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When he steps out of the VIP entrance, the tribune gradually goes quiet.
Which is a feat, considering that almost every seat in this part of the stadium is taken. Heads turn, faces change, jaws drop. Phones are whisked out of nowhere, snapping pictures and taking videos. Whispers of his name follow, rising here and there, spreading like wildfire.
Jude Bellingham keeps his head up and eyes ahead, toward the green pitch under the afternoon sun.
“Please come this way.” The steward is unfailingly polite. The professional smile on his face keeps any exhibition of his true feelings at bay. Jude returns it in kind, hands fisted at his side. Deep down, he wonders if anyone can see how badly he is shaking as he puts one foot in front of the other, following the steward to the VIP seating area.
Only about half the seats there are filled, but every face is turned his way, bursting with expectation—for drama, maybe, for any reason to be able to claim later, I was there, I saw it with my own eyes. After all, it isn’t every day that you’ll find the gay partner of a football player sitting among the wives and girlfriends, trying to look as if he belongs there.
For a moment, Jude considers turning around and abandoning the whole endeavour. In the end, this is only a child of his whims, his own reckless impulse. His mother said as much when he called her barely an hour ago.
“Make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons.” And then: “At least get someone to go with you. You can’t do it alone.”
Except that’s just the thing. Jude knows that he has to do this alone; has to walk this walk alone, or the whole attempt would mean nothing, let alone become the statement he wanted it to be.
Still, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t regretting his stubbornness very much right now.
But then he sees her, sitting alone in the second row. Like everyone else, she is looking at him, but unlike everyone else, the smile on her face is mild, more sympathetic than interested—and that, somehow, makes his decision for him.
“Thank you,” he says to the steward with a polite nod, and then takes the seat next to hers.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hi,” Jude responds with a lot less ease but nevertheless some relief. He doesn’t know who she is, whose wife or girlfriend she happens to be, with her long honey-brown hair in perfect waves and red-tinted Prada sunglasses perched above her flawlessly made-up face; pretty, in that bold, obvious sort of way, her sun-tanned body wrapped in a mini dress that any female celebrity might wear to an event like this.
In short, she’s everything Jude Bellingham is not, but she’s also the only person who doesn’t make him feel like she’s about to whip out her phone and ask for a picture.
(Not that he trusts his judgment very much at present, when every thought is so blurred by the fog of anxiety surrounding his brain that he can scarcely make sense of anything.)
“Here to watch Haaland?” she speaks again, still using the same casual tone.
“Yeah.” He swallows. “Sort of obvious, I suppose.”
“Sort of,” she agrees easily. There’s a moment of silence, and then an unexpected grin breaks over her face. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
Jude can feel himself flushing. “I’m so sor–”
“That wasn’t an accusation,” she waves his apology away. “We never met before—and even if we did, I wouldn’t expect you to remember me.”
“That just makes me sound incredibly rude.”
She shrugs. “Just being realistic. Although I can pretend that I don’t know who you are either if you want.”
“Nah, it’s alright.” This time, Jude manages a smile in return, if still small and awkward.
It takes some time, but slowly, his heartbeat begins to settle. He doesn’t have to look around to know that there are plenty of cameras still aimed in his direction. The match won’t start until five, maybe ten minutes later, which means the crowd is now still free to stare and gape at him.
He can already see the posts popping up on every social media under the sun: Jude Bellingham is here to watch Erling Haaland’s match! Jude Bellingham in the WAG section! Bellingham as Haaland’s WIFE! The Gay Royal Couple of Football Strikes Again! And many other variations with less acceptable language.
Not that there’s anything he can do about them. Jude knows that he rarely ever shies away from a fight, but this is a different fight entirely. For the first time in his life, Jude Bellingham isn’t fighting to prove his worth to stand on the pitch. He’s fighting for the right to love, and here, in this battlefield, everything is completely, overwhelmingly different—the rules, the stakes, the adversaries—that he can barely see his way forward.
“Nervous?” his neighbour asks curiously.
Jude blinks, and then forces another smile on his face. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he whispers in a low voice. “I mean, are there rules for these things?”
“Nah, just sit there and look pretty. That’s all the camera’s asking from us, believe me.”
That startles an unexpected laugh out of him. “Yeah, okay, I can do that.”
“I bet,” she purrs, running an appreciative gaze down his body. Jude can feel heat climbing up to his face—which is ridiculous, really. He doesn’t often feel embarrassed. In fact, he’s never had any problem with exposing his body to the masses, but here, right now, the vulnerability of the moment catches him off guard.
Fortunately, he is spared any need to reply by loud cheers coming from the front of the tribune. The players for the match begin to file out, bright blue next to brilliant red.
Jude finds that he suddenly cannot breathe.
Erling comes up last. As always, he carries himself with the confidence of an invincible Viking, but for once, there is no smile on his face.
“Oh.” His neighbour’s voice is soft with wonder. “He doesn’t know that you’re here.”
Jude doesn’t answer, because nothing can be more obvious. Erling doesn’t know. When he left the house earlier that day, Jude was still in bed, having just arrived three hours prior after a delayed flight from Madrid.
“Sleep some more.” Erling was all adoration and tenderness as he placed a kiss on top of his head. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
Jude remembers cracking a heavy eye open and pressing his cheek against Erling’s large warm hand. “Have fun.”
A soft laugh. “Always do.”
Because that’s what Erling always says, no matter how hard things are. And things have been incredibly hard since they both came out and announced their relationship to the public three months ago.
