Archive of Our Own

The match setting follows the real El Clásico played on 28 October 2023

at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys:

Barcelona took the lead through İlkay Gündoğan,

Before Jude Bellingham scored in the 68th and 90+2 minutes to seal a 2–1 victory for Real Madrid. 

Inspired by “Futures” — PREP

Jude’s second goal went in at ninety minutes plus two, and for several seconds, Gavi heard nothing.

Not the roar of the Real Madrid supporters erupting from one corner of the Estadi Olímpic stands. Not the curses breaking out from the Barça bench. Not the shouts of the goalkeeper, the defenders, or his teammates standing frozen after a ball that should have been cleared fell directly into the path of someone who had looked, all afternoon, as though he had been created solely to destroy them.

The only thing Gavi heard was a small sound from somewhere very far inside himself.

Like a key turning in an old door.

Like something he had been holding shut with the full weight of his body had finally opened anyway.

In front of him, Jude ran toward the corner of the pitch in the white kit Gavi had forced himself not to look at for too long since the beginning of the match. His arms were spread wide. His mouth was open in a shout. His body was quickly swallowed by Real Madrid players rushing in from every direction to embrace him, pat his head, shove at his shoulders, celebrating the man who had just turned his first El Clásico around with two goals as though he had never known fear in his life.

As though he had never called someone from Dortmund in a voice quieter than usual.

As though he had never said he was not sure what he was supposed to choose.

As though he had never waited for Gavi to ask him to stay.

Gavi stood several metres away from that mass of white, his breath suspended in his chest. His Barça shirt clung to his skin with sweat. His legs felt heavy, his lungs burned, but every trace of exhaustion from ninety minutes of football was suddenly eclipsed by one truth that was far simpler and far crueler:

Jude looked happy.

Not falsely happy for the cameras. Not wearing the polite smile he usually gave journalists or children asking for photographs. Gavi knew too many versions of Jude’s face to mistake one for another. The smile now appearing between the arms of his Madrid teammates was the kind that had been born before he had the chance to hide it—wide, wild, filled with disbelief at how good life could suddenly be to him.

Jesus Christ—he had loved that smile, once.

He had waited for it to appear on his phone screen during video calls after Dortmund matches. He had once felt as though he had won something in secret simply because one stupid insult from him could transform Jude’s exhausted face into something lighter. Once, in the most subtle mistake he had ever made in his life, he had imagined himself becoming one of the reasons Jude would keep smiling like that.

Now that smile was happening in front of tens of thousands of Barcelona supporters, after Jude had scored the winning goal for Real Madrid.

Real Madrid.

The word felt like the edge of a blade that had been lodged inside him for a long time, only now being twisted.

Gavi lowered his head for a moment. The grass beneath his boots looked ruined, torn apart by the marks of the match. Beyond the pitch, the electronic scoreboard already displayed the result he could no longer ignore: Barcelona one, Real Madrid two. There was so little time left that even anger no longer had enough space to turn itself into energy.

Pedri passed close by him, his face pale with disappointment. Someone told them to focus, that there was still time, that the ball needed to be brought back to the centre quickly. Gavi lifted his head. His body moved back into position because a footballer’s body always knew how to survive, even when every other part of him had already stopped functioning.

Jude began walking back toward the centre of the pitch.

This time, their eyes met.

Not for long. Not long enough for any camera to turn it into something. Jude was still being pulled along by the celebration, still having his shoulders touched by Madrid players on either side of him, but his eyes found Gavi the way they used to—as though, across every distance, through every noise, among every person, there was always one point he searched for first.

There was no triumph in that look.

Only something that made it even harder for Gavi to breathe.

Perhaps guilt.

Perhaps a question.

Perhaps the memory that there had once been a time when Jude’s biggest goals would have been followed by a message to Gavi, not a silent look from the opposite side.

Gavi looked away first.

He had already lost far too much that afternoon.

The final whistle came a few minutes later. Long, cruel, and final. The Real Madrid players immediately lifted their arms. The Barcelona players scattered in disappointment that took no single shape; some lowered their heads, some stared blankly toward the stands, and some walked straight toward the referee with the last remains of frustration that had nowhere else to go.

Gavi stood still.

Usually, a loss made his blood boil. It made him want to kick something, argue, run back onto the pitch as though the match could be forced to begin again if he simply refused hard enough to accept the result. Today, he felt cold instead. So cold that the October air falling over Montjuïc meant nothing at all.

Someone patted the back of his head. Gavi did not look to see who it was.

From the corner of his eye, he became aware of Jude being surrounded by people. Reporters. Teammates. Real Madrid staffs. Everyone wanted to touch some small part of the victory he had just created. Two goals in his first El Clásico. A powerful strike from outside the box that had changed the match, followed by one touch in added time that ensured Barcelona received nothing except regret.

There could not have been a worse scenario.

Even if Jude had to be a Real Madrid player, why could he not have been ordinary today? Why could he not have played badly, drowned beneath the whistles from the stands, returned to Madrid with his head bowed and some small empty space inside him that might still have remembered Gavi?

Why did he have to come to this city, to the stadium Barcelona were borrowing while their home was being rebuilt, and make himself look like someone who had never needed anything from the past at all?

Gavi did not know how long he stared.

All he knew was that Jude eventually looked over again.

This time, there was no distance of the match left to save them. The whistle had blown. Everything they were required to do on the pitch was over. Jude could have come to him. He could have walked across a few metres of grass and said something ordinary, something safe, like good game or get home safely, and then Gavi would have had the chance to hate him directly.

But Jude did not come.

He only looked at Gavi for a brief moment, his expression unreadable from that distance, before turning away and following his teammates toward the stadium tunnel.

Gavi watched that white back disappear.

The pain that followed was far sharper than the goal in the ninety-second minute.

Because all this time, beneath all his anger, there had apparently still been a small part of him that believed Jude would always be the one to come back first.

Before Jude became a Real Madrid player, he was a voice that appeared close to midnight.

At first, he was nothing more than a name people mentioned often. Two young players, both forced by football to grow up too quickly, placed beside each other too many times in lists, comparisons, awards, and conversations they usually had not started themselves. Gavi played for FC Barcelona in a way that made people call him fierce, reckless, excessive, brilliant. Jude played for Borussia Dortmund with a long frame, shoulders that grew broader from one season to the next, and a composure that often made him look older than he really was.

They met a few times at football events too unimportant for either of them to remember in detail. They greeted each other. Gave one another polite smiles. Once, Gavi laughed at Jude’s terrible Spanish, and Jude replied that at least he did not look like a small child prepared to punch someone every five minutes.

Gavi, naturally, did not like him.

Or at least, he believed he did not like him.

Until one night, a message arrived from a number that had been saved without much thought after one of those events.

It was a screenshot of an English-language article that had translated one of Gavi’s interviews terribly, followed by a message from Jude:

According to this article, you said you wanted to bite the referee.

Gavi was sitting alone at the dining table in his apartment after a bad evening training session. There was a bowl of food that had already gone cold in front of him, his phone in his hand, and the irritation he had originally aimed at training suddenly shifted toward one Dortmund player who had, for reasons unknown, decided to bother him.

Maybe I did say that.

The reply came quickly.

I already suspected you were dangerous. I didn’t realise it was on that level.

Gavi let out a small scoff.

Fix your Spanish before you start reading my interviews.

I’m learning.

Then Jude sent him a sentence in Spanish that was so disastrously wrong Gavi had to stare at it twice before finally laughing—properly laughing—alone at his dining table.

He did not know then that the stupid message would become a door.

Nothing dramatic happened immediately afterwards. Jude did not suddenly start contacting him every night. Gavi did not suddenly begin spending his days waiting for a reply. There were only small messages arriving every now and then, harmless and almost meaningless. A photograph of Dortmund’s grey sky. Complaints about the cold. A comment about one of Barcelona’s matches. A short video from the training room showing one of Jude’s teammates asleep on a sofa, sent with a warning that Gavi was not allowed to post it anywhere.

