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Gavi’s Men’s Health photoshoot drops on a random Sunday in September.
Jude is supposed to finish his packing for the international break, and truly, he just means to send his mother a quick reply when the notification pops up. It reminds him for the hundredth time that he really should turn those off for Gavi; as every other time, he tells himself later, knowing damn well that he won’t, not any more than he did the last hundred times.
Instead, he swipes through the post. Gavi, with his pink hair that Jude didn’t get to tease him about; Gavi in his tank top, the black cloak, the Louis Vuitton suit; strong jaw and strong arms, and his brown eyes so goddamn pretty, Jude still wants to be mad about it.
About how it’s the same thing every time, the way he looks at Gavi and something flares in his brain, strikes him like a live wire. It makes him stupid, has made him stupid one too many times, and he’s not supposed to want this anymore. Is not supposed to still consider throwing all caution to the wind just because he’s a fool for Pablo fucking Gavi’s pretty eyes.
In spite of all that, he switches to his messages, their chat that has been silent for weeks. Switches to his call log, and there's no saved contact anymore, but Jude knows the number by heart, not that he'd ever admit that out loud. His finger hovers over the call button, his heart kicking against his ribs.
Truth is, he knows that he has been looking for an excuse. Knows that he’s not some idiot who has taken leave of his senses, because hell, Jude knows how to control himself; it’s just that with Gavi, he stops wanting to. Stops being able to see the clear hierarchy of the priorities that make up his life without wanting to poke holes into it, see how much pressure he can put on it before something’s forced to give.
Truth is, he knows it’s not simply because Gavi’s hot, knows that that’s exactly why he put an end to it before it could get worse. Jude’s not stupid. But it’s also a matter of fact that Gavi is insufferably hot, and Jude’s been missing him for weeks now, no matter how firmly he had denied it, even or probably most of all to himself. Something about this shoot breaks right through it, and maybe it’s knowing him well enough by now to understand how much it costs Gavi to do these things, or maybe it’s the fact that ever since the season started—since yet another injury, little minutes, and a missing call-up to the national team—Jude has been thinking that it must have been a hard couple of weeks.
It’s not like it ever was Jude’s place to fill the role of a friend, even less so that of a lover, but then that never quite mattered as much as it should have. Still doesn’t when, perhaps thanks to a combination of all of it, he finally presses down on the call button, long before he has thought of anything to say.
He’s not sure Gavi will even pick up. Part of Jude hopes that he won’t, which is, of course, exactly why he does.
“I cannot think of one good reason why you would be calling me.”
“If I admit that I don’t have one, not a good one at least, will you hang up immediately, or do I get a moment to think of something?”
Jude winces; he’s not sure that this is better than the awkward silence that would’ve been the alternative.
Christ, it’s all a mess.
Gavi sighs, and Jude can picture him, his furrowed brows, the displeased twist to his mouth. “What do you want, Jude?”
And that’s a complicated question, no, a dangerous one. What does Jude want? A hundred things, probably, each more audacious than the next from someone who supposedly has it all. He wants to win for England. He wants Madrid to not be such an exhausting mess of a club. He wants to play football, he wants to be great at it, wants the Bernabéu to roar his name in adoration and every commentator’s voice to rise with that slight thrill of anticipation, every time he touches the ball.
He wants not every single twitch of his finger to get examined by journalists desperate for the next headline, wants not to hear abuse hurled at himself, or for his family to be scrutinised even more than they already are. He wants every goddamn racist prick to choke on their own spit. He knows it’s the price they all pay, knows what everyone would say if he dared to complain; that it is what they chose, the bargain they struck for clawing their way to the top. Jude, in all his years, has never quite got around to believing that it meant any of it was right.
He wants Gavi, no matter the risk. He wants his brain to get a grip, because two months later, the entire thing hasn’t got any less disastrously stupid than it was back then.
Jude clears his throat. Doesn’t have a plan, which has always been his undoing when it came to Gavi, and asks, “Are you home?”
“Are you serious? The last time we spoke, you literally told me—”
“I know,” Jude cuts in, because he does. Remembers it in startling clarity—the goddamn New York hotel room, and how it was thick with the aftershocks of having almost been caught together; the cold dread trickling down the back of his neck, and how his hands wanted to keep shaking. The careful blankness on Gavi’s face when Jude told him that they should stop seeing each other, that it had got too risky for something so casual, so meaningless. He had known that he was full of shit even when he said it, and really, he’s just proving the point now, two months later, heart still aching when he remembers the look in Gavi’s eyes.