Jude has lost count the number of times he wanted to give up during those three months. It’s not just the cruel words or gross slurs—one insult soon blurs with the next and the next into a river of shit when there are too many of them, and he’s been familiar enough with any version of it since he started playing; it’s the widening gap between them, the slowly dawning certainty that they’re making each other worse, the sleepless nights thinking what if what if what if, the regret, the pain, the hurt.
The conviction that love, so fragile and vulnerable, when put on a scale against that much heartache, can only end up losing.
But the words never passed his lips, or Erling’s, and so three months later, here they still are.
The thing about Erling is he loves the game. He truly enjoys playing, and the enjoyment he gets from scoring a goal is completely different from Jude’s all-consuming, back-breaking devotion to the sport. It’s also why watching Erling play is such a pleasure.
Today’s Erling doesn’t smile. He looks at the pitch as if he’s looking at a barren frozen land, somewhere he needs to survive instead of the familiar ground in which he’s had the privilege to play. Jude watches him throughout the first half with something akin to dread squeezing his insides. Erling doesn’t play; he rushes at the ball, treats it like an enemy instead of an extension of himself, the way it has always been before.
The first time he misses a shot, Jude has to dig his nails so deep into his palms lest he betrays anything on his face. It’s the certainty that at least one camera will always be trained on him, recording every shift of his expression, every single twitch of his muscle, that makes him determined not to give away anything.
Then the second missed shot happens. And the third. Erling may be able to shrug away the first two, but the third generates the first definite signs of frustration. It’s a burden entirely unique to the number nines of this world—to accept a pass carefully threaded across the length of the pitch and still fail to score—and Jude watches the way it eats away at his lover as the clock quickly winds down to halftime.
When another shot bounces off the goal post instead of sailing in, devastation is clear on Erling’s face. This time, the camera catches it with unforgiving precision, splattering all its pain and anguish across giant screens.
Jude wants to curse and wail and weep, but in the end does none of those. Someone is always watching, and he’s not going to give any of them the pleasure of seeing him break.
The match goes into halftime without breaking the deadlock.
–
Get off the bench u giant oaf.
Im watching.
Half a second after he sends the chat, Jude regrets it. Before he can delete either lines, however, Erling has replied: with a single thumbs-up emoji.
He breathes out slowly, unsure of what to do, what to feel. What does the thumb-up even mean? And Erling doesn’t usually check his phone during halftime. What does it say about his state of mind that he does exactly that today, after the four missed shots?
After a moment’s hesitation, he types in: I love you.
There is no reply. There’s no indication, even, that Erling has seen it. Jude isn’t sure whether it’s better or worse that he hasn’t.
His seatmate, bless her, doesn’t try to talk to him about the match. She shows him videos of her two new poodle puppies instead, and Jude spends the remaining ten minutes cooing over them, ignoring all the messages sitting unopened in his phone. He’ll deal with them later, social media included.
As soon as the second half starts, he finds his gaze glued to Erling. He seems calmer, the set of his shoulders more relaxed, but anything more than that must be a figment of Jude’s imagination since it’s too far to actually gauge his expression.
It’s about ten minutes later that it happens. Jude doesn’t notice at first, his eyes following the ball being passed around in front of the City’s goal until an enterprising defender kicks it toward the stand. When he looks for Erling once more, he finds that his lover is looking straight at him.
Staring at him with a frozen expression on his face, as if he can’t quite believe his eyes.
Jude stares back, heart hammering inside his chest. Surely it’s too far for Erling to actually see him, in the middle of this crowd too, but he cannot help the twitch of a smile—and then, because he’s Jude Bellingham and apparently is just that much crazy, he stands up and blows his boyfriend a kiss.
A huge smile splits Erling’s face. This time, Jude can see it clearly because the camera zooms in on him right then and there, capturing that moment for eternity.
Jude sinks back to his seat, still grinning to himself. He hears the scattered comments from around him—Bravo! Show them, Jude!—but at that moment, he realises that he doesn’t care anymore, not about public opinion, or making a statement, or whatever it is that’s been cluttering his head lately. They’re all gone, simply because Erling smiles at him.
When Erling scores the goal that finally breaks the deadlock in the 88th minute, the crowd roars in triumph. For a moment, he only does his usual walk, the smooth Viking smile on his face, before suddenly breaking into a run and jumping over the barrier, racing up to the VIP section to take Jude into his arms.
“Hi,” he says, breathless from the run, their foreheads pressed together.
“Hi.” Jude has a suspicion that he’s giggling in front of live television, not to mention the entire world when photos and videos of this moment hit the internet later, but… whatever.
“You here to cheer for me?” Erling asks, eyes full of wonder and so much joy Jude can totally drown in them.
He doesn’t, though. Jude Bellingham has a reputation to protect, and so he replies instead, with a touch of hauteur, “More like to judge you. What the hell is a first goal in the 88th minute? And you call yourself a nine?”
“Shut up and give me my reward,” Erling tells him, somewhere between fond and exasperated—and Jude obliges, of course, leaning in and kissing him. He’s always been so easy when it comes to Erling. Doesn’t think it will change anytime soon either.
“Dinner date later?” Erling says as soon as he lets his mouth go, arms still tight around Jude’s back.
“I’ll make the reservation.”
“Of course.” Erling steals one last peck and runs back to the pitch before the referee can get ideas, like awarding him a card for disturbing the match.
End