Pairing: Leah Williamson x Y/N
Summary: She’s Ellis to the world, Y/N to the ones who matter. Leah is captain, but never in control of what she felt for her.
Parts: Read the previous updates here.
A/N: Finally! This fanfic is completed. I enjoyed writing this so much, that I have written a somewhat AU of this “universe” fanfic.
Leah, 25 December 2026, Milton Keynes
The Williamson family Christmas was always a little chaotic — in a way that felt like home.
There was the scent of her mum’s roast potatoes wafting from the kitchen, her dad humming the Spurs anthem under his breath to annoy Amanda, and Jacob arguing with the telly over a rerun of Love Actually. The paper crowns were askew before they even finished the crackers, and the dogs had stolen half the pigs in blankets when no one was looking.
It was familiar. Loud. Warm.
And Leah couldn’t shake the quiet in her chest.
She smiled and laughed when she should. Shared inside jokes. Clinked glasses of mulled wine. But every time her phone buzzed — and it had, twice — her heart leapt before her brain could catch up.
Y/N had wrapped her final show in Paris a little over two weeks ago. The videos were everywhere. Clips of her in a sparkling black suit, confetti raining, voice raw and radiant on that final verse of Truth Behind the Lies. Leah had watched it on loop the night it dropped. Not because she didn’t believe it — but because some part of her needed proof that it meant something.
Since then, they’d texted. FaceTimed. Sent each other photos — sleepy dogs, bad coffee, the occasional lyric scribble. But never once did Y/N say the words Leah quietly feared.
That she was done with the hiding.
That she had chosen them — not just now, but for real.
Because she was terrified of the answer.
That evening, the chaos quieted. The dishwasher hummed low in the background. The tree lights blinked like a soft heartbeat in the corner. Leah curled up on the armchair in her childhood bedroom — oversized hoodie, socks mismatched, the usual post-holiday fatigue.
Her thumb hovered for a moment, then slid right.
Y/N’s face appeared — makeup-free, hair tucked under a wool beanie, background faintly blurred. Probably hotel Wi-Fi. Her smile, though? That was crystal clear.
Leah leaned back into the chair. “Hey. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” Y/N echoed, voice gentle. “How’s the family chaos?”
“Still surviving. I think my mum won the crown game. Dad sulked and switched the telly to football.”
“That sounds exactly like what I imagined,” Y/N chuckled. Then her expression softened. “And you?”
Leah hesitated. Then nodded. “Holding steady.”
There was a pause, not awkward but weighted.
“I wanted to call,” Y/N said finally, “because there’s something I need to ask.”
Leah met her gaze through the screen. “Okay.”
The words settled like snow.
Leah blinked slowly. Her pulse ticked up.
She thought about how much she’d wanted this. How many nights she imagined hearing those exact words, and how strange it was that now — faced with them — she didn’t feel immediate ease, only the sharp edge of memory.
“I do,” she said, quietly. “My heart does. My head’s… still trying to catch up.”
Y/N nodded. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t push.
“I get that,” she replied. “Truly. And you don’t owe me blind trust.”
Leah tilted her head. “Then why ask?”
“Because I need to do something,” Y/N said, her voice steady now. “Something I’ve been working toward for years. But I also know it only matters if you believe in what’s coming — even if it’s not here yet.”
She glanced away for a beat, then back.
“My contract ends next week.”
“I’ve said no,” Y/N added. “To the new one. I haven’t told many people. But I want you to know first. Because… what comes next is me. Just me. Not Ellis. Not someone curated. And if you’re still here… if you want to be…”
Y/N exhaled, smiling softly.
Leah raised an eyebrow. “What are you planning?”
Y/N winked. “Not telling. Yet.”
They sat in silence for a while after that, smiling without words, until Leah’s mum called her from downstairs.
Y/N tilted her head. “Go on. Go win another crown.”
“I already did,” Leah said, smiling at the screen. “You just called.”
Y/N, December 2026, London
The borrowed loft in Shoreditch didn’t look like a place someone would run away to. But it was the first space in months that didn’t feel like a set.