Their only saving grace had been that the American fans they encountered had only recognised Jude, and Gavi slunk away before anyone could get a second look at him. Still, though; too close, too close, too close.
“I know,” he repeats, running a hand down his face. He’s not sure that he knows what the fuck he’s doing any better now than he did then. “I’m sorry. I just—can we talk about it? I saw the interview, and—“
Gavi laughs, incredulous. “That’s what this is about? No other poor soul in Madrid you can find to hook up with, Jude?”
“Pablo,” he says, and he rarely does, the habit and mouthfeel of Gavi always strangely dear to him, but it’s—he can’t explain it, really. Or he can, but it’s too momentous for right now, is not something Jude can put into the open even for himself to see and then go on to pretend that the ground beneath him had not just shifted into something less load-bearing. “Can we not do this on the phone? Are you home?”
There is a pause, and the thing is that after months of texts and clandestine hookups, Jude does know Gavi, at least a little; knows that his temper is quick to flare, but just as fast to cool; that once he stops simply reacting, he’s above all else generous, almost painfully so. He doesn’t dare hope, but it’s a close thing.
Gavi sighs. “Aren’t you in Madrid? You lost pathetically to Atlético just earlier today. It was great to watch, in fact.”
“I’m aware, thank you.”
“And you’re meant to leave for England, most likely today.”
“Just about now, yes.”
“Jude.”
“I’ll make it work. I just—I need to see you.” He swallows. “Gavi. Please.”
Another pause, even longer than the last one. In the end, Gavi’s voice sounds tired when he says, “Fine, come by, then. This better be good, Bellingham.”
He hangs up before Jude can answer, but that’s fine. Jude doesn’t have so much as a plan, but it’s all wonderfully, perfectly fine.
Jude moves through the next hour without allowing himself to stop and think. His luggage for England is thankfully mostly packed, and he sends it off with the driver that was supposed to take him to meet his parents at the airport.
He sends his mum a message that he got held up and will take a later flight. He knows he’ll have to fess up to something sooner or later, but his mum has also always been good at knowing when to let him do his own thing. As long as he turns up for the official beginning of camp in three days, he should only be in manageable amounts of trouble.
He books a flight to Barcelona and packs a duffel bag. He hovers over the question of whether to book a hotel or not, but really, if Gavi kicks him out there’s little reason to stay in Barcelona at all. This entire thing is impulsive as fuck, so he might as well add risking getting stranded at El Prat in the middle of the night to the list.
There’s an hour to kill before his car comes, and Jude spends it wandering through the house, restless energy itching beneath his skin. He tries to think of what to say once he makes it to Gavi’s place, and it feels like running head-first into a wall every single time.
It has always been easiest to just act, with Gavi—disastrously so, at times; fantastically so, at others. The less Jude can think of what to say, the more he stakes his luck on the latter coming through once more.
The lack of plan kind of wants to make him tear his hair out. It’s also the most alive he has felt since a crowd of tens of thousands sang Hey, Jude at him after their win over Norway—in that short, blazing moment where he felt that anything was possible, the whole world at his fingertips.
It’s dark by the time Jude arrives at the airport, and no one pays him any mind as he moves through security. He kills time at the gate by looking at the shoot again, actually taking time to read the interview this time. Something ugly tightens in his stomach when he reads that Gavi dedicates the entire thing to Pedri, and it’s so goddamn stupid, is not like Jude has ever had a claim to him, not even before he fucked it all up. Not like he doesn’t know that there’s nothing between Gavi and Pedri because Gavi, like Jude, has the kind of mental illness where he likes to skirt a fine line between fucking and fighting, and close friends make bad bedfellows for that kind of thing. Jude would know.
Except that with Gavi, Jude has messed up his balance at some point, and so he’s boarding a flight to Barcelona instead of London, his hands clammy with an anticipation for something he still doesn’t have the guts to name.
The rational part of Jude knows that there is no happy ending here, no fairy tale wedding or riding off together into the sunset. Football is brutal on the best of days, even to the luckiest, most gifted of people. There is no narrative where love conquers all, and that would imply that there is love in the equation, and so Jude promptly shuts that train of thought down—again and again, until he finally steps out into the warm Barcelona night. By then, he feels like throwing up.
