Work Text:
The first time Harry really noticed it was outside an England hotel, though the supporters had been singing it at Jude for years by then.
There were hundreds of them behind the barriers, packed three or four deep along the pavement. Shirts and flags hung over the railings. Children sat on shoulders with pens clutched in their fists, and phones rose above the crowd whenever one of the players came close.
Jude had already stopped twice by the time he reached the entrance.
Someone began singing his name.
The voices around him joined almost at once, not laughing or trying to be clever, but with the sort of wholehearted affection usually reserved for songs people had known all their lives. The words spread down the barrier. Some supporters held their scarves above their heads. Others simply watched Jude as they sang, delighted when he turned towards them.
Jude stopped walking and truly turned to the crowd.
Harry had seen him accept applause after important goals and stand in front of crowds chanting his name, but there was something different in the way he received this. His smile was softer, almost shy for the first second, before pleasure took over. He pressed a hand to his chest and looked along the line of supporters as though he wanted every person there to understand that he had heard them. He signed shirts while they continued, leaning over the barrier to reach the children at the back. A little girl held out a handmade sign with the song’s title written across it in red and white. Jude asked her name, wrote something beneath the lettering and crouched for a photograph.
The singing only grew louder.
Harry had reached the hotel doors by then. He stood off to the side and waited, watching Jude mouth along to the part everyone knew best.
Jude stayed until the final voices had faded into cheering.
When he eventually came inside, he was carrying the little girl’s sign.
“You’ve nicked that,” Harry said.
“She gave it to me.”
“You can’t fit it in your bag.”
“I’ll manage.”
The cardboard was nearly as wide as Jude’s shoulders. One corner struck the revolving door and bent backwards. Harry took it from him before he damaged it properly. Jude surrendered it without argument, still looking back through the glass at the supporters outside.
“They were loud tonight,” he said.
“You had them going for ages.”
“I didn’t make them sing.”
“You stood there encouraging it.”
Jude looked at Harry as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “Course I did. They’re singing it for me.”
There was no arrogance in it. Jude sounded pleased, but also faintly disbelieving, as though that part had never entirely become normal.
Harry adjusted the sign beneath his arm. Up close, he could see messages crowded around the title. Good-luck wishes, hearts, shirt numbers and several declarations of love written in different handwriting.
“You do like it, then.”
“I love it.” Jude glanced at the sign and smiled again. “You can hear what they mean by it. Doesn’t matter if half of them have forgotten the words. They’re not doing it for a joke.”
Harry looked through the glass.
A few supporters were still singing, even though Jude could no longer hear them properly from inside.
“No,” he said. “They’re not.”
Jude bumped his shoulder against Harry’s arm as they headed towards the lifts. “You sound surprised people are fond of me.”
“I’ve met you.”
“That’s never stopped you.”
Harry carried the sign upstairs for him.
—
After that, Harry heard the song everywhere. It came from the stands before England matches, sometimes beginning in one corner and rolling around the stadium until Jude looked up from the warm-up. It followed him outside training grounds and through airport terminals. Supporters sang it in English, Spanish and accents from places Harry could not always identify.
Jude never ignored them.
Even when he was tired, he would lift a hand or turn towards the sound. If there was time, he stopped. If there was not, he walked backwards for a few steps, smiling as he listened.
Harry noticed how often the song appeared when people did not know what else to say.
Children sang it because they were too overwhelmed to speak to him normally. Older supporters sang it while holding shirts from Jude’s first England tournaments. Families sang it together, parents with their arms around children wearing his number.
There was a warmth to it that went beyond the accident of his name.
People used it to tell Jude what he meant to them.
Jude understood that instinctively.
He never treated their affection like something he was owed. He received it openly, which Harry thought mattered. There were players who became embarrassed by that sort of attention and players who hid behind jokes because accepting love in public made them uncomfortable.
Jude let people love him. He met it with both hands.
At least, Harry thought, when it came from strangers.
—
After a difficult England match, the supporters stayed behind. It had been one of those evenings where nothing settled. Passes went astray. The crowd grew tense. Every promising move seemed to break down just as it began to resemble something.
Jude had been poor by his standards and knew it.
Harry could tell before the final whistle. Jude became more expressive when he was frustrated, not less. His arms lifted after every misunderstanding. He chased the next moment too hard, trying to correct the last one before he had properly left it behind.
When the match ended, Jude stood with both hands on his hips and looked at the grass. Then he raised his head and went looking for the others.