Gavi replied with bright views of Barcelona, insults about the German city looking miserable, photographs of his new training boots accompanied by a short message saying they were far better than Jude’s.

Jude almost always answered.

Slowly, their conversations shifted from something that could have been stopped at any moment into a small, recurring part of Gavi’s life. He began knowing when Borussia Dortmund had finished playing without needing to look at the schedule, because a message from Jude would usually arrive a few hours later. He began knowing when Jude was tired simply from the way his messages lost their punctuation. He began saving things to tell him later—a funny moment in training, an irritating comment from a journalist, a food he hated—and only realised how strange that was when a story began to feel unfinished until it had reached Jude.

Their first phone call happened after Gavi took a hard knock during a match.

It was nothing serious. Everyone had already made sure of that. His thigh was only bruised, his body only needed rest, and by the following morning he would most likely already be complaining that he wanted to train again. But that night, Gavi went home with an irrational kind of anger, furious that he had been substituted, furious at the worried expressions on the faces around him, furious that his own body had dared to feel fragile.

Jude’s name appeared on the screen while he was pressing an ice pack against his thigh.

Gavi stared at the incoming call for a long moment. Messages could still be controlled; voices could not. Hearing someone meant giving them the chance to notice something he had failed to hide behind short words.

The ringing was almost about to stop when he finally answered.

“What?”

Jude laughed on the other end. Not loudly, only a soft breath of amusement that, for some reason, made Gavi’s room feel slightly less empty.

“Hello to you too.”

“If you only called to laugh at me, I’m hanging up.”

“I wanted to make sure your leg was still attached.”

“It is.”

“Good.”

Gavi waited. Jude did not immediately continue. On the other end of the line, there was the sound of a door closing, then the rustle of fabric. Perhaps Jude had just finished showering. Perhaps he was sitting on the bed in his hotel room or his apartment in Dortmund. The thought that they were now in their own private spaces, separated only by a phone connection, made Gavi slightly uncomfortable.

“I’m fine,” he said, more defensively than necessary.

“I know.”

“Then why did you call?”

Jude was quiet for a moment before answering, “Because I thought you were going to spend the whole night being angry about something you can’t change.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Pablo.”

The way Jude said his name made the lie seem so obvious that Gavi could not keep defending it without looking stupid.

“A little,” he muttered.

“At your leg?”

“At everyone.”

“Including me?”

“Especially you.”

Jude laughed again, and without realising it, Gavi smiled too.

That night, they spoke for more than an hour. About the match that had just ended, about how Gavi hated it when people treated him like something breakable simply because he had fallen, about how Jude thought Dortmund was too cold and still could not understand certain foods there. Their conversation was not deep. There were no important confessions. Yet when the call ended, Gavi’s thigh no longer felt like the centre of the world.

The following night, Jude called again.

Then he did not call for several days.

Then it was Gavi who called first, using the excuse that he was bored and wanted to make sure Jude was not wearing something terrible in public.

“So you think about my clothes?” Jude asked.

“I think about the safety of other people’s eyes.”

“How considerate.”

Gavi hung up in the middle of Jude’s laughter, but five minutes later Jude called again, and Gavi answered.

That was how everything grew: never announced, never agreed upon, never given enough clear space for either of them to panic. Jude was still in Dortmund. Gavi was still in Barcelona. There were flights, training schedules, matches, national team responsibilities, interviews, exhaustion. They were far apart, and that was exactly why the closeness between them felt safe.

Jude could not simply arrive one day and demand an answer.

Gavi did not have to think about what it meant that Jude’s voice always softened when the night grew later.

Their relationship lived inside their phones: voice messages of Jude trying to pronounce sentences in Spanish, photographs of coffee placed on a table beside a rain-streaked window in Dortmund, short videos of Gavi complaining that the rain in Barcelona had lasted only a little while but had still been long enough to ruin his plans, calls after matches, calls before sleep, calls when there was nothing particular to talk about but neither of them wanted to be the first to hang up.

Jude knew Gavi in a way Gavi rarely allowed anyone else to know him.

He knew Gavi would insist he was fine in his worst possible tone when he was actually lonely. He knew that after a bad match, Gavi did not need a long speech; he needed someone to laugh about something else with him until the loss stopped feeling like the end of the world. He knew Gavi hated being asked whether he was afraid, because fear in Gavi’s mind always felt like something he had to defeat on his own.

In return, Gavi learned that Jude’s calmness did not mean he never faltered.

Jude always sounded so good in front of cameras. So polite, so prepared, so aware that his career was moving toward something big. People saw him as a player who was never shaken by expectations. Gavi knew there were nights when Jude was too tired to be the perfect boy everyone trusted to save whatever he touched.

“Sometimes,” Jude said one night, “I feel like people have already decided everything that is going to happen to me.”

Gavi was lying on the sofa, the television on without sound. His phone was pressed to his ear. On the other end, Jude’s voice sounded so close despite the countries and cities between them.

“Who cares?” Gavi replied. “Your life is still yours.”

“Yeah.”

“If you want something, take it. If you don’t want it, don’t.”

Jude let out a small laugh. “You always make everything sound that simple.”

“It is simple.”

“Is it really?”

Gavi stared at the television screen, where people moved without sound. “Yes.”

Jude did not answer immediately. The silence that followed was not the empty kind. There was something inside it, something slowly moving closer, and Gavi felt his body tense before he even understood why.

“What if I want something,” Jude said, his voice lower now, “but I don’t know if I’m allowed to take it?”

Gavi held his breath.

He could have asked Jude what he meant. He could have pushed the conversation forward, could have allowed the thing that had been circling between them all this time to finally take shape.

Instead, he said, “You think too much.”

Jude went silent.

A few seconds later, he laughed softly, forcing the atmosphere back into somewhere safe.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Gavi did not fall asleep quickly that night.

He lay there with Jude’s voice no longer in his ear, thinking about that sentence, thinking about the way his heart had beaten when he felt that Jude had almost said something. He was not stupid. He knew their relationship no longer resembled an ordinary friendship. He knew not everyone waited for each other’s messages like this. He knew about the ugly little flicker of jealousy he felt whenever he saw Jude laughing too closely with someone in Dortmund photographs. He knew he had never allowed anyone else to see him as exhausted and lonely as he was after matches.

But knowing did not mean being brave.

As long as nothing was spoken aloud, Gavi could still believe he was in control of everything.

As long as Jude remained only a voice from Dortmund, love—if that was truly the right name for it—did not have enough of a body to hurt him.

Jude came to Barcelona on a warm night at the end of the season, and all at once, every protection distance had given them disappeared.

He told Gavi only a few hours before he arrived.

I’m in Barcelona.

Gavi had only just walked out of the training room when the message came through. He stopped in the corridor with his bag hanging from one shoulder. His heart leapt far too quickly, so embarrassingly that he glanced around as though someone might be able to see it.

Why? Dortmund finally got tired of looking at your face?

They let me out for a while.

What for?

There was a pause before the reply appeared.

Not sure yet. Maybe it depends on whether you’re willing to see me.

Gavi read the sentence twice. He smiled before he could stop himself, then wiped the smile away like an idiot when one of the staff members walked past him.

I’m busy.

Three dots appeared, then disappeared. Jude’s reply finally came, short and simple.

Okay. Another time.

Gavi cursed under his breath. He hated how easily Jude accepted a rejection he had never truly meant. Hated that Jude did not push, did not demand, did not save Gavi from his own terrible habits.

Busy waiting for your address, idiot.

Jude sent the address of his hotel along with a laughing emoji.