The car drops him off a street down from Gavi’s house, a matter of caution Jude still can’t shake. He walks the rest of the way, and then he stands in front of Gavi’s door and watches himself ring the doorbell, still not knowing what to say, what he wants, or how to keep that particular lie alive beyond the inevitable collision.
When the door opens and time runs out, at last, Jude still has no more of a plan than he did four hours ago, is no more prepared. The sheer relief of seeing Gavi almost bowls him over, though.
Gavi pulls him inside before he can get his bearings; pulls him inside, kicks the door shut, and shoves Jude up against the wall opposite the door, all in one smooth motion.
Jude lets him. That’s the thing with Gavi; at the end of the day, Jude’s always been helpless to do anything but.
Gavi had four hours to brood over Jude's cryptic nonsense, Jude realises, and his stomach sinks a little despite how reminiscent his current predicament is of how this entire thing between them started in the first place, bristling rivalry on the pitch tipping into something else in the blink of an eye.
He swallows, his throat dry. His hands find their way to Gavi's hips as if on instinct, and he's speaking before he can think. "God, I missed you."
Gavi makes a noise that's all frustration, the grip he has on Jude's hoodie tightening. "You can't just—what happened to how meaningless this is? To how it's not worth the risk, how the excitement's worn off, and—"
Jude kisses him, can't help himself, really. He half expects to get punched for his efforts, would deserve it too, he knows, and thinks wildly that if that's what it takes for Gavi to forgive him for his bullshit, he'll take it.
Gavi freezes, though, and Jude's an asshole but not that kind of asshole, and so he pulls back just as quickly. Says, "I was an idiot." Says, "I'm sorry." Says, "you dedicated the whole spread to him."
"Is that what this is? You're jealous? Of what, exactly? It's not like you—"
"I know," Jude cuts in, wincing, because he does; because hearing it still kind of makes him want to die, a helpless kind of misery that he doesn't know what to do with. "It's not about that. I called you before I even read that part."
Gavi's staring at him, crease between his brows that Jude tries to smooth away before he can talk himself out of it.
"Then what is it about?" Gavi asks, and some of the initial fury has ebbed from him along with the movement of Jude's thumb along his brow, even if he still looks like he can't quite decide if he wants to kiss Jude or to kick him to the curb.
It's about how, when this thing between them started, it was more rivalry than attraction, more push and release than anything else. It's about how despite that, they didn't stop there, didn't leave it as yet another unspeakable secret in the dark underbelly of the Bernabéu. It’s about how ever since then they have found excuse after excuse, gravitational pull sending them on a spiral all the way down.
It's about how they have got to know each other; how Jude can now tell apart Gavi's loyalty from his stubbornness, has seen the fierce kindness that's burrowed beneath. It's about knowing how Gavi takes his coffee and that his music taste is shit, how he's always the first to check on the people he cares about, and how he puts too much pressure on himself with just about anything. It's about being able to tell apart the types of his laughter—loud and unashamed, fond and low, helpless most often in the face of Jude's shitty humour that Gavi, for some unfathomable reason, seems to actually find funny. What he sounds like late into the night, when he's only just keeping himself awake; what he sounds like when he’s coming apart under Jude’s hands.
It's how everything has got kind of worse since Jude walked out of that hotel room. How seeing that godforsaken photo spread made him feel like just another stranger in an audience of millions. How it kind of threatened to drive him mad in worse ways than the looming threat of discovery ever did.
So maybe it is about jealousy, after all. Maybe what's lying underneath is even worse than that.
"You didn't protest," Jude says, rather than voicing any of those things, and knows that it's a stupid thing to say even before Gavi's brows furrow again.
"I wasn't aware a breakup was a negotiation."
"It wasn't a breakup. It was just—"
Gavi rolls his eyes, but he still hasn't moved away from where they are pressed together, still has his hands fisted into the front of Jude's hoodie, and perhaps Jude is reading too much into it—perhaps Jude has been reading too much into all of it, but truth be told, he doesn't think so. Thinks the fact that Gavi is so mad about it in the first place means that it mattered; that Gavi is entertaining him at all means that perhaps it still does. Perhaps they're just both scared shitless, more so of admitting any of it out loud than of the cataclysmic consequences this could have for their careers.
