alexia has the fright of her life… over nothing. but it does lead to something she didn’t expect on a rare and seemingly inconspicuous day-off. (8k)
It takes the Barcelona captain a long, long time to pull herself out of bed on days off.
Not… dreadfully slowly. She’s incapable of that, as much as she wishes otherwise. Years of alarms before sunrise and training schedules carved too deep into her bones for that. But slowly enough that when she finally opens her eyes, the room is bright already, with sunlight spilling through the thin gap in the curtains in one golden line across the floor.
09:43AM.
“Hm.”
Her voice comes out rough with sleep as she squints at the clock on the bedside table. Not even ten in the morning. Disgusting.
She stays there another minute, warm beneath the sheets, one arm tucked beneath the pillow.
Mid-season days off are strange things. Too rare to waste but too infrequent to know what to actually do with once they arrive.
Alba is with her girlfriend’s family. Her mother is on a beach somewhere, probably already ordering a variety of overpriced cocktails. Her friends are all working, she’d already asked weeks in advance if they were free, but alas not. And as far as she’s aware, everyone on the team is off doing their own thing.
And you–
Alexia’s hand moves for her phone before she’s fully conscious of doing it.
Blank lockscreen. No notifications from you.
Her brows pinch together. Weird.
Normally by now there’d already be at least four messages waiting for her. Some utterly pointless observation you’d had whilst trying to fall asleep. Maybe a photo of your breakfast since you always woke before her. Links to videos you found funny at unreasonable hours of the night.
But there’s nothing.
No good morning, no nonsense, no running commentary from inside your head spilling directly into her phone like it belonged there.
Alexia stares at the screen another second. Then another.
“Hm.”
This one comes out more suspicious.
Because it isn’t as though the two of you are casual. Not really.
Casual people do not end up with designated sides of each other’s beds. They do not automatically reach for the other person’s hands during movies, or knowing which takeaway to pick up on the way to the one’s place without asking, or having an accidental stash of hoodies with the other’s perfume stashed in your wardrobes.
Casual people definitely do not spend entire nights together beneath soft amber lamplight with half their clothes missing and absolutely no intention of putting them back on any time soon.
Though, it’d never properly… been given a name.
It had grown between you quietly over months instead. Something careful and warm and strangely precious, lit by a spark that’d struck after a short trip to Mallorca with Patri and Jana and a few others the previous summer.
You were teammates. Friends first. Entangled now in ways that mattered more than either of you had figured out how to say without risking either the loss of it, or rocking the boat of the team dynamic.
So instead, the two of you hovered happily in the space just before certainty.
Close enough that Alexia knew the sound of your sleepy voice at midnight. Close enough that you absentmindedly wore her clothes home. Enough that she sometimes caught herself imagining six months ahead before sharply stopping herself there.
But apparently not close enough to know why you’d vanished overnight.
Her frown deepens. The house suddenly feels too quiet.
By half ten, she’s given up on waiting for her phone screen to light up and forces herself into motion instead.
She connects her phone to the speakers in the ceiling all over her house, and showers. A mixture of genres and languages so horrifying she’d been banned from controlling the locker room music after just one chance. After already being banned for two seasons before that.
Music follows her through the house after that as she moves through the morning. She isn’t really paying attention to it, though, as she waters plants and folds laundry and wipes down kitchen counters that are already clean.
Every few minutes her eyes flick back to her phone where it rests face-up on the marble counter.
Still nothing.
She presses her lips together.
Ridiculous.
She is thirty-two years old. Captain of FC Barcelona. One of the best footballers in the world.
And somehow being ignored by you for twelve hours has turned her into this.
Time ticks on until it reads 11:18 on her phone, which had gathered a few notifications, but none under the one name she was after.
The house, despite all its cleanliness, has begun to feel stale around her somehow. Every room carries the faint sense that she is waiting for something. Or someone.
Alexia decides she needs air before she ends up checking your chat for the hundredth time like a teenager.
So she pulls on the first clothes she finds– faded blue jeans, black trainers, a slightly oversized white shirt, and a fleece gilet that Alba once told her made her look like a middle-aged farmer from Girona.
Alexia had pointed out that Alba owned the exact same gilet in beige; in fact, they had bought them in the shop together. Alba had replied that it was different because she was actually stylish.
Alexia had hung up on her.
She grabs her keys from the counter on the way out, shoving her phone into her pocket with one last glance at the dark screen first. Still nothing.
The street outside is empty at the weekday’s midday hour, would be peaceful if it wasn’t for the silly amount of hedge trimmers going off at once. The first day of sun in a week or so always sends the gardeners mad.
The brunette goes to turn left out of her gate, before she pauses, then heads to her neighbour’s house across the street. Knocks twice in the familiar rhythm she’s used for the last few months.
There’s a shuffling noise from inside, followed by several high-pitched barks.
The door swings open.
“Ah, Ale!” Her elderly neighbour, Beatriz, beams up at her immediately with a hand pressed to her chest. “Just you today?”
Alexia blinks once. “...Sí?”
The older woman leans to the side, peering dramatically around Alexia.
“Where is that lovely new girl of yours?”
She nearly chokes on absolutely nothing. Heat flushes embarrassingly fast across her face as she palms awkwardly at the back of her neck.
“She’s– uh, busy today.”
The woman narrows her eyes in a way that makes Alexia feel strangely as though she’s being interrogated by a disappointed aunt.
“You haven’t messed it up, have you?”
“W-what?”
“I quite like that one,” Beatriz continues, ignoring her completely. “Much better than the other girl.”
Alexia stares at her. “What other girl?”
“That brown-haired one who convinced you to go blonde. Terrible decision.” Beatriz scoffs. “I’m glad you became my neighbour when you were basically back to brunette again. I would’ve put hair dye in your shampoo.”
She closes her eyes briefly. Lost for words.
“It’s looking good now though. Much healthier. Keep it that way or I’ll stop giving you fresh tomatoes.”
“I will, Beatriz, thank you.” She exhales through her nose, fighting the smile threatening at the corners of her mouth at the lack of filter.
Another sharp bark erupts from somewhere deeper inside the house, followed by the frantic clicking of nails against the tiled floor.
“And no,” She says finally, softer this time. “I haven’t messed anything up, as far as I’m aware.”
The addition slips out before she can stop it. Beatriz catches it immediately, of course.
“Aha!”
“No– there is no aha.”
“There is always an aha.”
Alexia pinches the bridge of her nose. “We are both just doing our own things today. Does Boni need a walk?”
The tiny white dog comes skidding around the corner at the sound of her name like a possessed mop.
Unlike every other small dog Alexia has ever encountered, Boni behaves as though she is approximately the size of a small military tank. She launches herself directly at Alexia’s legs with startling confidence, barking furiously before demanding to be picked up.
“She is spoiled.” Alexia mutters, scooping the little dog into her arms anyway.
“And whose fault is that?”
Alexia chooses not to answer.
Five minutes later, she is back out on the street with Boni trotting at her side on a pink lead covered in tiny strawberries.
The contrast between them is ridiculous.
Alexia, all long limbs and composed athleticism beside a dog small enough to lose in a handbag.
Boni doesn’t seem bothered by this; she struts down the pavement like she is the celebrity.
They walk without much urgency in the pleasant Spring weather, this particular route to her go-to cafe away from the tourists and also not yet touched by the lunch crowds. Light glints gold against house windows, somebody nearby is playing music through open patio doors, and vespas buzz through the streets like angry insects.
Every now and then people recognise her– a couple walking past smile politely in that restrained way locals often do around the players, not wanting to intrude. A little boy nearly walks straight into a lamppost because he’s staring at her instead of where he’s going.
Her phone stays stubbornly silent in her pocket.
It’s not like she’s waiting for you to text her. She’s just… aware that you have not. There is a difference.
The air is warm enough that Alexia shrugs her gilet open as she walks, sunlight settling delightfully against the back of her neck.
Usually, on mornings like this, you’d somehow end up appearing beside her halfway through.
Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes because one of you would call saying things like ‘What are you up to?’ before simply meeting up wherever either happened to be.
You liked walking with her. Said the city felt different with Alexia by your side.
She’d rolled her eyes at that, even though she’d liked hearing it more than she should have.
Her chest tightens strangely at the thought now. Still nothing.
Hm.
The café near the little square is busy in the comfortable way all Barcelona cafés seem to be busy. Not loud or chaotic, just full, hearty.
Alexia pushes the door open with one hand, Boni trotting impatiently ahead of her like she owns the place. Which, considering the reaction from the staff, she may as well.
“Boni!”
The girl behind the counter abandons steaming milk mid-pour to lean over and fuss the tiny dog, who accepts the attention with the solemn dignity of royalty greeting her subjects.
“And Alexia,” The girl adds a second later, glancing up. “You too, I suppose.”
“How kind of you.”
The girl grins. “The usual?”
“Yes. And whipped cream for the cute, little rat.”
“Alexia!”
She steps back outside a few minutes later balancing a latte in one hand and a tiny paper cup of cream in the other.
The terrace is dappled with sunlight beneath broad beige umbrellas, warm air drifting lazily through the square. She chooses a small at the end, settling into the chair with a quiet exhale as Boni immediately hops onto the empty seat opposite her.
Spoiled.
Alexia slides the cream cup across the table anyway. “There.”
Boni plunges in face first, of course. Alexia shakes her head fondly before leaning back in her chair, fingers curling around the warm takeaway cup of her latte.
For the first time all morning, she properly relaxes. Even if there is still a faint restlessness beneath her ribs she can’t quite shake. But her shoulders do loosen slightly as she watches the square around her.
A cyclist weaves lazily between pedestrians. Two elderly men argue passionately over cards at a nearby table, giving Beatriz competitiveness at cards a run for their money. Alexia should give them her number.
Barcelona in late morning always feels softer. Sun-warmed and sleepy around the edges.
Her phone stays in her pocket for almost six entire minutes. A personal best.
Though, habit eventually wins.
She unlocks it one-handed beneath the table, thumb automatically opening instagram without much thought. Mostly background noise more than anything else. Something to occupy the part of her brain still irritatingly aware of your silence.
A few stories flick by. She barely registers any of them, eyes drifting absently across the screen as she drinks her coffee.
Then your close friends story appears. She pauses automatically.
A photo. Patri stands grinning at the camera somewhere bright and expensive-looking, Kika beside her mid-laugh with one arm slung around your shoulders while you smile between them.
There you are. Alive.
Interesting.
Her eyes narrow slightly.
So you do still know how to use your phone.
She almost taps past the story before something else catches her attention.
Flowers. White ones. Large arrangements spilling over tables in the background. People dressed formally behind you. A large manor house, decorated with elegant white ribbons and such.
Her thumb stills, but the next story loads automatically. And Alexia as a whole goes very, very still.
It’s you again. This time standing beside another woman.
Who is very clearly a bride. There’s no mistaking it.
She is very obviously wearing a wedding dress, elegant and fitted, all soft white fabric and delicate satin, bouquet tucked against her waist as she leans into your side laughing.
And you–
Alexia sits up straighter.
You;re dressed in light colours too. Cream maybe. Or white. Something bright enough that, under the sunlight, it blends almost seamlessly beside the wedding dress.
One arm wraps around the bride’s waist. The bride’s arm rests around your shoulders.
And the two of you are looking at each other. Not posing for the camera.
Looking.
Laughing properly. Heads tipped close together like there’s no one else around.
“...What?”
Alexia frowns harder at the screen.
No.
There had to be some explanation for this.
A family member. A friend. Or–
Her thumbs moves before she can finish the thought, tapping onto Kika’s story instead.
A video this time.
The camera shakes slightly with laughter as it pans across the gravel yard in front of the house, music playing in the background, people gathered waiting for photos with champagne glasses in their hand.
The camera lands on you and her stomach drops.
You are standing beside the bride again, close enough that your bodies brush from shoulder to hip. The woman says something that gets lost beneath the music and chatter around you.
You lean in automatically to hear her better.
Too close.
Your mouth brushes near her ear as you say something back.
The bride laughs immediately, head falling against your shoulder for a second before she nudges you lightly with her bouquet. You laugh too– soft and familiar enough that Alexia feels it somewhere beneath her ribs like physical damage.
Then your head tips towards her again, foreheads nearly touching.
Comfortable. Intimate. The kind of closeness built over time.
Alexia chokes violently on her coffee.
Latte goes down entirely the wrong way, hitting the back of her throat hard enough that she has to cough into her fist, eyes watering instantly as coffee splashes down the front of her white shirt and on her jeans.
Boni startles so hard she nearly falls of the chair. The tiny dog stares up at Alexia with huge black eyes, whipped cream still smeared around her mouth.
Alexia coughs again. A shadow appears beside the table.
Without a word, one of the café workers drops a thick stack of napkins beside her drink with the exhausted expression of somebody who has seen enough public romantic crises to identify one on sight.
There’s mild disgust there, but mostly exasperation.
Alexia looks up briefly, mortified. “...gracias.”
The worker glances once at the phone still clutched in her hand, then at the coffee all down her shirt. He sighs like it confirms something deeply unfortunate about humanity and walks off.
The midfielder grabs a handful of napkins, dabbing uselessly at the spreading stains across her abdomen and dotted over her thighs.
Her heart is beating far too fast. The video has looped by the time she looks down again.
You laughing. The bride touching your arm. Your heads leaning together.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Her mouth goes dry. A horrible heavy feeling settles low in her stomach all at once, sick and dizzying.
No texts, no calls, no mention of any of this.
Wedding. Bride. White outfit.
The thought crashes into place so suddenly it makes her feel stupid for not seeing it right away.
“Oh my God.”
Boni barks once; Alexia barely hears her.
She recognises the venue. Not from being there, just from research.
From nights months ago spent half-curled on her sofa with her notes app open while you slept against her shoulder, mindlessly saving things she liked without really thinking about why.
Venues and flowers and names and–
Ridiculous things. Tiny, impossible domestic fantasies she never let herself linger on for too long afterwards.
And this place? This exact manor house with its ivy-covered brick walls and enormous garden terrace?
It is sitting somewhere inside a locked note on her phone.
She feels abruptly nauseous.
“No.” She mutters.
Stares at the screen one last time. Then she stands so quickly the metal chair scrapes harshly against the pavement, scaring the life out of Boni.
“Ay, lo siento– come here.”
Alexia scoops the tiny dog into her arms before she’s even finished her cream, grabbing the lead and her phone all at once in a frantic movement. The abandoned latte rocks dangerously on the wobbling table behind her.
Her pulse is hammering now. Because surely you would have told her if you were getting married.
Wouldn’t you?
Boni spends the entire walk home yapping grumpily from Alexia’s arms, unaware that her temporary dog walker is currently experiencing what can only medically be described as a complete psychological collapse.
Her brain is moving too fast.
Wedding. Bride.
How long had this been happening? How had she missed it? Had everybody known except her? Was that why Patri had been weirdly smug lately? Was that why Kika kept making those cryptic comments about her needing to ‘say things before it’s too late’?
“Oh God!”
The tiny dog wiggles as Alexia unlocks Beatriz’s gate with fumbling hands.
The elderly woman opens the door before she can even knock. “Oh! Back already?”
“Yes.” Alexia thrusts the dog gently but urgently into her arms. “Emergency.”
Beatriz gasps. “What kind of emergency?”
Alexia opens her mouth. Closes it again.
Braces for a lecture.
“Romantic.”
Beatriz lets out the most dramatic gasp the brunette has ever heard.
“I knew it!”
“I have to go, sorry!”
“Alexia Putellas Segura!” Beatriz calls after her as she’s already halfway down the path. “If you ruin things with that lovely girl, I will haunt you!”
“I know!”
Then she’s gone.
She jumps into her car with the grace of a bull in a fine china shop.
And the drive feels endless.
Every single red light in Barcelona appears specifically engineered to destroy her. Until she finally gets out of the city, just for the traffic on the highway to be dreadful. Though it only teases her, as she gets to a mile away from her junction and it all clears up like nothing ever happened.
She grips the steering wheel hard enough that her knuckles ache, coffee-stained shirt sticking uncomfortably against her skin while her thoughts spiral further and further into insanity.
The more she thinks about it, the worse it gets.
You’d said it was a family thing today.
A family thing.
Not ‘I’m attending a wedding’.
Not ‘I'm in a wedding’.
And certainly not ‘by the way, I might be the person getting married’.
Her stomach twists violently.
“No,” She says out loud to the empty car. “No, no, no.”
The worst part is that she can suddenly see it. All of it. The silence and the white outfit and the venue and the way you looked at the bride.
Her brain stitches it together with horrifying efficiency until it becomes something terrible and impossible to ignore.
Maybe you hadn’t told her because you thought whatever existed between the two of you wasn’t serious enough to require it.
Maybe to you, this had all just been–
No.
Her jaw tightens sharply.
No, because you looked at her like it was her you pictured your life with.
Another vicious twist to her stomach; how can she assume that when you hadn’t even labelled whatever was between you?
She takes the turn towards the countryside roads too fast.
The manor house appears eventually through rows of tall trees, all pale stone walls and sprawling gardens behind wrought iron gates.
Alexia recognises it instantly– it looks exactly like the photos. Which somehow makes everything worse.
“Madre de Dios.” She utters in awe.
Cars line the gravel entrance in neat elegant rows.
Alexia’s does not.
She parks at an angle so catastrophic it would probably get her arrested if she wasn’t on private land, barely remembering to kill the engine before shoving the door open and climbing out.
The late afternoon air hits her immediately, warm and carrying the distant sound of music and conversation drifting from somewhere deeper into the grounds.
Her heart is pounding now, hard enough to hurt.
The gravel rocks crunch violently beneath her trainers as she rounds the front gardens.
Then she sees you. Standing outside near the tall entrance doors with Patri and Kika.
You’re laughing at something Patri is saying, sunlight catching against the pale fabric of your outfit while guests drift around behind you with flutes of champagne.
You look beautiful.
The thought lands with devastating force.
She slows for half a second, enough for panic to properly catch up with her.
Because this is real. It’s happening. You’re here, dressed like that. And if she doesn’t do something right now–
“No!”
The words tears out of her without inhibition.
Several heads turn immediately as she begins to run up the driveway.
You blink in confusion whilst Patri’s face goes blank and Kika lowers her drink.
“Please!” She calls desperately.
She’s still moving toward you across the long gravel driveway, every step slipping slightly against the loose stones beneath her trainers so that it feels absurdly cinematic, like she’s running through wet cement, in slow motion.
A few nearby guests stop talking altogether now. A few remove their sunglasses.
You stare at her.
“Alexia?”
She shakes her head immediately, breathless from the run and the panic and the sheer catastrophic momentum of this entire situation.
“No. No, please don’t do it!”
Patri looks genuinely alarmed now, your first time seeing that expression on her face in all the years of your friendship.
“...do what?”
Alexia finally reaches the last stretch of gravel before the tiled path leading to the door, chest heaving as she looks directly at you.
At your pale outfit, the flowers, the wedding guests.
Then at the woman standing just inside the doorway in a wedding gown.
Her face crumples.
“Don’t marry her.”
Silence crashes down around the front yard.
Well, not complete silence, because further inside the house music is still playing and guests are murmuring about the soap opera playing out before them, but enough that she can suddenly hear her own breathing.
Every single person within a twenty metre radius is staring at her.
A waiter has frozen mid-step with a tray of champagne. One man lowers the canapé he’d just been about to eat with a grumble at the request of his wife. Even the children had stopped their games to watch.
You blink at Alexia. Look at Patri and Kika. Then back to Alexia again.
“What on earth are you saying?”
Her dark hair is windswept and her shirt is still stained with coffee in a way that would horrify her under any other circumstances.
Right now though she barely notices because you still haven’t denied it.
“Please,” She says again, softer this time. Undeniably desperate. “Please don’t marry her.”
The bride standing in the doorway looks utterly baffled.
“Me?”
Alexia finally looks at her for the first time, properly.
Then at you.
And suddenly, something changes.
Tiny details begin slotting into place, her panic-riddled brain finally slowing down enough to process everything correctly.
Your outfit– not white. Cream. A soft, prosecco-coloured satin thing.
Formal, yes. Beautiful, devastatingly so, yes. But not bridal.
Your hands– no ring.
Bouquet– not bridal.
And the woman in the doorway, Alexia’s eyes flick past her. Straight through the open doors of the manor house where a huge decorative sign sits in the hallway. Beside it, the actual groom. Who is incredibly concerned.
She stops breathing for a second.
Oh no.
Her face drains instantly of what little colour remained in it.
Next to you, Patri’s face changes in real time as understanding dawns across her face.
“Tía,” she says slowly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Kika’s mouth falls open.
“Are you okay, Capi?” She asks, visibly fighting laughter. “Do you need an intervention?”
Alexia doesn’t know what to say. You stare at her with an expression somewhere between confusion and disbelief.
“You thought I was getting married?”
The sentence hangs there for exactly four seconds.
Patri looks at Kika, Kika looks at Patri.
Both of them turn toward Alexia’s stricken face and…
…immediately burst into laughter.
Loud laughter. The kind that takes people out at the knees.
Patri doubles over so fast she nearly spills champagne down her chest, one hand clutching Kika’s arm as she wheezes helplessly. Kika outright cackles.
“No– no, wait–” She gasps between laughs. “She thought– she seriously thought–”
“You drove here?” Patri chokes out. “You came all this way?”
Alexia remains frozen in place, still breathing too hard, humiliation beginning to crawl through her with devastating speed.
“Oh my god!” Kika cries. “You were trying to stop the wedding!”
“I was not–”
“You literally shouted ‘don’t marry her!’”
“I panicked!”
It only made them laugh harder. Several nearby guests join in with them too.
Meanwhile you are still staring at Alexia.
Then, your face begins to change too. Confusion melts first, then the disbelief.
Something dangerously fond takes center stage instead.
“You thought I was getting married.” You say whilst biting back a smile.
Alexia wanted the gravel to open up beneath her feet and consume her whole. Colour floods her face so quickly it reaches the tips of her ears.
It is deeply unfortunate that she cannot sprint away now without making this even worse.
“You idiot,” Patri laughs. “Oh my god, this is the best day of my life.”
Alexia glares at her, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact she still looks mildly panicked and has coffee down the front of her shirt.
You laugh too, then. Not like Patri and Kika are laughing, not cruelly. Just soft amusement spilling out in little bursts as you gaze at her.
And that is somehow worse. She would almost prefer being publicly executed.
“Alexia,” Kika says, wiping beneath one eye dramatically. “You came here to stop a wedding.”
“It was a miscommunication.” She feebly tries to defend herself.
It only sends Patri into another fit of laughter. “Wait until the team hears this. Wait until Vicky hears this.”
“No.”
“Oh, absolutely yes.”
“No, Patri–”
“You thought she had a secret fiancée!”
Alexia drags a hand down her face. Because when they say it out loud like that?
Dear god.
You finally step forward then, now smiling to yourself as you gently shove Patri backwards by the shoulder.
“Enough,” You tell her through your own stifled laughter. “Leave her alone.”
“She interrupted a wedding!”
“She interrupted my cousin’s wedding.” You correct her.
“Exactly!”
You ignore her, eyes returning to Alexia instead, who is impossibly more red at the reveal of whose wedding it was.
The teasing softness in your eyes makes something twist in her chest.
“What made you think I was getting married?” You ask, trying to keep your laughter out of it but ultimately failing.
Alexia looks away. The gravel shifts beneath her shoes as she shuffles awkwardly against it, suddenly deeply interested in the ground.
“I saw things on Instagram.” She mutters defensively. “You looked like a bride.”
“A bride?”
“You are wearing white!” She argues, shoulders up to her ears in a shrug.
You laugh gently, “I’m wearing cream, Ale.”
“It looked white in the photo.” She grumbled as you stepped closer. “And you were wrapped around a woman in a wedding dress.”
“She is my cousin!”
“How was I supposed to know that?!”
You stare at her again. Then laugh, quieter this time, shoulders shaking.
“Alexia,” You say, grinning. “I’m the maid of honour.”
Her eyes flick over your outfit again now that her brain is functioning at least marginally better.
Definitely cream. Definitely no ring.
Zero actual signs that you were the one getting married.
“...oh.”
“Yes, oh.” You tease, taking another step toward her.
“You’re sure?”
You gape at her.
“Yes!” You say incredulously. “I’m pretty fucking sure I’m not getting married!”
Kika makes a strangle noise beside Patri, leaning half her weight on her as she laughs silently.
“I just thought–”
“What exactly did you think?” Patri interrupts immediately, delighted. “That she forgot to mention a wife?”
“You said it was a family thing!” Alexia shoots back at you.
“It is a family thing!”
“Well… well, you failed to specify there would be brides!”
You roll your eyes as you come to stand before her. “There was only one bride, and she is my cousin, as I said.”
Patri has tears streaming without a care in the world for her makeup. A guest openly snorts into his champagne.
You press your lips together hard as you tilt your head at her, trying and failing not to laugh yourself as Alexia continues spiralling.
Well, not spiralling really, more attempting to dig her way out of the ever-growing hole of embarrassment she was in.
“You were looking at her like–”
“She was telling me her fake eyelashes were falling off.”
“–and you leaned your heads together.”
“It was loud!”
“You looked happy!”
You pause at that. The air shifts slightly as your expression softens.
“...well,” You say carefully. “I am happy.”
Alexia’s face turns red again.
Kika looks between the two of you, laughter beginning to fade into something more suspicious.
“Wait…”
Patri straightens too.
Alexia visibly realises, a second too late, that she may have revealed too much already.
You fold your arms. A smile pulls slowly at your mouth.
“Alexia,” You say softly. “Were you jealous?”
“No.” She responds immediately.
“You drove an hour on your day off to stop me from marrying someone.” You drawl with a smirk.
