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Carry the One | Simple Math Vignettes

pairings: joe burrow x reader (younger) 🤍 wc: 3,598 an: the simple math origin — seven little pieces of how the two of them actually add up. how he met you, what you do, the way you talk to him, what each of you has that the other doesn't, the math he can't stop running. you put them together yourself. for WHATEVER reason i've been so nervous to put this one out, because i wanted to get them so perfect for y'all. i've written and rewritten this thing like 10 times, i promise you. so for better or for worse... here you go. thank you for every comment and every bit of encouragement on this one — i really really needed it 💕 and a special thank you to this sweet ask and the many others who wanted more of her. this one's for you. and if there's one of these you want more of, you tell me and it's yours 🤍

masterlist here 💛

i. how he met you

it was a backyard dinner at zac's. one of those small things — eight people, maybe ten, the wives and a couple of the close guys and someone's sister. you were the friend of the sister. you weren't supposed to be there, technically — you'd gotten roped in at the last minute because she didn't want to show up alone, and you'd said sure, why not, you didn't have plans.

you grew up in ohio and you still didn't follow football. you knew the backyard was full of guys who played — your friend had said as much — but the names meant nothing to you. they were just big, easy, loud at the grill. somebody's husband, somebody's friend. there was one of them everyone angled toward without making it obvious, the way a room tilts toward the person it's organized around. you didn't clock why. you got a glass of wine and talked to your friend and didn't think about it.

you ended up in the kitchen because your glass was empty and everyone else was outside. he was already in there, leaning against the counter with a water, not doing anything. you nodded at him the way you'd nod at anybody and went for the bottle.

you'd poured half a glass before he said anything.

"i'm joe."

"hi." you topped off the glass. "y/n."

you weren't looking at him. you'd have missed it if you were — the part where he should've left it there and didn't.

"joe burrow."

"okay." you set the bottle down.

he heard it land — or not. his own name, handed to a stranger like it was supposed to do something, just sat there on the counter between you. he set the water down too. he didn't leave the kitchen.

he cleared his throat. "so. you teach?" someone must have told him. you nodded. "second grade."

"that's wild."

"why's it wild."

"i don't know." he was watching you differently now. "i don't know how anybody does that."

"it's not that hard."

"i think it's hard."

you shrugged.

he stayed in the kitchen with you for forty-five minutes. nobody came in. you'd decided in the first ten minutes he wasn't your type. you spent the next thirty-five revising. you told him about your kids — the one who'd informed you her mom was a witch, the one who'd found a frog on the playground and carried it inside in both hands to ask if it could be the class pet. he asked questions like he was actually listening.

"okay, your turn." you leaned back against the counter. "you all play, right? you too?"

"yeah."

"what position?"

"quarterback."

you didn't know what that was. he could tell.

"i throw the ball," he said. "to the guy who's supposed to catch it. that's mostly the job."

"huh." you took a sip. "so it's your fault when they lose."

he looked at you. then he laughed — quieter than you'd have guessed from the size of him, low, like it caught him off guard. "yeah," he said. "pretty much."

he didn't tell you anything past that, and you didn't push. it didn't occur to you there was anything under it.

you were heading out when he said your name. you turned. he was still leaning against the counter.

"i had a line. it's gone. can i get your number."

"yeah."

you gave him your number. you watched him type it in.

"thanks."

"you're welcome, joe."

you texted your friend from the car: i think some guy in the kitchen gave me his number.

she texted back: WHICH guy.

joe, you wrote. tall. bracelets.

your phone rang. you didn't even get to say hello.

that's JOE BURROW. you were in there for an HOUR. you didn't KNOW?

you hadn't. you looked out the window. you thought about the kitchen the whole drive home.

ii. what you do

he didn't get it at first. not rude about it — just trying to wrap his head around it, you could tell. the hours. the way you came over on a tuesday and fell asleep on his couch at 8:30 with a stack of worksheets in your lap. the way your alarm went off at 5:45 because you had to be at school by 7. the way you'd be exhausted by thursday and then up at six on saturday because your body didn't know how to sleep in anymore.

