he lets himself exist in relation to Jude when the world is close enough to matter.
They carry it with them through the rest of the day, through the small, routine interactions that feel slightly off now, through the distance that isn’t obvious but is there all the same. It follows them out of the training ground too, lingering in the quiet that settles once everything else falls away.
Franco feels it the second he’s alone. It doesn’t dissipate the way he hopes it will, doesn’t get lost in the routine of the evening or soften with distance. If anything, it sharpens. Without the distraction of movement, of other people, of something to focus on, it has nowhere to go but inward, turning over itself again and again.
He doesn’t reach out. Doesn’t text, doesn’t try to explain it in a way that would only come out wrong, too quick or not enough. He tells himself he needs the space, that it’s better to let it settle before he says something he can’t take back.
But Jude is at his door instead — still, composed, but not detached. There’s something quieter in the way he looks at him, something searching that he doesn’t try to hide completely. Whatever Franco had managed to hold together all day just— breaks.
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, the words coming out uneven, almost breathless, like they’ve been sitting at the edge of him for hours. “I’m— fuck, I’m sorry.” He doesn’t give Jude time to respond. He steps forward and pulls him in, arms wrapping around him tightly, instinctive and desperate in a way he doesn’t try to hide. It’s not careful, not measured — just immediate, like he needs to close the distance before it can exist again. “I didn’t mean to—” Franco starts, voice breaking slightly as the rest of it catches up to him. “I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know why I—”
He pulls Franco in just as tightly, one hand pressing against the back of his neck, grounding, steady in a way that doesn’t try to stop what’s happening but holds it in place so it doesn’t spiral any further.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice low, close enough that Franco can feel it more than hear it. “It’s okay. Let me in, yeah? We can talk about it, if you want”.
Franco hesitates for half a second, like the instinct to deflect is still there, still automatic. But it doesn’t hold the same weight it did before. Not when Jude is standing this close, not when he’s already seen too much to pretend there’s nothing to explain. He nods, small.
Jude doesn’t say anything else. He just guides him back, slow and easy, until they’re further inside the apartment, the distance from the door making everything feel quieter and safer. They end up on the couch, Franco sits first and Jude follows, close enough that there isn’t really space between them, one arm coming around him again — not pulling this time, just resting there, giving him the option to lean in if he wants to.
Franco does.
“What happened earlier?” Jude asks, softer now, like he’s already trying not to push too hard.
“Nada,” he says, too quickly, the word landing wrong even as it leaves his mouth.
“Fran,” he says, quieter now.
Franco’s shoulders drop just slightly, the tension in them shifting. He drags a hand back through his short hair, a small, restless movement that feels more honest than anything he’s said so far.
He leans a little more into Jude without fully realizing it, like he’s trying to anchor himself while he figures out how to say it.
“They’re not even—” he cuts himself off, jaw tightening slightly. “It’s not like they’re saying anything completely wrong.”
“They don’t know anything,” Jude says, steady, because that part is still true. “They’re guessing. People see things all the time. It doesn’t mean—”
“It’s different,” Franco cuts in, not sharp, but firm enough to stop him. His gaze lifts again, more direct this time, something unsettled in it that he isn’t fully hiding anymore. “It’s like they’re putting it together. Y puta madre… I want them to.”
“It’s not just that they saw it,” he says finally, voice low, almost hesitant in a way that doesn’t quite match him. “That’s not what—”. He cuts himself off, jaw tightening slightly, like the next part is harder to admit than anything else he’s said so far. “I keep thinking about it,” he admits. “About how easy it was for them to see it. How obvious it looked. And I wanted more of it.” Franco lets out a quiet, almost disbelieving breath, like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it out loud. “I want people to know, I want to go out with you and not have to think about it. I want to walk into a room and have it just... be obvious” he continues, more quietly now. “That you’re mine. That I’m yours”.
Franco’s gaze drops again, his shoulders tensing slightly like the weight of it is catching up to him now.
“I don’t want you to have to do that,” he adds, voice lower now. “Go out with her first. Make it look right so you can be seen with me later and it doesn’t — stand out as much.”
Jude exhales slowly, something heavy settling in his chest at the way Franco says it, at how easily he folds himself around something that was never meant to be fair in the first place. There’s a quiet, sharp ache to it, something that presses in deeper the longer he sits with it — not just because of what Franco is saying, but because of how much he understands it.
Jude’s hand tightens slightly where it rests against him, thumb brushing slow and absent along his side, more grounding than anything else.
“I don’t want to have to do that either,” he says quietly. “But it’s not about wanting,” he adds after a second, softer now. “It’s just… how it works.”
“I know that. That’s what scares me, I think — that what I actually want is something we can’t have. And I can’t get there, not without it messing everything up for you”.
Jude’s expression changes immediately, something in it softening and tightening at the same time, like he’s already about to push back against that idea but isn’t really able to find the words to do so.
But Franco isn’t finished.
“And not just you,” he continues, more quietly now, but no less intense. “Me too. I’m barely holding onto my place as it is,” he says, the words quieter now, stripped of the composure he usually carries. “I’m not playing well. People are already on me for that, already saying I don’t deserve to be here, that I’m not ready, that I should go back”.