“There was traffic on the way here, it took a bit longer than it should’ve.”
“You were upset.” You tease, taking another step closer, the gap too small for the just teammates facade you’d been holding previously.
Alexia looks for something to say but comes up empty.
“You thought I was with someone else,” You continue, one hand rising to play with her coffee-free collar. You look up from her shirt to meet her eyes, clearly trying not to smile too much. “And you lost your mind.”
She exhales sharply through her nose, gaze dropping away from you for a second toward the gravel again.
Then she mutters under her breath quietly, trying to speak just for you.
“Of course I did.”
Judging by the noise Patri makes, she was not quiet enough.
Alexia manages to ignore her and looks back up at you. Her eyes bore into yours as she speaks.
“I don’t want you with anyone else.”
For once, nobody interrupts. Even Kika goes quiet.
You gaze at Alexia, something gentler flickering across your face beneath all the amusement.
“Ale…”
“What?” she grumbles instantly, defensive again now that the sentence exists outside her head. “You asked.”
“We’ve never even–”
You stop yourself, smile growing ever so slightly.
“We’ve never actually talked about what this is,” You land on instead. “And you’re already showing up to stop me marrying people?”
Alexia’s blush deepens to the point it looks painful.
“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds dramatic.”
“It was dramatic.” Kika comments. “You ran up the driveway like somebody in a telenovela.”
You laugh again, arms folding loosely across your chest as you look at her.
“So what exactly was the plan here, hm?” You question. “You were going to stop the wedding, and then what?”
Alexia stares blankly as you wait for her answer.
Admittedly, she had not thought that far ahead. Patri clocks it.
“She didn’t even have a speech prepared!” She exclaims, sounding far too pleased.
“I was panicking!” Alexia snaps at her.
You’re still looking at her though. Still smiling.
“Ale,” You murmur. “You realise this is insane behaviour for someone who supposedly isn’t my girlfriend.”
Alexia glances between Patri and Kika, who are both openly staring back.
Kika looks seconds away from combusting and Patri seems as if she’s already got a storytime voicenote brewing for the groupchat.
A few months ago, hell, even a few weeks ago, that would’ve been enough to make Alexia retreat back into herself. Brush it off, laugh it away, pretend.
But standing there now, coffee stained and breathless and publicly humiliated after driving across Barcelona because she thought she’d lost you…
Something in her just gives up. Or maybe gives in.
The truth is already standing between you anyway, broad as daylight. And judging by the looks on Patri and Kika’s face, it is not exactly being received with horror.
The brunette exhales slowly. Then lifts her chin slightly.
“And so what if I want it to be us getting married here someday?”
Silence as everyone stares in shock again.
Neither Patri nor Kika speak for a full minute which for those two is honestly concerning.
Until they both shriek simultaneously–
“What?!”
Several nearby guests turn again, this time with rather disapproving looks on their faces.
Alexia seems as if she wants to launch herself directly into the Mediterranean and never resurface again.
Patri grabs Kika by both shoulders violently. “I knew it!”
“You said they were just sleeping together!”
“Clearly I was wrong!”
Kika turns to Alexia, and the captain gulps. “You planned a whole marriage before defining the relationship?”
“She has a venue!” Patri yells to back her up.
Alexia freezes. You narrow your eyes.
“You have a venue?”
“...no.”
“Alexia.”
“It’s not important.” She argues futilely, because you were not one to let things go.
“You have a venue.” You repeat, eyes crinkled with the smile that’d taken over your face.
She grumbles something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a Catalan curse, which was basically a yes.
Kika doubles over, nearly dragging Patri down with her.
A nearby bridesmaid appears beside you looking deeply concerned. “Do you want me to remove them?”
You glance at the two of them, who were now arguing loudly over which one deserves credit for predicting this situation first. Then back at the bridesmaid.
“Yes, please.” You say with a polite smile.
They let out cries of outrage and disappointment, but eventually allow themselves to be dragged away. Mercifully, they disappear into the manor house, and their voices fade.
The nearby guests return to their conversations too, intrigue gone now the public emotional crisis appears mostly resolved.
Quiet rests around the two of you. Private, somehow, despite the wedding still happening around you.
You turn back toward Alexia and immediately soften at the sight of her.
She still looks wrecked. Flustered, pink-cheeked, coffee-stained, hair a mess from running across half the property like an emotional tornado.
Beautiful. Ridiculous.
Yours, if you wanted to be brave enough to call her that.
“I think,” You start. “There are probably a few steps between whatever this is now and us getting married, don’t you?”
Alexia huffs through her nose.
That was another thing that would’ve sent her retreating back into embarrassment again. Another joke or deflection.
But now there’s no audience. Just you.
The afternoon sun catches gold against your cream outfit as the breeze stirs gently through the gardens around you. Alexia gazes at you.
And god. You really are beautiful. Not just now– always.
But especially like this, softened by sunlight and laughter, eyes still bright from amusement as you look back at her with that expression she’s become quietly addicted to over the past months.
“I know,” She says finally. “I know that.”
Alexia glances away briefly, jaw shifting slightly like she’s trying to organise thoughts that had not originally intended to leave her mouth today.
“I just…” She exhales. “I saw you there and everyone dressed up and you looked–”
“Bridal?” You offer unhelpfully with a grin.
Alexia glares at you.
“You looked like somebody else’s.” Your grin shifts into a small smile. “And it scared me.”
No dramatics now. No panic.
Alexia swallows once before continuing, voice quieter when she speaks again.
“Because I realised I never asked for any of this properly.”
You frown. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” She gestures vaguely between the two of you. “You just sort of became part of my life before I had the chance to decide what to call you.”
You stare at her as she keeps talking.
“You’re just there all the time now.” She frowns slightly, like this is deeply inconvenient for her. “In my house. In my routines. Alba asks about you before she asks about me. Beatriz has already decided that you’re the one for me.”
You laugh softly, but Alexia looks scared.
“She threatened to haunt me if I mess it up.”
You hum, pleased to have the elderly woman on your side when she didn’t take to people too easily. “Good.”
“And every time something happens, you are the person I want to tell first.” Alexia says it quieter now. “Even stupid things. Especially stupid things.”
Something in your eyes changes. Alexia notices it and begins to panic.
“I’m explaining this badly.”
“No,” You say quickly, smiling uncontrollably. “No, keep going.”
Her ears turn pink again and she looks away for a second, before murmuring:
“I just think maybe somewhere along the way, you became…” She hesitates. “…home, a little bit.”
Your breath audibly catches. Alexia gets flustered again.
“Not in a weird way!” She rushes out. “I mean– not that it would be weird if– you know what I mean.”
You laugh under your breath.
“Oh my god.” She groans, covering her face with her hands. “I sounded so much smoother in my head.”
“I would hope so.”
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“Hm, a little.” You offer with a glint in your eyes.
Alexia peeks at you through her fingers, and the look on your face nearly kills her on the spot.
You look… smitten. Slightly astonished by her words and perhaps even caught off guard with how much you adore her.
“What would you have done if I had been with someone else?” You wonder in a quiet, curious voice.
All the joking melts away at once into something awfully sincere.
“I think it would’ve broken my heart.”
The confession comes so simply that it nearly steals the air from your lungs.
Alexia looks startled by her own honesty afterwards, but she doesn’t take it back. Just stands there in wrinkled clothes and coffee stains and the aftermath of public embarrassment, gazing at you like she’s finally too exhausted to pretend any differently.
Your hand brushes her forearm, before sliding down to link your fingers with hers. “Ale.”
She shakes her head once. “I know this is an insane way to do it. And I know we should've talked about all of this like normal people before I interrupted somebody’s wedding.”
“My cousin’s wedding.”
“-but apparently I am very stupid when it comes to you.”
You stop for a second. Take in her honesty. And grin helplessly. “That much is clear.”
“And I don’t…” She trails off with a small shrug. “I don’t want this to stay undefined forever.”
Warmth slowly blooms out from your chest and across your body.
She’s the one that came all this way, made herself a laughing stock in front of at least forty people, and she has to say it?
You wait, very patiently.
She groans under her breath like this is cruel and unusual punishment.
Then, finally, with burning cheeks…
“I am saying that maybe, eventually, perhaps one day, hypothetically, I would quite like to marry you.”
You burst out laughing, even if your heart skips a concerning amount of beats as your stomach flutters like you’re a teenager again.
“You’re not supposed to laugh at that.” She complains, though watches you with a smile.
You compose yourself after a few moments, both hands coming up to cradle her face and tilting her head down slightly.
“I’m laughing at how ridiculous this all is,” You tell her. “And how ridiculously happy it’s making me.”
“Oh,” Alexia says, a small, shyer smile pulling at her lips. “Well… me too, then.”
She’s still looking at you like she’s waiting for the ground to correct itself. Like if she blinks too hard, you might disappear back into uncertainty and almosts.
Your hands stay on her face, her skin warm beneath your palms.
You let your thumbs brush lightly along her cheeks, slow and grounding, like you’re trying to convince her that everything that’d happened was indeed real. Even if there were some things she’ll omit in her memory of the day.
“Hyopthetically.” You murmur with a pleased grin.
She exhales a laugh, small and defeated, as her hands settle at your waist like she’s been doing it forever and just forgot to admit it out loud.
Her gaze shifts then, less panic, more certainty finally finding its footing. Her eyes flick down to your mouth for half a second, then back up again, asking permission without words.
You don’t answer with words either. You just lean in.
It’s soft at first, careful too. But Alexia melts into it soon after, one hand tightening at your waist, the other sliding up to the back of your neck as if she’s decided she’s not letting you go anywhere again, mistaken wedding be damned.
It deepens unhurriedly, no panic left to rush it. The faint, sweet taste of her sweetened latte mixes with the champagne on your tongue, and Alexia exhales a breath into you like she’d been holding it for months.
When you finally pull back, it’s only by a fraction. Her forehead rests against yours. And you look, unmistakably, like hers in a way she hasn’t had words for until now.
“I would’ve loved to have come along with you to this, you know.” She states a short while later. You lean back in slight confusion.
“As my plus one?” She nods like it’s obvious. “Nobody knew about us though.”
She lets out a noise of acknowledgement, though doesn’t look like she even remotely cares about that. So you continue.
“What was I supposed to say?” You ask. “‘Hi, this is Alexia by the way, we cuddle during movies, sleep together, and accidentally act married sometimes but haven’t actually discussed it yet’?”
Alexia mutters something in Catalan beneath her breath that sounds offended at how you worded it. Though she couldn’t argue, because you were right. There was no way prior to this exact moment where whatever was between you could be trimmed down to a neat, proper explanation.
She didn’t speak for a while, and neither did you.
You’d missed her the night before and had been too busy amidst all the wedding prep to get a chance to text her. So, her showing up was a nice surprise. A near perfect surprise, if she hadn't caused so much commotion.
Her mind seems to go to the same place, for she groans suddenly.
“What?” You blink up at her.
She buries her face in your neck. “Patri and Kika saw all that.”
Your grin returns immediately, unable to resist hugging her tighter against you.
“And they absolutely loved it. They’ll probably talk about it for the rest of their lives.”
“Que dios me ayude.” She grumbles into your shoulder, then leans back. Smiles as you laugh.
Thinks she would probably interrupt a hundred weddings if it meant hearing that sound.
Pinches the bridge of her nose nevertheless, already exhausted by the teasing torture awaiting her in the future.
“Why,” She mutters dramatically. “Did I have to fall for someone whose best friends are the two most annoying people on earth?”
You gasp in mock offence, which makes her roll her eyes. “You love them.”
“I tolerate them. For you.”
You can’t help your smile at that. She adored them anyway before, but even more now that they’re her people for the person she loves.
“You know,” You start, and Alexia braces herself. “There is absolutely no way the team doesn’t find out after this.”
Alexia stills for a second.
Once upon a time, that had been the fear, hadn’t it?
Not shame– never shame.
You were teammates first, friends first. Part of something delicate and tightly woven together inside that dressing room, the atmosphere that was the foundation for all the success. Neither of you had wanted to risk making things awkward or complicated.
Alexia looks past you absently toward the manor doors where Patri’s laugh echoes loudly from somewhere inside.
Then she thinks about the look on her and Kika’s faces.
Shock first, then surprise, then delight.
No judgement, no discomfort. Only happiness.
Apparently everyone had seen this coming long before either of you did.
The thought took a while to arrive, but it finds a place to land quickly.
She shrugs one shoulder.
You frown at her slightly. “That’s it?”
She gazes at you. At your flushed cheeks from laughing, the crinkles beside your eyes. The way you’re standing close to her now, in her arms, without even thinking about it.
Alexia smiles softly. “You’re my girlfriend now, no?”
The word is new enough to make her heart swell as it crosses her mind.
Your face changed instantly at the word, shy but bright around the edges. You nod once.
“Yeah,” You agree quietly. “I am.”
She reaches up asbentmindedly, brushing a strand of hair back behind your ear.
“I think if they laugh, it will only be because we apparently made this difficult for absolutely no reason.”
You huff a quiet laugh. “Probably.”
“And if they are happy for us…” She shrugs slightly again. “Then I don’t care anymore.”
Your throat tightens ever so slightly at her honesty.
Because this is Alexia. Careful Alexia, private Alexia.
Alexia who holds her heart so closely protected most of the time.
And she is standing here in front of a wedding full of strangers looking at you like she’s finally decided being loved openly by you matters more than being afraid of it. Stained shirt, and all.
You’re about to kiss her again when a shout suddenly erupts from the door.
“Come on, stop making out and party with us!” Patri yells.
“We deserve it after the show you put on!” Kika adds unhelpfully.
Alexia sighs so deeply it sounds spiritual. Straight from the soul.
You giggle at her reaction and it instantly sends her lips curling upwards again.
“Come on then, you heard them.” You say warmly, offering her hand as you step back. “Let’s go meet my family.”
Alexia’s face rapidly turns to one of horror.
“In this?!” She gestures at herself.
You rake your eyes deliberately over her once and decide you still think you’ve won a lottery no one else could ever win. Even with the current wild state of her.
You smile, slow and meaningful. “Exactly like that.”
“They’ll think I’m insane!”
You give her a pitiful look. “I think they probably already do, Ale.”
She stops her arguing. At the reminder of the events that’d led to this point, and the many people that had witnessed it… yeah, there’s no point trying to defend herself.
She exhales once. Glances towards the door where the party awaits.
“I’m going to need champagne for this.”
You raise your eyebrows at her. “It’s mid-season.”
“Yes.”
“You never drink during the season.”
“Please don’t be offended by this,” She starts with a fearful expression. “There is absolutely no way I survive meeting your family after this without alcohol.”
You laugh brightly, unbridledly, and wrap your hand around her upper arm before beginning to guide her towards the door.
“Well, good news for you, girlfriend,” You say grinning up at her. “My cousin has an open bar!”
—
lol this is so fucking stupid but kinda love it. hope u do too :)
you have a rather unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome, encounter at the gym. (5k)
Going to the gym on vacation was, honestly, one of your favourite things to do. Because what better time, and environment, to go than on a small island in the Mediterranean, with the aircon at a perfect temperature and views of the beach out the window?
And since it was 8am, it meant there was no one else from the resort in there either. Apart from one woman who hadn’t done much for a while apart from pose in the mirror.
Regardless of her self-absorbed self, it was so peaceful. It helped clear your mind perfectly.
You were about halfway through your workout for the day, having planned it loosely around what equipment the gym had and what you felt like doing. So far, it’d gone off without a hitch.
Your music was hitting the spot, the exact extra bit of motivation you needed. You were getting through your sets with ease. You felt strong, your reps were clean . It couldn’t have been going better.
…until you reached that part you always found a little awkward.
You needed a spot for bench press.
Sometimes, when you found it so awkward, you skipped the exercise altogether. Because not asking someone to spot you and then having a hugely embarrassing accident by trapping yourself under the bar was so much more awkward than asking for a spot.
But today, however, you were feeling good. You wanted to get through your routine and have the satisfaction of doing so settle into your bones for the rest of the day.
And, well… there was someone you could ask on this occasion. Though you weren’t sure if she was capable of tearing her eyes away from her own reflection for more than five seconds.
She had actually done some exercises earlier; she did barbell squats, and judging by the plates she had on the bar, hell she’d be more than capable of helping you out with your bench press weight. And if there was one thing more embarrassing than asking for a spot, it was getting caught and interrupted whilst taking photos of yourself like she was, thinking there was no one around.
But she must’ve known you were there, right? Surely she had to have seen you, it’s not like the gym was big or–
“¿Se te ha perdido algo?”
You startled at the voice. Blinked back into reality out of your thoughts and realised… you’d been staring very, very obviously at the in-love-with-herself fellow gym goer.
“¿Estoy muy interesante hoy o qué?”
You didn’t mean to roll your eyes but who could blame you.
The brunette woman, clad in a red Nike two-piece of a sports bra and a rather small pair of shorts, was still laying on her side as she watched you with the slightest of smirks. Her head was held up by a hand under her chin and her other arm rested along the curve of her waist into her hip.
Who lays like that in a public gym?!
“I was looking for a spot but it looks like you’re too busy admiring yourself, so, no bother.” You waved her off.
You went to turn around and leave her be, but the high-pitched, amused laugh she let out after your reply stopped you. As did the crooked, lazy grin she gave.
“Well, there is a lot to admire, no?” She shrugged one shoulder with an air of faux innocence.
Something about her made you clench your jaw. Provoked the urge to rise to her smugness and demonstrate exactly how unbothered you were by it.
“I suppose if you stare long enough, anything starts to look impressive.” You crossed your arms over your chest and let out an unnecessarily frustrated, quiet breath.
This walking Nike advert model simply chuckled. She let the sound of her amusement linger in the air for a moment as she subtly, not so subtly, raked her eyes over you at least twice.
“Mm. But you’re still looking.” She murmured, voice velvet-smooth and entirely too pleased with herself.
To be fair, she had every right to be. Because shit, she had caught you out. You were indeed looking at her still. Rather indulgently, too.
She was inviting it, though. So it was her fault that you were staring.
“Just because you’re hot doesn’t mean you have to get cocky.” You retorted without an ounce of hesitation. It wasn’t like she didn’t know it.
But you regretted it when her grin grew unbearably smug and an eyebrow raised at you. It led to you unfolding your arms and linking your hands together behind your back, hoping she wouldn’t notice the goosebumps on your skin.
Then she was standing, with an elegance nobody should naturally possess. Her hands gravitated to her hips and she began to take slow, measured steps over to you. Her eyes were slightly wide, not unsettlingly so, if anything the opposite. They were quietly daring, openly confident. You found yourself unable to look away as she continued to move, breath becoming strangely shallow.
Until she was standing no less than a metre away. The scent of her chosen fragrance distracted you from the grasp of her gaze and had you biting down a scoff. She’d put perfume on before coming to the gym, hints of vanilla and cardamom drifting from her skin to your senses.
Her head tilted down a little at you, even though she had almost no height over you. “I’m not sure being sarcastic earns you favours.”
You refused to back down, or give in; whatever she could give, you could do better. And if your chin jutted upwards a menial amount, she didn’t seem to notice.
“Does calling you hot not get favours?”
Her grin held, and yet something inside it shifted. Subtle enough to slip past your notice, until the feeling of it reached you first. By the time you realised what had changed, it was already a smirk. Wry, deliberate. Knowing.
“Depends what kind of favours.” She drawled.
You blushed.
She spotted it before you had even registered it happening. The responding huff of amusement she offered only made it worse.
You pushed your tongue into your cheek, and your gaze flicked from feature to feature on her face. Her eyes didn’t move from where they bore into your own.
“I already said. I need a spot for bench press.” You reiterated. It added a glint to the hazel of her irises, almost like she was proud of your determination to remain composed in the midst of her attempt to fluster you.
You swallowed down a sudden surge of something decidedly unhelpful.
“I don’t think I heard any manners there.” You didn’t see her eyes, or her hair, her outfit, the golden sands through the window or the ceiling fans overhead.
All you saw was the curve of her lips. The movement of her tongue against her teeth as she spoke.
The remark slid under your skin, precise as a needle, leaving heat blooming in its wake. You continued to stare at her like she’d just bent the law of physics in front of you. Which, frankly, she might have, because there was no reasonable explanation for why your pulse pounded against the thin skin of your neck. You refused to acknowledge the possibility that it had anything to do with her mouth.
You weren’t entirely convinced three sets of bench press was worth entertaining her smug little power play. Then again, walking away now would feel suspiciously like surrender. And you had never been especially fond of losing.
Sometimes, getting the better of someone like her was giving in to what they wanted, right?
Right.
“I need a spot for bench press…” You said lowly, before you trailed off. It invigorated you that she was so clearly hanging onto your every word. “...please.”
Her lips tightened into something satisfied. Not pointed inward this time. You had the distinct, irritating sense she’d known you’d say it.
“There you go. That’s all you had to say, guapa.” She replied. Her eyes softened a fraction, and that somehow made the effect of them worse. “Go and get set up. I’ll be there in a second.”
With that, she turned and walked away. She headed back to where she’d previously been sprawled on the floor, far too sultrily than should be allowed in a public setting.
You made your way over, finally, to the bench. Racked your weight and watched out of the corner of your eye as she grabbed her phone and water bottle unhurriedly, like she had all the time in the world and knew it. It was almost impressive, her commitment to the bit.
Two can play at her game.
“Sneaking in some more pictures?”
But she started it, and she wasn’t going to end it.
“No, I got plenty. I can show you if you want.” She quipped without a beat or sparing a glance.
You rolled your eyes but the expression betrayed you by softening at the edges, a trace of humour slipping in. “I’ve seen more than enough.”
She noticed. Of course she noticed. Something in her posture eased in a quieter portrayal of her satisfaction. Gentler. Almost made you forget she got you to beg for her help.
You took a sip from your own drink as she walked over. You couldn’t help but track her movements over the top of the bottle; the slightest sheen of sweat on her chest, the few tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead, how her shorts had bunched up to expose more skin than necessary.
She stopped in front of you instead of behind the bar. Outstretched a hand, offered palm-in, as she looked down at you with a sort of… unreadable expression. If you knew any better you might have said it was hopeful.
You blinked up at her, completely caught off guard by the sudden normalcy of it. Then took her hand and met her deft grip. Her palm was rough and somehow soft at the same time. Worn down but well cared for.
“I’m Alexia.” She said, tone far away from its smugness. You doubted it was permanent. “It’s nice to meet you here.”
You told her your name. A pleased, proper smile bloomed for the first time on her face as a result. The sight of it settled somewhere inconvenient. So you cleared your throat and shifted your shoulders again, eyes flicking anywhere but her face as you shuffled back slightly on the bench.
Thankfully, she also chose that moment to step behind the rack instead of staying planted in front of you, which made it marginally easier to breathe.
You laid back and adjusted yourself on the bench, feet planted firmly to the ground and fingers finding their place along the knurling with familiarity.
“So,” You said, a touch too casual to be convincing, attention fixed on the bar. “Are you on vacation, or do you actually work here as, I don’t know, some kind of marketing scheme? What with your gym selfies? I noticed your accent.”
An audible huff of amusement sounded from above you.
“No, no. I’m on vacation.” She said, warmth threading naturally as she answered you. “I live in Spain.”
You hummed, like that was merely interesting and not something you’d immediately filed away.
Your grip shifted a centimeter wider, before you took a measured breath in. You lifted the bar off the rack, lowered it. Breathed out. Lifted it again. And again. The first reps went up clean and steady, your breathing somehow controlled despite the awareness of her standing over you, watching you.
By the last rep your arm trembled just a bit as the burn crept in, until your arms pressed upwards, your elbows locked, jaw set, and guided the bar back onto the rack.
You sat up and reached for the bottle. Behind you, metal gave the faintest, traitorous slide.
“Is this your PB?” Alexia asked.
You nodded, swallowing a mouthful of water.
“Mm.”
It wasn’t agreement. It was assessment.
You didn’t see her hands move. Didn’t see her fingers test the plates before nudging another onto each side. Not too much added at once, but enough to make a difference. And when you lay back again and reset your shoulders, she was already still, palms resting lightly near the bar like she’d never touched it.
Just as your hands found their spot, you looked up. You wished you hadn’t immediately.
From below, she was all angles and shadows and focus, her face framed by the golden morning light like she’d deliberately staged it, placing the sun at that exact point in the sky at this exact time. The proximity and position did something strange to your bloodstream, heat rising fast across your cheeks, and you cleared your throat as if oxygen had suddenly become optional. Hopefully she’d chalk it up to exertion. Or just not notice at all.
You unracked the bar again.
It dipped lower than expected. Your brow furrowed.
The weight pressed heavier into your palms, different enough that your muscles clocked it before your mind did. You pushed anyway. Once. Twice. A third time that slowed halfway up. Your mouth parted, ready to say something–
“You can do it.” She said softly. “Come on. I’ve got you.”
It was the ‘I’ve got you’ that did it. Something in her tone sent a shiver down your spine. You focused on the bar, on the burn, on literally anything but the fluttery feeling low in your stomach at the sound of it.
You pushed. The rep went up.
As did the one that followed. And the next.
By the last one, your arms shook in earnest, breath escaping through your teeth, chest tight with effort. The bar hovered a second too long before her hands ghosted underneath, guiding it safely back into place as you finished.
You sat up slowly, eyes narrowing at the plates, and then at her.
“You added more weight.”
She didn’t smirk mischievously or annoyingly; she smiled. That same glint in her eyes from earlier returned, a little stronger this time.
“I did.” She admitted. “And look, you lifted it. New PB.”
You let out a disbelieving laugh, shaking your head as you reached for your bottle again. “What are you, a personal trainer or something?”
“No. Footballer.”
Worse.