his world didn't have those kinds of hours. his world had film and lift and meetings and a chef and an 8pm bedtime in season, and even in the off-season, his time was his own in a way yours never was. you weren't bitter about it. you just lived a different life.

he started keeping the good coffee at his house for you. you didn't notice at first. you walked into his kitchen one morning and the oat milk was in the fridge, and you didn't think anything of it because of course it was — you'd had it the last time you were there. it didn't occur to you that he'd had someone go get it. it didn't occur to you for a while.

he learned which weeks were hard. parent-teacher conference week. the week before winter break. testing week in march. he didn't ask. he just knew. he'd order in instead of making you go out. he'd let you grade at the kitchen island while he watched film in the next room. he'd come up behind you and put his hands on your shoulders and not say anything, and you'd lean back against him a second longer than you needed to.

you graded papers at his kitchen island in one of his t-shirts once, and he came in to get water and just stood there for a second looking at you.

"what."

"nothing."

"joe."

"i just like this."

"like what."

"this."

he didn't elaborate. he never did. but you knew what he meant. you in his shirt, his red pen in your hand, a stack of seven-year-olds' handwriting in front of you. you in his house, doing the most ordinary thing there was.

he crossed the kitchen and kissed the top of your head and went and got his water. you didn't look up.

iii. the way you talk to him

you don't fawn. you never have. it's the thing he noticed first at the kitchen island that night, and it's the thing he still notices now, five months in — that you talk to him the way you talk to everyone. you tease him. you call him out. you tell him when he's being weird about something.

the first time he tried to do the thing — the joe burrow thing, where he goes a little quiet and a little observant and lets the silence do the work — you'd looked at him across his couch and said, "what."

"what."

"you're doing the staring thing."

"what staring thing."

"the thing where you look at me like you're trying to figure something out."

he'd laughed, a little caught. "i'm not doing anything."

"you are. you do it all the time."

"yeah?"

"yeah. it's a whole vibe, babes."

he'd shaken his head, smiling at his hands. you'd gone back to your phone. he kept watching you. you knew he was. you could feel it like a hand on your knee. you didn't say anything else. you scrolled the same instagram post three times.

it took him a few weeks to figure out that you weren't going to play. that you weren't going to pretend not to notice when he deflected. that if he said i'm fine in the tone he uses on reporters, you'd say okay but how are you actually. that he could not run the play on you that he ran on everyone else.

the first time you called him on it was a sunday in march. he'd been off all day — quiet in a way that wasn't his normal quiet. you'd asked him three times if he was okay. three times he'd said yeah. the fourth time, you put your phone down.

"joe."

"what."

"either tell me what's going on or tell me you don't want to talk about it. but stop saying you're fine."

he'd looked at you. just looked. and then, after a second: "i don't want to talk about it."

"okay."

"that's it?"

"yeah. that's it. that's all i wanted."

he'd come and sat down next to you on the couch and put his hand on your knee. you didn't say anything else. you didn't have to.

—

iv. what you don't have that he does

you don't talk about money with him. not really. it's not that you're hiding anything — it's that there's nothing to talk about. you make what a second-grade teacher in cincinnati makes. you have student loans. you split rent with a roommate in a two-bedroom in northside. you're fine. you're not struggling, exactly. you're just twenty-two and a teacher and you do the math at the grocery store like everybody you went to college with does.

he doesn't do that math. he's never done that math. he has a chef and a house and a car you've never asked the price of. you've never seen him look at a bill. you've never seen him check a balance. the first time you saw him tip, you almost said something — not because it was wrong, just because the number on the line would've covered your rent.

you'd mentioned it once, early on. that you were trying to be smart about money. you'd said it lightly, in passing, the way you'd say anything — i'm trying to be smart about money, so probably not, but thank you — when he'd asked if you wanted to go somewhere for the weekend. he'd nodded. he hadn't pushed. you thought that was the end of it.

it wasn't.

he started doing things. small things. he'd have the chef make whatever you'd mentioned liking — the salmon from that place in october, the pasta you'd brought up twice — and it would just be on the counter when you came in from school. he stopped asking if you wanted to go out — there was always food. he never made you pick up a check. when your car had a noise in april and you were stressing about the cost, he'd said i know a guy and then there'd been a guy, and the noise was gone, and when you asked how much, he said it was nothing, baby.

you'd looked at him.