Jude’s jaw tightens at that, something immediate and defensive rising in him, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“And this would just — hand it to them,” he adds. “An actual reason. Not just football. Something bigger, something they can point to and say that’s why I don’t belong here. And it would be enough, I think. Enough to push me out. Enough to make it feel like maybe they’re right. But I feel stuck.” He lets out a quiet, almost frustrated breath, like even that word isn’t enough to explain it properly. His gaze flickers away for a second before coming back, something more exposed sitting in it now, something he doesn’t usually let Jude see this clearly.
“And then I start thinking about you, about how I want to just–”. He cuts himself off again, but this time only for a second.
“—show you off,” he finishes, the words coming out softer. “So then I get stuck in it,” he says. “Trying to focus on football, trying to fix how I’m playing, but I can’t because my head’s somewhere else. And then that just proves everyone right, and I… I don’t know how to get out of it.”
Jude doesn’t answer immediately. He feels the shape of what Franco just said settle into him first, lets it land fully instead of rushing to smooth it over. There’s a reflex in him — to fix it, to interrupt the spiral before it tightens any further — but he knows better than that. Franco isn’t saying this because he wants reassurance. He’s saying it because he doesn’t know where else to put it. So Jude exhales slowly, grounding himself in the quiet of the room, in the fact that they are here and not out there, that this is one of the few spaces where they can just be.
“That’s not a circle you built on your own, sweetheart” he says finally, voice low, steady in a way that doesn’t try to overpower what Franco is feeling. “You’re acting like it just came out of you, like it’s something wrong with how you think or how you handle things. You’re distracted because you’re trying to hold two versions of your life together that don’t fit the way they’re supposed to right now. That’s not you failing, That’s you being put in a position where there isn’t a clean way to do it.”
“And about what you said — about wanting to show me off,” he adds, voice lower, something more personal slipping into it now. “I get that.”
Franco looks up at that, a flicker of something uncertain in his expression.
“I do,” Jude repeats, a little more firmly. “You think I don’t want the same thing?”. There’s no bitterness in it, no edge — just honesty. “I knew it would hit at some point, but I thought we had more time before it started getting in your head like this.”
“Hey,” he says quietly, his grip at the back of Franco’s neck tightening just slightly — not forceful, just enough to pull his attention back. “This isn’t you messing anything up.”
He waits until Franco actually looks at him again before continuing.
“And you’re not one bad run of games away from being sent back home,” he adds, more firmly now. “People talk. That’s all they do. They’ll latch onto whatever they can”.
“And for what it’s worth,” he adds, almost softer than anything else he’s said, “wanting that kind of freedom with me… that’s not something you need to fix. That’s the part I don’t want you to lose.”
Jude goes quiet again after that.
Not because he doesn’t have anything to say, but because he has too much of it, and none of it feels like something that will fix what’s sitting between them. He watches Franco for a second, really watches him — not just the words he said, but the way they landed in his body, the way they’re still there, unresolved, looping back in on themselves.
“I don’t have an easy answer for you,” he admits finally.
There’s no softness in the phrasing, no attempt to dress it up into something lighter than it is. Just honesty, steady and grounded in a way that feels heavier precisely because of that.
“I wish I did,” he adds, quieter now. “I wish I could just tell you what to do and it’d make it better. Or tell you it’s not going to affect anything and have that actually be true.”
He exhales slowly, gaze dropping for a second before coming back to him.
“But it’s not like that, isn’t it?” he says.
“I have the same thoughts,” he continues after a moment, more quietly now, like this part isn’t something he says often. “About being seen. About not having to think about it all the time. About just… existing with you without it turning into something we have to manage. I think about it more than I should, if I’m being honest”.
Jude’s jaw tightens slightly, not out of frustration with Franco, but with the situation itself — with the limits of it, the way it forces choices that don’t feel fair no matter which way you turn them.
“You’re eighteen,” he says, not condescending, just factual in a way that carries weight. “You’re at Madrid. You’re about to play your first World Cup. There’s no version of this where I let you risk all of that,” he continues, quieter but firmer now. “Not for me. Not like that.”
Franco’s breath catches slightly, like he expected that answer and still didn’t want to hear it said that clearly.
Jude softens immediately, his grip shifting, less firm now, more grounding again.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want it,” he adds quickly. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t—” he stops himself, exhales, recalibrates.
“But it’s not just me,” he says. “And it’s not just you. It’s everything around it.”
The words settle between them, heavy in a way that doesn’t leave much room to argue.
For a moment, neither of them speaks.
Franco’s gaze stays lowered, like he’s still turning it over, still trying to find a version of it that feels less final than it sounds.
Jude watches him for a second longer before shifting slightly, his hand moving from his side back up to his neck, thumb brushing there in a slow, absent motion.
“But hey,” he says quietly.
Franco looks up.
“Don’t do that again.”
It’s not harsh. Not even sharp. But there’s something firm in it, something that doesn’t bend.
“Don’t push me away like that and then deal with it on your own,” Jude continues, softer now, but no less certain. “If it gets too much, if you start thinking like that... tell me. Don’t just… shut me out.”
Franco’s expression shifts slightly at that, something uncertain flickering through it.
“I wasn’t—” he starts.
“I know you weren’t trying to,” Jude cuts in gently. “I know.”
His thumb presses a little more firmly against his skin, grounding.
He nods.
“Okay,” he says, softer now.
Jude studies him for a second, like he’s making sure it’s not just something said to move past the moment.
“Yeah?” he asks.
Franco nods again, this time more certain.
“Yeah.”