There was no concierge in a lobby. No hotel towels folded in triangles. No scent of vanilla diffusers from a label-sponsored suite.
Just brick walls, an old upright piano, a record player that skipped on Billie Holiday, and a mattress on the floor.
Y/N called it a beginning.
Olivia called it a tactical retreat.
The truth probably lived somewhere in between.
Her last show in Paris had ended not with confetti, but a blackout. Just her silhouette on stage, hand over her heart, breath shaking before the final verse of “Truth Behind the Lies.” The crowd was still chanting her name when the lights dimmed and her mic went dead.
She remembered walking offstage, chest aching like she’d cracked something open that couldn’t be sealed again.
“You alright?” one of the crew had asked.
But what she meant was: I’m free.
December 29th. Two days before the year ended. Olivia arrived at the loft just after noon with two coffees and a sealed envelope.
“No lawyers,” she said, handing it over. “No press. Just this.”
Y/N stared at the letter. Printed on embossed paper. The kind that felt heavier than it looked.
Inside: a termination confirmation. The final formality. It stated the obvious — that her contract would expire on the 31st, that she was not renewing, and that while she remained bound by a non-compete clause until the end of 2027, she was free to distribute and perform any independently-produced material.
A long way of saying: You can do your thing. But don’t expect backup.
Y/N signed it without hesitation.
“You’re sure?” Olivia asked.
Y/N nodded. “I’ve never been more sure.”
Olivia exhaled. “Alright. Then we begin again.”
She didn’t throw a party. Didn’t post a countdown. Didn’t fly to LA or stage a New Year’s Eve comeback.
Instead, she stayed up late with the piano in the loft, bare fingers skating over worn keys, writing lyrics that sounded more like prayers than hooks.
The song didn’t have a name at first. Just a line that wouldn’t leave her head:
You don’t have to say forever — just tonight with your whole heart.
It wasn’t a single. Not a chart-chaser. It didn’t even have a proper bridge.
She called it “The Quiet Between Notes”.
When she played it for Olivia on the 30th, her manager blinked hard and said, “It’s not a hit. It’s a confession.”
“Then it’s perfect,” Y/N said.
On New Year’s Eve, she stood alone in the loft, a single lamp casting gold on the floorboards. She set up a phone on the old upright piano. Hit record.
No makeup. No editing. Just her.
A voice in the quiet. Fingers over keys. A song barely whispering through the static.
She uploaded it to Instagram at 11:47 p.m.
The real tour starts in 2027.
Happy new year. I’m home.
No tags. No links. No label watermark.
And she turned off her phone.
It wasn’t until 12:26 a.m. that she turned it back on again. The screen lit up like fireworks — texts, DMs, mentions, news alerts.
But only one message mattered:
Leah: I saw it. You’re brave.
She stared at it for a long moment. Her breath caught.
Y/N: You were my first brave thing.
Outside, fireworks cracked over the Thames. But inside, she only heard silence — the kind that felt like space, not emptiness.
Not the end. Not yet a beginning.
A moment between two truths.
Y/N, January 2027, London
It was cold again in London.
Not the Hollywood kind — performative and dry — but the sort of aching chill that soaked into her bones. Camden held its winter hush, all wet pavements and faded yellow lights. And in that quiet, Y/N felt something like clarity. Or the beginning of it.
The chapel Olivia found sat tucked behind a butcher’s shop and a record store — an old deconsecrated space with candles in glass jars and chairs arranged in imperfect rows.
No sound crew. No stylists. No stagehands.
Just her, a piano, and thirty-something guests who had said yes without needing to know what it was they were saying yes to.
The rehearsal earlier in the day had been quiet, almost reverent. Y/N walked the space slowly, fingers trailing the stone altar. She whispered her warmups. Olivia checked mic levels with her usual precision.
By 6:00 p.m., everything was still.
By 6:30, the first guests began to arrive.
By 6:57, Olivia stepped behind the curtain.
“She’s here,” Olivia said gently.
She didn’t need to ask who. Olivia would only ever say that about one person.