"joe."

"what."

"how much."

"y/n."

"how much was it."

he'd looked at you, and his face had done the thing it does when he doesn't want to fight about something. "let me do it."

"that's not an answer."

"i know."

you didn't push. you couldn't quite name why, except that pushing would've meant saying i don't want to owe you anything, and you didn't want to say that, because you didn't mean it. you let it go. and then you let the next one go.

your friend's birthday is in austin next month. you've mentioned it once. you don't think he caught it. flights are insane right now and you're trying to be smart about money. you're probably just going to send the gift and facetime in.

you don't know any of that yet. you don't know yet that he heard you. you don't know yet that he was in the kitchen when you said it on the phone. you don't know yet that he's already going to book it. that he's going to tell you it's handled. that he's going to do it the way he does everything — without making it a thing, without making you say thank you, without making you feel small about it.

v. what he doesn't have that you do

you say things he doesn't know how to say. you say them without meaning to. you haven't built the thing he's built — you haven't had to. you're still in the part of your life where if you feel something, it comes out of your mouth. he lost that a long time ago. he watches you do it like it's a trick he forgot.

you tell him you love him first. you tell him in the kitchen on a wednesday. you don't make a thing of it. you'd been telling him about your day and you laughed at something he said and you said god, i love you the way you'd say it to your roommate, and then you'd kept talking, and it had taken you a full thirty seconds to realize what you'd said.

you'd stopped.

he was looking at you.

"i — "

"y/n."

"i didn't — i mean, i did, but i wasn't — "

"y/n."

"what."

"come here."

he didn't say it back. he pulled you in instead, chin on the top of your head, and held on. that was the answer he had, and you took it. you didn't push for the words — you knew he didn't have them yet.

you're a crier. you've never tried to hide it. you cry when you're tired, when one of your kids has a hard week, when you've had two glasses of wine and you're thinking about your dad. you cry in front of him and you don't apologize for it. you don't dress it up. you just sit on his couch and you cry, and he doesn't know what to do with it, and you don't make him figure it out. you just let him put his hand on your back. you let him be there. you don't need him to fix it.

and then there's the other thing.

the thing you said in bed in march that he hasn't stopped thinking about.

he was lying on his side facing you. he'd asked you what you wanted. you'd been quiet for a second. you'd said no one's ever asked me that.

he'd gone still.

"what."

"like — no one. nobody's ever asked me what i wanted."

"y/n."

"it's not a thing. i just — i don't know what to say."

he hadn't moved. his hand had been on your hip. he'd looked at you in the dark for a long time, and you couldn't read his face, and you hadn't known what to do with the silence. you'd thought maybe you'd said the wrong thing.

then he'd said, very quietly, "okay. we'll figure it out."

and he'd meant it. you didn't know yet that he'd meant it. you found out over the next few weeks — that he was going to ask. and keep asking. you already knew how to want things; you'd just never been in a room with anyone who asked you to say it out loud. so he asked. clumsy about it at first, because asking wasn't his language any more than answering was yours. and he kept asking until you stopped waiting for the catch.

you don't have his discipline. you don't have his guard. you don't have whatever he built to keep himself safe — and you've never needed it. that's the part he can't get over: that you walked in without any of it and didn't get hurt. that you just say the thing, out loud, like it's nothing. he never could.