Harry watched him reach one of the other players near the centre circle. The lad had made a mistake leading to the goal and looked close to tears. Jude put an arm around his shoulders, spoke to him for a while and kept him beside him when they went over to applaud the supporters. He found another teammate on the way. By the time Jude reached the touchline, he had spent ten minutes managing everybody’s disappointment except his own.
The supporters began the song.
It was quieter than usual at first. The match had taken something out of them too. Then more people joined. Flags lifted in the stand, and the sound swelled across the emptying stadium.
Jude stopped.
Harry was several steps behind him and saw his shoulders rise with a long breath.
For one brief moment, Jude looked very young. Younger than usual.
He lifted both hands towards the crowd. Not celebrating. Not performing. Just acknowledging them.
They sang louder.
Jude applauded them until the song ended.
Back inside, the dressing room was subdued. Music played somewhere at the far end, but nobody had turned it up enough to fill the silences. Players showered, changed and spoke in small groups.
Harry sat beside Jude.
Jude had showered quickly and was already dressed, though he had not put his shoes on. He was leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, looking at a point between his feet.
Harry passed him a bottle of water. Jude drank some and rested it against his knee.
“I should’ve released it earlier,” he said after a while. “Second half, when Bukayo went outside. I saw him. I thought I had another touch.”
“You were trying to draw the defender.”
“Yeah, and he didn’t move. So I ran into him instead.”
Harry gave a quiet hum.
Jude rubbed both hands over his face. “It was poor. The more I tried to get involved, the worse my decisions got. You can feel it happening and still not seem to stop yourself.”
He was not looking for reassurance. Harry knew that. Jude hated being told he had played well when he had not, and Harry had no intention of insulting him with it.
“You kept trying to fix the match in one touch,” Harry said. “Once you got frustrated, everything had to be the pass or the run that changed it.”
Jude glanced over. “That’s annoyingly accurate.”
“I’ve done it enough.”
“Could’ve mentioned it at half-time.”
“You weren’t in the mood to listen.”
Jude’s mouth twitched faintly. “I’m rarely in the mood to listen to you.”
Harry looked at him and then chuckled.
Jude gave a small laugh and lowered his head again.
The room continued around them. Tape being pulled away. Studs knocking against the floor. Someone opening and closing a locker several times while searching for something that was probably directly in front of him.
“You were good with your teammates,” Harry said.
“They were blaming themselves.”
“So were you.”
“That’s different.”
Harry left the sentence alone.
Jude knew how it sounded. Harry saw it in the way his fingers tightened around the bottle.
A few seconds later, Jude leaned sideways until their shoulders touched.
Outside the dressing room, faint through several walls and a concrete corridor, supporters were still singing.
Harry recognised the tune.
Jude must have heard it too. His head tilted slightly towards the sound. “They’ve just watched us play like that,” he murmured, “and they’re still out there.”
“That’s generally how supporting someone works.”
Jude glanced at him. “Very profound.”
“I have my moments.”
The singing carried on.
Jude listened until it faded, his shoulder warm against Harry’s.
That night, the song stayed in Harry’s head. He had always thought of it as something bright. Something meant for crowds and long endings, for people with their arms around one another.
Lying awake in the hotel, Harry remembered the beginning instead.
Not the exact words. The feeling of them.
Someone speaking gently to a person who had taken something painful and drawn it inward. Someone telling him that the hurt did not have to remain there simply because he knew how to carry it.
Harry thought about Jude going straight to the others at the final whistle.
He thought about the way Jude had stood in front of the supporters, taking their love while still visibly disappointed in himself.
For the first time, the song seemed to fit more than his name.
—
Harry did not tell him.
There was no particular reason to, and Jude would have enjoyed the information far too much.
Jude already found endless amusement in Harry’s sentimentality, particularly when Harry had attempted to conceal it. A card kept in a drawer, a photograph saved from a group chat, the fact that Harry remembered exactly which sweets Jude liked from a shop they had visited once.
Jude noticed all of it.
He teased Harry, then quietly kept every sentimental thing Harry gave him.
The song became another private association.
Harry heard it and found himself looking for Jude. Usually, Jude was already looking back.
At a charity event, a band began playing it from the stage. Jude had been halfway through a conversation on the other side of the room, but his eyes found Harry almost immediately.
He smiled and pointed at himself.
Harry shook his head.
Jude pressed a hand to his ear, pretending the entire ballroom had begun serenading him personally. The people around him laughed, though they had no idea why Harry did too.