When Y/N walked on stage at 7:03, she kept her gaze low. A handful of familiar faces in the audience. Some from the start of her career. Some from its messiest middle. And in the third row, wearing a black coat and white jumper, eyes locked on her — Leah.
“I don’t know what this is,” Y/N said softly into the mic. “But it’s real. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”
The keys felt like glass under her fingers, but the song spilled from her easily — the familiar melody of shared coffee cups, slow glances, the ache of “almost” in the hours between.
This one hurt. Not because it was raw — but because it had been real. The chords pulsed under her hands like a heartbeat. The lyrics, about streetlights and strangers, echoed down the chapel walls like a memory.
There was no applause. Just silence. Weighty. Present.
Song Three: Truth Behind the Lies
Y/N cleared her throat before beginning.
“This one… you’ve heard. But not like this.”
It was slower than the single version — stripped-down, almost acoustic. No layered production. Just the truth, raw and fragile.
When she hit the line “I said I’d be anything but honest, and still you knew”, her voice cracked, but she let it stand.
There was no fixing what had been real.
Song Four: The Quiet Between Notes
She looked up just before she played the first chord.
“This one is new. I teased it on New Year’s — called it The Quiet Between Notes. But tonight’s the first time I’m playing it in full.”
The song wasn’t long. Barely three minutes. But it held every word she hadn’t known how to say — in Zurich, in Camden, in all the places between.
It was, finally, the truth.
When the last note faded into the rafters, Y/N sat in silence, hands resting on the keys.
No applause. No movement.
Just that chapel stillness — heavy, knowing, kind.
She stood. Bowed once. And walked offstage.
Leah was waiting outside.
Not by the door, but against the brick wall of the alley, coat pulled tighter around her, eyes soft and unreadable.
Y/N stepped into the cold.
Neither of them spoke for a second.
Then Y/N whispered, “I didn’t know if you’d come.”
Leah’s smile was barely there. “I didn’t know if I’d survive it if I did.”
Y/N huffed a breath that turned to mist. “You always say the most devastating shit when I least expect it.”
But they stood in the dark, closer than they had in months, like the silence between songs had finally given way to something new.
Y/N reached for Leah’s hand, brushing it lightly. “Thank you for coming.”
Leah squeezed back. “Thank you for letting me in.”
Leah, January 2027, London
The night air in Camden was cool but gentle, pressing against Leah’s skin like a secret not yet spoken. She walked beside Y/N down a quiet street just past the chapel’s modest doors, the hush between them wrapped in something softer than silence. The city murmured around them — taxis slicing through puddles, faint laughter spilling from pub windows — but here, in this moment, the world was pared down to two pairs of footsteps and a hundred things neither of them dared say.
Y/N’s hand didn’t touch hers. It didn’t need to.
They walked two blocks together, not for any practical reason but because parting too soon would feel too sharp. When they reached the junction, where Leah had parked discreetly, Y/N slowed.
“This was…” Y/N started, then paused. “Thank you for coming.”
Leah’s gaze flicked to her. “I meant what I said. I wouldn’t have missed it.”
Y/N’s smile was faint, but real. “Even after everything?”
Leah didn’t answer with words. She just offered that small, brave kind of nod — the kind that says, I’m still here, aren’t I?
Y/N dipped her head. “Sleep well, Leah.”
And that was it. No cinematic kiss in the streetlight. No grand declarations. Just the quiet, aching civility of two people trying again — carefully.
Back home later that night, Leah stood in the kitchen of her flat, kettle boiling and her coat still on. She felt hollowed out in the best way — like the weight of something heavy had shifted just enough for her to breathe.
She sipped tea that had gone lukewarm too fast and scrolled Instagram. The hashtag #ChapelSessions was already trending. Clips of Y/N — Ellis, to the world — flooded her feed. Acoustic, raw, unguarded.
She found herself watching a fan video of “The Quiet Between Notes.” It was a shaky recording, someone clearly crying while filming, but it captured the way Y/N looked when she performed: eyes closed, hands trembling slightly, like the music was the only scaffolding holding her up.
The comments were a flood of awe and speculation.