That night, they met far from the centre of the crowd. Jude chose an area near the beach, a small road lit by yellow streetlights and almost empty now that the hour had grown late. He was wearing a dark hoodie and a cap, both hands buried in his pockets, his tall frame still far too easy for Gavi to recognise even from a distance.

When Gavi approached, Jude turned.

That face was different from the screen.

Too real. Too close.

Video calls had never been enough to show how tall Jude really was when he stood directly in front of him, how warm his smile looked when it was not broken apart by bad connection, how difficult it was for Gavi to pretend everything was normal when the voice that had always come from his phone was now saying his name out loud in the Barcelona night.

“Pablo.”

Gavi shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket so Jude would not see how awkward he had suddenly become. “You look worse in person.”

Jude’s smile grew wider. “It’s good to see you too.”

They walked without any important destination. Bought simple food from a small place near the beach, sat on a bench facing the sea, talked about things they had already discussed countless times before, only for those same things to suddenly feel new now that their bodies occupied the same space.

Jude turned toward him more often whenever Gavi spoke. Watched him with an attention that made Gavi lose several words in the middle of his sentences. Gavi tried to cover it by speaking more harshly, insulting him more often, shoving Jude’s shoulder whenever Jude laughed at him. Jude accepted all of it easily, as though he already understood that Gavi’s roughness was often not an order to stay away, but the only way he knew how to ask someone to remain.

The night grew colder. The sea wind made Gavi rub his arms without realising it.

Jude took off the outer jacket he was wearing.

“I don’t need that,” Gavi said before Jude could hand it over.

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m not shivering.”

“You’re unbelievably stubborn.”

“I don’t want your jacket.”

Jude did not argue again. He simply rose slightly from the bench and placed the jacket over Gavi’s shoulders before Gavi had the chance to refuse. His fingers brushed the back of Gavi’s neck in a brief movement that should not have meant anything, yet made Gavi’s breath stop.

The jacket was too large. Warm from Jude’s body. It smelled faintly of night air and his perfume, something Gavi would later search for without meaning to in other things and never quite manage to find again.

“Give it back before I leave tomorrow,” Jude said.

Gavi lowered his head, sliding his hands into the jacket pockets. “What if I don’t want to?”

Jude looked at him.

The streetlight fell across one side of his face. Behind them, the sea moved darkly. There was no sound except the waves and the occasional distant car.

“Then,” Jude answered, “I’ll have to come back and get it.”

Gavi knew that sentence was not only about the jacket.

Or at least, he hoped it was not.

For several seconds, they only looked at each other. Something tightened between them; something that had been building for a long time through voices, messages, distance, and all those nights when they pretended they were merely passing the time.

Jude did not touch him.

He gave Gavi the chance to step away.

Perhaps that was exactly why Gavi did not.

When they eventually stood near Gavi’s car several hours later, saying goodbye became the first part of the night that felt difficult. Jude would leave tomorrow. Gavi had morning training. Logically, all they needed to do was say goodnight and continue living as usual, returning to phone screens and a distance that was easier to manage.

But Gavi did not want to return to that distance.

Jude stood in front of him, both hands empty now because Gavi was still wearing his jacket. He looked as though he was searching for a safe sentence and failing to find one.

“I’ll come back,” he said at last.

Gavi looked at him. “For the jacket?”

Jude smiled faintly. “If that’s the reason you’ll give me.”

There was a particular way Jude looked at him that night. Not forceful, not demanding, but so open that Gavi felt as though every wall he had built around himself suddenly looked ridiculous.

“I’ll come back if you want me to,” Jude added.

Gavi should have answered.

He should have said that he wanted Jude to come back. That he wanted more than late-night messages and calls ending only when one of them grew too sleepy to speak. That he no longer knew how to separate a bad day from the need to hear Jude’s voice afterwards.

But the words were too exposed.

Too large.

So Gavi chose an action easier than a confession. He stepped forward, grabbed the front of Jude’s hoodie, and kissed him.

Their first kiss was brief, rough with nerves, almost like a challenge thrown before Gavi had time to regret his own courage. He had barely begun to pull away when Jude lifted one hand and touched the side of his face.

Very gently.

As though Gavi were something fragile, even though everyone in the world saw him as someone who always wanted to charge forward first.

“Can I?” Jude asked, his voice barely more than a breath.

The question only made Gavi’s entire body burn hotter.

He did not answer with words. He pulled Jude back to him.

The second kiss was far worse for Gavi’s defences. Jude bent down, his lips moving more slowly now, more certainly, as though he had imagined kissing Gavi this way for a long time and was trying not to let the full extent of that desire show all at once. Jude’s hand shifted to the back of his neck, warm and steady, holding him without trapping him. Gavi gripped the hoodie more tightly because something inside him felt as though it was falling, and Jude was the only thing close enough to reach for.

When they parted, Jude’s face was still very close.

“Pablo,” he said.

Gavi was afraid of the tenderness in his voice.

“Don’t talk.”

Jude frowned slightly. “Do you regret it?”

“No.”

The answer came out far too quickly to be questioned.

“Then why can’t I talk?”

Because if Jude spoke, Gavi would have to listen. If Jude said aloud the feelings that had been floating between them for so long, Gavi would have to decide whether to catch them or let them fall. A kiss could still be treated like a beautiful accident that demanded nothing. Words would turn it into something real.

Instead of answering, Gavi kissed him again.

Jude let him.

When they parted that night, Gavi went home with Jude’s jacket and lips that still felt warm. A few minutes after he arrived at his apartment, a message came through.

I really am going to take my jacket back later.

Gavi sat on the edge of his bed, Jude’s jacket still wrapped around his body.

Try it.

Is that an invitation?

Gavi stared at the screen, his heart beating stupidly hard.

Don’t get a big head.

Jude’s reply came a few seconds later.

Too late.

Gavi never told him that he slept that night with Jude’s jacket folded on the chair beside his bed, as though simply seeing it there was enough to prove that what had just happened had truly existed.

He never told him that, for several weeks afterwards, the future began to wear Jude’s face.

After that kiss, their relationship did not become easier. It only became more impossible to deny.

Jude returned to Dortmund, but now every call carried the memory of touch. Gavi could watch Jude’s lips move on the screen and suddenly remember what they had felt like against his own. Jude could ask what Gavi was wearing and then laugh when a glimpse of his dark jacket appeared over Gavi’s shoulders during a video call.

“You said that jacket was lost,” Jude said.

“Maybe I found one that looks similar.”

“With the little stain near the pocket that I made myself?”

Gavi looked down at the stain, then immediately covered his camera with his hand. “You’re creepy.”

“I’m attentive.”

“Not the same thing.”

“It is to me.”

They met once more before the season ended. Not at the beach. Not somewhere open where they could walk for hours and pretend they were still only friends. They met in a borrowed apartment belonging to an acquaintance who was away, with the curtains drawn shut and far too little time.

Jude embraced him the moment the door closed.

Gavi was briefly startled by how easily his body accepted the hug. His face fell against Jude’s shoulder, the scent that had grown faint on the jacket now complete around him again. He had just begun to think about mocking Jude for being dramatic when Jude kissed his temple, then his cheek, then his lips.

Their kisses were not awkward this time.

Jude kissed him like someone who had been waiting far too long. Gavi answered with all the longing he had never admitted over the phone. His back touched the wall, both hands rising to Jude’s shoulders, and when Jude held his waist with one hand, Gavi felt frightened by how right the position felt.

They stopped before limited time became a decision that went too far. Afterwards, they sat on the sofa without any distance between them, Jude’s arm stretched along the backrest behind Gavi, their fingers brushing against each other without ever quite interlocking.

That afternoon, muted light filtered in through the gap in the curtains. Fine dust moved inside it. Outside, the city continued living without knowing that two young footballers who always looked fearless on the pitch were sitting in silence because neither of them was brave enough to name what they were actually doing.