“An athlete. No wonder you’re so unbearable.”
Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug that didn’t even attempt innocence.
You took a drink, still smiling despite yourself. “I don’t come to the gym to build more muscle or anything. I like maintaining where I’m at now.”
Her gaze moved over you once you finished speaking. Not fast, or subtle, or apologetic. Thoughtful in a way someone might assess a sculpture they admired.
But it wasn’t detached admiration. It was attentive. Exacting. Her eyes traced with the kind of care hands would use if they were allowed. There was calculation in it, yes, but softened by something delicate, something that made it feel less like you were being looked at and more like you were being studied.
“Hm.” She uttered. “Good.”
You scoffed, but it wasn’t bitter. You ducked your head at the same time so that your cheeks didn’t give away the reason behind your speechlessness. “You really are unbelievable.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, guapa.” The brunette preened, before tapping the bar. “Final set now. Come on.”
You groaned under your breath but got into position anyway. When you lifted the bar, the increased weight combined with the fatigue in your arms left you unsure you could get through just four reps.
But then you stole a glance up at her and saw the belief on her face, whether she knew it was so clearly on display or not, and decided there was no way you weren’t doing this last set.
You brought the bar down, and pressed it up again.
“That’s it.” She murmured as you did the next rep. “Easy. Sí. Just like that.”
You weren’t sure why the way she flipped from teasing to proud encouragement motivated you so much. You only knew you suddenly wanted to give her something to be proud of.
You forced the bar through the last few reps with strained exhales and trembling arms. The metal rose inch by stubborn inch on the final one, not quite getting high enough to rack it. You panicked for a split second, but Alexia stepped in at the perfect moment.
“There you go.” Her voice carried that low note again, approval threaded cleanly through it. “Perfect. I knew you had that.”
You sat up, breathing uneven but intact, and wiped the back of your wrist across your forehead. Her praise rooted itself in the back of your mind.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself.” You muttered, though the corner of your mouth gave you away. “You’d think you were the one lifting it.”
“All you, guapa.” She hummed, before ushering you up off the bench. “My turn now. Spot me.”
“Didn’t hear any manners in that.” You grumbled under your breath, though she took no notice.
You stood where she’d been seconds prior, expecting her to just sit on the bench and go. Instead, she added one plate to each side. Then another. And another.
“You–” Your eyebrows raised, before looking at her. “Alexia, I don’t know if I can l–”
She didn’t answer. Just laid back, settling into position within a second, hands finding the bar like it belonged to her. The lift-off was clean. Controlled. Effortless in a way that nearly offended you.
One rep. You blinked. Then she’d done eight.
You’d stood there, ready, technically spotting, but she didn’t so much as wobble. Not a shake in her arms or a hitch in her breath. Each one had been smooth, like gravity had ceased to exist for thirty seconds.
By the time she set it back down, you realised how… intensely you were staring.
You caught yourself and folded your arms. “Right. So you didn’t need me at all then. You just wanted to show off.”
She sat up easily, and you swore you didn’t watch the muscles in her stomach tense deliciously as she did so, before she turned her head to look at you with a grin that carried zero denial and even less shame.
“I’m an athlete.” She said lightly. “It’s in my nature.”
Then she stood up from the bench, rolling one shoulder as if to loosen muscles that very clearly did not need loosening, and you realised that wasn’t even part of her workout for the morning. Like it had merely been a warm-up stretch instead of an attack on your ego.
Un-fucking-believable. Right down to her core. Her very impressive core, apparently.
“You’re not done showing off, are you?” You said flatly.
Her glance over her shoulder was immediate, bright with interest. “You say that like you’re surprised.”
“I say that,” You replied, trailing after her, “Like I’m starting to think this entire ‘workout’ is just an elaborate performance.”
She stopped beside the hip-thrust station.
You should have known. You really should have known.
But she didn’t start adding plates or fixing pads to the bar yet. No. She stood, and she stared at you. One of her thumbs ran along the pads of her fingertips as she did so, a subconscious thing as she chose her next poison.
“Nobody is making you stay, guapa.” She said languidly. “I won’t be offended if you surrender early.”
You gulped. Stayed rooted to the spot.
After a few moments, one corner of her mouth curled upward. Bold. Presumptuous– because she’d known you weren’t going to leave. And she was glad; she didn’t want you to.
She started sliding plate after plate onto the bar with efficiency after that, as you watched on in mounting disbelief. The bar bent slightly under the load.
“That,” You said slowly, finally able to find your voice again. “Is an unnecessary amount of weight to be able to lift.”
Her fully-fledged smirk appeared at that, like she’d been waiting for you to say something exactly along those lines.
“Well…” She sat on the floor, back against the padded box behind her. “You never know when it might come in use.”
The penny dropped.
Actually, it didn’t drop. It slammed.
You made a face– a small, involuntary recoil of your nose and brows– which only made her grin widen as she positioned her hips under the bar and began her reps.
She struggled more than with the bench press, but even in her struggle, she was still controlled and infuriatingly precise.
You looked away. Instantly looked back. Then wished you hadn’t.
She laughed mid-rep. Actually laughed. And still didn’t falter.
From there, it became a pattern. A wordlessly declared competition.
Alexia would tilt her chin toward a machine or rack, you would sigh like you were about to say no, before stepping up and picking your weight. Cable rows. Shoulder press. And a brief, humbling interlude involving pull-ups where she tripled your high score.
Each time, there’d be a comment from you, something complaining and accusatory, and each time she’d accept it like a compliment she had thoroughly earned.
“This is unfair.” You said at one point. “It is literally your job to be good at all this.”
She tilted her head, her smirk not there but certainly inferred. “Better at all what exactly?”
“You know… everything here.” You gestured vaguely, unimpressed.
“Everything?” Her lips twitched. “I’d hate to overstate my superiority, guapa.”
You groaned, yet couldn’t stop looking at her. She didn’t even have to say more, everything about her body language said it for her.
Then, because you apparently had no self-preservation instincts whatsoever, you decided that you needed to get the better of her at least something, or your ego might not survive your vacation. And you had the perfect thing in mind.
“I know something I can beat you at.” You stated, suddenly full of confidence.
Alexia didn’t flinch, or react much. Which offended you. Only egged you on more.
“What is it?”
It was your turn to smirk.
“Who can row five-hundred metres the fastest.”
The midfielder arched an eyebrow, smirk firmly back in place.
“Oh? You think you can beat me at cardio?” There was a smug chuckle desperate to make its way out, but she didn’t let it. “I run fourteen kilometers every match.”
You just looked at her. Quiet confidence settling over you like a shield. The belief in your eye as you silently replied did not escape her notice. And perhaps she loved it.
There were two rowing machines in the gym; side by side, inches apart, practically inviting competition. You both sat down, sliding your feet into the footrests and adjusting the straps, turning on the screens. The warmth of her arm as it brushed against yours, the sway of her shoulder as she leaned forward– each movement made your pulse skip. You almost caught yourself enjoying the closeness.
“Don’t complain too much when I beat you by a minute.” Alexia chirped. You rolled your eyes for the hundredth time that day and swore the movement ached from the amount you’d done it.
“That literally isn’t possible.” You argued, to which she blew a quiet raspberry at.
“Sure. We will see about that.”
With a final check and one last glance at each other, you both leaned back as your hands gripped the handles. The screens counted down from three, and you were off.
The first strokes made Alexia’s confidence crack. You were fast. Faster than she expected. And clean, too– every stroke was powerful and fluid. Her brow creased as she tried to match your rhythm, a flash of surprise flickering across her face. It wasn’t just speed, it was control, it was perfect form. She scrambled to keep up.
You were neck and neck until the last fifty metres, when your calm and methodical rows propelled you ahead.
Ten seconds.
You beat her by ten seconds.
She set the handles down with a small, incredulous laugh as she leaned forward to catch her breath.
“I… did not see that coming.”
You panted, chest heaving, triumphant. “You underestimated me, didn’t you?”
She shook her head, a small smile returning.
“I didn’t underestimate you, guapa.” She began. Her eyes sparkled with something both mischievous and sweet. “I just wanted to see your confidence in action. It’s quite distracting.”
You felt your cheeks blush. Your jaw went slack for a split second before you got it back under control. There was a flustered shuffle of your hands against your legs and a slight hitch in your breath. She caught every detail, and the pride in her gaze couldn’t have been clearer.
She chuckled quietly at your reaction and stored away how easy you were to fluster – hopefully – for future use.
“Don’t worry.” She said. “I’ll let you enjoy this win. For now.”
You laughed breathlessly, still trying to recover from the effort and the intensity of her attention. She rose from the seat, brushing off invisible dust, and looked at you with that teasing arch of her brow you already knew so well.
“Come on.” She gestured towards the changing room. “We’ve had enough games for a morning on vacation.”
You followed her, of course you did.
But was slightly disheartened as she grabbed a towel from her bag and headed straight for the showers without so much of a word.
Was… that it?
You stopped in front of the space where your bag was, glancing towards the shower area entrance as the sound of running water came out of it. You frowned. Then grabbed your things and headed to one of the cubicles to change.
You were heading to the spa afterwards, so had no need to shower. Which you were quickly glad for, because that would have been far… far too much to handle. For one morning on vacation.
Once you’d gotten changed, you left the cubicle and headed towards the large mirror in the room to do your hair. Except you failed to notice that the shower had already turned off.
You were digging through your bag, looking for something which you soon forgot about, when Alexia walked back in.
In a bikini. A cobalt blue thing that was delectable against her tanned skin. Her hair was down and wet, droplets all over her shoulders and racing inappropriately down her torso.
You froze. Heart hammering in your chest. Her presence had caught every nerve in your body off guard. But worst of all, your own eyes betrayed you. They traced the line of her collarbone, the dip of her waist, the small patch of fabric that started dangerously low.
She didn’t notice it yet. She was busy pulling a white lace cover-up over her bikini, the fabric a tinted transparent window, the hem brushing the top of her thighs as she smoothed it down. You caught yourself in the mirror, suddenly painfully aware of how exposed you must look just standing there.
Alexia’s head tilted as her eyes finally caught yours in the mirror’s reflection. A knowing smile tugged at her lips, and you knew this had been her cunning plan all along.
You blushed furiously. Turned to fumble back through your bag again. She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh that mocked; it was one that pushed, encouraged, dared, and somehow made you melt and stiffen at the same time.
While you were distracted, the footballer reached into her bag. She pulled out a small journal she always carried on vacation, as well as a pen. She scribbled quickly on the corner of a page, tore it out, and kept it enclosed in her hand. Then she picked her bag up and slung it over her shoulder, before making her way towards you.
Her hand brushed lightly against your lower back as she approached your side.
“It was nice beating you on every machine.” She said, breath close to your ears. The words were teasing, obviously, but laced with something mellower underneath. A grin crept over your lips despite your blush.
“It was nice beating you on the rowing machine.”
She laughed again. It was threatening, almost.
“Next time, I will make sure I win.” And you had no doubt she meant it. The idea, despite its unlikeliness, made your chest tighten with anticipation.
Her hand lingered for a second as she raised it, before she slipped the small scrap of paper into your palm and closed your fist around it.
She leaned in, and whispered, “I’m leaving tomorrow. Maybe next time we do this in my home gym?”
You didn’t move, didn’t speak. Couldn’t. And that was enough of a reaction.
The words echoed in your head already. The feel of her breath against your ear lingered. She pulled back just enough to look at you, and gave one last quiet laugh. Then she lightly brushed each cheek of hers against your own with a grazing of a kiss to both.
“Ciao, guapa.”
Just like that, she was gone.
You stayed there, stunned. Looked down at the note in your hand to find a stupid winking smiley face staring up at you, her number written neatly underneath.
Well. You just might have to take her up on that one day. Soon. Hopefully very soon.
—
had the idea a week ago, and then *that* photo came out, so… welcome to my:
-rowing machine propaganda
-attempt to manifest that a lesbian experience like this WILL happen to me one day at the gym.
hope you enjoyed☺️
《 part 2, Children cry and laugh and play, slowly hair will turn to grey
》 Alexia Putellas x Physio!Reader
》 words count: +9.7k
》 No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place [Zen proverb]
THE DAY AFTER 20 APRIL, 2024
You have never been to Alexia’s house.
She is always in your space, your office, your apartment. But she never lets you get too close to her home. Boundaries and lines drawn around her private life almost as to protect her own heart.
It’s not like she doesn’t trust you.
She simply couldn’t allow herself to trust you too much.
When she opened the door you didn’t really have much time, or desire, to look around. The midfielder dragged you into the bedroom without even switching on the lights, moving on pure instinct and impatience.
You wash your face in the bathroom, cross the living room and linger into the kitchen.
Now, the morning sun’s rays coming through the windows, you wander around with no rush or fear of being invasive.
Her place is neat, clean in a way you have pictured without realising.
It’s so different from yours.
It smells lived in, like the stoves are daily turned on and evidence of use hides in plain sight. Like on the door on the top of the sideboard that doesn’t really shut completely or on the scratches carved into the wood table. On the few little plants near the window, herbs Alexia actually knows how to use. On the leftovers in a pot, waiting to be heated. On the coffee machine standing out from a corner with one too many accessories a coffee machine should come with.
It feels like a loved space, it feels like a space that has known love.
You fill a glass of water just to give your hands something to do.
“You move like a burglar”, Alexia’s voice comes in a measured way, clouded with sleep and an edge you can’t name this early in the morning.
“Should that be a compliment?”
“It’s actually quite scary, to be honest”
You turn completely toward her when you hear the smile in her voice, taking it all in for the first time.
She’s resting against the door frame, arms crossed with the fake confidence of someone who has not looked at themself in the mirror yet. Hair flying around, untamed, and eyes still fighting the sleep away. She picked an oversized, overworn t-shirt that makes you wonder if she’s wearing anything else.
You can get used to this version of her.
Even under your scrutiny, she feels comfortable. Not judged, not in the middle of a test she’s scared of not being able to pass. She doesn’t feel the need to compose, to put herself together for you.
She let you see her.
“I thought you’d left”
“Do you want me to leave?”, you ask, trying to hide something.
Disappointment, maybe.
Fear, most definitely.
Do you regret it? – it’s your question.
She says nothing, but she comes closer with a couple of steps, smiling.
There isn’t much space between you when she answers, “No. Do you want coffee?”
Do you want to stay? – it’s her question.
You kiss her.
Because it feels right to, because you want to.
Because you can.
The sun is rising in Barcelona, you did not die yesterday and you will survive to see tomorrow. Alexia doesn’t taste like a mistake, not that you had any doubt, and your heart may give out, but you will be fine.
“Yes”
~
APRIL TO MAY, 2024
Nothing is really different at work.
Around Barcelona’s facilities, Alexia Putellas is Alexia Putellas and you are you.
Captain and physiotherapist.
There’s trust, there’s support, there’s the kind of understanding that comes with passing so much time together in a safe space.
Impeccable professional behaviour.
Outside work, you and Alexia are just you and Alexia.
There’s still trust, maybe even more, and there’s support that goes beyond football and treatment sessions. There’s the kind of understanding that comes with sharing so much of yourselves, your lives, while building a safe space together.
It’s both impressive and, frankly, painful to observe from the outside.
Alexia, on her end, just wants to enjoy every moment.
Sessions run on schedule, physio appointments before or after training sessions growing in intensity as the final stretch of the competitions approaches.
You have to be around more, keeping an eye on everyone to make sure they all survive to see the last game of the season.
People close to her notice.
She trains with the same dedication, with the same passion that has defined the way she breathes football since the very first days as a kid.
She’s also more light-hearted.
Not superficial, never superficial, but she moves like she doesn’t have weights on her chest or have to roll an immense boulder up a hill. The smile on her face is a genuine one, playful most of the time, and she lights up at random during the day.
It’s difficult to miss, to be honest.
And people close to you both notice something else too.
“You’re not subtle, you know?”
Irene’s voice hits you right in the middle of a sunny afternoon session.
You’re observing from the sideline, focusing on Mapi’s movements off the ball and the way she adapts now she’s almost completely reintegrated with the squad. She’s been out for so long now and the medical team wants to make sure she’s ready to be back soon.
You may not have been assigned to her care, but she’s grown on you the past year.
“Aren’t you supposed to stretch?”, you say, not turning to look at the defender.
Irene sips from the water bottle, her gaze shifting from you to the small group busy with the drill. And back to you.
Alexia and Mapi are messing around, paying little to no attention to the coach explaining the exercises one to many times. They’re way too competitive for this late in the session.
Children.
Athletes are big ass children, you are more sure as you spend more time with them.
“I don’t know what’s happening”
“Nothing is happening”
“Things have been happening since you came here”, the Basque says, firm but not unkind. Because she knows more than what most assume, but also because she is one of the most loyal and supportive people you have ever met.
She’s the kind of person to be ready to fight by your side way before you even realise there’s a war to go to.
When you seem to tense under her eyes, still pretending to pay attention to the team wrapping up the session, she clarifies, “I’m not saying whatever is happening is a bad thing”
Alexia laughs loudly at something Jana whispers in her ear, the younger jumping around her like a kid who has just been promised ice cream for dinner, and a smile grows on your lips before you can hide it.
“It feels right”, you admit, right as Irene thinks you will not say anything about it all.
A beat passes, maybe longer.
Jonatan dismisses the team, urging them to stretch properly and go to sleep early. Tomorrow morning they have media and a video session to attend.
Irene nods, like she just decided something really important, “Make it right then”
~
MAY, 2024
You celebrate Barcelona overturning the defeat against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge late at night, hours after the team’s celebration dialed down and right before your alarm goes off.
In front of the other girls, you tease Alexia about Aitana joining her as all-time top scorer in the Women’s Champions League for Barcelona. In the privacy of her hotel room, you kiss her frown away.
Then they secure the league title, for the fifth consecutive season, winning away against Granada.
You watch the game at home, not traveling with the girls since you had to attend a conference in Madrid. Alexia shows up the next morning with a bag from your favourite bakery and a way too amused smirk on her face.
You balance the two things out and decide to let her in.
There are two versions of you and Alexia.
Barça completes the domestic treble winning the Copa de la Reina with a 8-0 scoreline that belongs in a different sport.
Alexia plays meaningful minutes, insists that Irene raise the trophy, and let you buy her dinner in Zaragoza just because she can.
But it’s not a difficult balance to maintain, you find out.
You’re careful, of course you are.
But you don’t have to be all the time.
You don’t want to.
Not when Alexia has her legs on your lap, a little bit too absorbed in a game playing on the TV. You didn’t even know your streaming subscription involved sports. It doesn’t really matter when you can type on the computer with one hand and caressing Alexia with the other. A touch you can finally indulge in.
It’s been a good night.
You have cooked, something the Catalan woman promised was easy enough for you to attempt on your own. She did supervise, though, even if her idea of supervision was wrapping herself around you and criticising the way you hold the knife.
Dinner was edible, thank you very much.
It’s been a good night.
You don’t want this to end.
Even if sometimes, when Alexia mutters a comment under her breath against the TV, you find yourself smiling like an idiot for no reason.
It’s the same thing that happens she places a gentle kiss on your temple, just because she is close enough to do so, your entire body exhales in relief and fills in contentment.
Or when she makes a joke, so bad people may think it’s strange but you discovered it’s pretty on character, and you can’t help but laugh.
“You’re quiet”
You don’t look up from the computer, “I’m always quiet”
“You’re the overthinking something kind of quiet”, she clarifies, sitting up to point a finger on your forehead. “You make a very cute face when your mind is running too fast for you to keep up”
“That’s– very specific”
“Thank you, I’m becoming an expert”
On the TV, someone must have scored a pretty impressive goal because the commentator goes wild in the way sport commentators usually do. Too much, too loud, too philosophical for a ball kicked into a net.
“My contract ends in June”
Alexia doesn’t look away, her smile doesn’t falter when your eyes meet.
“I know”
You are yet to talk about what it will mean for you, for the two of you.
You place the computer on the coffee table, turning completely toward Alexia without breaking any point of contact.
The fact you will leave is a topic of discussion you faced once, that night in December, and briefly mentioned in passing the past months.
Only acknowledged in moments of vulnerability, always on the back of your minds.
You’re always touching somehow, all the time.
“I’m still leaving”
“I know”
“Should we talk about it?”
“I don’t want to”, she says, one hand reaching for your face and smoothing some tension around the jaw. “I don’t want to pass the time we have holding back or calculating the days we have left. I want to be here– I want to be with you in all the ways I can until I can”
It’s an honest answer and a self-protective one too, but honest nonetheless.
“And I don’t want to hurt you”
“You are not”
“Alexia–”
“You’re not hurting me. You made a decision, I respect that. I’ve always respected your decisions”
“Even the ones that hurt you”, you mutter, just because you can not to.
“Even the ones that hurt”, she relays, vulnerable and yet fearless, “My decision is to enjoy what we have for as long as we have. For once, I’m not planning ahead. I just– I just want to be happy”
You grant her the same vulnerability when you say, “I’m happy too”
It’s quiet again, for a while, before she breaks the tension, “Do you wanna judge their poor ball possession with me?”
And you let go, for now.
Because Alexia asks you to, because she needs this from you now. Because you have both made decisions this time.
You answer her with a kiss, muting the TV when the commentator starts another rant and you really just want to hear the noises Alexia is making under you.
~
“You should definitely stop”
The protest sounds weak even to you and your wandering hands don’t really help the case.
But it’s too early and Alexia’s kisses are too tempting for you to be reasonable.
Since she found that soft spot on your neck, barely hidden in between your ear and your jaw, she’s been using it against you every time she wants something you’re giving as soon as she pleases.
She smirks, “You don’t look like you want me to stop”
As a good enough answer, you playfully pinch her side. But no sooner has she taken a step away, acting offended, than you’re already pulling her back towards you.
You know you shouldn’t.
Alexia entered your office while you’re watering the plants with a teasing smirk on her face and a paper bag in her hand, unannounced because now even more than before she feels like she doesn’t have to.
Neither of you even indulged in the unprompted breakfast.
She knows she shouldn’t.
Not here, not like this.
In your office, the facility quiet enough for you to catch up on some work before the first session of the day, but definitely not empty.
“I don’t want to stop”, you admit, hands traveling on her shoulder to put enough distance – much to her disappointment, “But we should”
She almost whines.
Alexia Putellas, world class athlete and one of the most prominent personalities of the country, genuinely just complaining like a child because you’re not letting her kiss you at work.
“You hate me”, she comments, wrapping her arms around your torso and hiding her face against your neck.
Like she doesn’t have to act with you. Like she doesn’t have to be her camera-smile on, like she doesn’t have to hold herself composed and stoic. Like she doesn’t have to be constantly overaware of the glances, the spotlights, the gossip.
You laugh at her playfulness, at the way she let you see such sides of her without thinking too much.
She is just so comfortable with you, she just trusts you like that.
Like she can just be.
Your hands find her face, angling her so you can find her lips.
The kiss deepens so easily you both get so lost into it.
Too lost.
“Oh, ¡Madre mía!”
The door slams close as fast as it was opened.
Not fast enough for you to ignore the fact Jana Fernández just walked into you kissing her fucking team’s captain.
“Of course this happens”, you mutter, taking a long breath as your eyes find the ceiling in search of God or some other heavenly help.
Alexia, on the other hand, seems to freeze.
You notice immediately.
Maybe because she’s still so close, maybe because she literally stopped up with your fingers still caressing her blushing face.
“You good?”
“Jana just–”
“Yeah, and whose fault is it?”, you whisper, making it clear you’re just teasing and you’re not really upset about it.
It’s not ideal, you know, but it could be worse.
And you brought this on yourselves, really.
When she doesn’t retort, when she still looks like something irreparable happens that will change everything forever, you realise the panic in her eyes has a name.
A name you know well enough.
So you try again, more firmly this time, “You good?”
She holds your gaze then, searching for the answer to a question she will not ask out loud.
A beat passes, maybe more. Long enough for the air in the room to soften, but not long enough to ignore Jana’s lingering steps by the other side of the wall.
“Yes, I’m good”
And that is enough for you, for now.
You place a gentle kiss to her forehead, trying not to beam with pride when you feel her entire body relax, before you reach for the door to find the younger girl pacing in deep thought.
“Jana–”
“I’ve seen absolutely nothing!”, she blurts out with a hit of panic in her voice, “I swear, I’m born blind. It’s a tragedy, really”
You can’t hold back the amusement, “Born blind?”
“Yes! Yes, of course. Have you never noticed? You are a terrible doctor if you haven’t noticed–”
“Shut up”, you silence her, barely hiding the smile on your face.
When the defender realises you’re strangely calm about it all, she feels reassured enough to calm down too.
“Sooo–”
“Came in”
“Alexia is still there”
“We’re on the second floor, Jana. Where do you think she could be other than where she was a minute ago?”, you reason, matter of fact.
It’s not like she could sneak out of the window.
You hope she hasn’t, at least.
If she has not killed herself trying to escape the situation, you definitely will.
Fortunately, when you walk in the office, Alexia is right where you left her – by the desk, even more flushed.
And, because Jana can be such a little shit, as soon as she looks at the midfielder she screams, “¡Ajá! You’re so embarrassed!”
“Jana”
Apparently you have to be the adult one.
“Silence, both of you”
“I’m just saying–”
“You say nothing”, you point a finger at the defender, gesturing to the treatment bed to then nodding at the door for Alexia, “And I will see you later”
Alexia hesitates for a second, nothing more, before placing a kiss on your cheek and leaving the office with a pleased smirk.
The session starts with an unusual calmness, not uncomfortable but definitely different from what is normal for your sessions with Jana.
But you can tell she’s trying so bad to not comment on what she walked into.
You work on her thigh with precision, asking questions about the pain management and how it feels after the first few minutes back.