—

vi. the math in his head

he's twenty-nine. you're twenty-two.

he does the math. you don't.

you don't, because to you it doesn't mean anything — you've dated guys your own age and they were worse at every single thing he's good at, and the seven years he has on you don't feel like seven years when you're sitting in his kitchen at midnight talking about nothing. it feels like he's just him and you're just you. the math doesn't come up.

it comes up for him.

it comes up when you say something about your friends — what they're doing, where they're going, how the girl from your hall freshman year just got a teaching job in denver. he goes a little quiet then. you don't always catch it. when you do catch it, you don't push, because you've learned that pushing on the quiet doesn't work — you have to wait for him to come around to it on his own.

it comes up when he meets your friends. they're twenty-two and twenty-three and they're loud and they're a little drunk and they ask him questions a thirty-year-old wouldn't ask, and you can see him doing it — answering them a half-second slower than he answers you. the calibration.

it comes up most when he hasn't told his parents.

you know he hasn't. you've known for months. he's never said it out loud — he's never said i haven't told them about you— but you know. you know because he's never mentioned you mentioning them. you know because he's never said my mom asked about you. you know because when he calls his mom on sundays, you've learned to not be in the room, and he's never asked you to be in the room, and you've never made him.

it's been five months.

you do your own math about it. you don't talk to him about that math. you don't talk to anybody about it, really, except sometimes your friend at school, and even then you say it light — yeah, he hasn't told them, i don't know, i'm not gonna push it. like it doesn't bother you. like it's fine.

it does bother you. you just don't know what to do about it yet.

he says he's working on it. i'm working on it, baby, economical, true, not dressed up. you believe him.

but you've started bracing for the thing. you don't fully know that you're doing it. but somewhere in you, you've started keeping a small running count of the moments where it's been one more week and he still hasn't said your name, hasn't said your age out loud to the people who made him, hasn't done the thing. you've started getting ready, quietly, for the day he gets it wrong. you don't know what wrong is going to look like yet. you just know it's coming.

he doesn't know you're bracing. you'd never let him see it.

vii. what you do for him

you don't know what you do for him. not all of it. you know some of it — the way he looks at you when you come into a room, the way he reaches for you in his sleep, the way he says your name when he's tired. you know he loves you. you've never doubted that part.

what you don't know is the rest.

he didn't sleep in his bed for a long time before he met you. not since someone got into the house. he moved down to the couch in the den after it and never moved back up — told himself the bed was too big, the room too quiet, the couch easier, and didn't look too hard at the part where the den let him see the door. he never told anybody. he started sleeping upstairs again the week after you stayed over the first time. he didn't decide to. it just happened. you were in the bed, so that's where he slept.

his chef texts him every monday now, asking what you'll want that week. he's had to add things to the list he'd never bought before — the oat milk, the specific yogurt, the cereal you like that he thinks is for children. the chef teases him about it. he doesn't mind.

sometimes he watches you grade papers from the doorway, when you don't see him there. you in his t-shirt at his kitchen island, red pen in your hand, your hair pulled up crazily, your phone face down next to you. he doesn't take a picture. he just watches for a second. he thinks about how the house was before you. he doesn't go to that thought for long.

he told sam, finally, the week before christmas. he'd been driving and sam had been on speaker and sam had said so what's going on with the girl and joe had said i'm in love with her. flat. no preamble. sam had been quiet for a second and then said yeah, i know, dude. and joe had laughed — that low one that catches him by surprise — and that was the whole conversation. that's the only person he's said it to out loud.

he's already googled flights to austin twice. he's going to do it. he's been waiting until thursday so it doesn't feel like he's responding to overhearing you. he's going to figure out how to give it to you without making you feel small.

the math in his head is quieter when you're in the room. when you're with him — actually with him, in his kitchen or on his couch or asleep on his chest — the seven years stop being a number. they're just the gap between the year he was born and the year you were. they don't mean anything when you're laughing at something on your phone with your foot tucked under his thigh. he forgets to do the math then. that's the part that's starting to scare him. that you make him forget it.

he hasn't told his parents. he's going to. he doesn't know when. he knows it has to be soon. he knows that every week he doesn't, he's failing you in a way he hasn't fully looked at. he's going to look at it. he says he's working on it, and he is — but he hasn't finished. he doesn't have the sentence yet. he hasn't said your name to his mother. he hasn't said the words my girlfriend. he hasn't done it.

he will.

you walk into his house and the house gets bigger.

he hasn't told you that part yet either.

he will.

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