“The season is almost over,” Jude said after a long while.

Gavi leaned back slightly but did not turn. “I know.”

“I might have a lot of decisions to make after that.”

The word decisions made something in Gavi’s body harden, though he did not know why. The rumours had already existed even then, vague and distant: big clubs, Jude’s future, which team might be able to take him away from Dortmund. Gavi always scrolled past stories like that quickly, as though not caring were the best way to stop them from becoming real.

“Every player has decisions,” he replied.

“I want to talk to you about some things.”

Gavi finally turned. Jude did not look as though he was joking. His gaze was calm, but there was a small nervousness in it, something Gavi rarely saw.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to take a big step and only find out afterwards that you were actually hoping for something different.”

Gavi’s heart beat harder.

There it was again: the door Jude opened gently, the opportunity he placed in front of him without force.

Gavi hated how badly he wanted it.

He hated even more how quickly his fear arrived.

“I don’t control your life,” he said, pulling his hand away from where it had rested near Jude’s fingers. “Just do whatever you want.”

Jude looked briefly at the hand he had withdrawn. “That isn’t what I’m asking.”

“Then what are you asking?”

“I think you know.”

Gavi rose from the sofa and walked several steps toward the table as though he were looking for a drink, even though his glass was still full. “Don’t make everything complicated.”

“I’m the one making this complicated?”

Jude’s tone was still gentle, but there was a small exhaustion in it now. Gavi did not answer.

A few seconds later, Jude stood too. He approached, but he did not touch Gavi. That carefulness hurt more than insistence would have.

“I’m not asking you to promise me anything right now,” he said. “I only want to know whether, when I think about what comes after Dortmund, I’m allowed to think about you too.”

Gavi stared at the glass on the table.

Had he turned around then, perhaps he would have seen how sincere Jude was. Had he been even slightly braver, perhaps all he needed to say was yes. No grand promise. No definition. Only one small permission for Jude to believe he was not building a future on something that mattered only to him.

But Gavi felt as though his chest were being crowded by something too large. He had never loved in a form that demanded a future. He had never thought of someone and then had to place that person inside decisions, cities, schedules, pressure, secrecy, and the risk of loss.

He understood how to face an opponent far better than he understood the possibility of being loved.

“Tonight was good,” he said at last. “Don’t ruin it.”

Jude went silent.

Then he nodded.

“Okay.”

There was no argument. That was what made it worse. Jude did not push. He did not demand. He kissed Gavi once more before they parted, softly and a little more sadly than before, but Gavi pretended not to feel it.

That night, on his way home, Gavi wore Jude’s jacket again.

He did not know that almost every great opportunity in life failed to look important while it was happening. Sometimes, it only looked like someone sitting beside you, quietly asking whether he was allowed to think of you in his future.

And sometimes, because you were too afraid of your own answer, you made that person believe the answer was no.

The Madrid rumours became real slowly, then all at once.

At first, there were headlines. Gavi saw one on his phone after training and immediately locked the screen. A few hours later, he opened it again. Read the entire article. Read another article. Read the comments of people who sounded as though Jude’s future were public entertainment and not something pressing directly against Gavi’s ribs.

Real Madrid wanted Jude Bellingham.

Real Madrid were leading the race.

Real Madrid were confident a deal could happen.

Jude’s name and that white crest appeared beside each other more and more often. So often that Gavi began to feel sick at the sight of his own phone screen.

Jude said nothing for several days.

They still communicated, but differently. Jude’s messages came more carefully. Their phone calls were shorter. There was something he was hiding, and Gavi hated him for not talking about it while also hating himself for not daring to ask.

Eventually, the call came late at night.

Gavi was lying in his room with the lights off, his body exhausted after training. When Jude’s name appeared, he knew even before answering.

His hands felt cold.

He let the phone ring several times, almost hoping Jude would give up. But Jude did not give up. The call continued until Gavi finally pressed answer.

“What?”

Jude’s voice came softly. “Hi.”

Gavi stared into the darkness of his room. “Why are you calling?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Every part of him that had still hoped the rumours were wrong collapsed at once.

“Talk.”

Jude drew in a breath.

“Real Madrid have contacted me seriously.”

There was no sound after that sentence. Gavi did not move. Even his breath seemed not to know where to go.

“And?” he asked.

“I haven’t made a final decision yet.”

A lie, Gavi thought instantly. Or perhaps it was not a lie, but the decision already existed everywhere except in Jude’s mouth. A club like Real Madrid did not approach a player like Jude to receive an uncertain answer. Jude would not be telling Gavi this if some large part of him did not already want to go.

“If you want to leave, then leave,” Gavi said.

“Pablo.”

“What?”

“I didn’t call only to tell you.”

“Then what did you call for?”

Jude remained silent for long enough that Gavi could hear him breathing. He imagined him sitting somewhere in Dortmund, holding his phone, staring at a window or the floor or anything except the courage he was forcing out of himself.

“I don’t know what will happen if I go there,” Jude said at last. “With us.”

Gavi closed his eyes.

Those final two words should have made him happy. With us. It meant Jude believed there was something. It meant all the kisses, calls, the jacket, the long nights, and the looks held for too long were not something Gavi had quietly imagined on his own.

Instead, he felt cornered.

Because Jude’s confession arrived together with the threat of losing him. Because after months of being allowed to enjoy their closeness without naming it, Jude was now asking for a name at the exact moment he might be standing on the side Gavi least wanted to accept.

“There is no us,” he said.

The sentence came out so quickly, so coldly, that even Gavi felt as though he had just heard someone else speak through his mouth.

Jude did not answer.

Gavi sat up on his bed, his heart striking against his chest. He knew he had just hurt Jude. Knew he could fix it if he immediately took those words back.

But pain and pride had already found each other, turning into something stronger than courage.

“What are we supposed to be?” Gavi continued, letting out a short, humourless laugh. “You came here a few times. We kissed. We talked. That doesn’t mean you have to include me in your career decisions.”

“I didn’t say I had to.”

“Then why are you calling me like this?”

“Because you matter to me.”

Gavi gripped the blanket in his hand.

Jude’s voice had begun to crack at the edges, so faintly, so carefully controlled, but Gavi knew him too well not to hear it.

“Because I love you more than you probably want to know,” Jude said. “Because I’m afraid of going to a club that will make you look at me like an enemy. Because I want to know if there’s something here you want me to hold on to.”

Gavi should have broken at the words I love you.

All his anger should have dissolved, leaving only the truth that Jude was placing his heart so carefully in Gavi’s hands.

Instead, what Gavi felt was a large, rough, almost humiliating fear. Jude loved him. Jude truly loved him. That meant all of this was real, and anything real could truly leave him.

“Don’t make a stupid decision for something that never even existed,” he said.

On the other end of the line, Jude stopped breathing for a moment.

Gavi knew he should apologise.

He did not.

When Jude spoke again, his voice had changed. Calm, neat, distant—the kind of voice he might use with journalists when he did not want anyone to know he had just been destroyed.

“Okay.”

That single word tightened painfully around Gavi’s chest.

“Bellingha—”

“I understand.”

“No, I—”

“You’re right.” Jude gave a small laugh, but there was nothing alive inside it. “I shouldn’t have made it bigger than it actually was.”

Gavi felt panic rise in his throat. “I didn’t say—”

“You said it clearly enough.”

Then silence again.

Perhaps this was the last moment that could truly have been saved. If Gavi said don’t go now, perhaps Jude would still go to Madrid, but he would go knowing that someone in Barcelona wanted him back. If Gavi said I love you too, perhaps they would have something to fight for, no matter how complicated it became.

But pride was not always something loud. Sometimes it looked like silence. Like waiting for someone else to read the feelings you deliberately hid. Like hoping Jude would understand that those cruel sentences had only been born because Gavi was too afraid to beg.

“I hope you’re happy there,” he said at last.