She answers, she teases, she is the usual self.
The session is almost over when you joke, “It’s on you, really. You are never on time”
“And I will never be again!”
~
The day proceeds with the usual buzz.
The sun is up in the sky and warm on the skin, the Champions League’s final is approaching and the team is even more excited than as expected from a group of girls running around a ball for a living.
Alexia watches Jana attentively.
And Jana notices. Because she is not stupid, but mostly because Alexia is not subtle.
She may have a reputation. She may enjoy a good gossip and she may have blurred out a secret or two in the past. She may be a chatterbox, but she’s even a better friend.
“You can relax, you know?”, she tells the older woman when they are alone, walking together to the parking lot by the end of the day.
“I know, Jana, I trust you. I just– I don’t want to fuck this up”
The defender waits for a more elaborate thought, but when it’s clear Alexia doesn’t really have the words to do so, she comments, “She is the reason you’re so happy lately, right?”
Alexia stills for a moment, taken aback by the simplicity of it.
The realization arrives from outside, named by someone else, and becomes undeniably hers.
“Yeah– Yeah, she is”
Jana nods, looking away to find the key and opening her car, before turning back to her captain, “Good, it’s good. You were both really weird for a bit, it was painful to watch”
Alexia flips her off as a goodbye.
~
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL, 2024
The night in Bilbao feels historic even before you step into the pitch and you’re not even the one who is going to play.
The air around the stadium is heavy with anticipation and something you can’t name from where you stand, watching almost 40 thousand or so Blaugrana’s jersey filling the place. Many came in a flotilla of buses organised by the club, setting a record for the largest travelling contingent in women's football – Carlos told you, beaming with pride.
The first half ends too early.
Even you can tell this is not just a game, this is not any Champions League final, this is history in the making.
This is Barcelona, relentless and still haunted by past defeats, facing Olympique Lyonnais, the model for the development of women’s football for so long. Their biggest rival and the team that had broken their hearts before.
It’s a waiting game.
You spend the entire break massaging tired muscles and calming down tense nerves, pushing and grounding the girls with firm hands and even more confident gazes.
You know they can do it.
Lyon presses early, sharp and aggressive because they know how to fracture Barcelona’s structure, but Barça absorbs it. Pass by pass, triangle by triangle, they stretch the field until the pressure begins to thin.
When the teams reenter the pitch, you notice the way bodies move like they know something is about to happen. They settle, shoulders loose and measured strides. No panic, no tension spikes.
Then Aitana finds a seam and drives through it.
The kind of run that physios hate and love at the same time. Explosive acceleration, change of direction, full commitment. Dangerous, both for the body and for the scoresheet.
It ends in a goal.
After that, San Mamés is no longer a stadium. It’s a wave of waving flags and Spanish chanting. Every Barcelona pass is cheered before it’s completed, every Lyon attempt is swallowed by noise. The crowd senses what’s happening, what is coming.
The stadium erupts and you rise from the seat to celebrate with the other staff members – apparently that’s something you do now.
In the chaos, despite the chaos, your gaze meets Alexia’s and the smiles on your faces shift into something more private and deep.
In the middle of all that noise, Alexia enters the pitch.
The game is almost over, but she isn’t done.
You stand by the bench, arms crossed as to hold back the joy.
This is not just any match, this is not just another step of her journey. Not after the injuries, not after the long recoveries. Not after the doubts and the uncertainty.
Fights against monsters that look a lot like a mirrors.
This is a testament of all those silent hours in rehab rooms, sessions after session of doing the same movement again and again, rebuilding trust in a body that once betrayed her.
Fights behind closed doors.
Fights against the Federation, her own body, her own wants.
So when she steps into the box, there’s a split second where time stretches. When she positions herself is pure intuition, pure class. When she finishes, clean and composed, it is just Alexia.
A goal that means so much more.
You realise you’re crying just when Carlos teases you about it.
You can tell by the way she moves after. No hesitation, no protection. Full commitment to the sprint, the turn, the celebration.
Carefree, like she deserves to be – like you fight for her to be.
~
The whistle goes and no one cares about cramps and tired legs.
Confetti, photos, stupid celebrations.
From the sideline, you don’t even try to hold the excitement back – you learned to pick your battle.
The girls jump and run around like kids, holding each other and screaming in pure joy.
You will never get used to it all, but you’re a bit more willing to indulge in it.
Especially when your nephew is running around the pitch like he just won himself, kicking a ball with some of the younger girls. He refuses to wear Barcelona’s colours in any form, but he lets Alexia tie a Spain flag like a cape with little to no protest.
“You two are embarrassing”, Cris comments, nudging at you when Alexia kisses Toby’s cheek and his face turns as red as a tomato.
You say nothing, you do not defend yourself because you really have nothing to defend yourself from.
In the chaos of the celebration, celebration that doesn’t seem to calm down, Jana runs toward you with Toby in her arms and the boy’s ones secured around the trophy. Alexia is following close behind, chasing them playfully.
“Hide us!”, your nephew screams in between giggles and Jana matching ones.
They really try to use you as a shield.
You stand like that for a moment, just close.
“You can’t hide forever”, Alexia says, acting like she can’t just circle around you and recover what the two troublemakers apparently want to steal.
She smiles at you, conspiratorial, when your eyes meet.
Even when Jana sprints away, Toby’s laugh echoing, she doesn’t leave.
JUNE 2024, THE END
She stands next to you.
In the middle of the pitch, in the stadium where she just reborn. In the crowd, between confetti and noise. In front of everyone and no one but the two of you.
~
The team wraps up the season with three games in one week, saying goodbye to two beloved players like Mariona and Sandra who play their last games for Barcelona.
You ask the club to not disclose your own departure, you will inform the girls about it yourself.
The ACL research paper, the one you have been working on for the past two years, is accepted for publication in the biggest sports medicine journal.
When you receive an email right before they have to travel to Mexico for the 2024 Camp3onas Tour, you slam the computer shut so loudly it cannot go unnoticed.
You try to hide a smile for the entire day, breaking down just when Ona and Jana join forces to drive you absolutely crazy.
You let them tease you, invade your place like they truly belong there as they belong in your life. You let them eat snacks on the couch and pick up silly arguments with each other, card game after card game. You let them know your time in Barcelona is coming to an end and you let them unload about it, but you don’t let them try to convince you to stay.
The team celebrates the news with the same enthusiasm and commitment they reserve to major tournaments.
Some of the girls invite themselves to your apartment, bringing food and an obnoxious balloon ornament you don’t want to know how they managed to fit into the elevator.
Jana cries like you have personally offended her with a career choice, Claudia genuinely asks if you hate them, but then she ends up fighting Patri over who will inherit your plants. Mapi is surprisingly mature about it. Irene doesn’t say much, and her reaction is the one you fear most, but she seems to understand your reasons.
Alexia lingers around with the usual calmness. Right words at the exact right times, placing a hand on your back when you need it the most or smiling at you from the other side of the apartment when your eyes meet.
By the end of the night, they have accepted your decision – mostly.
Apparently, she is ready when you’re brushing your teeth in the bathroom and she’s putting on the stupid overworn t-shirt she insists on sleeping in.
The girls leave in small waves, soft goodbyes and long hugs fill the space until you and Alexia are the only two left.
She helps clean up, holding something close you know she will spit out when she is ready.
“Can I read it?”, she asks, gaze finding yours in the mirror’s reflection.
“What?”
“The research”
~
You don’t think too much about it, cleaning your mouth and crossing the room to dig around all the shit covering your desk.
You hand her a spiral-bound stack of papers – you’re the type of person to print it, obviously.
The next morning you wake up with a headache and the other side of the bed too cold for your liking.
You find her in the kitchen, sipping from the Atlético’s mug Toby gifted you for Christmas, bent over your research papers.
When Alexia sleeps at your house, she usually leaves the bed just when she absolutely has to. When she has a day off and she can sleep in, holding you close until someone, usually you, has to be the responsible one. When she has something to do or somewhere to be, she leaves with barely enough time to get ready for the day.
Today is not one of those days.
It’s the most confusing scene you have ever witnessed in your entire life.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading”, she answers simply, not looking up.
“You realise what you’re holding?”
Alexia observes the mug, maybe for the first time, making a face, “That’s why the coffee tastes like shit”
You laugh at her reaction, stepping closer to kiss the frown away and stealing the cup from her hand, taking a long sip – it doesn’t taste that bad.
You sit beside her, studying her face, “Interesting reading?”
She hums, still someway deep in thought.
The footballer is not going to pretend she understands everything in those papers. The abstract is clear enough, direct like medical researches usually are not allowed to be. Some passages go completely over her head, but some paragraphs speak to her in a way she can’t really describe.
She knows she is there.
Her injury, her tests and her results.
Her recovery journey.
What she’s been through is there, somewhere.
What she’s been through in the past two years, probably even longer. What she’s been through with you by her side.
But what is most striking is the conclusion.
Brilliant observations, clinical but human. Recommendations, suggestions. The reality of return-to-sport decision-making processes. The reality of different rehab’s paths. How clubs and leagues usually handle the situations, how it should change. The changes that must be done. By the athletes, by the medical teams, by the Federations.
“This is why you’re leaving”, she says.
Not as an accusation, not to start something.
Just a fact.
“Part of, yeah”
“The rest?”
You’re honest when you answer, “I’m still figuring out the rest”
~
JULY 2024, THE NEW BEGINNING
In between nights in the safe of your apartment and Alexia’s pre-Olympic preparation, your relationship keeps growing.
According to Alexia, training camps are good enough.
The transition from club to National team is not as bad as last summer, despite some tension and the fact you started to enjoy being a pain in the Federation’s ass.
Not being related with Barcelona anymore makes you an asset, sure, but it also means you don’t have to hold back to respect some political balance.
But you’re not her physio anymore.
They focus on tactical compactness and defensive transitions, but they still rely a lot on Barcelona group’ synchrony on the pitch. The load management is too prudent or too uncautious, nowhere in between.
You’re very vocal against it.
Carlos takes back his rule on Barcelona’ side, while her personal physio keeps her entertained the rest of the time.
It’s a shift in your dynamic. Not loud, not dramatic, but definitely intense. Strange, but not uncomfortable.
Officially, that is the only change in your relationship.
Even if she’s in your apartment for most of the time she spends outside of a football pitch, or in Barcelona altogether, discussing the latest Liga’s game on videocall with Toby.
She drops on the couch like she owns the place, hair wet from a shower that was supposed to help save water and ended longer than anticipated – you regret nothing.
Officially, she is just Alexia now.
Expect, maybe, framing Alexia so she could greet your nephew.
As soon as Toby gets a glimpse of her, it’s impossible to separate the two.
The call, eventually, ends in a rush when you hear Cris asking if he tidied up his room as promised.
With a few comfy clothes in your closet, a toothbrush and way too expensive creams in your bathroom, and her head on your shoulder as a stupid film plays out.
When she laughs, genuinely and uncontrolled, at a very silly joke made on the screen, you really don’t want to ruin the moment.
The words just slip out.
“We need to talk”
The footballer’s face drops, her eyes pop out almost comically.
“You can’t break up with me”
“Alexia, we are not even together”
“Yeah, so you can’t break up with me”
You can’t help but burst out laughing at her reaction, amused by the exchange but not missing the way her shoulders relax.
By September, this apartment will have another tenant.
It may not be as heavy as feared, but you still have to talk about your upcoming departure. About what you leaving will mean for the two of you.
It’s not something you can hide under the carpet anymore, especially since you had rescinded the lease.
You gain some composure, muting the television and sitting up on the couch, gaze fixed on Alexia.
“I’m going to Madrid”
“Traitor”, she mutters, mostly to ease the tension.
“Not like that, idiota”, you retort, lightly pushing her shoulder, “Madrid, the city. Not Madrid, the club”
“Still shit, but could be worse”
Despite the playful attitude, you are now familiar with Alexia’s tells. The way her eyes travel everywhere to hold back the tears, or the way she pinches the back of her hand to steady her breath.
So you add, “I will work with the FEB”
“I will oversee medical research and rehabilitation protocols from U-17 through senior level”
The Basketball Federation reached out right before the World Cup. You weren’t interested at first, not really seeing the appeal of working for a governing body.
Then the World Cup happened and an idea formed.
They came back and in December you found middle ground.
“For the Basketball Federation?”
“For the Basketball Federation”
A smile appears on the Catalan’s lips, open and genuine, “You really hate football that much, don’t you?”
You don’t have time to answer, Alexia jumps on you with all the force a professional athlete manages to hide under jumpers and a loose t-shirt. Her arms wrap around your shoulders and you don’t fall off the couch just because her body ends on top of yours first.
“I’m so proud of you”
~
“You’re kinda unemployed now”, Jana comments with her mouth full and the frankness of a child on a sugar-high.
“Chew your food”
Why did you accept Alexia’s invite to help her babysit a bunch of overexcited kids with a major tournament around the corner?
“She’s not wrong”, Ona adds, enjoying the sun crushing on the restaurant’s patio, her hands behind her head and the smirk of someone who is going to cause trouble. “When do you start the new fancy job?”
“September”, you answer, drinking the lemonade you ordered so not to be the only one indulging in alcohol – stupid athletes and their strict diets. “I’m taking the summer off, I think. I’m taking my nephew on a roadtrip in Europe. Backpacks, trains, different cities, all that jazz”
You let them talk, mentally taking note of a few places that aren’t in your detailed plan, but could fit in – you’re trying something new lately, spontaneity.
That sparks an animated debate.
About the fact it’s probably going to be the first vacation of your adult life, about which and how many cities you should visit in the three weeks.
It is Patri who asks, “Did Paris make the cut?”
Alexia doesn’t react, but you’re close enough to see how her leg starts to bounce under the table. Your hand finds her knee without too much trouble.
“We might be around during the Olympics”
Just a city you happen to visit at the same time, for two completely different reasons.
You drop the possibility out, letting the Catalan know it’s an option but it doesn’t have to be a box to tick out of a list or a big deal.
If she wants you there, just because you can, you will be.
No pressure, no drama.
~
AUGUST, 2024
For some reason, despite an whole year has passed and your relationship with Alexia changed in so many ways you couldn’t even keep track, this summer looks a lot like the previous one.
The midfielder goes radio silence, because that is what she does during a tournament, but the pictures are shared constantly.
It takes a few days and almost missing one too many train-connections, but you and Toby make a surprisingly good team – despite you being an overplanner and the kid wasting too much time inside historic buildings.
You share pictures of stretches of stones older than almost anything you’ve ever touched, Alexia shares bits and pieces of her life outside training.
The trip really kicks off in Rome.
In the thick of summer it’s loud, chaotic, and somehow the perfect start. You rent bikes, get scammed, fall in love with every corner. Toby plays with a few kids in a garden that should belong to a museum and decides he must buy a football jersey for each city you will visit. You try to fit three weeks worth of exploring in three days. Rome teaches the rule you’ll carry for the rest of the rest of the trip: do less, feel more.
Florence is smaller, but not less loud. In the afternoon heat, you escape into the Boboli Gardens where Toby runs ahead like it’s his own backyard.
This time, it’s all about breathtaking sculptures and majestic architecture, while Alexia frames cards and board games – you’re almost sure only the one she won make the cut.
You skip Venice, adding a few hours of train to make a stop in a quiet lake on the border with Switzerland. Mountains rise, the air cools a bit and the pace shifts. In Innsbruck, you’re surrounded by peaks in every direction and your nephew doesn’t complain a single time about the long hikes.
You share big views, riverside walks and mountain activities. Alexia shares the strange quietness of empty stadiums before kickoffs and ice baths.
The train to Vienna is added just to fulfill a personal dream and get a Billy Joel inspired tattoo on your ribs.
You send a photo of the freshly inked skin to Alexia and she doesn’t even try to pretend it doesn’t have a devastating effect on her.
Prague is a surprise, at least till you almost lose your overexcited nephew in Old Town Square at peak hours.
When Spain scrapes a victory against Colombia after penalties, you are just over with the tour of the three Pinakotheks of Munich and can easily detour toward France a bit earlier than planned. Toby is an easy sell to any new destination if football is somehow involved.
You include a few little stops to ease the travel and don’t look too eager to arrive in Lyon – from there, you have a few options.
On an overnight train you send Alexia a screenshot of your new plan, giving her a way out if she doesn’t feel like it’s the right thing at the moment.
She answers a few hours later with tickets and full access credentials you will not use.
The day in Marseilles is the only one with just a single picture shared between the two of you.
It’s a selfie of you and Toby after the game.
The kid is trying to show the number 11 on the back of his Spain jersey, you smile at the camera like the scoresheet doesn’t really matter to the way you feel for the footballer.
A few days later, as your roadtrip with Toby is approaching its end, Alexia calls from the airport, waiting to board her return flight to Spain.
It takes the two of you less than ten minutes to arrange a getaway weekend before you have to go back to reality.
The window in between the Summer Olympics and the start of Barcelona’s new season is short and bittersweet.
~
Like most players, Alexia has a break too brief to properly rest, but she’s beaming to rejoin the team for pre-season and looking forward to the tactical preparation under the new head coach.
On the other hand, she can literally hear the countdown of your departure to Madrid, like those scenes in movies when the bomb’s timer steals the show. The deafening ticking of the inevitable approaching, the certainty something will change when the time will come.
“Why are you wrapping my plates like that?”
“Like what?”, Alexia asks, twisting the object in her hands like it’s made of cheap plastic and not an overpriced ceramic.
Why do you even own such expensive shit?
Before answering, you inspect the boxes she filled already with a raised eyebrow, “Like you don’t want them to survive the journey”
“I’m doing an excellent job, thank you very much”
“You broke two mugs and mutilated a pot I didn’t even know I owned”
“It’s not that big of a loss then”, she retorts, carefully adding the plate into the box.
It’s a strange feeling, watching the kitchen emptying.
It looks a lot like it used to be, but, unlike when you first moved in, there’s a sense of emptiness now. As if something grew into it, took up the space, and now it’s forced to leave and will make the absence loud.
The entire apartment feels like this.
The Catalan’s arms wrap around your torso, hugging you from behind in a way that is becoming familiar enough to be second nature. Her chin rests on your shoulder, holding you as close as physically possible.
Alexia comes closer, noticing the way your eyes keep checking every corner of the place like a crime scene.
The furrow on your forehead doesn’t help either, a sign the midfielder learned to look for when your mind is driving into an overthinking mood and it will be too deep to drag you back.
She lets you analyse the situation, calculating in your head whatever is the situation you’re trying to assert.
It takes a few minutes.
“I have more things than when I moved in”
“You buy half a paycheck’s worth of cutlery last summer”
“I couldn’t keep letting literal World Champions eat off plastic plates”, you call back, half turning into her arms to make your point clear, “I’m not uncivilized, Alexia”
She hides her laugh into the hollow of your neck, sensing there’s something bigger under the jokes.
You have always packed light, used to being on the move and not really a homebody to begin with.
There are essentials that travel with you no matter what, changing place based on the new apartment layout.
The clothes fit into a few suitcases, the wardrobe is really the easier thing to update from city to city.
A lifetime of relocations taught you a way or two to move books without gambling your back so young and, since you keep accumulating them in huge piles, if they are not essential or don’t hold sentimental value, most are donated to libraries.
Plants, vibrant and luxuriant under your daily care, are gifted to the friends you made along the way.
Some things are stupid, like the pot plant your best friend gifted for your 15th birthday and still host different plants despite the cracks.
Some things are sentimental, like the framed photo of a kid version of you and your sister or a note Toby wrote for you when he just learned how to hold a pencil properly.
Some things are practical, like the surprisingly good garment steamer you treat like a prized possession, and some things have been with you for so long you can’t really picture your life without.
“Why do you own this shit?”
But, besides the few exceptions, packing has always been just another tick off the list before moving.
This time is different.
“Toby!”
The little bubble built around you and Alexia in the kitchen pops easily when your nephew comes marching into the room with the determination only an offended kid possesses.
“What is this?”, he questions, waving the offended items.
Alexia, still too close to be casual, answers with a smirk and the playfulness of a thirty years old woman who runs around a ball for a living, “Best club in the world’s jersey, my little friend”
The only thing stronger than Toby’s adorable crush for Alexia is his love for Atlético, much to your own entertainment.
He ignores her as if she’s not even in the room, “Why do you have this?”
“They gifted it when I first started to work with Barça”
“You do not work for them anymore, you can burn it”
“¡Oy!”
You shouldn’t laugh at the pictures of Alexia Putellas and your nephew fighting over a football jersey, you know by her posture and the boy’s tone this is a serious matter, but you really can’t help.
It’s ridiculous.
“If you want one too, you just have to ask”
A mini version of Cris, indeed.
As a good enough answer, Toby sticks his tongue out. He shakes his head, directing you a disappointed look too similar to his mother’s one.
When he leaves the room, you can clearly hear him mutter something along the lines, “This goes to the donation box”
“You handle that beautifully”, your sister comments, watching the exchange from close by, “You will have so much fun babysitting him”
That will be a privilege coming from the move to Madrid.
Being closer to Cris and Toby means more opportunity to be present.
To actually go see him play, even if he still has to master the art of change of pace. To actually be there for your sister, like she always has been for you despite the distance. To actually be around for birthdays and holidays and casual days that, for some reason, turn memorable.
“I will show up in full Barça gear and loaded with presents he will love”, Alexia jokes.
And she says things like that like it’s not a big deal at all.
It means something new can start.
Like it’s completely normal to assume she will be present in the future, like it’s implied she will stick around for you – for your relationship.
Like it’s inevitable.
Like this change, you moving, doesn’t mean it’s all over.
“I’ll hold you to it”, Cris retorts, because she can read between the lines and she will never miss an opportunity to act as the big, protective sister she is.
~
The jersey will not make it to Madrid and you love Toby too much to investigate the whereabouts of the item.
Alexia, however, will make her point during the housewarming party when she will place an obnoxious mug with a huge Barça crest right next to Atlético’s one, making sure Toby sees her doing it.
Another one will magically appear in the new apartment once you will have enough time to actually unpack, signed by the entire Barcelona’s medical team.
You will hide it in your new office, even debating to frame it – out of Toby’s sight, out of mind.
~
SEPTEMBER, 2024
You leave the apartment better than when you entered it.
Two years of your life fit perfectly into three suitcases, fifteen boxes and the boot of your sister’s car. Everything is sent to Madrid with a courier and will occupy Cris’ garage for at least two weeks.
One of which you’re spending at Alexia’s.
It’s not like you planned it.
You had to vacate the apartment, but you have to take care of some errands in Barcelona before actually saying goodbye to the city. Taking advantage of Alexia’s hospitality is just the most reasonable and practical option.
Trying to find a balance is surprisingly fun.
She likes to oversleep, and that’s something you still have to wrap your head around, but you will never complain about the few minutes she steals in the morning. She holds the sheet as if you could run away with them and drop her out in the cold, despite the lingering summer heat. She also squeezes the toothpaste right in the middle and leaves around the house way too many half-empty water bottles.
Little things you find out without really realising, without really putting effort into it.
It’s just something that happens in the comfort of sharing so much space in such a short amount of time.
~
You know it’s a temporary break from reality, a suspended moment that lives between her pre-season and your new job in Madrid.
It doesn’t mean you two will not enjoy it, every coffee shared in her kitchen and every night wrapped into each other is cherished as a precious memory.
The early afternoon sun is a heavy, golden pour that turns the Mediterranean into a sheet of hammered foil. It’s barely quiet outside Barcelona, summer still lingering in the corners of streets and tourist traps.
You’ve just finished a long lunch at a chiringuito, the napkins were thin and the floor was covered in sand. The wine was cold enough to make Alexia forget the new season is fast approaching.
Now, you are just walking.
You are halfway through a conversation about Vicky’s latest, failed, attempt to wedge the midfielder in a TikTok dance when her phone rings.
There is nowhere to be today. No physio session, no paperwork, no tactical analysis of the upcoming game or sponsor duty.
It is just the rhythmic sound of feet on the beachside pavement and the heat of Alexia’s palm against yours. Your fingers are interlaced. Not a tight grip, but a casual knot that feels way more permanent than it really is.
She checks the screen and her entire posture shifts.
“Hola, mamà", she says, her voice dropping into that melodic, rounded Catalan that always sounds like a secret meant only for family.
“No, no, tot va bé. Només– estic caminant. Soc a la platja–”, Alexia glances at you, her eyes looking for something you hope she finds without having to ask, “Sí, no– no estic sola–”
You slow your pace, to maybe also physically give her some privacy, but watching from the corner of your eye.
You can’t hear Eli on the other end, but you don’t have to. You see the way Alexia’s shoulders drop, you see her bite the corner of her lip to suppress a smile, looking down at her shoes like a teenager caught out.
Famously composed under the pressure of finals, but a terrible liar when it comes to her mother.
She shifts her weight, nodding at nothing, “Aquesta nit? Sí. No, jo– no ho sé. Deixa’m– mamà, deixa’m que li pregunti. Adéu, t’estimo”
You may not understand Catalan, but you can tell when the conversation shifts.
The footballer pulls the phone away, looking at you with a strand of hair plastered to her forehead by the sea breeze. She looks completely frazzled.
You can’t help it and a low, amused huff escapes your chest.
“You’re terrified of her”, you tease, bumping your shoulder against hers.
“Shut up”, she mutters, though the corner of her mouth is twitching, “She’s persistent. And she’s doing that thing where she talks in circles until I– I don’t know how she already knows– things”
“She’s your mom”
Alexia waits a bit, somehow preparing herself, before asking, “Do you wanna come to dinner tonight?”
Your heart does a strange, frantic little slide against your ribs.
Dinner at her mother’s isn’t just dinner, you know that.