Later, Jude appeared beside him with two drinks. “You didn’t sing.”
“I was speaking to someone.”
“You weren’t. I checked.”
“You checked?”
Jude handed him a glass. “I wanted to see whether you knew the words.”
“Everyone knows the words.”
“People become very confident around the chorus and hope nobody remembers the rest.”
“Is that what you do?”
Jude took a drink, avoiding Harry’s eyes. “I’m the inspiration. I don’t need to know all of it.”
Harry smiled.
Jude studied him over the rim of his glass. “You always go funny when it comes on.”
“Funny how?”
“A bit far away.”
“I’m standing beside you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Someone called Jude’s name from behind them. His attention shifted, and the conversation disappeared into the rest of the evening.
Harry assumed Jude had forgotten it.
He had not.
—
They were in Harry’s kitchen months later when the song found them again.
Jude had come to England for several days. They had spent most of the evening at dinner with friends, then returned home later than planned because Jude had insisted on stopping for dessert despite claiming throughout the meal that he was full. The remains of it sat in a cardboard box on the counter. Jude was eating it with a fork while Harry put away the glasses from the dishwasher.
“You said you didn’t want any,” Harry said.
“I didn’t want it in the restaurant.”
“It’s the same cake.”
“The setting’s changed.”
Harry closed the cupboard and looked over.
Jude was wearing one of Harry’s jumpers, the sleeves pulled over part of his hands. He was perched on the counter despite there being stools directly beside him, swinging one foot idly while he ate. “What?”
“You’ll complain you feel sick in half an hour.”
“I’ll deal with that version of myself when he arrives.”
“You’ll complain, and I’ll become your personal butler.”
“There’s no point having a boyfriend who can reach the top shelves if I don’t use the service.”
Harry took the cake box away before Jude finished the entire thing. Jude let him, which meant he probably had begun to feel sick already.
Music played quietly from the speaker near the window. It had been running since they came in, one of Jude’s playlists full of songs that made abrupt and often baffling transitions.
The next one began with a familiar piano.
Jude looked towards the speaker. Then he looked at Harry.
Harry kept the cake box in his hands for a second too long.
“There,” Jude said.
Harry put it in the fridge.
Jude had climbed down from the counter by the time he turned back. He stood with his arms folded loosely, amused but not yet laughing. “You’ve done it again.”
“Done what?”
“That look.”
Harry reached for the dishwasher door.
“It’s empty.”
“I know.”
“You were about to open it.”
Harry rested one hand on the worktop.
Jude came closer, examining his face with entirely too much interest. “I noticed ages ago,” he said. “Whenever this song comes on, you look at me like you’ve remembered something. I thought perhaps you’d had a deeply emotional experience in a Beatles-themed pub and never found the courage to tell me.”
“Nothing like that.”
“So there is something.”
Harry glanced towards the speaker.
Jude followed his gaze, then smiled slowly. “Oh, this is going to be soppy.”
“You’ve already decided that.”
“I know you. Also, you’re going red.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh yes you are.”
Harry reached for Jude and hooked a hand around his waist, pulling him nearer before the inspection became any more detailed. Jude came willingly, still looking pleased with himself.
“It reminds me of you,” Harry said.
Jude waited. “Brilliant start. Reminds most people of me.”
“Do you want to hear it?”
“Very much.”
Harry chose his words, aware that Jude was watching him do it. “At first it was only the name. Everyone makes that connection. Then I started noticing how people sing it to you.”
Jude’s amusement eased.
Harry continued while the song played behind them. “They’re not trying to be funny. They sing it because they love you. Some of them can barely get the words out when you’re standing in front of them, but they know that song, so that’s what they give you.”
Jude looked down briefly.
Harry’s hand stayed at his waist. “You always let them,” he said. “Even when you’re shattered, or you’ve played badly, or you’ve got somewhere else to be. You stop and listen because you understand what they mean.”
“They’ve waited for me.”
“I know.”
“It feels wrong to rush past.”
“That’s what I mean.”
Jude looked back at him. There was no joke waiting now, only quiet attention.
Harry had expected to feel awkward explaining it. Instead, once he had begun, it seemed simple. “I listened to it properly after that bad England match. Not sure if you remember it, but the fans still sung it for you.”
Jude remembered immediately. Harry could tell.
“You spent the whole time after the whistle looking after everyone else,” Harry said. “You were angry with yourself, but you found the others first. Then the supporters sang to you, and you stood there taking it in as if you needed reminding they still loved you.”