The politest sentence he had ever spoken to Jude.

Jude let out a quiet breath.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

The call ended.

Gavi sat on his bed in the darkness, his phone still pressed into his palm. There were no tears. No shouting. Only silence slowly changing into the knowledge that he had just allowed something to walk out of his life without even trying to hold it back.

After several minutes, he stood, opened his wardrobe, and pulled Jude’s jacket from its hanger.

The jacket still carried the faintest trace of a scent that perhaps existed only because his memory insisted on creating it. Gavi held it in both hands, intending to throw it far away, intending to convince himself that whatever had just ended had never existed in the first place.

Instead, he eventually sat down on the floor with the jacket clutched against his chest, his forehead pressed into dark fabric that had long since lost the warmth of Jude’s body.

The next day, Jude did not call.

The week after that, he did not call either.

When his transfer was officially announced, Gavi learned about it through the internet like everyone else.

Jude stood in Real Madrid wearing neat clothes, smiling beneath the flash of cameras, raising the white shirt that had once been the subject of their jokes.

Gavi had once told him that moving to Real Madrid would be a terrible decision forever.

Jude had once replied with a laughing emoji.

Now Jude was wearing white in front of the entire world, and Gavi realised there was not a single part of it that was funny.

He watched the presentation until Jude put on the kit.

Then he switched off the screen.

That night, he folded Jude’s jacket into a box and pushed it beneath his bed.

He did not throw it away.

He had been too much of a coward to keep Jude, and apparently he was also too much of a coward to let go of the last thing Jude had left behind.

Jude had tried.

That was the thing Gavi could never forgive himself for.

A few days after the presentation, Jude sent him a message.

I hope your pre-season preparations are going well.

Gavi stared at it for hours before merely reacting to it with a like. He did not know why Jude had chosen a sentence so formal. Perhaps because, after Gavi destroyed whatever they had once possessed, politeness was the only way Jude could still reach for him without making himself look foolish again.

After one of Barcelona’s matches, Jude sent another message.

You played well.

Gavi read it while sitting on the team bus. City lights slipped past beyond the window. His teammates spoke around him, and no one paid attention to him.

He typed: You watched?

Deleted it.

Typed: Thank you.

Deleted that too.

Eventually, he sent:

I know.

Jude reacted with a laughing emoji.

There was no conversation after that.

Perhaps Jude understood the cold answer as a boundary. Perhaps he knew Gavi was hurt but was simply too tired to keep being the only person brave enough to knock on the door. The messages after that became rarer, then stopped completely.

Meanwhile, Jude’s life in Real Madrid unfolded in a way that felt almost insulting.

He scored. Again. Then again. The Bernabéu sang his name. The media called him phenomenal, perfect, a player who looked as though he had been at that club for years rather than a twenty-year-old boy who had only just left one city and, without anyone knowing, perhaps also left behind someone who had realised too late that he was being abandoned.

Gavi saw almost everything.

He never searched for it intentionally, or so he lied to himself. Videos of Jude simply kept appearing. Photos of celebrations. Statistics. Interviews. Clips of Real Madrid supporters chanting his name.

Sometimes, he opened them without sound.

Sometimes, he watched until the end.

Sometimes, after Jude scored, his thumb moved instinctively toward their conversation before he remembered that he no longer had the right to send anything.

The worst part was not seeing Jude succeed.

The worst part was realising he was still happy that Jude succeeded.

Beneath every sting of pain at seeing that white kit, Gavi still recognised the player he had once watched in secret from Barcelona. Still knew how hard Jude worked. Still knew that every word of praise was deserved. Still wanted to say, in a low voice when no one could hear him, that he was proud.

But Gavi had already made his own choice.

He had said there was no them.

Jude had simply been kind enough to believe him.

Then the El Clásico schedule was released, and from that day onwards, 28 October became something Gavi quietly feared.

Everyone talked about the match as Jude’s first El Clásico. They wanted to know how Real Madrid’s new player would face Barça, how Montjuïc would receive him, whether his extraordinary start to the season would continue in the biggest fixture of all.

No one knew that for Gavi, the match would be the first time he had to see his own mistake walking before him in human form.

Matchday arrived beneath a clear Barcelona sky and an air cold enough to be noticed.

In the tunnel before they walked out onto the pitch, Gavi saw Jude wearing the Real Madrid shirt from only a few steps away.

He had already known the sight would hurt.

He had not known it would feel like losing someone for the second time.

Jude looked older than the last time they had met. Not dramatically different at first glance, but there was something in the way he stood, in the stillness of his shoulders, in the way the Madrid players around him already seemed to have accepted him as one of their own. He spoke briefly to Vinícius, then turned, and like a curse that always knew its way home, those eyes found Gavi.

There was no greeting.

No smile.

Only a brief look that felt more intimate than any touch, because Gavi could clearly recognise what had vanished from it: ease.

Jude had once always looked like someone Gavi could approach, even when he did not know what to say.

Today, Jude looked like someone who had learned how to stand without waiting for him.

As they walked out onto the pitch, Gavi let the roar of the stadium enter his body. He would play. He would win the ball. He would tackle Jude if he needed to. He would be a Barcelona player before he became someone Jude had once loved.

For a while, that plan worked.

Barça scored early through Gündoğan. The stadium erupted. Gavi ran, pressed, disrupted Real Madrid’s flow, throwing all the resentment he had stored away into the small battles of midfield. Several times, he came face-to-face with Jude; several times, their bodies collided, and every touch felt like electricity he forced into aggression.

During one duel, Gavi brought Jude down with a hard but clean tackle.

Jude lay on the grass for a moment before getting back to his feet. As he passed close to Gavi, his voice came low beneath the noise of the stadium.

“You look healthy.”

Gavi stared straight ahead. “Disappointed?”

“Never.”

Those two words were worse than an insult.

Gavi turned, but Jude had already moved away to take up his position. His white shirt passed easily through the pitch, as though he had not just brought back every conversation Gavi had tried to bury.

Barcelona held the lead until half-time. For a few minutes, Gavi began to believe that perhaps the afternoon would not belong entirely to Jude. Perhaps Jude would have to go home with a defeat. Perhaps that would be enough to make the injustice in Gavi’s chest feel slightly more balanced.

But Jude had always possessed one terrible habit: shining brightest at the exact moment Gavi most wished he would fade.

In the sixty-eighth minute, the ball fell to him outside the penalty area. There was not enough time for Gavi to think, only enough to watch Jude prepare his body, strike the ball, and send the shot tearing through the Montjuïc air.

The ball went in.

For several seconds, the entire stadium seemed strangled by disbelief.

Jude ran to celebrate. Real Madrid’s players chased after him. Gavi stood several metres from where the shot had been taken, feeling something in his chest tighten until he almost felt sick.

He had seen Jude score from distance through a screen before. Had smiled to himself when Jude played well. Had once sent a short message saying, decent, to which Jude had replied, I know you’re impressed.

Today, he wanted to hate that goal.

But the deepest part of him still knew: it had been beautiful.

And the admiration that still rose inside him, even wrapped in pain, made him want to tear himself apart.

Once the score was level, the match changed. Real Madrid grew more confident. Barcelona tried to regain control. Tension spread into every duel. Gavi became harsher in his movements, quicker to close Jude down, less and less able to tell whether he was defending his team or trying to punish someone for a wound he had created himself.

In one collision, Jude went down after Gavi arrived late.

The whistle blew.

Jude got up immediately. This time, there was no small smile, no calmness deliberately put in place. He approached with a hard expression until barely any distance remained between them. The other players began moving closer, ready to separate them if necessary.

“Are you going to do this for the entire match?” Jude asked quietly.

Gavi let out a short laugh. “Scared?”

“Not of you.”

The answer struck deeper than it should have.

Gavi shoved him in the chest.