And you’re moving to Madrid in a few days.
In the world of the Putellas family, after everything they’ve navigated and the inner circle she keeps so fiercely guarded, an invitation to that table is not just an invite.
It is a declaration, the understatement that something fundamentally changed.
“Ale–”, you start, your voice losing the teasing edge, “I’m not sure if it’s– if it’s the right time”
The ticking clock of your departure, which can’t really be ignored anymore, starts to hum in the back of your mind.
You look at her, really look at her, and you see the vulnerability she usually keeps tucked behind the heavy fabric of her oversized sleeping t-shirt.
It’s a stupid way to admit your fears. To point out the imminent moving, the distance. The unsaid. The known, not hidden, but protected.
She stops walking, her hand tightening around yours to face each other. The place is quiet, save for the distant laughs of kids playing somewhere nearby.
“We do not do right times, we never did”, she says, her gaze fixed on yours with that terrifying, beautiful honesty she only uses for the things that truly matter. “And I don’t want it easy. We’ve done the hard parts already, but I want everything. I want to hear you complain about papers and I want to watch you nod at your own notes. I want shared calendars, late mornings, dates, like this one, and I want you teasing me for basically everything”
“You sure?”, you ask, just because you feel like you have to.
“I trusted you with my pain, how could I not trust you with my happiness?”
They just need to be accepted.
You feel the professional resistance in you. The part of you that calculates risks and manages workloads simply crumbles.
You’ve spent two years trying to fix things, but as you look at her you realise some things don’t need to be fixed.
“Yes”, you eventually state and the word feels like a physical weight lifting off your chest, “Yes, okay”
“Okay?”
“Sure– I love her cooking anyway”
She beams at you accepting her invite to dinner, but really not just that.
Alexia Putellas just beamed. That radiant, ego-bruising smile that belongs only to her and you have been lucky enough to feel close to.
You pull her by her hand, cutting the rest of the afternoon short, “¡Vale! We have to bring dessert, at least, and I have to buy her something– Does she like flowers? What kind? Is wine better or–”
“Are you panicking?”, she teases with a huge grin, still matching your pace, “You have already met her, it’s not that serious”
“It is that serious and you know it”
“Is it?”
“Yes”, you say, turning just to find her gaze, “I’m meeting her as your girlfriend this time. It’s different–”
Alexia stops on the spot, stepping into your space. Her hands finding the small of your back, pulling you in until the salt-scented air is the only thing between you. Her expression is suddenly, jarringly serious.
“My girlfriend?”
You look at the woman who has become the center of your gravity, the one you’re willing to fight everything and everyone for, the one whose half-empty water bottles you’ve actually grown to find endearing.
“Yes, Alexia, your girlfriend”, you whisper, leaning in until your forehead rests against hers for a moment. “Now, let’s move! I have to change, buy flowers for your mom and for your sister– Alba! Is your sister going to be there too?”
~
You are standing in line at the pharmacy, on the phone with your new boss to discuss the impending arrival, when Alexia simply texts an address and time.
It’s not like it holds bad memories, not really, but for some reason you want to preserve it in a certain way.
You recognise it immediately, it’s the same cafeteria right outside Barcelona you said goodbye at before the World Cup. A place you never visit again after, despite being one of the best you have ever been to.
You enter the cafeteria five minutes earlier, but the midfielder is already waiting for you at a table in the farthest corner from the entrance.
For a second, you even think of proposing another bar, but you know that if Alexia wants to meet you there it’s probably trying to be sentimental.
Lately, she’s been really sentimental.
“Fancy meeting you here”
“You picked the place and the time”, you retort, sitting right in front of her with a matching smile.
“Yeah, but I also ordered your usual”
The drinks arrive a beat later, as if cued, and the conversation flows easily. The cafeteria is not full, but around there’re enough people to make you feel like you’re just any other couple.
“I have something for you”, she admits when her coffee turns cold.
You figured this was something more than an unplanned date.
She reaches into your bag to pull out a stuffed animal you haven’t seen in too long.
Dr. Wallace.
“We had a very important meeting when you were out this morning”, she says, placing the toy on the table like it must be part of this conversation, “Someone must come to Madrid to keep an eye on you”
The toy sits on an armchair in Alexia’s bedroom like it owns the whole place, you just recently found out.
The callback to last year doesn’t pass unnoticed, especially since it is so clear.
The meaning behind the gesture, however, definitely deeper.
It’s not just a symbol of the journey, the path taken together. The stops, restarts, the detours.
It’s the story of your journey together.
A path which, if it isn’t already mapped out, you want to build.
Of two distant paths that crossed, for some reason, and that learned to travel a stretch of the way together.
The story of how you lost sight of one another and yet continued to follow each other from afar.
The story of how you found each other again, despite everything.
The story of how you must keep moving forward, seeking a path that will allow you to continue the journey together.
“I never thought I could share custody of a stuffed toy”, you say eventually.
Right there, late afternoon in a cafeteria outside Barcelona, both you and Alexia know the toy represents more than an inside joke.
And when you kiss, there’s nothing truly hidden anymore.
This was such a fantastic ending! The Dr Wallace scene made my heart hurt in the best of ways. I’ll miss these two but am glad they got their happy ending!
I even wrote a scene, taking place in 2026. The first and only time Reader willingly and happily took a picture on the pitch after a win is to celebrate Alexia 500th game with Barça.
"Come here and smile, please. I couldn't be here, not like this, without you"
summary: alexia is older, wiser, and trying to make you the best. in doing so, she loses sight of more important things.
words: 5.7k
warnings: me and my toxic age gap are back at it x
notes: i forgot about this fic but here is the second part! i hope, again, that you clock the two timelines pls don't gaslight me
Midday.
Sweat rolling down the back of her neck, so tanned, kissed from the sun. The sun rewards Alexia for her devotion and dedication, bronzing her, although she’d prefer to be golden. You like shiny things just as much. You like those colours.
Alexia is making you practice penalties. Over and over again. Boots off to feel the contact of the ball, street and beach football coursing through the connection of skin and leather. Leather is skin. You look down at the ball and consider it once being made of something real, some sacrificed animal who died for entertainment. Some things are lost with time. Synthesised.
It’s madness to train like this. The grass is hot under the soles of your feet. The sun is burning, light blinding you as you squint at the goal, at Alexia in the goal, her lips held taut as she goads you, “go on, de nuevo.”
De nuevo. She doesn’t try to save it – she’s not a goalkeeper – but her head turns as the ball rolls into the left side of the net. Powerful, sure, but not lifted.
Can’t have this be the penalty she passed down.
De nuevo.
You sigh, throat dry and minty, bones aching. Five more minutes wasn’t enough. You’re tired, so tired, but Alexia is detached from tiredness, spent too many years being dog-tired and now that has become part of her routine, and therefore it has become part of your own. There’s a certain resilience to that, and you admire it. You know you’re lazy. You hold that over her head, sometimes, in moments of hatred and resentment. You have never had to practice like this, de nuevo de nuevo de nuevo de nuevo, relentless until the ball is bullied to bend to your will. It has always come naturally. Alexia had that too, but ‘natural’ has never been enough. Something above that, of course: divine. She needs you to be divine too.
Regardless of your scorn, you’re still here, still kicking. This one hits the top corner. Perfect. Perfection must be replicated.
“One more and then we’ll take a break, alright?” She senses your frustration. Lets you tip off the edge but never, ever has left you to freefall off it. Holding your hand and letting go, letting you feel the drop and the terror of that promise, but no, she won’t allow that to happen fully. Too dangerous and unpredictable for that.
As you drain the bottle of water, disgustingly warm from where it has been left to cook, she gently passes a towel over your forehead, dabbing the sweat. “Gross,” she says but does it anyway, using the same towel for herself before folding it neatly and dropping it to the floor. A useless action as it unravels but she does it with intention, a snide comment about caring for one’s possessions.
“This sucks,” you tell her decidedly, licking your lips. The bottle bounces on the grass from the force of your throw.
“I thought you loved football?”
“Not this much.” Your shrug makes her jaw tense, veins throbbing. She probably has a headache now – her brain rebels against this kind of slander, as incomprehensible as a made-up language. Nonsense all the same. “I mean, I do like it. It’s my job.” This is prodding the beast and the beast is growling quietly, staring at you with fire in her eyes, and she looks like she might hit you but she won’t. “Football brought me you.”
She smiles at that.
Now is the time to ask. “So, can we go home now?”
Later, in the shower, Alexia’s lips on your neck, hands skimming down your hips, something so good about this feeling despite the deep ache in your muscles and the soreness in your bones. The water is too hot – the only thing cold about Alexia being Alexia herself, always needs to be burning up to compensate, always needs external warmth – and there is so much steam, enough to make your vision hazy. It’s good for recovery. The time passes quickly with Alexia, anyway.
Then she has a meeting and she makes you sit to the side of her, not on camera but very much present, a shadow ready to learn. You’re yawning, sighing, rubbing your eyes, and that’s annoying, of course, because it takes a certain level of petulance to seem so apathetic about something so important. Can’t fuck a teacher and have fun all the time, you suppose. Teachers have to teach. She doesn’t seem to care much when you pull out your phone, scrolling through the text messages that sprouted in the early afternoon (when your other teammates had woken up). With a grumble of jealousy, you read through the group chat you have. You, Vicky, Salma, Jana, Kika. Jana could leave the club but couldn’t bring herself to leave the chat. Ever the comedian, she replies with a thumbs down to the invitation to a bar tonight.
You consider Salma’s request, eyes flicking over to where Alexia frowns at her agent, arguing that no one cares if she does a campaign for juice and that filming an advert in Madrid will take time out of her training schedule. A static memory of being promised dinner and a movie tonight. Maybe it came yesterday? After the match?
The thudding close of the laptop makes you jump.
“He’s a fucking idiot,” Alexia murmurs, groaning. You stroke a hand down her shoulder. She pushes it off, then takes that same hand into her palms, holding it in her lap. “I’m sick to death of his bullshit. I think we should switch agencies.” Her decision to make.
…
It’s your first season at Barça. 2023. Every time you swallow there is pride at the back of your throat. Guilt, too. You still haven’t worked out whether this has been a meritocracy – haven’t yet decided if that even exists – or if it had been your stepfather, wrought with grief for the life he interrupted and trying to repent. He’s not an unkind man. He is just not yours; neither are you his.
The city is just how you remember it. Barcelona is a city of ghosts – your own and not, some just wandering aimlessly until their gruesome place in history is forgotten and something is rebuilt on the ruins of their memory.
You’re not alone, which is a feeling that is almost new, almost foreign. In America you were exotic. In Germany you were unusual. In Valencia you had been temporary, liminal, cautiously held onto with a bit more effort than normal from the club because they had known you were too good for them. It didn’t take much for that resolve to be bought out, though. Put a price on a name and it’s yours. Barça can do that.
Barça is a giant.
Jana nudges your shoulder as you hesitate at the polished door of the training facility. Birds fly into glass doors because they see the reflection of the sky. They see the promise of comfort and freedom and then they die. You wonder how many have hit this one, unaware and instantly dead – it’s a morbid thought. You shake it from your head.
“What? You’re nervous?” Jana asks, reaching disbelief before remembering for as much as she thinks she knows you and counts you as another product of her club, she doesn’t and you are not. A weird twist of fate. It feels almost unnatural for that to have been the case. Wrong in all senses of the universe. Her voice softens, “you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t good enough.”
“I know that I am good enough,” you reply without arrogance. A fact. You have looked at your highlight reel, at the profile your agent distributes, and you are humble but not in denial.
“Come on,” she says. “You can’t be late on your first day.”
…
You’re lounging around, letting the sun fall westwards in the sky. The sofa is soft under your bare legs. Alexia is on her laptop, scrolling through emails.
A thought occurs: “what if I don’t want to move agencies?”
Her head turns, just slightly, tension in her jaw. Her fingers don’t stop swiping the touchpad. So many emails – so many people wanting a piece of her.
“Like, I don’t know, why are we even moving? And why do I have to move as well?”
Her fingers stop.
The room feels different now. Not colder, because it’s still warm from the blaze of the midday sun, but tighter, like the air has begun to seep out into nothingness. This apartment is laced with trigger wires. There are so many of them but they are almost invisible, and it is easy to forget that they exist. But they do exist. You’ve just tripped one.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Alexia says carefully. She has decided you’re wrong and she’s trying to figure out how to express it without this blowing up. You don’t like being told you’re wrong. She doesn’t like being disagreed with. Things are good when they’re good but life doesn’t work that way, does it? “You can stay with an agency that treats you like shit.”
The thing with Alexia is that she is made vulnerable by her love for you. Loving someone gives them the capacity to see you at your worst – to know that side of you – and once the ugliness is exposed, it is hard to shove it all back down.
She wants to be subtle but she cannot. She doesn’t understand why you are pushing back.
“They’ve done so much for you, Ale,” you remind her. “And they got me that Nike contract.”
“I got you that Nike contract.” Nepotism there.
“They got you the contract, then,” you say, not giving up. Your legs have prickled and the sofa no longer feels so safe. It’s always scary delving into the time before Alexia was la Reina. She’s not accessible to you in that way, a part of herself that she has shut off, as if it is wrong to think about her being anything but what she is now. “Why do you always make me follow you around?”
The question hangs there. You hadn’t meant for it to sound like it did, like she had picked you up and held on tight and pulled you along with her. It’s not cruel but it’s a sensitive topic for her. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Age Gap. Not uncharted waters but a Bermuda Triangle of sorts, in that anything that ventures there gets mysteriously lost along the way.
You watch her face for a reaction.
She gives you nothing.
“I thought we’d discussed this,” she says, closing the laptop with a soft click. She sets it on the coffee table beside your empty Redbull can, turning to face you properly. Her knee brushes yours and you don’t move away, magnetised by the contact even if you can feel the argument brewing. Better soak up what you can get now before one of you storms off. “Your contract is up for renewal next summer. The club is in debt. If you want to negotiate a better salary you’d be at risk of them selling you. Or pulling out of all future plans with you.” She can’t say the same for herself. Alexia plays a game of chicken with Barça and it’s clear she is not the bird. “I want you to have an agency capable of doing that. I want them to keep you here.”
“What about what I want?”
She raises an eyebrow. A reaction, at least.
It sends a jolt of fear down your spine. Or, no, not fear, but shame. Shame to have even entertained the thought. You cast your mind to Jana, exiled in London, eager to come back and that is what makes Alexia proud: she is dedicated to a club that couldn’t even find a spare euro to keep her home. You want her to be proud of you like that.
“You’re starting almost every match.”
“I’ve been looking at other leagues.”
“Other leagues don’t have Barça.”
You watch her carefully, examining the threatened look she is fighting off. This is her legacy slowly slipping away from her. “Barça doesn’t have competition.”
Her jaw tightens at that complaint. It’s one that never fails to annoy her. It’s something that she’s been asked about in the media and even then she can’t keep her irritation at bay. What a stupid notion. A pedestal and an insult to come with it.
“Why are you doing this?” she asks, confused. Disappointed, maybe.
“Doing what?” A shoddy defense. You always tremble. You always need to warm up to the sport of arguing with Alexia. You can see the darkness cloud her face as she gets moodier by the second.
“This.” She gestures between you, a small and frustrated motion. “You’ve been off all day. You’ve been somewhere else and now you’re picking a fight about something you’ve never even mentioned before.”
“I’m not picking a fight.”
“You are.”
“Maybe I just don’t want to be told what to do.”
She laughs, then. Actually laughs. “Mentira.” The venom comes out with endearment. She has heard this before, has let you have this tantrum. Sometimes she wonders how so much talent fits in your body and how there is any room left for petulance. It makes no sense.
“I don’t, Ale,” you protest, lowering your voice in the hope of giving yourself some kind of credibility. She’s not taking you seriously anymore though. Frustration itches at your fingers. “You always assume what I want. You’re so fucking controlling.”
“You lack discipline,” she fires back without missing a beat. She knows this scene, knows these lines, and it’s getting a bit old but what can she do? Sacrifices must be made. Someone would have done it for her. (Not true because Alexia never was this unruly as a teenager, never had the luxury of being so, but she is generous for the sake of it.)
“I don’t need to be disciplined. You’re not my prison warden – you’re my girlfriend.”
“And I love you, and I care about you, and someone needs to be there to keep you focused.”
“Focused on what?” You cross your arms, leaning into the grumpiness of adolescence. You’ve been demoted to that already.
“Your career. The one you’re about to see go swirling down the drain by ignoring my advice. But if that’s what you want…”
“This is over a juice,” you say all of a sudden, sitting up. You’re glaring and she’s glaring back. Her cheeks are flushed and the heat is oppressive and the air conditioning should have turned on but hasn’t. You need to get out of here. You need to gain perspective. You need to figure out what you want and who you are. You need Alexia, really, to guide you in that but you can’t have her do that because of right now and this argument. “They want you to do a brand deal with a juice company and you don’t like it so you’re firing them. That’s so unlike you. You’re so understanding. You’re so nice! This is over a juice, Ale.”
She doesn’t move but you can see her legs twitching, wanting to take her somewhere else. Sometimes it’s like that when you argue – a heady, unsatisfying almost-fight that leaves you both miserable and uncomfortable. There is no catharsis in that.
“It’s over a distraction,” she says. Her voice is firm. She wants you to see where she is coming from, and while she is a little impatient that you haven’t yet caught up, maybe there is a teaching moment buried somewhere in all this. “It’s not the juice. I know it’s a triangle, sport-sponsorship-media, but come on, don’t you see? What could be wrong with it?”
You pause. “Filming in Madrid? You’d miss training?”
“I can’t miss training, can I? Not for an ad.”
“You could train in Madrid.”
“But then who would keep an eye on you in drills, eh?” She means to make a joke. You look at her and see the truth in her eyes.
…
Alexia doesn’t know why she can’t get the thought of you out of her head. She closes her eyes and sees sweat rolling down your neck, down into your collar, as you squat in the gym.
She doesn’t stop thinking about last season. You, drunk, in her car. In her home. In her bed.
It’s not clear whether this obsession is the groundwork for her usual fixation. She thought about Pina lots when she mentored her, constantly going over things to tell her in her head, always watching clips of her and analysing each and every mistake. And with Jana, she spoke to her, never stopped speaking to her. She wanted them to be the best and it seemed to work.
A few months into the season, you already own most of Alexia’s attention. She watches you in drills, she watches you in the gym, she’s always correcting. She’s always thinking about it. She’s always there, beside you.
Irene is the only one who is brave enough to warn her. It comes after dinner at hers. Mateo is in bed and Lucía doesn’t really want help cleaning up in the kitchen – even if she did, she can see on her wife’s face that there are other priorities tonight.
The sofa in the living room is soft (until one finds a stray Duplo block or a figurine) and Alexia lets it swallow her up, sinking back into it under the wash of her singular glass of wine. She imagines the alcohol seeping into her blood. She remembers your hands on the window of the taxi.
“She’s not like the others,” Irene says. It’s what she chooses because she thinks the best way to lure Alexia into this conversation will be to take her by surprise.
Alexia nods, something professional overtaking her expression, a mask that covers entirely unprofessional feelings. “Incredible. She’s so talented and she hardly works for it. Lets it flow to her naturally. No discipline at all.”
Irene doesn’t respond immediately. The silence stretches. Lucía drops a fork in the sink and clatters, metal against metal. Somewhere upstairs, Mateo is sleeping. Alexia swallows down the domesticity with a sip of water to calm her growing unease.
“You’re not listening to me,” the defender says finally.
“I’m listening,” comes Alexia’s instant response.
“You’re hearing words. You’re not listening.” Irene shifts on the sofa, tucking one leg beneath her. She tries to make it seem casual but the way her gaze is fixed on Alexia exposes it for what it really is. “I’ve known you for a long time, Ale. I’ve seen you be a referente – perfect for them. Inspiring. A good leader. A captain who cares and pushes and wants them to be great.”
A surge of pride rushes through her. She’s humble, yes, but some things do get her, do stick with her more. Her success rate as a captain-coach is one of them. But Irene’s hesitation makes her wary. She wants to get defensive. She wants to leave before a topic is broached that she has no interest in explaining to anyone but herself.
“And?”
“And this is different, Ale.” Her voice comes more gently now, soothing the wound. Alexia can’t look at her. She focuses on the title of a book on the table instead. Travesuras de la Niña Mala. She’s never heard of it. Didn’t pay enough attention in school to know. “There’s a difference between mentoring someone and… fixating on them.”
“Fixating.” The word feels foreign. It doesn’t belong in her mouth.
“What else would you call it?”
“I call it doing my job.” The job past playing and passing and scoring. The one where an armband is both power and powerlessness. How can elastic change everything? “I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Irene nods, as if her agreement is so lacking that she must physically compensate. She won’t mention how the others have started to notice. There is a time and a place for these things and Alexia’s already unsettled. She won’t poke the bear when the bear is already on the brink of anger. “But she comes over, doesn’t she? She has dinner with you.”
“We talk about football.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“And I…” She’s not sure if she wants to confess her non-crimes. She has never done anything. She has never acted on it, never let it manifest past a fantasy in her mind. “I’m not going to do it. I’m trying not to.”
She fights the desire to run right out the door, away from this conversation, staying until Lucía says, “don’t you guys have an early meeting tomorrow?” In her head, she wins because of that.
When she gets home, infected by your youth, she is subjected to twenty minutes of scrolling on her phone, bum going numb on the toilet as she is thrown down your rabbit hole of Tiktoks. So many videos. She watches them all.
how was dinner? is the message that awaits her like a prize at the bottom of the seemingly endless links.
She replies: It was good. I just got back.
You open the message and begin to type something. She shouldn’t be surprised – you’re always on your phone, addicted to the thing like its crack and you need it to feel.
it’s late capi q mal ejemplo das
Laughter bubbles out of her. The action reminds her to get a move on with her night routine. She’s soon in bed, stretching out in a space meant for two (ignores how lonely that makes her feel sometimes), still texting.
Her phone rests against her stomach, the screen lighting up her face in the dark. She’s constructing a response to a stupid emoji you’ve sent, typing out something to reestablish her authority, but then your message comes through first.
no duermes nunca o qué
Alexia huffs softly, shifting onto her side, pulling the duvet up higher like it might somehow steady her.
Soy tu capitana, I’ve got to make sure you’re getting enough rest
The reply is instant.
mentira. estás despierta x mi
She stills.
It’s ridiculous. Cocky. Too sure of itself. Exactly the kind of thing she should shut down immediately. But her thumb hovers.
Qué confianza tienes, she types back. It’s safer, lighter, an attempt to steer it somewhere less dangerous.
There’s a pause this time. Longer. She imagines you smirking at your screen, stretched out wherever you are, probably still half dressed from training today, hair a mess and your skin still warm. She wonders briefly what you do of an evening. Whether you visit your mother. Or go out. No – she knows you do go out, whenever it suits you, but you would have told her if that had been the case tonight. Another thing to add to the pretense of professionalism.
don’t pretend that you don’t think about me
She reads the message twice and realises that she has no one left to lie to other than herself. Deep down, she regrets recommending you to be scouted. Further, there is a part of her that is deeply satisfied by the result.
…
The argument stagnates when Alexia puts an old match on the TV. It’s new, this TV, because she’d broken the last one when you’d been playing two-touch together and the game got too competitive. It’s so big that you have no other option but to watch.
She keeps on pausing the footage just before you score. The build-up plays in reverse as she drags you back through the passes it took. She counts, calmly, and then makes you identify the most important player.
Her, of course. She touches the ball five times before it’s slotted through the defence to find your feet.
“Do you see?” she asks, her voice still carrying the edge from earlier but now smoothed over with a sheen of authority. It’s so settled into her being that it is hard to separate it from her normal self. Sometimes she looks in the mirror and she doesn’t know if she can see Alexia behind the hardened exterior of la reina. Sometimes it’s why she needs you the most – for all your insubordination, at least you remind her that she is just a human. “The goal starts here, with me. Not you.”
You nod. The tension hasn’t gone anywhere. You feel as if you’re watching a forest fire. You can feel its heat, can see the flames, but it’s not close enough for you to be scared.
If it had been up to you, you wouldn’t be sitting in purgatory. But Alexia has decided that the argument is over and Alexia usually gets what she wants.
She pauses the frame again. Your body is frozen mid-stride, arm raised to receive the pass. The way you have scraped your hair back into a ponytail makes your face look tighter, younger.
“Watch it again,” she says.
“I’ve watched it five times.” You let out a loud sigh. She doesn’t look at you.
Her disinterest sparks a challenge. You could just storm off and tell her what you think of watching even more football on your one free day from its clutches. You could respond to the friends who have messaged with questions about bars and clubs tonight. Or you could get revenge.
The third option is always the most alluring.
Alexia is sitting on the edge of the sofa, the remote in one hand, her posture rigid. You move. You push her chest back. You swing a leg over her hips and settle into her lap, straddling her. Her thighs are tense as your knees brush their sides, sinking into the cushions of the sofa.
Her breath hitches. Just barely. You smirk, because it’s nice to have an effect on her.
But her gaze stays fixed on the television, on your frozen body on the screen. Must be weird to see something and feel something all at once – both the same and different, frozen and burning hot.
“Did you need something?” she asks. Her voice is deliberate and steady. You almost laugh.
She doesn’t touch you as you settle deeper into her lap, although her hands twitch at her sides. On the plus, she isn’t pushing you away. Back when you first did this – years ago now – she would have tipped you off, told you to behave. Maybe she has since learned that it is hard to force you into obedience.
The remote is still in her hand. She clicks play.
The footage resumes. The pass arcs through the air and, on screen, you control it with your left foot (your weaker foot, the one she’s been forcing you to train), and boot it into the corner of the net. The goalkeeper had no chance. Probably shat herself when she saw you coming, anyway.