Jude’s mouth shifted at one corner. “Bit dramatic.”
“You looked close to tears.”
“I was sweaty.”
“Jude.”
“All right.”
He glanced away, but he remained close, one hand settling absently against Harry’s chest.
Harry lowered his voice. “It’s not only a happy song. That’s what I hadn’t noticed. It sounds like someone trying to help a person who’s got into his own head. Someone who thinks he has to turn every bad thing into something better straight away.”
Jude was still.
“You do that,” Harry said. “You’re brilliant when somebody else is struggling. You make it feel normal. Then it happens to you and suddenly there’s no time for it. You’re already trying to fix the next thing.”
The song moved quietly through the kitchen.
Jude’s thumb rubbed once over the fabric of Harry’s shirt. “You’ve thought about this a lot.”
“More than I meant to.”
A small smile returned to Jude’s face, though it was different now. “I knew it would be soppy.”
Harry sighed and began to step away.
Jude caught the front of his shirt and pulled him back. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” His smile widened when Harry looked down at him. “It’s extremely soppy. You’ve apparently been having private emotional revelations every time somebody sings my name, and you’ve been keeping that from me. I’m allowed to enjoy it.”
“You enjoy everything that embarrasses me.”
“Not everything. Mainly the good material.”
Harry’s hand returned to Jude’s waist.
Jude looked up at him for a moment, his expression softening around the edges. “The bit about the supporters is true,” he said. “It does feel like they’re giving me something. Even when it’s thousands of them, it still feels quite personal. I know that sounds strange.”
“It doesn’t.”
“They could sing anything. They choose something kind.”
Harry nodded.
Jude’s fingers curled gently into his shirt. “And the other bit,” he added, quieter. “Maybe that’s true as well.”
Harry did not seize on the admission. Jude would have hated that. Instead, he slid his hand into Jude’s and drew him away from the counter.
Jude followed for two steps before he realised. “What are you doing?”
Harry put Jude’s hand on his shoulder.
Jude looked from their hands to Harry’s face. “You’re actually doing this.”
“There’s music on.”
“We’re in the kitchen.”
“Plenty of room.”
“There’s a chair directly behind you.”
Harry moved it aside with his foot.
Jude laughed under his breath, but his other arm went around Harry’s waist. “This is a lot, even for you.”
“You can sit down.”
Jude moved closer instead, fitting himself against Harry’s chest. “I’m not stopping you. I’m making sure you appreciate how ridiculous it is.”
Harry rested his palm at the small of Jude’s back.
They began to move.
It was not really dancing. There was hardly enough space between the island and the table, and neither of them was dressed for anything more formal than bed. Jude’s socks slipped slightly against the kitchen floor. Harry guided him around the corner of the counter before he walked into it. The light above the hob was still on, leaving the rest of the room dim. Outside, the garden was dark beyond the windows.
Jude settled gradually. His head came to rest beneath Harry’s chin. His hand moved from Harry’s shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers warm against his skin. Harry held him closer.
The song sounded different here than it did in a stadium. There were no flags, no phones raised, no thousands of people trying to put their love into one familiar tune. Only Jude’s breathing against his chest and the quiet drag of their feet across the floor.
“You know they’d lose their minds if they saw this,” Jude murmured.
“Who?”
“The fans. Their song, their Jude, slow-dancing in Harry Kane’s kitchen.”
“You’re not their Jude tonight.”
The words came out without planning.
Jude lifted his head.
Harry nearly looked away, but Jude’s expression stopped him. There was mischief there, because there nearly always was, but something warmer sat beneath it.
“Possessive,” Jude said softly.
“Only a bit.”
“I quite like it.”
He tucked his head back against Harry before Harry could become too aware of himself.
The song reached the familiar refrain.
Harry began to sing quietly. He did not make a performance of it. His voice remained low, close to Jude’s ear, carrying only enough of the melody for Jude to recognise it.
Jude went very still for a second. Then his arms tightened around Harry.
Harry continued, singing the words softly into his hair while they turned slowly between the counter and the table.
Jude did not tease his voice. He did not interrupt or stretch the moment into a joke.
He let Harry sing to him.
Harry thought of the supporters outside hotels and stadiums, of the little girl with the handmade sign, of thousands of voices offering Jude the same song because ordinary words were not large enough.
They sang it because they adored him.
Harry understood.
He pressed his mouth to Jude’s temple and held him nearer, singing so quietly that the final words belonged only to the two of them.