A small scuffle broke out. Players rushed in, hands pulling their shoulders apart. The stadium roared, believing this was simply the rivalry it ought to be: FC Barcelona against Real Madrid C.F—Gavira against Bellingham—two young players consumed by the heat of the match and too much pride.

No one heard Jude before he was dragged backwards.

“I left because you told me to leave.”

Gavi froze.

Someone was still holding his arm. The referee was speaking in front of him. The stands had gone wild. But all of it suddenly sounded far away.

Because Jude was right.

And Gavi hated that, even after spending months building his anger, one sentence was enough to bring it all crashing down.

He kept playing. Of course he kept playing. But after that, he could no longer stop the memories from entering: Jude’s voice on the phone that night, the sentence he had spent all this time avoiding, the silence after Gavi told him that whatever they had shared had never existed.

Then came the ninety-second minute.

Jude scored his second goal.

Jude won the match.

Jude walked off the pitch as Madrid’s hero, while Gavi was left behind in his own temporary home with defeat and the knowledge that the person he had once pushed out of his future had truly learned how to shine somewhere else.

FC Barcelona’s dressing room after the match sounded wrong.

Too quiet beneath all the small sounds that should have been ordinary: boots being removed, water bottles dropping onto the floor, locker doors opening, the sound of showers beginning to run in the room beside them. A defeat like this always carried a particular kind of air, heavy and sharp, but for Gavi it felt worse because everyone else inside that room was only mourning the match.

He alone was trying to understand why one afternoon could feel like the end of something that had actually ended months ago.

He sat on the bench at his locker, still wearing part of his kit, his elbows resting on his knees. His legs bore marks of grass and contact. A faint ache lived in his shin. Usually, physical pain gave him something to focus on. This time, it was not enough.

In front of him, inside his mind, Jude kept running in celebration of his second goal.

There had been no apology in that movement. There should not have been. Jude was not guilty for scoring. Not guilty for being brilliant. Not guilty for moving to Madrid after someone he loved told him there was nothing he would be leaving behind.

And yet, Gavi still hated him a little.

Perhaps because it was easier to hate Jude than to accept that the person he should hate was himself.

Pedri stopped near his bench. His hair was still damp with sweat. His face looked exhausted and grim.

Gavi did not look at him. “Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“Good.”

Pedri was silent for several seconds. “Are you going to shower?”

“Later.”

“Gavi.”

“What?”

When Gavi finally lifted his face, Pedri was looking at him with something that did not need explaining. They had played together long enough to recognise anger born from a match and anger someone had carried into the match from the very beginning.

Pedri did not ask about Jude. He did not need an answer Gavi might never give.

He only said, “Don’t destroy the entire night if there’s actually something you need to say.”

Gavi felt his throat harden. “Too late.”

Pedri looked as though he wanted to answer, then stopped himself. Instead, he patted Gavi’s shoulder once and walked away.

The word remained.

Too late.

Gavi had used it as an excuse for months. Too late to answer Jude’s messages. Too late to explain that phone call. Too late to apologise after the Madrid presentation. Too late to say he still watched every goal. Each delay made the next one easier, until he finally had an entire distance he could use as proof that nothing could be done anymore.

But watching Jude leave for Madrid’s dressing room without looking back suddenly made that phrase unbearable.

Gavi stood.

He did not shower. Did not fully change out of his clothes. He only pulled a training jacket over his still-damp kit, wiped his face with a towel, then walked out before his courage could shrink back into something small and cowardly.

The stadium corridor was colder than the dressing room. Post-match activity scattered in every direction: staff members carrying equipment, the sound of boots against concrete, doors opening and closing, the occasional short conversation echoing off the walls. Gavi walked quickly without truly knowing what he would do once he found Jude.

Hitting him might be easier.

Shouting might suit him better.

Saying I love you felt like something that belonged in someone else’s body.

Still, he kept walking.

He stopped near the corridor leading toward the away-team area, aware that he could not simply walk inside. His breathing felt uneven. For a moment, he only stood there alone, and the feeling of his own stupidity began to fill his head.

Jude was done with him.

Perhaps he had been since that night. Perhaps every look on the pitch earlier had only been what remained of an old wound, not an invitation. Gavi had come here after Jude scored twice, and perhaps all he would achieve was making himself appear even more pathetic: a Barcelona player only brave enough to want something after the Madrid player had proven he could live perfectly well without him.

He almost turned around.

Then a door opened at the end of the corridor.

Jude stepped out alone.

He had already changed into a clean Madrid training top, though his match shorts still clung to his body. His hair was wet, his face looked freshly washed, and there was a faint red mark at the side of his neck, perhaps from a collision or the friction of his collar. His phone was in his hand. He was reading something, his steps slow, until he lifted his eyes and saw Gavi.

Jude stopped.

For one second, his expression was open: surprise, perhaps concern, perhaps something resembling hope that he quickly forced back down.

Then his face became calm.

Too calm.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

The voice was polite.

Gavi would rather Jude had shouted at him.

“I want to talk.”

Jude watched him for a long moment. “About the match?”

“No.”

Jude gave a small, tired laugh. “Of course.”

He stepped forward as though he meant to walk past Gavi.

Gavi moved to block him.

“Jude...”

“Don’t.” Jude’s voice remained low, but this time it was no longer flat. There was pain slipping through the cracks in his control. “I can’t do this right now.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend you came because you finally care, when tomorrow you can go back to deciding that none of it ever meant anything.”

Gavi felt as though he had been slapped.

“I never said you didn’t matter.”

Jude looked at him, and the small smile that appeared on his face was so bitter that Gavi wished he would simply shout instead.

“Really? Because I’m fairly certain I remember exactly what you said.”

“I was angry.”

“I know.”

“I was afraid.”

The word fell out before Gavi could stop it.

Even he seemed startled to hear it leave his mouth.

Jude did not move.

Gavi lowered his head for a moment, his jaw tightening. All his life, he had never known how to stand in front of someone without preparing an attack. Even now, his body wanted to turn this into an argument because arguing was easier than admitting that, that night, he had destroyed something only because he was afraid of being destroyed first.

“I was afraid,” he repeated, more quietly. “You called me and said Real Madrid, and suddenly everything I had never needed to think about before became real. You would be here. Close, but not for me. You would become someone I had to look at wearing that.” His gaze fell to the Real Madrid crest on Jude’s chest. “I didn’t know how to want you without feeling like I was already losing you.”

Jude closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them again, his anger had not disappeared. If anything, it looked sadder.

“I hadn’t left yet.”

Gavi said nothing.

“I called before I made my decision,” Jude continued. “I called because I wanted you to be the reason leaving felt difficult. Not because I expected you to make me turn Madrid down, Pablo. I know my career belongs to me. But I wanted to know that if I left, there would still be something waiting for me to come back to.”

Gavi drew in a breath that hurt.

“There was.”

Jude laughed quietly, without happiness. “Now there is?”

“There always was.”

“No.” Jude shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t rewrite the past because you regret it now.”

“I do regret it.”

“And that’s supposed to be enough?”

“No.” Gavi’s voice began to crack. He hated it, but it was too late to become hard again. “I don’t know what’s enough.”

Jude looked at him. They stood only a few steps apart, the stadium walls cold on either side of them, the entire footballing world still moving somewhere outside while the conversation that should have happened months ago was finally being forced into existence after too much damage had already been done.

Gavi felt his eyes grow hot.

He turned his face slightly away, angry at his own body for choosing this moment to look weak.

“I watched you at the Madrid presentation,” he said.

Jude did not answer.

“I watched you hold that shirt. I hated it.” Gavi gave a short laugh, choking on something that nearly became a sob. “I hated everyone who looked happy for you. I hated your stadium. I hated every time you scored and I still wanted to message you the way I used to.”

Jude’s expression wavered.