“Good goal,” Alexia does concede. She doesn’t yet drop her gaze from the pixels. Even if the real deal is right here, waiting for her. Some things will always take precedence.
Your hands find her shoulders. You can feel the tension there, the hard knot of muscle beneath her hoodie tender as you dig your fingers in. She flinches, just slightly.
“Ale.”
“Watch the replay.” She clicks the remote. The goal reverses, your body moving backwards, the ball returning to her feet.
You don’t watch. You lean in, close enough that your lips brush the shell of her ear. “I don’t give a fuck about the replay.”
“You should. Your first touch was terrible.”
“It wasn’t, though.”
She pauses it. Her free hand spreads out against your back. “Could’ve been better.”
“You could’ve passed earlier and I would have been more ready,” you counter, not needing to have watched anything because you remember every assist Alexia has ever gifted you. You have a good memory like that.
“You weren’t free.”
“I was.”
Her hand presses harder into your spine. She smiles, rolling her eyes. “You’re free about thirty percent of the time. The other instances are just you being cocky enough to think you can get past the defender.”
“Which I can.”
“Qué arrogante eres.”
“¿Y tú qué? ¿La más humilde?” You hum, as if it requires any thought. Also unforgettable: sex with Alexia. “You like me to fuck you like you’re a goddess.”
Her hand stills against your spine. The remote hangs loose, dangling from her other side.
She’s blushing. She hates it when you’re crass.
“Shy?” you tease as her eyes run from yours and try to focus on a screen that isn’t playing anything. “Where did all that captain's bravado go?”
“You can’t even focus,” she mutters, as if she’s annoyed. She probably still is. She’ll hold the grudge of the juice and the agent for a while, and she hasn’t even begun to process the thought of you going to a different team. No, that was instantly discarded – not even something to be considered. It won’t happen. Alexia gets what she wants and what she wants is for you to stay with her, after her, and then she won’t feel so far from playing when the r-word becomes her reality.
When you open your mouth for your next retort, you’re shocked to find Alexia’s lips covering the space your sound would have filled. Her grip tightens on your hips, both hands there now, and she pulls you closer, tongue sliding against yours. Naturally, you grind down and the remote clatters to the floor as she gets infected by your lack of fucks for how many times the number eleven must be praised for being the greatest midfielder alive.
This is still a fight. It doesn’t take many therapists to agree that the bedroom (as a concept, not a place) is a popular battleground. And if it is, you’re glad to be fighting somewhere mythical, like Troy, with a goddess as your enemy. Sing of the wrath of Alexia.
…
Alexia’s body is a furnace beside yours. It’s so hot that the sweat has stuck to your skin and you can’t ignore it even though she has moved to the edge of the bed. Your fingertips trace the wrinkled sheet in the gap.
It’s been an hour. She has granted you an hour of dignity but you can feel her working up the courage to kick you out. You’re not an idiot – you knew you wouldn’t be staying the night.
You’re surprised that she caved this early.
It has been four months of unrelenting attention; extra sessions on the weekends, low conversations over the phone when she can’t sleep and needs someone to distract her from the constant ache in her chest. She deletes your text thread every other week, just out of fear.
Tonight it seems that Alexia stopped caring. Just for a moment. Just long enough to tell you to come over under the pretence of showing you her trophies, which you’d been begging her for.
She slings her arm over her face in embarrassment. So weak, she thinks.
You turn over to look at her and even in the darkness you can see the hard curve of muscle, toned from so much training at the World Cup and the Champions League before that. It’s the kind of stuff she can never shed, so deeply carved into her being, as good as marble or stone on a sculpture. Eternal, in that sense. Some things about Alexia, about football and Alexia, will never, ever die.
You reach out, wanting to touch her even more, addicted to what she has let you do to her. It will never be enough, now. You’ve had a taste.
The thought pounds in her mind: enough.
“I should take you home.” Her voice is strange and flat. Post-sex tiredness isn’t an excuse for it. You’ve stripped away her armour. It’s an achievement but now she is at her most vulnerable.
And so are you. Not that you care.
“It’s 3AM.”
“I know.” A light blooms on her bedside table as the sheets rustle, falling down her torso as she sits up. You look and then look away. She pulls on the t-shirt she’d taken off hours before, as if that will rewind the clock. Sighing, “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologising?” you ask, but you feel small and childish and now, with Alexia moving about and undoing everything that has just happened, you want nothing more than to just disappear. She has that effect: she makes you feel invincible, she makes you feel defeated.
“I’m sorry,” she says, as if that is a good explanation. When you next allow yourself to look at her, she has your clothes gathered in her hands.
She leaves the room as you redress.
When she comes back, you are prepared for the inevitable. But you can’t let it go.
“Do you regret it?” You smirk. You can’t help yourself. “I’ve been told that I’m quite good.”
She raises her eyebrows.
You scoff. “Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy yourself, capi.”
Better than any medal is the achievement of unravelling Alexia Putellas. Someone so untouchable, unreachable, now raised up higher but not as far away. You’ll be proud of that, always. Making Alexia come. Making her feel good. It’ll be the death of you, you’re sure.
“I’ve had better,” she says, a singular engagement in your cockiness. She wants to make it clear that you have a lot to learn. You’re young. That’s the point of being young.
“I bet I’m up there, though. Or…” You’re overstaying your welcome now, because she begins to gently herd you to the door. “Ale, how many people have you slept with?”
“I thought I told you.” At times, she has to admit the content of your text exchanges. It’s not all professional. She’s no liar.
“Yeah, but, like, that was a month ago.”
You reach the door. She checks her phone; there’s an Uber waiting outside the building for you.
It’s natural for her to want to minimise the duration of her embarrassment. It’s logical.
Just as you step out, door closed halfway, she says, “no one since you signed for Barça.”
there is a kind of quiet after a child is born that the world never quite gives you again. you and alexia make the most of it. (3.3k)
Dawn had begun to slip through the blinds in thin bands of orange light, soft and warm against the pale hospital walls. The glow pooled across the floor and stretched over the neatly folded, knitted blue blanket that sat in the clear plastic of the bassinet by the window.
Beyond the glass, the sky was still waking. A slow gradient of amber and blue pressed against the horizon; the first gentle promise of morning. The city could be heard in the distance as it slowly dressed for the day, and birdsong decorated the stillness of the room.
Inside though, the air carried that faint sterile scent, yet even that felt hardly noticeable now– dulled by the serenity of the hour, untouched by the day’s chaos so far. Machines sat silent in their corners, screens dim, lights blinking softly as if careful not to disturb the peace.
Time was slower there, somehow. Suspended in the peaceful hush of early morning, when the world outside had not quite begun and the room existed in that fragile, fleeting calm that only arrived at the end of something difficult and the beginning of something new.
“He waited for the sun.”
You smiled.
You shifted slightly against the pillows, turning your head toward the chair beside the bed.
The love of your life cradled your newborn son against her chest with a reverence that matched yours.
Oriol was tucked carefully in her arms, one large hand cradling the back of his impossibly small head. The light of the sunrise caught in her hair, painting gold through her brunette strands, but her eyes were fixed entirely on the tiny bundle in her arms.
She looked a little awed. Still in disbelief he was finally here.
Alexia tilted her head just a bit, watching him.
“He keeps making this… little noise.” She murmured, voice hardly louder than a whisper.
You laughed tiredly. Exhausted, right down to the bone, but you wouldn’t miss this moment for the world.
Oriol made the sound again; a faint, breathy mewl that was hardly anything but felt like everything to Alexia.
She brushed her thumb gently over his cheek as one corner of her lip twitched upwards.
“There it is again.” She said. Then, she looked up at you, eyebrows slightly raised in wonder. “Did you hear it, amor?”
“I did.”
You reached out, resting a finger in Oriol’s palm where his hand rested against Alexia’s top. His fingers wrapped around yours instantly. Your breath caught for just a second, and Alexia smiled at it.
“He’s strong, hm.”
You huffed a small laugh.
“He’s four hours old.” You rolled your eyes, before looking back at her, gaze full of affection.
She shrugged one shoulder, careful not to jostle him.
“Still.”
Your son’s hand unwrapped from your finger, his uncoordinated little movements as he wriggled a little and Alexia’s responding soothing shushes warming your heart.
Months of heartbreak and arguments and moments of hopelessness were worth this. Undoubtedly.
“Anaís is going to lose her mind when she sees him.” You commented, thinking of your three-year-old daughter who was at her abuela’s house, sleeping soundly, with no idea what was waiting for her when she woke up.
“She will.” Alexia chuckled, leaning down to graze her lips against Oriol’s forehead in a light kiss.
“I think she might cry.” The brunette’s head lifted up questioningly at your assumption. “When she sees him. Happy tears.”
“She’s three, amor.” Alexia rebutted in confusion, not convinced a child that age could cry without the tears being a result of a monstrous tantrum.
“I know,” You began, a teasing smile growing. “But she’s your daughter. Your genes. You’ve only just stopped crying, haven’t you?”
She looked away, back to the teasing-free safety of her son.
“Cállate.” She grumbled. But she smiled again when she heard you laugh to yourself.
Then, she went quiet.
You followed the small movements of her eyes.
They flicked from his tiny scrunched nose to the soft curve of his cheek, still ever so slightly flushed from his introduction to the world. To the way his lashes rested unfairly long against his cheeks, how his pink lips parted as he breathed in slow absent movements.
He had a few wisps of dark hair that peaked out under the pastel green hat Anaís had crocheted with the help of Eli. Green being the chosen colour after asking what newborn babies looked like, being shown photos of herself at that age, and deciding newborn babies… looked like frogs.
Eli had tried to convince her to choose another colour, but… well, when a three-year-old had their mind set on something, there was simply no other option.
Looking at it now, though, it suited the little boy perfectly. Alexia, and you too, loved having a piece of your daughter with him when she wasn’t allowed to be there in person yet.
His brow furrowed for a second, as though the world already puzzled him, and the sight pulled a silent huff of amusement from Alexia.
“Look at that.”
You leaned forward, following her gaze. Oriol’s forehead had creased as if in concentration, his lips pursing as he made another sound.
“He’s thinking already.” Alexia commented, amused but in amazement. Like she knew the idea was ridiculous, and yet was still miraculous to her.
You smiled with a shake of your head, watching the delicate way she held him. Every movement of her hands deliberate and protective. Seeing Alexia like this for the second time was almost better than the first. You treasured it, knowing it’d be the last time; two little ones were plenty for you and her.
“I forgot how small they are.” She said out of nowhere.
You hummed in agreement. Loved being able to see the adoration that consumed her so clearly in her eyes.
“I still don’t know how something this small changes everything so quickly.” Came an almost unintelligible voice. Would have gone unheard if the room wasn’t near silent.
You observed her. Were more than aware of her thinking habits when something akin to a phenomenon happened to her. Sent her mind reeling about anything and everything. You wondered what adventure it was taking her on this time.
“Well, he’s not small, is he?” She mumbled. “Mi pequeño, sí, pero… he will do so much.”
You couldn’t love her sentimentality anymore.
“He will. Because he has the best role model there is.” You told her.
Alexia turned her gaze to you. Offered the smile she initially only gave to one person. Then two. And now, three. But this time, it was back at you.
“You. He has you.” She said, catching you out with your own words.
You scoffed lightheartedly as you shook your head. “That’s not how that works.”
Alexia’s mouth tilted at the corner, the look in her eyes warm in that familiar knowing way.
“It is.”
She said it simply, like there was no room for argument. She’d already decided it for the both of you. The four of you.
Oriol shifted against her chest then, making another tiny sound as his fingers curled loosely into the fabric of her vest top. Her attention dropped back to him immediately, her thumb smoothing over his back to comfort him. He settled again after a few seconds.
She held him, comforted him, with ease now. Compared to three years ago when Anaís had first been placed in her arms and she’d looked at you in fear. This was where she was always meant to be. Who she was always meant to be.
“We all have you.”
She glanced back up.
“Me. Oriol. Anaís.” You said in a soft tone. “You’ve never let any of us down. Not once. Your love is the best thing we all have. That little guy has no idea how lucky he is.”
The praise landed deeper within her than she expected.
Hearing you, of all people in her life, commend how well she did the thing she held most importance to… never got old. She tried hard. Harder than she ever had in anything before– football included. And it was paying off in ways she could have only ever dreamed of.
She looked at you the same way she had been at Oriol; quietly, thoughtfully, considerately. Then, she shuffled forward in the chair until she was right on the edge of her seat. One arm stayed wrapped securely around Oriol, making sure he remained undisturbed in her movements.
And with her free hand, she reached out to gently cup your cheek. Her thumb stroked across the skin of your cheekbone in the same admiring care she’d given to your son.
She leaned down, and pressed a kiss to your lips. Soft and slow, with that awed air about her she’d had for the last few hours. It was one thing seeing it directed at Oriol, but feeling it directed at you made your chest ache in a way you’d never quite learned to get used to.
And you hoped you didn’t– hoped her love still made you feel like this in twenty, thirty, forty years. When it’s the two of you in rocking chairs with a grandchild in her arms, and she’s still thanking you for the life you’d given her. When your memories failed you both but the feeling of loving her and being loved still lived somewhere deep in your bones.
After she pulled back, she didn’t move far. Her hand stayed against your cheek, her forehead hovering close to yours.
“I love you.” She murmured.
Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the quiet of the room, or the tiny new life breathing gently between the two of you, but the words felt heavier this morning. More meaningful.
You smiled, wide. It creased your eyes at the corners, forming lines Alexia knew you hated but she took as evidence she was doing everything right. You lifted your hand to rest over hers.
“I love you too.”
She gave the same smile she’d given you a thousand times before, and leaned down for another kiss. Held it longer than you expected her to as she tried to convey the emotions that had flooded her that day.
When she straightened again, she pushed herself up from the chair. Oriol squirmed at the movement but didn’t unsettle, only blinking slowly in that unfocused newborn way as Alexia adjusted him in her arms. She began to rock him instinctively, a habit that came as naturally to her now as breathing.
She walked the few steps toward the window.
The sunlight spilled across her shoulders as she stopped beside it, making sure Oriol’s face was kept away from the beams. She looked out over the waking city while his eyes fluttered lazily before drifting closed again.
Her rocking slowed. And for a moment she just stood there, watching him doze off, until she spoke again.
“Four years ago…” She uttered, almost to herself. “We were scared to even try for this.”
You lay in the shadow her body casted, admiring the golden hue to her eyes that sun always lit ablaze in the hazel.
“And now we have two kids. Together.” Your voice still carried hints of disbelief. Even if Oriol had lived with you for nine months, and he’d spent nearly five hours shared between your arms and Alexia’s. Still, reality hadn’t quite caught up with you yet.
Alexia turned her head at the sound of it. Looked over at you. For a second she just studied your face, the same thoughtful expression returning to her features.
“You gave me everything.” She stated.
You groaned softly, already shaking your head before the sentence had left her mouth, even if your cheeks flushed enough to give you away.
“Don’t start.” Your hand lifted in a weak wave of dismissal. “You helped, Ale.”
She didn’t soften the way she usually did when you brushed off her praise and compliments. Instead, she turned fully from the window, rocking Oriol once, twice, before answering you.
“No.” There was nothing sharp in the correction, only certainty. “You did the hardest parts.”
Your brows pulled together immediately. Tried to defend yourself, even if there was no reason to. But you weren’t about to sit back and listen to the woman who had given you more than she would ever take credit for.
“Maybe, but you–”
“Amor,” She cut in gently. Her eyes had gone softer now, but they held steady on you. “All I did was help whilst you were going through hell. When your body was in pain, when you were upset, when you were sick. All I did was love you, support you, so that you could give me the world. Two times.”
Your throat tightened. Your eyes blurred, cruelly denying you of seeing her as she confessed her gratitude in a way you’d treasure forever. You blinked the tears away hastily and gave a down-turned smile at the admiration radiating from her.
She glanced down at Oriol briefly, adjusting the blanket tucked around him before looking back up again.
“You stayed.” She said simply.
You sagged back into the bed at that.
“Ale–”
“You did.” She shrugged, barely. “Even when I made it very easy for you not to.”
She held your gaze for a few seconds.
Something moved behind her eyes again, the same faraway look you had learned over the years meant her mind had wandered somewhere beyond the room you were in.
“There was…” She started, then paused. The words required a little courage from her she needed to find before continuing. “There was one time I almost let you down.”
You pushed yourself back up against the pillows, confusion knitting your eyebrows together.
“What?”
Alexia’s jaw flexed once, bracing herself against the memory.
“One moment,” She clarified quietly. “Where I almost ruined us.”
For a minute, you just stared at her.
Until understanding landed.
You frowned deeper– not in anger, but in disbelief that she’d carried that moment with her all this time.
“Alexia…” You said in a mellow tone of voice. It did little to ease the burden on her shoulder then.
Her hands, with their usual fidgeting nature when she was uncomfortable, were very clearly occupied. But the weight of her son and the comfort he brought was more than welcome. She ran a fingertip in a feather-like sensation down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. Did it a few times before carrying on.
“I thought you deserved someone easier to love.” She admitted.
It was something she had voiced years ago– long before talks of IVF and children and futures. When you lived separately in flats across the city from each other, three years deep as a couple but threatened by fears and insecurities that ran rampant through you both. Arguments littered each week for months, breaking the two of you down piece by piece until all that remained was bruised hearts running on nothing but adrenaline and the quiet, desperate hope the other wouldn’t walk away first.
At the same time Alexia reached her breaking point, you’d hit a wall of adamance.
“I thought if I stepped away first it would hurt you less.”
The words came out low, clearly something she had turned over in her mind a hundred times before finally letting them exist out loud.
You let out a breath through your nose.
“You tried to send me away.”
Alexia nodded once. Slowly.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed down the emotion that rose.
“But I refused.” You added.
A barely there, almost incredulous smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as the moment replayed itself in your mind.
“You don’t get to decide for us.”
That sentence had singlehandedly paved the path that’d led you both here. A daughter at home, a son in Alexia’s arms. A love that had been tested at its weakest point, and flourished into a lifetime as a result.
The brunette gave a wet, breath laugh at the reminder.
“You were crying.” She murmured.
“I remember.”
“You were furious.”
“I was right.” You said simply, an eyebrow raised to tease.
Her smile widened, though her eyes still shone.
“Yes.” She agreed easily. “You were.”
At that, you cautiously shuffled over to one side of the hospital bed. Patted the small empty space beside you once you were settled and beamed, amidst all your tiredness, when Alexia came over to join you. She sat back against the white sheet with a relaxed sigh, and adjusted Oriol on her chest so that you had a clear view of his sleeping face.
He was at peace. There was no better place for him to be.
The contentment to Alexia’s expression lingered, but vulnerability slipped back into her features. It nudged itself into her eyes, caused the furrow to her brow, brought on a frown to her lips.
“I was scared of this too, you know.” She revealed after a while.
“Of another baby?”
“Kind of. Not of him.” She adjusted his hat, tugging it a little further down his forehead and over his ears. “Of loving him.”
You stilled as you gave her space to explain herself. She kept her eyes on your son as she spoke, like it was easier that way.
“When Anaís was born… it felt like something inside me broke open. Like my heart had been too small before, and suddenly it wasn’t anymore.” She paused, searching for the right way to explain it. “Like it had made space I had no idea was possible.”
You didn’t stop staring. Couldn’t. Not when she was pouring her heart out, and keeping your son safe, protected, and calm so easily in her arms. It was second nature to her now. More than football was, she’d often say.
“I thought that was it.” She continued. “That loving her was the… biggest thing I would ever feel.”
Her attention switched back to you. Eyes boring into yours.
“But then…” She shook her head once, the corner of her mouth lifting in a perplexity she treasured. “Then loving her meant loving you more. And loving you meant building this life together. And somehow that love just kept… making more room.”
She looked at Oriol again.
“Now there’s him.”
He writhed just a bit in her arms, disturbing the silence with a sleepy sigh that had you lifting a hand and resting it on his feet through the blanket just to feel him.
Alexia’s eyes glistened when she turned to you.
“I thought loving you would be the biggest thing that ever happened to me.”
Your breathing hitched.
“But it turns out…” She smiled tearfully. “Loving you just keeps leading to more.”
The stillness of the room only exacerbated the effect of her words. Alexia continued to stare at you with an expression so open it almost hurt to see.
“Loving you is the best thing I’ve ever done.” She declared. “I don’t know how I got so lucky to be able to do that.”
Her voice wavered slightly then. So obviously overcome with emotion.
“But I am very proud that I get to. And I can’t wait for what is next.”
The quiet cry that left you escaped before you could stop it.
Your hands reached for her without thinking, wrapping around the back of her neck and pulling her down into you. She came willingly, carefully, while keeping Oriol safe between you both. You buried your face in her shoulder and she nuzzled her cheek into the side of your head.
There were tears coming from both of you.
Your arms tightened around her as the first stifled sob racked her body, you shaking with quiet and exhausted emotion after everything that led to this moment.
Between you, Oriol remained entirely unbothered.
Curled warm and safe against his mother’s chest, he slept through it all.
—
sorry this isn’t silhouette part 3 (again) but this came into my head and i couldn’t… not write it. actually one of my favourite things i’ve ended up writing. would love to hear your thoughts :)
summary: your life falls apart the night before the biggest race of your career. Devastated but unrelenting, you turn your pain into ruthless discipline, becoming the best in the world while keeping everyone at a distance. Until a quiet conversation with Alexia Putellas begins to crack the foundation of the walls you intended to build.
a/n: i’ve been working on this in the background for a while. it’s a little passion project of mine, inspired by my background irl. this will be part 1 of 3. the other parts aren’t written yet but i wanted to get the first part out otherwise it might be sat there stagnating for months.
word count: 13.4k
-
The medal is heavier than you expected.
Physically it is exactly what it is, a disc of silver hanging from a ribbon the colours of chosen for Oregon, regulation weight, regulation size, the same as every other one handed out at Hayward Field over the past ten days. But it sits in your palm on the plane home like something extracted from your body. Like something that was supposed to be handed to someone else.
You don’t put it in your bag. You don’t put it around your neck. You hold it in your left hand for four hours somewhere over the Atlantic and you watch the clouds through the small oval window and you think about nothing, which is what you have been doing since approximately eleven forty-seven last night when you walked back into the hotel room and realised that your relationship was just about to end.
You don’t think about what you found. You have decided, with the discipline of someone who has spent the last six years training her body to perform under conditions that would hospitalise most people, that you will not think about it until you are home. Home means Manchester. Manchester means Mia. Mia means you are allowed to fall apart in a controlled environment with someone who will not let you disappear entirely, who will make you eat something and will not say “I told you so” even though she told you so, approximately four years ago, in the kitchen of your flat over a bottle of wine you split on a Tuesday because neither of you had training until ten the next morning.
“There’s something off about her,” she said.
You frowned. “You don’t know her.”
She said, “I know you though.”
You had looked at her across the kitchen island with its scratched surface and the mug you kept meaning to throw away and the cork board Mia had put up without asking covered in her various magazine cutouts and motivational things you found embarrassing and you had thought: Mia is wrong. Mia is protective in the way that people who love you are protective, which is to say irrationally and without sufficient evidence. You had thought: Chloe is fine. Chloe is good. Chloe says your ambition is the thing she loves most about you.
Thirty-two thousand feet above the Atlantic, silver medal in your palm, you think about that sentence. Your ambition is the thing she loves most about you. You think about the way she said it, early on, in the voice she used for things she wanted you to believe. You think about what you heard through the hotel room door before you opened it. The silence that fell when you walked in. The way the room smelled different, close and warm in a way that hit you before anything else did, before your eyes had even processed what they were looking at. There was a girl you recognised distantly—someone from the wider orbit, a face from a dinner months ago whose name you had never retained because you had no reason to—and then there was Chloe, and neither of them moved for a moment that lasted much longer than a moment.
The way Chloe’s face arranged itself into something that was not quite guilt and not quite surprise but some precise combination of the two that told you she had been waiting for this moment the way you had been waiting for the final. Patient. Prepared. Positioned.
You had looked at her for a long time. Long enough that the other girl gathered the sheet and said something you didn’t hear. Long enough that the room’s warmth became nauseating.
Then you had put your kit bag down on the chair by the door and told them to get out.
She had said your name. Just that. Your name in her mouth, which eighteen hours ago you would have described as one of your favourite sounds, and which now had the particular quality of a thing that has been used up.
“Don’t.” You said.
Then you had gone into the bathroom and run the shower very cold and stood under it until your hands went numb—and when you came out, dripping, shivering, the room was empty. Both of them gone. You dried yourself and put on your pyjamas and got into the bed on the far side and stared at the ceiling until five forty-seven in the morning when your alarm went off and you got up.
This is what you think about, thirty-two thousand feet up. Not the race. Not the finish line or the time on the clock or Athing Mu’s back pulling away from you in the final eighty metres with a kind of terrible inevitability, like watching something expensive fall from height and being completely unable to stop it. Not the silver. Not your face in the press conference after, which you had assembled into something appropriate—gracious, disappointed but measured, already looking forward, all the things they want. Not the way the British media had looked at you across the room with their recorders out and their slightly hungry eyes, smelling something they couldn’t identify, something just beneath the professional surface of you.
You think about the shower. The cold water. The temperature of the tile under your feet. You think about how you had turned the tap as far left as it would go and stood there until the numbness moved from your hands up your arms and settled somewhere around your sternum where it has stayed, more or less, ever since.
The woman next to you on the plane is asleep, her mouth open slightly, a sound coming from her throat on every exhale like something being dragged across gravel. You watch her for a while. Her skin has the particular grey quality of long-haul flights, the capillaries visible under her eyes, a small crease along her cheek where her face has been pressed against the headrest. She is completely unconscious and therefore completely unguarded, and there is something almost unbearable about this, the total vulnerability of strangers in transit. You look away.