“Ellis has never looked more herself.”
“Can tell those songs meant something. Every lyric felt lived-in.”
Leah shut her phone off before she could read more.
The next morning, she met Keira for coffee after Arsenal training. The café was mostly empty, a sleepy Wednesday kind of slow. Keira had her hood up and sunglasses on, despite the grey sky.
“You look like you’re hiding from the press,” Leah teased.
“I am. Not the press — your fans.”
Leah raised a brow. “What?”
“You’re glowing,” Keira said, stirring her tea. “It’s suspicious.”
Leah rolled her eyes, but her smile was traitorous.
They talked about football first — always football. Arsenal’s mid-season form. England’s upcoming training camp for the World Cup. Keira’s annoying new physio. It wasn’t until the second round of drinks that the conversation shifted.
“So,” Keira said, not looking up from her mug. “You seeing her again?”
Leah hesitated. “We talked. She sang. I was there.”
Keira snorted. “Not what I asked.”
“I don’t know,” Leah said honestly. “It’s not simple.”
“No, it’s not,” Keira said, finally meeting her eyes. “But sometimes, it doesn’t have to be solved all at once. You just… decide to stay in it. Or not.”
Leah looked out the window. The street was wet with half-melted sleet. A cyclist passed, head down against the wind.
“I’m still in it,” she said quietly.
Keira reached across the table and tapped her fingers once on Leah’s knuckles. “You look lighter lately.”
That night, as Leah curled under her duvet, her phone buzzed once.
It was a message from Y/N.
“Thank you for staying until the last note.”
Leah stared at the screen, thumb hovering.
“I wouldn’t have missed it.”
She pressed send. No hesitation.
She set the phone face-down on the nightstand and closed her eyes, hearing echoes of a voice she once kissed in the quiet.
But now — maybe — it was beginning to stay.
Y/N, February 2027, London
The flat in Shoreditch is all concrete angles and secondhand softness. It smells like fig candles and eucalyptus oil, things Olivia had left behind from her last visit. Outside, the February rain made no promises, streaking faint shadows across the windowpanes. Y/N sat cross-legged on the worn velvet couch, notebook on her lap, guitar untouched beside her.
She has been circling a melody for hours, fingers idle, thoughts anything but.
The Chapel Sessions had stayed with her like the hum after the final chord — not just the applause, but the stillness that followed. The way Leah stayed behind. The way they didn’t rush to label what the night meant, only that it had meant something.
They’ve texted since. Enough to feel it wasn’t a fluke. Not enough to make it real.
She scrolled up through their last exchange. A meme from Leah about the chaos of group chats. A voice note — a snort of laughter and a dry: “Imagine me, an Aries, in a room full of Geminis.”
Y/N had laughed. Alone, but it counted.
She opened her voice memos folder — the one she never names properly. Scrolled past “lyric_scribble_6” and “demo_alt.take” until she saw the one she saved from months ago. It’s Leah’s voice, low and a little sleepy, recorded during a late night when Y/N had asked her what she was thinking.
“I think you don’t realise how much of you stays, even after you leave the room.”
She closed the laptop, set aside her notebook. Breathed in. Then opened her phone.
No overthinking. No lyrics to shield her.
Would you like to go on a date with me?
Not just coffee in Camden or hiding backstage.
She added a heart. Deleted it. Replaced it with a full stop. Then nothing. Finally, just the words — and she hits send.
She set the phone down and left the room.
By the time she returned, the light’s gone golden and the sky is already folding into dusk.
She exhaled — long and quiet — and texted back:
Then let’s make it count.
Leah’s POV · August 2027 · London
The plane ride home from Brazil was quieter than usual. The kind of quiet you don’t fill with noise, because everyone’s carrying something too heavy to set down just yet.
Leah sat by the window. Watched clouds crawl beneath the wings like they were in no hurry to be anywhere. And for once, she wasn’t either.
England had come close again. Finalists. Silver. One-nil to Spain. The same heartbreak, dressed in a different disguise. But this time, it didn’t feel like collapse. She had captained them with every fibre of her being. She had led, she had fought, and she had made peace.