Gavi kept talking because if he stopped now, he would never be able to begin again.

“I kept your jacket.”

Jude swallowed.

“I tried to put it away. I thought that if I didn’t see it, I would stop thinking about you. But I kept thinking about you. Every match. Every article. Every time anyone said your name.” His voice grew smaller. “I didn’t know how to say it while you still wanted to hear it.”

Jude looked down at the floor for a moment.

When he lifted his head again, his eyes looked bright.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “I wanted to hear it before.”

Gavi nodded slightly, like someone accepting a blow he knew he deserved.

“I know.”

“I would have done anything to hear you say all of this back then.”

“I know.”

“I waited.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know,” Jude said suddenly, his voice rising for the first time. “You don’t know what it feels like to love someone who keeps taking whatever you give him and still manages to make you feel stupid for wanting more.”

Gavi froze.

Jude dragged one hand across his face, turned half a step away, then faced Gavi again as though all the anger he had held back for months had finally run out of anywhere else to live.

“I didn’t need you to be easy. I knew you weren’t easy. I knew you became cruel when you were afraid, I knew you went silent when what you really wanted was to be held back, I knew all of that.” His breathing was heavy. “But there is a limit to how long someone can keep translating the pain you give them into proof that you care.”

Every word landed exactly where it should.

Too exactly.

Gavi could not defend himself without lying.

“I love you,” he said.

Jude went still.

The sentence came out so softly it was almost inaudible, but after saying it, Gavi felt as though the entire stadium must have heard him. The words should have brought some kind of relief. They should have been liberation, something beautiful after being hidden for so long.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Jude’s face broke.

Not in any large or dramatic way. Only in small changes: a breath that stopped, a jaw that could no longer successfully hold itself tight, eyes that dropped for one second as though hearing those words now hurt far more than never hearing them at all.

Gavi took a step closer.

“I love you,” he repeated, stronger this time, more desperate. “I loved you when you were in Dortmund. I loved you the night you called. I loved you when you left. I love you today, even though I want to hate you every time I see you wearing that white shirt.”

Jude gave a quiet laugh, and this time the sound nearly broke apart.

“You can’t say that now.”

“Why?”

“Because I still love you too.”

The answer made the world stop.

For one second, Gavi’s pain turned into something resembling hope. So quickly, so instinctively, so humiliatingly. If Jude still loved him, then it was not over. If Jude still loved him, then perhaps all of this could still be fixed. Months of silence, the white shirt, Madrid, the goals, the defeat—perhaps all of it was only a road that had taken too long to return to something that had never truly died in the first place.

He did not give Jude time to say anything else.

Gavi stepped forward, grabbed the front of Jude’s Real Madrid training shirt, and kissed him.

The kiss had none of the gentleness of their first kiss near the beach. None of the curiosity, none of the room for embarrassment or hesitation. It was born from too much loss, from messages never sent, from calls that had never happened again, from every time Gavi saw Jude smiling somewhere else and had to pretend his life had not been left behind.

His lips crashed against Jude’s in desperation.

For a fraction of a second, Jude did not kiss him back.

Then something inside him gave in.

His hands caught Gavi at the waist, pulling him closer so quickly that their bodies collided. Gavi was pushed back against the corridor wall, his back meeting the cold surface as Jude kissed him like someone who had denied himself the right to want this again for far too long. There was anger in his kiss. There was longing. There was love, injured and still alive even though everything would have been easier if it had already died.

Gavi did not care if anyone walked past.

He did not care about the shirts, the cameras, the risk, or the match he had just lost. He only gripped Jude’s top more tightly, feeling the Real Madrid crest crease beneath his fingers, and hated how Jude’s body still felt like the place he had once abandoned in the most foolish way possible.

Jude kissed the corner of his lips, his jaw, then returned to his lips. Their breaths broke unevenly. Jude’s hand rose to the side of Gavi’s neck with a touch he knew so well, and because he knew it, the pain in Gavi’s chest only deepened.

As though their bodies had never learned how to forget.

As though all they had ever needed was to stop pretending.

When they parted, Gavi was still holding Jude’s shirt. Their foreheads almost touched. Jude’s breath was warm against his face. His eyes were closed, and for a moment Gavi thought perhaps this was enough. Perhaps the confession had come late, but not too late. Perhaps there was a kind of love that could wait even after being destroyed.

“Don’t go,” Gavi whispered.

The words finally came out.

Several months too late.

Too late after the Madrid presentation, after Jude’s messages stopped, after two goals at Montjuïc, after Jude stood in front of him carrying a wound that had already had time to become part of his life.

Still, Gavi said them.

Jude opened his eyes.

What Gavi saw there was not victory. Not relief.

It was the gentlest sadness anyone had ever directed at him.

“I waited for you to say that the night I called,” Jude said.

Gavi gripped his shirt more tightly. “I’m saying it now.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t go.”

Jude did not answer immediately. His hands were still at Gavi’s waist, but his grip began to loosen slowly. That tiny movement sent a fear greater than anything else through Gavi’s entire body.

“Jude.”

“I love you,” Jude said.

“Don’t say that like it’s goodbye.”

Jude closed his eyes briefly, then removed his hands from Gavi’s body.

Cold immediately filled the places he had left behind.

“I don’t know how to return to something that made me feel like I was never important enough for you to choose until after I was already gone.”

“I’m choosing you now.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you know as though it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything.” Jude’s voice cracked. He brushed his thumb across his own lips, as though the kiss still lingered there and hurt him. “That’s why I can’t pretend one kiss will make me forget what it felt like to wait for you.”

Gavi stared at him, unable to move.

“I can fix it.”

Jude gave him a small, sad smile. “You shouldn’t have to fix love as though you’re paying off a debt.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

“Why?” Gavi asked, and for the first time his voice sounded truly young. Not fierce, not sharp, not ready to fight. Only someone finally reaching out when the person he wanted to hold was already too far away. “If you still love me, why isn’t that enough?”

The question made Jude look at him for a very long time.

Then Jude said, “Because I still love you, and I know that if I go back now, I’ll spend every day waiting for the next time you get scared and decide I’m not real.”

Gavi had no answer.

Jude was right again.

Perhaps one day Gavi would change. Perhaps he had already changed in that very second. But Jude did not owe him the courage to trust a change that had come only after he had already learned how to live with the wound.

“I’m sorry,” Gavi said.

The words sounded small. Useless. Almost insulting compared with everything that had happened.

But Jude nodded slowly, as though he knew how difficult it was for Gavi to say them.

“I know.”

This time, Gavi did not ask him to stop.

Jude lifted one hand and touched Gavi’s cheek with the tips of his fingers. The touch was so gentle that Gavi had to hold himself back from closing his eyes and leaning into it the way he once would have. Jude swept his thumb briefly near Gavi’s cheekbone, then lowered his hand.

“I really do hope you’re happy,” Gavi said, his voice almost disappearing. “When I said that that night, I was angry. But I still meant it.”

Jude’s expression softened. “I know.”

Gavi gave a quiet laugh through the tightness in his throat. “You’re annoying.”

“Yeah.”

They stood in silence.

From far away came footsteps, doors, the movement of a stadium that would soon forget everything except the final score and Jude Bellingham’s two goals. The world would remember that afternoon as the great performance of Madrid’s new player. People would rewatch his powerful strike, his injury-time winner, his celebration.

No one would know that, minutes after becoming a hero, Jude stood in a corridor with red eyes and let go of someone he still loved because that love had reached him too late.

“I have to go,” he said at last.

Gavi felt his entire body want to fight that sentence.

He had already let Jude leave once. Every deepest instinct in him screamed at him to do something this time: grab his hand, hold him, say he did not care whether Jude was at Madrid or he was at Barcelona, say he would learn, that he would answer every call, that he would never make Jude guess again.

But love that arrived too late did not give him the right to hold back someone who had already chosen to save himself.