You close your fingers around the medal and put it in your bag.
-
Mia greets you at arrivals.
She is standing slightly apart from the other people waiting, most of whom are holding signs or craning their necks or doing the anxious shuffling of people who have somewhere to be after this. Mia is not doing any of these things. She is standing with her hands in the pockets of a hoodie that is technically yours, watching the arrivals gate with the calm and total focus of someone who has already decided what the next four hours are going to look like. She has a tote bag on her shoulder that you recognise. It contains, you know without asking, two portions of whatever her mother batch-cooked this week, a bottle of something you won’t have to open yourself, your preferred brand of sparkling water, and the soft blanket from the end of your bed that she has brought because she knows you will want it and will not ask for it.
She sees you.
She doesn’t smile exactly. She does the thing with her face that means: I see you, you are okay, I am not going to make it weird. Then she walks forward and takes your kit bag off your shoulder without asking and puts it on hers and says, “Car’s outside.”
That’s all. Just that.
In the car she doesn’t ask about the race. She doesn’t ask about the medal or the press conference or any of it. She puts the heating on because even in late July the Manchester air is thick and damp in the way that makes your bones feel waterlogged, and she drives in the way she drives when she’s being careful with you, both hands on the wheel, nothing playing out of the speakers, just the sound of the engine and the motorway and the rain beginning on the windscreen.
After about twenty minutes you say, “She fucking cheated.”
“I know.” She says
You say, “You don’t know.”
She says, “Jess told me.” A pause. “Lottie told Jess.” Another pause. “She told Lottie.”
You look at the motorway. The lights are doing the thing they do in the rain where they smear across the wet road and you can’t tell where one ends and the next begins.
“Lottie doesn’t know anything,” you say.
“Lottie knows she saw Chloe pick the same girl up from her physio appointment,” Mia says. “Five weeks ago.” Her voice is completely level. No satisfaction, just the fact of it delivered cleanly, the way she delivers most things.
You say nothing. The rain on the windscreen gets heavier. Mia turns the wipers up.
“I’m glad you still ran,” she says.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“No, but—“
“Please, Mia.”
She keeps whatever she wants to say to herself.
-
The flat smells like the candle Mia burns when she’s stress-cleaning, something cedar-adjacent, and the kitchen is very slightly too clean in a way that tells you she spent part of yesterday on her hands and knees with a cloth because she needed something to do with her hands. The cork board is the same. Your mug is still there. Everything is exactly as you left it and also somehow completely different in the way that everything is different when you’ve been somewhere far away and returned to find your life exactly as you left it, waiting for you with the indifference of inanimate objects.
You sit on the kitchen floor.
You’re not trying to be dramatic. You haven’t slumped to the ground in the way someone might in a film, sliding down a wall with their face in their hands. You just sit down on the kitchen tile with your back against the cupboard under the sink because standing requires a continuous decision you are not currently equipped to keep making. The tile is cold through your joggers. You rest your head back against the cupboard door and look at the kitchen ceiling which has a small brownish water stain in the corner that the landlord has been looking into for approximately fourteen months.
Mia sits down next to you. She doesn’t say anything. She opens the wine and puts it on the floor between you and gets two glasses from the draining board above your head without getting up fully, just reaching up on her knees, and she pours both of them and hands you yours and you take it.
You drink half of it before you say anything.
“Apparently my ambition was the thing she loved most about me.”
“I know,” Mia says.
“Three and a half years,” you say.
“I know.”
“I ran it in one fifty-seven point nine one,” you say. “My split at six hundred was the fastest in the field. My start position was perfect. My tactics were correct. Everything I could control I controlled.” You stop. You drink the rest of the wine. “She took the one thing I couldn’t control and she did it the night before. Like she needed to make sure.”
Mia is quiet. Then: “She didn’t cost you the gold.”
You look at her.
“Mu was always going to be difficult to beat,” she adds. “You know that. You’ve always known that. You ran an incredible race.”
You scoff. “Did I now?”
“I’m not managing you,” she says. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“The truth,” you say, “is that I was in that hotel bathroom at midnight under a cold shower instead of asleep, which is what I should have been doing. The truth is I ran the final on three hours of sleep and a physiological stress response and whatever the opposite of emotional equilibrium is. The truth is that she knew that. She knew exactly what she was doing to me the night before the most important race of my career so far and she did it anyway.” You stop. Something has moved through your chest while you were talking, something with heat in it, the first real thing you’ve felt since the cold shower, and it is not grief exactly. It is closer to fury. It is the specific clean fury of someone who has been precise and disciplined and correct about everything within their power and been undone by something outside it. “She said my ambition was the thing she loved most,” you say. “And then she made sure I’d feel it most when it cost me.”
Mia refills your glass.
“Where is she now?” you ask.
“I don’t know.”
“She hasn’t come to collect her stuff?”
“Not yet.” A pause. “But when she does I'll make sure I'm here.”
You think about this. Mia, watching Chloe move through the flat, taking her things in whatever efficient and rehearsed way Chloe does everything, her hands with their bitten cuticles moving through the spaces where she’d installed herself over three and a half years. The smell of her products no longer in the bathroom. The absence of her shoes by the door, which were always slightly too close to the middle of the hallway, which had always faintly irritated you in a way you had never said because you were in love with her, or had believed you were, which you are now beginning to understand is not necessarily the same thing.
“Good,” you say.
Mia doesn’t say anything.
“I’m fine,” you say.
She looks at you for a moment. Her eyes are very still. She has the quality some people have of being able to look at you without it feeling like an examination, like she is simply noting you, taking in information, deciding nothing. It is one of the things you love most about her and also occasionally the thing that undoes you the most, the sense that she sees you with a precision you don’t apply to yourself.
“I know,” she says finally.
-
You are not fine.
You are in the gym at two in the morning four days later, which is how you know. The Regional Arena is quiet at this hour in the way that large institutional spaces are quiet—neither empty nor peaceful, but humming with the low-level aliveness of a building that never fully switches off. The overhead lights are the kind of white that flattens everything, makes shadows disappear, makes skin look like something that hasn’t been outside in years. You are doing intervals on indoor track because if you go home you will lie in the dark and think about things you have decided not to think about yet.
Yet. That’s the word you’ve been using. Not yet. The grief, the anger, the unravelling of years of a relationship you had believed in with the same certainty you’d believed in your training block—not yet. The European Championships are in three weeks. Munich. You will go to Munich and you will run and you will win, because winning is the thing you are good at, winning is the thing that exists on the other side of everything you’ve ever endured, winning is the only answer you have ever found to the question of what you’re for.
You will grieve later.
Your feet hit the track and the sound echoes in the empty building and you think about nothing except the next stride, the next breath, the specific angle of your arms, the mechanics of your own body doing the only thing it has ever known how to do without question. Your lungs begin to burn at the four-hundred-metre mark and you lean into it, the burn, the particular honesty of physical pain which asks nothing of you except that you keep moving.
You keep moving.
You will keep moving until Munich. Then you will keep moving until Budapest next year, then Paris the year after. You will keep moving because stopping is the thing you are most afraid of, because stopping means the noise gets in, the thing Chloe left behind when she took her shoes and her products and her three and a half years, the cavity of it, the shape of a person’s absence in a life they’ve been living inside.
The overhead lights hum. Your spikes hit the track. Your lungs burn.
You don’t think about her.
You don’t think about the way she made you feel in the early months when everything was new and you believed her absolutely, when you were twenty and good and getting better and someone was looking at you like you were worth looking at for reasons that had nothing to do with a clock or a podium or a medal around your neck.
You don’t think about the hotel room. The silence. Her face. The girl’s face.
You run another interval. And another. And another after that. The lights buzz indifferently above you and somewhere outside Manchester is wet and dark and going about its business without you and you run and run and run until the burn becomes something else entirely, until it becomes the only thing, until there is nothing left in you except the movement and the breath and the clean, animal fact of a body doing what it was built to do.
You stop when your legs give.
When they simply reach a point where the information they’re sending upward becomes non-negotiable and you slow and stop and put your hands on your knees and breathe. Your lungs make a sound like something being wrung out. Sweat falls from your face to the track in slow, heavy drops. You watch them hit the surface. You stay bent over your own knees for a long time.
Then you straighten up.
You go home. You shower. You get into bed.
You don’t sleep for a very long time, but eventually you do, and when you wake up it’s morning and the light is coming through the gap in the curtains and somewhere in the flat Mia is making coffee and the sound of it is ordinary and continuous and completely callous to anything you’ve been through, and you lie there listening to it, and you think: three weeks until Munich.
Three weeks.
-
Three weeks is enough time to become someone else.
Not permanently. Not in any way that would hold up under scrutiny, under the forensic attention of the people who know you well enough to notice when the person you’re presenting as isn’t quite the right shape. But three weeks is enough time to build a convincing exterior, to sand down the edges of something raw until it passes at a distance for healed, to learn the rhythms of a version of yourself that functions—trains, eats, sleeps the minimum, smiles at the correct moments—while the actual self sits somewhere further back, quiet and watchful and waiting for conditions that never quite arrive.
You are very good at functioning.
The track at Robin Park is eight lanes and four hundred metres and you have run it so many times in your life that you stopped counting somewhere around age seventeen. You know every slight variation in its surface, every place where the texture changes under your spikes. You know this track the way you know your own hands, intimately and without thought, and this is why you come here at six in the morning and again at four in the afternoon and sometimes, when the flat is too quiet and Mia is at work you coach doesn’t know, at eleven at night. Because this is the one place where your body is smarter than your brain. Where the knowing is physical and total and requires nothing of you except that you keep going.
You keep going.
Jess notices before she says anything, which is how you know it’s obvious. Jess Harper is not a person who sits with things she’s noticed—she has the quality of someone whose face processes information in real time, thoughts moving across it like weather, and the fact that she has been watching you for four days across training sessions before she says anything means she has been actively holding it in, which costs her visibly. You can see it in the set of her mouth during the cool-down, the way she glances at you and then away, and when she finally says it she says it while she’s unlacing her spikes, not looking at you, which is as close to tactful as Jess gets.
“You’re losing weight,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.”
“I’m eating.”
She looks up then. Her eyes are very direct, the irises an unremarkable brown that somehow manages to be relentless. Her face is flushed from the session, the capillaries across her nose and cheeks livid under her skin, a strand of hair stuck to her jaw with sweat. “You’re eating enough to train,” she says. “That’s different.”
You look at her for a moment. Then you pick up your bag.
“Munich in ten days,” you say.
She says nothing. You leave.
This is not untrue. You are eating enough to train. You are eating the correct macros at the correct intervals as prescribed by the nutritionist you have worked with since you were nineteen, and your body is responding the way it always responds, because your body is extraordinary and does not particularly care what is happening in the rest of you as long as you fuel it correctly and give it adequate recovery and train it for at least five hours a day and ask it to do the things it was built to do. Your body is the most reliable thing about you. It has never let you down in the way that people do. It keeps its end of the deal with a consistency you have come to depend on in a way you don’t fully examine.
The rest of you is less reliable.
The rest of you goes out on Thursday night with Mia and Jess and a loose collection of people Mia knows from her course and ends up in a club in the Northern Quarter that is dark and loud and smells like the inside of someone’s mouth, the air thick with the specific humidity of too many bodies in a contained space. You drink more than you intend to. You dance, which you don’t usually do, with a blankness that Mia clocks from across the room. You can feel her watching you the same way you can feel the bass through the floor, as a physical fact, constant and low-grade. The girl you end up dancing with has her hands on your hips and her mouth very close to your ear and her breath smells like something sugary and synthetic and she says something you don’t hear and you say yes anyway.
The bathroom is single-occupancy with a lock that sticks. She is pretty in the way of someone who knows exactly how pretty she is and has organised her life around this fact. Her perfume is very strong and slightly sour at the edges, the way perfume becomes when it’s been on skin for too long, and there is a small smear of something dark at the corner of her eye where her makeup has shifted. You don’t think about Chloe. You are not thinking about Chloe. You are thinking about the lock and hoping it stays put as you pull her skirt up and kneel down between her legs and lick her and suck at her and she moans loud enough that the lock is, in theory, pointless.
After, she says, “Aren’t you that runner?”
“No.”
She laughs. You don’t understand what’s funny.
In the Uber home Mia sits next to you in silence for a while and then says, very quietly, on the edge of sleep: “That’s not going to work.”
“Maybe not,” you say.
“Okay,” she says. And that’s all.
You do it again the following weekend anyway. Different club, different girl, same dodgy lock, same emptiness of the forty minutes after when you’re lying on your back in the dark and there is no thought in your head at all, which is the closest you’ve come to peace since Oregon. You have decided that the absence of thought is sufficient. That the body’s capacity to be entirely present in the physical and therefore entirely absent from everything else is not self-destruction but strategy. That you are managing something the only way you know how to manage it outside of running.
Mia doesn’t comment again. Jess doesn’t know, or pretends she doesn’t, which for Jess is an act of love.
The tabloid thing happens on a Wednesday.
There is a low-grade awfulness of waking up to a message from your management at seven forty in the morning, before your alarm, which means they’ve seen it already and are managing their tone. The message says we need to talk today in careful phrasing that means something has happened that they want to get ahead of. You lie in bed and read it twice and then you go onto the internet and find it yourself, which is faster and less mediated than waiting for them to tell you.
It is a photograph. Thankfully nothing that crosses into something actionable—but enough. A grainy shot from outside the club two weeks ago, you and the girl from the bathroom, the angle and the proximity and the context of the moment captured making obvious what it is. The article around it is three paragraphs of insinuation dressed up as concern, the kind of thing written by someone who knows exactly where the line is and has positioned themselves one inch on the right side of it. They don’t name her. They name you, obliquely, as a British athletics star whose recent performances have raised questions about her focus ahead of major championships.
You read it once. You put your phone face down on the bed. You get up and make coffee and stand at the kitchen window and drink it looking at the back alley below which has three bins and a piece of cardboard someone has been sleeping on recently, the cardboard soft and greying at the edges with moisture.
Mia comes into the kitchen at seven fifty-five, reads the situation correctly from the set of your back, and pours herself coffee without saying anything.
Your management call is at nine. The woman you speak to has a voice like something laminated—smooth and slightly impervious—and she talks about perception and the pre-Munich window and what this means for the narrative going into the Europeans and you say the correct things at the correct intervals and afterwards you sit on the sofa and look at the middle distance for a while.
Then you put your kit on and go to the track.
This is the thing about being a machine: the machine doesn’t stop. The machine runs its session. The machine hits its splits. The machine does the strength work and the cool-down and the ice bath and the recovery work and eats the correct food at the correct time, and the machine does not read the comments on the article, does not look at Chloe’s Instagram, does not think about the hotel room in Eugene or the smell of the room or the particular sound of your name in Chloe’s mouth immediately after, the specific guilt-shaped way she said it, like she’d been waiting to say it like that.
The machine is excellent at its job.
At the track Lottie is doing strapping for one of the sprinters and she sees you come in and her expression does the thing it has been doing for three weeks, a careful neutrality that costs her something, and you nod at her and she nods back and that is sufficient. Lottie Kane is the person who, a few years ago, you would have described as something you hadn’t named yet—something in the space between friend and more than friend that had a warmth to it without ever quite resolving into anything definite, because Chloe had just asked you to be her girlfriend and therefore not looking, or telling yourself you weren’t looking. Now Lottie is your physio and your friend and the person who will occasionally appear at the flat with food when Mia texts her, and the unnamed thing has quietly become something else, something easier and more permanent, and you are grateful for this in a way you don’t know how to say.
She comes over after she’s finished with the sprinter.
“How are your adductors?” she says.
“Good.”
“I’ve been told you were compensating on the back straight yesterday.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Liar. I watched the training video back.” She holds your gaze. Her face is very steady. “Left side. Come and see me tomorrow morning before your session.”
“I have—”
“Before your session,” she says, immovable.
“Alright, I’m sure I can squish you in.”
“Good.” And then, very quietly, without changing her expression: “You’re going to be okay. In general. Not just the adductor.”
You look at her.
“Thanks,” you say.
She goes back to the sprinter. You go to your lane.
The week before Munich is its own kind of monastic. You cut the nights out, not because Mia asks you to but because your body is starting to tell you things you choose to hear. You eat more. You sleep seven hours and then eight and even sometimes nine. You run your final sharpening session on the Thursday and it is very fast and very controlled and something in your chest loosens very slightly, the first loosening since Oregon, the relief of a body that has been pushed past its sensible limits remembering what it feels like to operate correctly.
On the Friday night, the night before you fly to Munich, you are in the kitchen at ten o’clock eating the dinner Mia made and your phone is on the table and Chloe’s name is on the screen.
Not a call. A message. I miss you. I'm sorry.
You read it. You read it again. The internal weather of it moves through you, but something older than love and more reflexive, the body’s instinct toward the familiar regardless of what the familiar cost.
You hold the phone for a long time.
Then you open your running app and check tomorrow’s weather in Munich and put the phone face down and finish your dinner.
You don’t delete the message. You don’t reply to it either. You leave it there like a bruise you’ve decided to stop pressing.
Mia is watching you from across the table.
“Nothing,” you say, before she can ask.
“I know,” she says.
You fly to Munich in the morning. You run the 800 metres final on a Tuesday evening in the Olympiastadion and you win it in one fifty-seven point three, which is not your fastest but is enough and is clean and entirely correct, and the crowd makes a noise you feel in your sternum and you cross the line and put your hands on your knees and the first thing you feel is not joy but something more structural than joy, something that sounds like: this is what you are. This is the thing that doesn’t leave. This is the thing that cannot be walked in on, cannot pack its things and go, cannot send you a messages at ten o’clock on a Friday and make you hold your breath.
On the podium you smile the smile they want. You hold the gold medal. It is heavier than the silver was, or it feels that way, though you know this is not physically possible. You look at the cameras and the cameras look at you and somewhere in the crowd a British flag is moving and you find it and hold your gaze on it for a moment and breathe.
Later, in the hotel bar, you sit at the end of the counter with a drink you’ve been nursing for far too long and Jess is somewhere behind you being loud with some of the other athletes and Mia has gone to bed and the room is warm and bright and full of people celebrating things, and you watch them in the way someone who has spent everything they had and is now sitting very quietly in the aftermath of it.
Your gold medal is upstairs in your kit bag.
The bar is full of noise and light and bodies and you watch the room over the rim of your glass and think about nothing, which you have become very good at, and you feel, underneath the nothing, the faint persistent hum of something you cannot name. You wouldn’t call it loneliness, and it’s not grief exactly, not the Chloe-shaped thing which is still there but quieter now, manageable, a bruise rather than an open wound. Something else. Something more like an absence you haven’t yet identified the shape of.
-
Paris smells like exhaust fumes and something floral and slightly rotting underneath, the way expensive cities always do when you get close enough to the surface.
Laura says this every time she comes here, which is often enough that Jemma has started finishing the sentence for her, and they do this in the back of the taxi from the airport with the comfortable ease of people who have spent enough time in close proximity that their rhythms have merged without strain. You are sitting between them with your bag on your lap and your face turned toward the window and the city moving past in the blue-black way of October evenings, the light doing something complicated with the limestone buildings and the river glimpsed between them.
“You’re quiet,” Jemma says.
“I’m always quiet.”
“You’re quieter than always,” she counters. “There are degrees.”
Laura puts her hand briefly on your arm—just that, just the weight of it for a moment—and then takes it away. Laura Muir is the most efficient communicator you have ever met. She has the ability to say more with a hand on your arm for two seconds than most people say in a paragraph, and you are grateful for this in a way you couldn’t explain to anyone who doesn’t know what it’s like to be around people who fill silence with noise when silence is sometimes the only thing you can manage.
“It’ll be fine,” she says. “Drink the champagne. Talk to the right people. Fly home tomorrow.”
“That’s your philosophy for everything,” Jemma says.
“It has an excellent success rate,” Laura says.
You look out the window. The taxi crosses a bridge and below it the Seine is flat and pewter-coloured and reflecting nothing, and you think about Munich, the podium, the smile you assembled for the cameras, the gold medal in your kit bag upstairs while you sat at the hotel bar scanning the room for something you couldn’t name. You have been thinking about that moment with a regularity that concerns you slightly. The absence you felt sitting in that bar. You have been to enough hotel bars in enough post-competition cities to know the difference between post-race monotony, which is physiological and temporary, and something else. This was something else.
The hotel the Nike team has put you in is very tall and very white and the lobby has the chill of a place that maintains a constant temperature regardless of what’s happening outside. The marble floor reflects the overhead lighting in a way that makes everything look slightly unreal, as if the lobby is a photograph of itself. A woman at the front desk has the kind of face that belongs on something decorative, symmetrical and slightly glazed, and she smiles at you with teeth that are very white and very even and hands you a key card without ever quite focusing on your eyes.
Your room is on the fourteenth floor. Through the window Paris arranges itself in the way it does for tourists and visiting athletes. Rooftops and bridges and the dark thread of the river and in the distance something tall and illuminated that you look at for a moment before turning away. You put your bag on the bed. You sit next to it. You check your phone. Mia has sent you a voice note that is just under two minutes long, which you know without listening will be roughly twenty seconds of genuine good wishes and the rest will be instructions, and you play it while you unpack and she says “drink water, not just champagne, eat something before you go up, text me when you’re back in the room” and you smile at the wall, which is the most you’ve smiled at anything in weeks.
The party is on the rooftop. You take the lift with Laura and Jemma and a man in a very dark suit who smells strongly of something that is trying to be cedar and is instead something adjacent to cedar, something slightly synthetic that catches at the back of your throat. He presses the button for the rooftop and you all ride up in silence and when the doors open the city opens with them. The whole of Paris at night laid out beyond the glass balustrade, lit and enormous and entirely indifferent to the event being held in front of it.
There are perhaps sixty people. Maybe seventy. The kind of number that fills a space without crowding it, that creates a low continuous noise of voices and glasses and the particular sound of expensive shoes on stone flooring. The lighting is warm and very deliberate, doing flattering work on everyone’s faces, and there are people here whose faces you recognise from television, from magazine covers, from the global vocabulary of famous, and they are moving through the space with the ease of people who are used to being looked at and have learned to carry it without reprocussions.
You get a glass of champagne from a passing tray. You drink half of it immediately.
Laura steers you toward the British cluster without making it look like steering, which is a skill she has, and within ten minutes you are standing in a small warm group being congratulated again on Munich—incredible race, so clean, you must be so pleased—and you say the right things and smile the correct amount and drink the rest of your champagne and get another one.
You see Keira Walsh before she sees you, which gives you a moment to arrange your face. She is standing with Leah Williamson and two women you don’t recognise and she is laughing at something, her whole face involved in it, the laugh coming from somewhere genuine and unperformed, and when she turns and sees you her expression does the thing it does—immediate and warm and entirely without agenda—and she says your name like it’s good news.
“You came,” she says, like you might not have.
“Nike insisted.”
“Same.” She pulls you into a brief hug that smells like something warm and slightly sweet, and then holds you at arm’s length and looks at your face with the directness she’s always had, that quality of looking at people without softening it into something easier. “Munich,” she says. “God. I watched. You were phenomenal.”
“You watched?”
“Obviously I watched.” She turns to Leah. “She watched too. We were in camp and someone put it on and we all watched you in beanbags.”
Leah says, “The last two hundred metres. I don’t think I breathed.”
You don’t know what to do with this so you drink your champagne.
Keira’s group absorbs you with the easy hospitality of people who are good at parties, and for a while it is—fine. More than fine. Kiera has a gift of making whoever she is talking to feel like the most coherent version of themselves, drawing things out of you without seeming to, and you find yourself talking about the indoor season coming up and the training block in Loughborough and something approximating an actual conversation rather than the performance of one. Leah is funny in a dry, understated way that you don’t expect and appreciate. The two women you don’t recognise turn out to be Spanish players. You catch their names and lose them immediately, your brain doing the thing it does at parties where names slide off without sticking.
At some point Keira leans in and says something to one of the Spanish girls, gesturing toward the far side of the rooftop, and the group begins a slow drift in that direction, the natural gravitational shift of parties, and you drift with it because it requires no decision and you are trying to conserve the energy required for decisions.
This is how you end up near the bar.
You peel off from the group to get a fresh glass, your third, which you are monitoring with the background awareness of an athlete who knows what alcohol does to recovery and has decided tonight this doesn’t apply, and when you turn from the bar there is a woman standing approximately two metres away who is looking out at the city with the specific quality of attention of someone who is present in a room without being available to it.
You know who she is. This is not a surprise, she is probably the most recognisable person on this rooftop, which is a significant statement given what this rooftop contains. She won the Ballon d’Or twenty-four hours ago. She is dressed in a dark tailored blazer and trousers, something precise and considered. Her hair is down. She is holding a glass of water, not champagne, and she is looking at Paris with the expression of someone who has a complicated relationship with being looked at and has made peace with it that stops just short of comfort.
Keira materialises at your elbow with the timing of someone who has been watching this moment approach.
“Alexia,” she says, and the woman turns, and Kiera does the introduction with the efficiency of someone who has done a lot of introductions. “This is my runner grind I was telling you about.”
Alexia Putellas looks at you. Her eyes are very dark and very still, and there is something in the quality of her attention, the way it settles on you fully and without hurry, that you are not prepared for. Not intensity exactly. More like accuracy. Like she is looking at the actual thing in front of her rather than a version of it she’s assembled from prior information.
“Congratulations on Munich,” she says. Her English is precise, slightly formal in the way of someone who learned it carefully rather than accidentally. “Kiera showed me the highlights. You have a very strong finish.”