She had left it all on that pitch in Rio.
And now she was coming home to something else. Something softer.
The London summer was gentler than Brazil’s electric heat. The air cooler, the skies never quite certain of sun. But Leah didn’t mind. She wasn’t looking for spectacle.
She wanted the mundane. The real. The everyday that makes a life.
Her suitcase barely touched the floor before she heard the kettle click on in the kitchen.
“You drink peppermint now?” came the voice she had been missing in the quietest parts of herself.
Y/N — barefoot, hair damp, a mug in each hand.
“I’ve changed,” Leah said, walking over. “World Cup finals do that to a girl.”
Y/N raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see how deep the change runs. I bet you still leave your phone in the fridge when you’re tired.”
Leah grinned and stole a sip from Y/N’s mug. “Only when I miss you.”
They weren’t in Camden anymore. Y/N’s temporary Airbnb had turned into a longer lease in Shoreditch — a top-floor flat that smelled of eucalyptus and the lingering echo of chords that hadn’t yet made it into songs.
They never made a public announcement. No hard launch. No coordinated Instagram post.
But everyone who mattered knew. Keira. Jess. Alex, of course. Olivia, who had stopped blinking twice whenever she saw Leah in the flat. Their families. Her mum had cried the first time she saw them on FaceTime together — not out of shock, just out of recognition.
Leah didn’t need the world to name it. She knew what she had.
And what they had — it didn’t want headlines. It wanted quiet.
The kind that lets two people find each other again without needing to perform the reunion.
One week after she landed, Leah found herself on the sofa, legs curled under her, still wearing the hoodie she’d taken from Y/N’s closet that morning. Not on purpose. Not entirely.
Y/N was sitting on the rug, tuning her guitar — back straight, eyes soft.
She had written three new songs since Leah returned. None of them had names yet. She played the third one now, the melody like a memory trying to remember itself.
“What’s it called?” Leah asked, voice barely above the hum of the strings.
Y/N shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Thought about calling it Postcards from the Edge, but that felt dramatic.”
“I write dramatic,” Y/N corrected. “I live quietly.”
Leah leaned her cheek against the couch arm. “Call it Coddled.”
Y/N turned, one brow lifted.
“You know,” Leah added, “for the way you always steal the duvet and kick me in your sleep.”
Y/N grinned. “Sounds more like a diss track than a love song.”
“Same thing sometimes,” Leah murmured, smiling.
They spent the next day doing nothing spectacular.
Y/N read through fan letters over toast. Leah answered emails from the FA. At one point, they went to the corner shop in mismatched shoes and matching sunglasses, and nobody batted an eye. Leah thought about how many years she’d wanted a life like this but never let herself picture it.
Not because she didn’t believe in love — she did. But because she wasn’t sure if someone like her was meant for a love that wasn’t complicated.
But Y/N made the complicated beautiful.
The morning coffees with half-sweet oat milk. The voice notes left mid-rehearsal. The way she always said Leah’s name like it was a line from a song.
The way they let the world exist around them without it having to define them.
Later that week, Keira came by. Brought biscuits and silence and eventually asked, “You alright?”
“Yeah,” Leah said. “Better than alright, actually.”
Keira watched her for a second longer, then nodded.
“You look lighter lately.”
Leah didn’t answer right away. She didn’t need to.
One evening, they sat on the rooftop, wrapped in an old blanket from the tour van. London lights blinking in the distance. Y/N played Leah the same song again — the one with no name.
She didn’t sing the lyrics this time. Just played.
When the last note faded, Leah said quietly, “I think it’s called Us.”
She just reached over, laced their fingers together, and leaned her head on Leah’s shoulder.
And in that moment, with no spotlight, no crowd, no fear — it felt like the beginning of everything they never thought they’d get to have.
A/N: Leah and Y/N deserved softness. So this story ends where it was always meant to — not in a hard launch, but in quiet commitment. A kind of love that doesn’t need to announce itself loudly to be real. One that trusts the other person will still be there when the lights fade, and the music stops.
Thank you to every single reader who followed their journey.
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