So Gavi only nodded.

Jude took one step backwards.

Then stopped.

“Do you still have my jacket?”

The question was so simple it nearly made Gavi collapse.

He nodded again. “I do.”

Jude looked at him with the faintest smile. “Keep it.”

“Jude—”

“Seriously.” His gaze dropped briefly, then returned to Gavi’s face. “It always looked better on you anyway.”

Gavi pressed his mouth shut. If he tried to answer, he knew something he could no longer hide would come out.

Jude looked at him one last time.

There was no goodbye kiss. No embrace. Perhaps because they both knew one more touch would make the decision much harder. Perhaps because the kiss they had already shared would be enough to haunt them for a very long time.

Then Jude turned and walked down the corridor.

The Real Madrid training shirt on his back moved farther away.

His steps were steady, although Gavi knew there was no chance he was truly calm.

Gavi stood watching him, and suddenly the memory of a song Jude had once sent him, weeks before all the Madrid rumours appeared, returned with brutal clarity. At the time, Gavi had mocked his music for being too soft, too suited to someone who drank coffee while staring at the rain. Jude had only laughed and said Gavi would like it if he stopped being stubborn.

Gavi had never told Jude that he listened to the song alone afterwards.

Never told him that some of its lines remained.

Now, watching Jude’s figure grow smaller at the end of the corridor, Gavi felt as though he were trying to stop something he was no longer capable of catching. Like someone who waited for the rain to fall before finally deciding to run, only to discover that the train he had wanted to reach had already carried away the entire reason he had stepped outside.

Jude disappeared around the corner.

Gavi remained there.

Alone.

At last, the first tear fell without a sound. He wiped it away quickly, roughly, furious that even his tears had arrived too late—after Jude was no longer there to see how deeply he regretted it.

No one asked many questions when Gavi returned to the dressing room.

Perhaps his face said questions were a bad idea. Perhaps the other players were too immersed in their own defeat. Pedri watched him from a distance for a long moment, but did not approach.

Gavi changed in silence.

He showered without truly feeling the water touching his skin. He let it run for too long over the back of his neck, precisely where Jude’s hand had once held him while kissing him. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw two things in turn: Jude running in celebration of the winning goal, and Jude standing in the corridor, saying he still loved him but could not come back.

Nothing was crueler than the fact that both were true.

Jude was happy in Madrid;

Jude still loved him.

Jude left anyway.

Gavi had once thought love was the final answer; that if two people finally confessed, everything else was only a technical problem they could deal with later. Now he understood that sometimes love was only a fact. Important, life-changing, but not always saving.

Sometimes someone could love you with his whole heart and still choose not to stay in the place that had once made him feel unwanted.

He went home after night had fully fallen over Barcelona.

The city was still crowded, but the sounds outside the car did not reach his mind. The streets passed in lines of light. Every red light felt too long, every vehicle ahead of him too slow, even though there was nothing waiting for him in his apartment except silence.

When he reached home, he did not switch on the living room lights.

His bag fell near the door. He left his shoes carelessly behind. He walked into his bedroom with a heavy body, then stopped in front of the bed.

The box was still underneath it.

Months ago, he had pushed it as far back as possible until the shadows covered it, thinking that hiding Jude’s jacket was the closest thing he could manage to throwing it away. For months, he had never opened the box again. Not because he had forgotten. Precisely because he remembered too well.

Gavi crouched down.

His hands trembled when he pulled the box out.

A thin layer of dust clung to the lid. He wiped it once with his palm, then opened it.

Jude’s jacket lay folded inside, dark and still. There was nothing special about it. Only an ordinary jacket, slightly too large for Gavi’s body, with a small stain near the pocket that Jude had once used to prove Gavi really had been wearing it during a video call.

But the moment he saw it, Gavi felt his throat close.

He lifted the jacket slowly.

Jude’s scent was gone. Time had taken that too. The fabric smelled only of wardrobe space and closed air, and perhaps that was what hurt most: even the thing he had kept so faithfully could not truly keep a person inside it.

Gavi put it on.

The size was still the same; the sleeves too long, the shoulders too wide. He pulled the fabric tightly around his body, then sat on the edge of the bed in the dark bedroom.

His phone lay beside him.

He did not know what he was waiting for.

Perhaps a message. Perhaps a call. Perhaps a momentary mistake from Jude saying he had changed his mind, that he could not leave after the kiss they had shared, that Gavi could still open a door and discover that every future he had already destroyed had only been hiding.

At last, his phone screen lit up.

Jude’s name appeared.

Only one message.

Gavi opened it so quickly his breath hurt.

Keep it. It always looked better on you anyway.

He stared at the sentence for a long time.

A very long time.

There was no sentence after it.

The commentator’s voice broke through the silence of the apartment: Gündoğan’s name, Barcelona’s name, Madrid’s name, then Jude’s name spoken over and over again in tones of admiration.

Gavi should not have watched.

But he stood, walked out of his bedroom with Jude’s jacket on his body, and stopped in front of the television just as the replay of the winning goal began again.

The ball came into the penalty area.

Jude appeared.

A brief touch.

Goal.

Then that celebration again—his arms spread wide, his face broken open with joy, his body swallowed by white.

Gavi watched until the footage changed.

He did not know whether one day that sight would stop feeling like an open wound. Perhaps it would. Time was good at taking the sharpness out of things that had once felt impossible to survive. Perhaps months from now, he would be able to see Jude on the pitch without remembering that corridor again. Perhaps they would shake hands like professionals. Perhaps they would exchange short, polite smiles, like two people who had once known far too much about each other and then agreed to bury it somewhere neither of them needed to visit again.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps every time Jude scored, some small part of Gavi would still hear laughter from the Barcelona beach. Still remember the jacket around his shoulders. Still feel Jude’s hand at his waist and hear the voice asking whether Gavi was allowed to be included in his future.

Future.

The word felt so cruel now.

Once, Gavi had never thought they had so many possibilities. He had simply lived inside every call, every kiss, every brief arrival of Jude, as though time would always provide another chance without asking him to decide anything. But now, after everything was gone, those futures appeared one by one inside his mind with painful clarity.

There was a future in which he answered that phone call honestly.

One in which he said Madrid were still a disgusting club, but Jude did not have to lose him simply because he went there.

There was a future in which Jude came back to take his jacket and Gavi returned it only so he could steal another hoodie later.

There was a future in which they fought about distance, about schedules, about who should call first, then made peace with their bodies pressed together on a sofa while laughing at something unimportant.

There was a future in which their first El Clásico still hurt, but after the final whistle Jude still searched for Gavi because he knew there was somewhere to come home to behind the Barcelona shirt.

There was a future in which Jude’s two goals did not feel like an announcement that his life had moved forward perfectly without Gavi.

There were so many lives they might have had.

Not one of them would happen now.

Not because Jude had never loved him.

Not because Gavi had never loved Jude.

But precisely because they loved each other, and Gavi had only become brave enough to prove it after that love had grown too tired of waiting.

The television remained on. Sounds from the stadium entered the empty apartment, carrying cheers for the man who had once sat beside him on the beach and said he would come back.

Gavi lowered his gaze to the sleeves of the jacket, still too long for him, and curled the ends into his palms. At last, he understood why certain kinds of grief did not feel like breaking, but like being left behind on a platform after running too late.
There was no one he could blame for the train that had already departed.

There was nothing he could do except stand there out of breath, watching the lights fade into the distance, knowing he had been the one who waited too long before he began to chase.

On the screen, Jude smiled.

Gavi loved him with all the things Jude would never know at the right time.

And in the middle of an apartment that now felt far too large for one body, with Jude’s jacket wrapped around his shoulders like a final embrace that had never truly been given, one question from that old song returned to him—soft, simple, and without any answer at all.

“Where do all those futures go?”