Which is, when it comes right down to it, an admission in itself. Jude leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together and they're breathing the same air, until he can see Gavi's pulse race in the hollow of his throat, mirroring Jude's own.
"I think that you missed me, too. I think that's why you picked up the phone, why you let me come by tonight."
Gavi scoffs. "Maybe I'm just hoping to put you off your game before you face Spain on Saturday."
"Because that has worked out so well for you the last dozen times?"
"The league title and the current table are lending more credibility to that theory than whatever it is you think you're doing."
Jude laughs despite himself, and for a long, heavy moment they just look at each other, the millions of reasons for why this is still a terrible idea falling away until it's once again just them.
At last, Gavi releases the tight grip on Jude's hoodie, runs his hands up Jude’s chest, framing his face between his palms. "If you do anything like that again, I'm selling your phone number to MARCA."
"That's fair," Jude says. "I won't. I promise."
"I can't believe you ditched England Camp because I posted a bunch of thirst traps."
"Least surprising turn of events, actually."
Gavi laughs, and under the disbelief there's delight that makes Jude want to lock them away and never let the world get a hold of them again. It's perhaps the worst thought he has had tonight, which is why he kisses Gavi again, gentle this time.
Gavi lets him, his fingers pushing into the hair at the nape of Jude's neck, making him shudder. It's a slow kiss, full of the confessions they haven't actually spoken out loud, and Jude pulls him closer until they're pressed together chest to toes, still in Gavi's goddamn hallway, all the world just waiting to get a piece of them shut out, for once.
"Seriously," Gavi says, pulling away just far enough to speak into the space between them. "Don't do that to me again."
It comes out vulnerable this time, and Jude feels it, then, how close he came to letting this slip through his fingers.
He runs his thumb along Gavi's jaw, kisses the corner of his mouth, then the other. "For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I kind of freaked out; the World Cup was insane, and then we got almost caught in New York, and I—I like you, is the thing. An awful lot, actually, which is agonising to admit, but I guess ditching England to come here kind of gave me away. It just—you know. Took me some time not to feel like crawling out of my skin about it."
Gavi snorts, mischief bright in his eyes. "English men, so romantic."
Jude grimaces. "I just mean—"
"Yeah, I know. I figured if a professional thirst trap combined with a good bit of ragebait didn't work to get you out of your own head, I'd just have to wait for the Clásico, but thank God you're predictable."
This, more than anything else, brings Jude up short. He squints down at Gavi, the smirk on his face, and can't help the incredulity when he says, "There's no way you planned all of this."
He's not sure whether it's a statement or a question. Gavi's smile doesn't help, even as he presses another kiss to Jude's mouth, and another.
"I'm not saying it was the main motivation, but, well—it also didn't not work, did it?"
It's the most Gavi thing he could've probably done. Jude laughs with so much affection, he fears it might spill all over, make it obvious to anyone who looks at him that he's stupidly in love, the glowing stains of it all over him.
"And you say I'm bad at this whole romance thing," he says, but he hugs Gavi close, presses his face into the crook of his neck. Thinks, with something fierce and unyielding hooking its claws into his chest, that he will never let this go again.
"Yeah," Gavi says, but he's pressing his mouth to Jude’s temple, lingers there. "I still can't believe you delayed your England return for me, though. After losing to Atlético, no less."
Jude makes a noise. "I'll take it back; that's the most unromantic thing you have said to me today."
"Bullying is the bedrock of this relationship, Bellingham; don't pretend you don't like it now."
Jude refuses to deign to answer as a matter of principle, but he has a sinking suspicion that Gavi can tell, regardless.
They stay like this for a while, swaying slightly, until Gavi asks, "When do you have to leave? Will you stay the night?"
Jude thinks of not booking a hotel, of the pressing hope that made him come here. Thinks of England, and Madrid, and how for all his meticulous plans for the trajectory of his life, some of the best things have come from taking a leap even when he couldn't see the bottom.
He pulls back a little, presses a kiss to Gavi's mouth. "I'll stay as long as you'll have me."
It's not a confession, not any more than what he’s already revealed today. It’s not a solution to the endless obstacles just waiting for them to misstep. When Gavi's cheeks go pink, and he finally pulls Jude into the house, presses him into the couch and kisses him until they are both breathless with it, he thinks that it might just be enough, though.