“Thank you,” you say. “Congratulations on tonight. And on—all of it, this year.”
Something passes across her face that is not quite a smile. “Thank you,” she says. A pause. “It has been a strange year.”
This is, you think, a significant understatement for someone who tore their ACL in July and then won the Ballon d’Or in October, but you don’t say this. You say: “How is your knee?”
She glances down briefly, the automatic response of someone whose body has been a topic of public conversation for months, and then back up. “Progressing,” she says. “Slowly.” Another pause, and then: “You know how it is. When the thing that defines you is also the thing that is—not available.”
You do know how this is. You know it from the outside, from the fear of it rather than the fact of it, the dread that lives in every athlete’s peripheral vision. The injury that takes the thing away. You have not said this to anyone before. You say it to her, because she will understand, and she listens in the way some people listen, with her whole face, without preparing her response while you’re still talking.
“Yes,” she says, when you’re done. “Exactly that.”
There is a silence that is not uncomfortable. Below you Paris makes its continuous noise.
“These events,” she says, with a small careful gesture that takes in the rooftop, the people, the warm light doing its work. “They are always a little—”
“Boring,” you say.
“I was going to say formal,” she says. “But surreal is also correct.”
You have done a number of Nike campaigns with the British girls, you tell her. Shoots and promo days, the kind of thing that puts people in the same room who wouldn’t otherwise be in the same room. She nods. “They’re good,” she says, meaning Keira and Leah, and there is a warmth in it that is genuine and undemonstrative. “Keira especially. She is—consistent. You know where you are with her.”
You think about this. You say: “Yes. That’s exactly right.”
She looks at you for a moment with her full attention. Then someone appears at her shoulder, a man with a lanyard and an expression of professional urgency, and she turns, and the conversation ends the way conversations end at these things, quickly and without ceremony.
“Nice to meet you,” she says. “Good luck with your season.”
“You too,” you say. “With the knee.”
She nods. She goes.
You stand at the bar for a moment. You drink your champagne. Below the balustrade Paris is the same as it was before, lit and enormous and indifferent, and the party continues around you with its glasses and its voices and its warm deliberate light, and you think: that was a perfectly normal conversation. A pleasant five minutes with a very famous footballer at a networking event. You think: she seems very grounded. You think: that thing she said about injuries, about the thing that defines you not being available—you think about that for a moment, the cleanness and the accuracy of it.
You go and find Laura and Jemma.
“Who were you talking to?” Jemma asks.
“Alexia Putellas,” you say. “She seems really nice.”
Jemma says something and Laura says something back and the conversation moves on the way conversations do and you drink the rest of your champagne and talk to two more people whose names you don’t retain and at eleven-fifteen you tell Laura you’re going to bed because tomorrow is a travel day and your body is already sending the kind of information it sends when you’ve been social for longer than your system finds comfortable.
In your room you sit on the bed and scroll through your phone and see the Ballon d’Or posts. The ceremony, the red carpet, Alexia holding the award, her face doing the complicated thing introverted people do in photographs, being present and slightly elsewhere at the same time. You look at one of them for perhaps four seconds longer than is necessary. Then you put your phone on the nightstand.
The indoor season starts in January. You have eight weeks of base training before the first competition. You have things to do, things to build toward, a shape of a year assembling itself ahead of you that requires everything you have and several things you haven’t got yet but are working on.
You turn off the light.
You don’t think about the conversation at the bar.
You sleep.
-
January in the north of England is less a colour and more an absence of one.
You have lived here your whole life and you have never gotten used to it. The way the sky sits low with the same shade of nothing from the moment it gets light until the moment it stops, the greyness of it that is not dramatic enough to be bleak and not bright enough to be bearable, just a continuous neutral overhead fact that presses down on everything below it without apology. You run in it every morning at six forty-five. You have run in it at six forty-five for so long that the light, or the absence of it, has become part of the rhythm, part of the physical grammar of what it means to be you preparing for a season.
Trevor's voice at the far end of the back straight has the same timbre it has had for as long as you can remember, carrying a combination of authority and restraint that you have come to understand means he is pleased with what he is seeing but will not say so directly because he believes, correctly, that you run better toward a standard than toward approval.
“Last rep. Same as the first.” He says.
You say nothing because there is nothing to say. You go back to your start position. You breathe.
Georgia Bell is two lanes across, hands on her knees, chest heaving, a string of something from her lip to the track surface that she wipes away with the back of her wrist without looking at it. Georgia is twenty-nine and has been training in the same group for a few months. She runs the 1500 metres with a brutal efficiency that makes her a useful training partner for you in the way that good training partners are useful. She pushes at the right moments and is quiet at the right moments and does not require anything from you except that you show up and work, which are the only terms you are currently able to offer anyone.
Right now, her face is the colour of someone who has been pushed past the point of comfort—a deep mottled red that extends from her jaw to her hairline, the veins in her neck visible with every exhale. She looks, from certain angles, like she is in significant distress.
She looks up and sees you watching and says, between breaths, “Stop looking so normal.”
“I’m not normal,” you say. “I’m just quieter about it.”
She makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. You turn back to the start line. The rep goes exactly as the first one did, which is what your coach asked for and what you delivered, because the first rep was controlled and precise and you saw no reason to deviate from something that was working.
This is the version of yourself you have been constructing since August. Since Munich, more precisely, since the hotel bar with the gold medal upstairs and the hollow feeling you couldn’t name. You have been building toward the indoor season with a focus that has a different feel to previous years, sharper and less forgiving, as if something has been stripped away and what’s underneath is purer and more functional and colder. Mia says you have become, and this is her exact word, monastic. She says it while she’s on the sofa on a Tuesday morning while you are eating your first meal of the day at five forty AM before early track, her wearing the expression she wears when she is making an observation that contains a question she isn’t quite asking yet.
“I’m focused,” you say.
“There’s focused and there’s this,” she says.
“This is focused.”
She looks at you for a moment. She has a stillness when she is deciding whether to push further or let something sit, and you have learned to read it well enough to know which one is coming. This time she lets it sit. She drinks her coffee. You eat your breakfast and go to the track.
Lottie catches you on the way out of a Thursday session, following you to the treatment room with the quality of a person who has something to say and has chosen her moment. She manipulates your left hip flexor with her thumbs while you stare at the ceiling, which has a water stain in the shape of something that might be a continent, and she says: “You’re holding tension in your glute.”
“No I don’t.”
“It’ll be fine if I do this twice a week before it becomes something that isn’t fine.” Her thumbs find a specific spot and apply pressure and you make a sound you didn’t intend to make. “There,” she says, with the satisfaction of someone who has been right about something. “That’s been there for weeks.”
“It doesn’t affect my running.”
“Not yet,” she says. She works the spot with a precise and relentless patience. “How are you sleeping?”
“I’m getting my seven hours.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You look at the ceiling stain. “I’m sleeping,” you say. “Now leave me alone.”
She doesn’t say anything. She continues working. The room smells like the specific combination of antiseptic and athletic liniment that you have associated with recovery for so long that it has become almost comforting, the olfactory equivalent of being told everything is being managed.
It is being managed. Everything is being managed.
In February you fly to Poland.
The airport is very bright and very cold and the seats in the departure lounge have the particular quality of airport seats everywhere, slightly too upright, the upholstery a colour that was chosen to resist visible dirt rather than to be sat on by human beings. Jess is asleep beside you with her mouth open, her breath audible in the way that people’s breath becomes when they are genuinely unconscious, a low repetitive sound like something soft being compressed. You are reading a training analysis document on your phone that your coach sent at eleven the previous night. You have read it three times. You read it again.
Toruń is grey and cold as most Polish cities are in winter, the cold being different to the Manchester cold. Drier and more serious, as if it means it in a way that British cold does not. The hotel is clean and functional and the room smells like the previous occupant’s laundry detergent, something floral and slightly too sweet, and you open the window for twenty minutes before bed despite the temperature because the alternative is sleeping inside someone else’s olfactory residue.
Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena is smaller than you expected. You notice this during warm-up — the way the banked corners feel tight, the ceiling low, the crowd already pressing in close to the rail even with an hour until the first gun. The track itself is a is on the lighter side of navy and the surface has a slight give to it that your spikes find immediately, a responsive compression that is different, and you file this the way you file everything about a new venue—systematically, without attachment, as information to be used.
The race itself takes ten minutes to set up and one minute fifty-seven point eight seven seconds to run.
You sit behind Yarigo through the first four hundred, which is where you planned to sit, and you run the back straight of the second lap with the even controlled power of someone who has done the work and knows the work and trusts the work, and at the three hundred metre mark you move. You don’t sprint. You accelerate like something mechanical, a gear change that is smooth and total and, once initiated, non-negotiable. The gap between you and the field opens in the final straight with a kind of inevitability that you experience from inside as simply: flawless. This is the perfect speed. This is the perfect shape of a race. The clock stops and the number it shows is one fifty-seven point eight seven and a woman with a microphone says world leading time, meeting record and you nod once and collect your things.
In the mixed zone you say the correct things. You credit your coach, your team, the work done in January. You are polite and measured and the journalists write it down. Your face does what it needs to do. Inside you feel something that is adjacent to satisfaction but is not quite there—a recognition that things are going as they should, that the machine is performing, that the plan is working. You think about Budapest in August. You think about the 800 metres final and Mu and Moraa and what it will take and you think: more. It will take more than this.
You think: fine. You will find more.
In the hotel room that night Jess is lying on her bed with her feet up the wall, which she does for circulation recovery, and she says: “You ran a world leader today. Have you processed that.”
“Yes,” you say.
“You don’t look like you’ve processed it.”
“I have, now I’m thinking about Budapest.”
She is quiet for a moment. “Are you over her yet?”
You look at your phone. “Yes,” you say.
Another pause. “You’re allowed to not be,” she says. “It was serious.”
“I’m over it,” you say. “I’m over her.”
She looks at you for a moment, eyes narrowing before she puts her feet back down and says, “Order the food. I’m not moving.”
You order the food.
A week later you are in northern France.
Liévin is slightly warmer than Toruń and the hotel has a smell in the corridor that is difficult to categorise, something institutional and faintly damp, and your room is on the second floor with a window that looks directly at another building’s wall.
Lottie flies in for Liévin, which she sometimes does for back-to-back competitions, and she works on your hip flexor in the hotel room the night before the race and afterwards you sit on the floor against the bed and she sits against the wall and she says “You’re running the best of your life.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to keep going.”
She looks at you, allowing you to be insufficient and waiting for you to notice. “And your hip’s better,” she says eventually. “You’ve been doing the activation work.”
“I know,” you say.
“I know you know,” she says. “I just like saying it.”
You run one fifty-seven point seven one. Another win. Another race. Jess runs well also and you celebrate this with appropriate enthusiasm and then you lie on your bed in the room with the wall outside the window and look at the ceiling and feel a flatness settles over you after a race that went right, the anti-climax of achievement met, the moment where the goal dissolves and the next one hasn’t yet solidified.
You fly back to Manchester on a Thursday in the third week of February.
You put your kit bag down in the hall and you notice immediately the wall leading to the kitchen where the photos were. Four of them. Chloe in three of them, you in all of them. The wall is blank now. Four slightly lighter rectangles where the frames kept the paint from fading, the ghost-shapes of them still there, a pale negative space where something used to be.
Her favourite mug is gone from the cupboard. You look at its absence for longer than is necessary.
There is a note on the kitchen counter, folded once. Your name on the outside in her handwriting, which you know as well as your own. You stand in front of it for a moment. Then you unfold it.
It is four sentences. The first is an apology that reads like a formality, something produced because the genre of the note required it rather than because she felt it. The second is something about wishing you well. The third is practical, a question about your joint accounts. The fourth is I always knew it would be the running.
You fold the note. You put it back on the counter. You go into the bathroom and run the shower and stand in it for six minutes and then you get out and put on clean clothes and go and sit on the kitchen floor with your back against the cupboard under the sink, which is where you sat in July, which is apparently where your body goes when things need to be processed on the tile.
Mia emerges from her room, sleep mussed and disorientated an hour later.
She sees you on the floor. She sees the note on the counter and puts the kettle on because a cup of tea is the only thing she can think to offer you at this time of day.
“She’s blaming my career.”
“She was wrong about you,” Mia says. “She was wrong about everything.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“She is wrong about what it means.” Mia pours your glass and hands it to you. “The running isn’t the reason she left. The running is the reason she felt small. Those are different things.”
You drink your tea. The kitchen is very quiet. Outside the window the January light is doing its grey continuous thing and the back alley has its three bins and its piece of softening cardboard and everything is exactly as it was and also different in the specific way of rooms from which a person has removed themselves.
“I’m not sad about her,” you say. Which is almost true. “I’m angry,” you say. “Still.”
“Good,” Mia says. “Run faster.”
You look at her.
“I mean it,” she says. “Take every single thing she did and run faster than you’ve ever run. That’s a legitimate use of anger.”
You are quiet for a moment. “That’s the most useful thing anyone has said to me in six months.”
“It better be,” she says. “I’ve been saving it.”
On Sunday you drive to your parents’ house.
Your mum opens the door before you’ve parked the car, which she always does because she watches for you from the front window. She hugs you in the doorway the way she hugs you after difficult periods, with both arms and a firmness that you used to try and wriggle out of. She smells like the soap she’s used your whole life and the house behind her smells like roast lamb and the house is warm in the way that houses are warm when someone has been in them all day.
Your dad talks about your Birmingham times over dinner, which are not yet set but which he has projections about based on your Toruń and Liévin splits, and Theo sits across the table from you eating an amount of food that seems biologically implausible and periodically says things designed to make you laugh, which work more than you want them to. He is twenty-seven and very large and looks nothing like you except around the eyes, and he has the quality that very large protective people sometimes have of making the space around them feel slightly safer than it is.
After dinner, washing up, your mum stands next to you with a tea towel and says quietly “You’re carrying it alone again.”
“I’m okay, Mum.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I always am.”
She hands you a plate to dry. She is quiet for a moment in the way she is quiet when she is deciding whether to keep going. She keeps going. “You don’t have to be,” she says. “That’s all. You don’t have to manage everything alone.”
You dry the plate. You put it in the cupboard. “I know,” you say.
She puts her hand on your back for a moment, brief and warm, and then goes back to the washing up, and you stand next to her and dry the plates she hands you and the kitchen is warm and smells like the roast and somewhere in the living room Theo is saying something that makes your dad laugh, and you think: this. This is the thing that the running can’t do. Not fill this, exactly. But stand alongside it.
Birmingham is on the following Saturday.
You run one fifty-seven point one eight.
It is a British Indoor Record. You win the race by over twenty-five metres, which in an 800 metres is a different category of winning, a distance that stops being competitive and starts being demonstrative. The crowd makes a noise that you feel as a physical event, a pressure change rather than a sound, and you cross the line and you allow yourself six seconds of something that might be joy or might be relief or might be the specific sensation of a body being asked to do a thing and doing it with such totality that the mind is briefly unnecessary.
Six seconds. Then you collect yourself and you find the camera and you do the thing they want and your face does what it needs to do.
In the mixed zone someone asks if you’re happy. You say yes. They ask what the secret is. You tell them hard work, good team, believing in the process, and the other things athletes say in mixed zones. Trevor is standing ten metres away with his arms crossed and an expression that is as close to pleased as his face gets, which is to say neutral with a very slight adjustment around the eyes that you have learned over three years to read correctly. You nod at him. He nods back.
At the team dinner Jess makes you order dessert, which you do, and Lottie says your hip has been perfect all week, which it has, and there are four of you around a table in a restaurant near the arena and the conversation is easy and warm and you drink two glasses of wine and eat the dessert and feel, for the first time in months, the uncomplicated thing of being in the right place with the right people after having done the thing you came to do.
You are the number one 800 metre runner in the world indoors. You are twenty-three years old. You have won three races from three and set a British record and the year has barely started.
You sit in your room two days later with your three indoor medals on the shelf. Toruń, Liévin, Birmingham, three small pieces of metal that represent, collectively, hundreds of hours of early mornings and dark Januarys and Lottie’s thumbs finding the spot in your hip flexor and Jess’s face the colour of something that has been through significant pressure. You look at them for a while.
I always knew it would be the running.
Is she wrong about what it means?
That doesn’t matter now. Budapest is in six months.
You put your kit on. You go to the track. The January light is doing its grey and continuous thing outside and inside the fluorescents are white and constant and the surface under your spikes is exactly the same as it was weeks ago, and you go to your lane and you run.
Outside, spring is not yet there. But it is, somewhere, the idea of it. It will come. The body knows this even when the sky doesn’t show it, the particular readiness of a system that has been doing this long enough to know what the next thing is and what the next thing requires and how to move toward it with the specific and total commitment of someone who has decided, again and again, that this is the truest thing about her.
-
You didn’t think you’d find yourself at Camp Nou on a Thursday evening in April.
Keira had texted four days ago—second leg against Chelsea, I’ve got you a seat, come— with the casual certainty of someone who does not entertain the possibility of no. You had looked at the message for a moment, then at your training plan open on your laptop, then at the grey Manchester afternoon outside your window, and had thought, the outdoor block doesn’t properly start until May. You have a recovery week. You have never been to Barcelona.
You said yes.
This is the version of you that is slowly, tentatively, becoming something other than purely functional. The version that occasionally responds to things on the basis of wanting them rather than on the basis of whether they fit the schedule. It is new enough that you are still suspicious of it. But here you are, in the corporate section of Camp Nou with twelve thousand other people, watching warm-up on a pitch the size of something you’d only ever seen on television, and the warm April air is doing something complicated to every surface and the grass below is so meticulously green it looks constructed rather than grown.
The outdoor season starts properly in May. Trevor knows you’re here and has sanctioned the break with the brevity of a coach who understands the psychology of people who run best when they are not thinking about running every minute of every day. You needed to leave Manchester. The flat still has the pale rectangles on the wall where Chloe’s photos were and you have not repainted them because repainting them would be an acknowledgement that they are not coming back, which is an acknowledgement you have not yet made formally, though informally your body made it months ago.
Keira had found you at the players’ entrance thirty minutes before kickoff with the distracted warmth of someone already ninety percent in match mode, her handshake firm and brief, eyes doing the thing athletes’ eyes do in the final hour before competition—present but slightly interior, processing things you can’t see.
“Glad you came,” she said. “I put you next to Alexia, since you got on so well in Paris.”
You had said, “Right.” And Keira had already turned back toward the tunnel.
-
Alexia is already in the seat when you find the row.
She is watching the warm-up with the focused attention of someone who cannot turn the professional part of themselves off even from the stands, which is something you understand intimately and have never heard articulated but can read in another person when you see it. She is in a dark jacket, and something in the way she holds herself is different to Paris—less careful, less managed, like her knee is no longer something she has to think about with every movement. She looks, in a word you would not say aloud, recovered.
She turns when you sit down. The recognition is immediate.
“Ola,” she says. And the way she says it—carefully, with the tightness of someone who didn’t expect to be saying it to a certain someone today—does something you don’t examine.
“Hi,” you say. “Keira told me about the seat about twenty seconds before she disappeared.”
Something at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. “She does that,” she says.
Down on the pitch the Barcelona players are running patterns in the half-light of the stadium, the grass catching the floodlights in a way that makes their boots flash white intermittently. The Chelsea end is loud already, banners moving, the noise of away fans who have travelled far enough to need to justify the distance.
“How are you finding it,” you say. “Watching instead of playing.”
She is quiet for a beat. “Strange,” she says. “I watched for nearly a year. You think you get used to it.” A pause. “You don’t get used to it.”
“No,” you say.
She looks at you. “You know this?”
“I’ve been lucky,” you say. “No serious injury yet. But I know the fear of it.”
“The fear is different,” she says. “The thing itself is—” She stops. She looks back down at the pitch. “You spend a long time not knowing who you are without it. Then you find out. And then you come back and you have to—” she makes a motion with both hands because you know she can’t find the word. Integrate.
You think about this for a moment. About after Eugene, the hours at the track at two in the morning, the way the running had been both the wound and the bandage simultaneously.
“What did you find out. When you were without it.”
She turns to look at you and there is something in her face that is the expression of someone being asked a real question and deciding whether to answer it really. She decides.
“That I am still Alexia without football,” she says. “But she is—quieter. Less certain. She needs more looking after.” A pause. “This is not comfortable information.”
“No,” you say. “But it’s useful.”
She looks at you. “Yes,” she says. “Exactly that.”
Below you the warm-up ends and the teams begin to retreat toward the tunnel and the stadium fills further, the sound building in the incremental way of large crowds assembling, individual voices folding into something collective and formless. You watch the Chelsea players disappear. You watch the Barcelona players follow. The grass sits empty and very green under the lights and the noise continues to build around and above it.
“Indoor season,” she says. “You had a good one.”
“You watched?”
“I saw some,” she says. “Keira talks about you.” A pause. “Three wins. World leader. British record.”
You look at the pitch. “It should have felt better than it did,” you say, which is something you have not said to anyone, not even Mia, not in those exact words.
“But it didn’t,” she says.
“No.”
“Because you are already past it,” she says. “You won it before you ran it. So when you ran it the achievement was already—” she makes a small precise gesture, something dissolving. “Gone.”
You turn to look at her. She is looking at the pitch.
“That’s very accurate,” you say.
“It happens,” she says. “When you are very good at something and you know you are very good, the winning confirms what you already know. It does not surprise you. And you need the surprise.” She pauses. “What you need is something you cannot guarantee.”
“Budapest,” you say.
“¿Qué?”
“World Championships. August. That’s the one I haven’t guaranteed.” You pause. “I’ve never won a World Championship. I’ve got silver twice. Once when I was nineteen, which I could excuse, and once in Eugene, which I—” You stop. You had not intended to go this far. “Which I couldn’t excuse.”
She is quiet for a moment. “What happened in Eugene.”
It is not quite a question. It is the tone of someone who has heard the professional answer and is asking for something underneath it, and you look at her profile—she is still watching the pitch, not looking at you, giving you the option of not answering—and you think about the hotel room and the shower and the three hours of sleep and Mu’s back in the final eighty metres and you say, “Personal things. The night before. Things I couldn’t control.”
She nods once. She doesn’t push. This is, you think, one of the more considerate things a person has done for you in the past eight months.
“The night before Budapest,” she says, “will be different.”
“I’ll make sure of it.”
“No,” she says. “Not like that.” She turns to look at you finally. “I mean you will be different. You are already different to whoever ran Eugene. You can see it.”
You look at her. “How would you know?” you ask. “You met me for the first time after Eugene.”
“I don’t need more than that,” she says. There is no arrogance in it. It is stated the way she states most things—plainly, without embellishment, as if the fact of it is simply obvious and she sees no reason to dress it up as something more tentative than it is.
The teams emerge from the tunnel. The noise from the crowd changes register entirely, rising into something physical, something you feel in your bones before you hear it properly, and for a moment conversation becomes impossible. You stand because everyone around you is standing and the Barcelona players are moving toward the centre circle and the floodlights are very white on the green of the pitch and the sound is a continuous roar that presses against the inside of your skull and you think, this is what sixty thousand people sounds like when they want one thing.
You understand wanting one thing.
The first half is end to end in a way that makes your palms press against your knees. Alexia explains, without being asked but without being condescending—a running commentary delivered in the gaps between play, low enough that it’s just for you, the kind of context that turns watching into understanding. She explains the pressing trigger Barcelona are trying to set. She explains why a particular Chelsea midfielder is dangerous in the channels. She says, when Barcelona win a corner: “Salma will get on the end of this,” and Salma does, though the header goes wide, and Alexia makes a small sound beside you that is not quite frustration and not quite satisfaction.
“You’re still coaching from up here,” you say.
“I’m always coaching from up here,” she says. “It is a condition.”
At half-time you go for water and come back and there is a different feel to sitting down again, something easier, the awkwardness of two people who don’t fully know each other having been replaced by the familiarity of shared attention. You have watched a game together. This is, apparently, sufficient.
“Do you actually enjoy watching?” you say. “Or is it just—cataloguing.”
She considers this with a seriousness you are starting to understand is characteristic. “Both,” she says. “When it is going well I enjoy it. When it is going badly I am cataloguing.” A pause. “Tonight it is going—” She tilts her head. “Adequately.”
“High praise.”
“We are defending a one-goal lead,” she says. “Adequate is correct.”
The second half tightens. Chelsea push higher. Barcelona absorb it, more conservative now, and Alexia is quieter, her jaw set, and you watch the players below work through a system that she understands from the inside out and you from the outside in. There is something companionable about this asymmetry, about watching something together from different angles of knowledge.
At the sixty-third minute Barcelona score and Alexia stands up and puts both hands flat together once, a single, contained clap, and sits back down. You look at her.
“That’s it?” you say.
“What more is needed?” she says.
The final whistle goes and the stadium does the thing stadiums do, the noise fragmenting from collective into individual, the tightly held thing releasing into movement and voices and people beginning to gather their things. Below, the Barcelona players are moving toward the home end, arms raised. Alexia is watching them with the expression you saw in Paris across the rooftop—present and slightly elsewhere, at the same time, the inside of something vast being visible only at the edges.
“Do you miss it?” you say. “Being down there.”
She is quiet for a moment. “Every time,” she says.
You look at the pitch. The Chelsea players are walking toward the tunnel. The Barcelona end is still singing. The grass is churned at the penalty spots, the perfection of it from an hour ago disrupted and human now, used.
“I’m back in three days,” you say. It comes out without particular intention. “Altitude work.” This is, you note, the first time you have mentioned your own schedule to her unprompted, which is a small thing and probably nothing.
She looks at you. “Back? In Barcelona?”
“Near enough,” you say.
There is a pause. Not uncomfortable. The noise of the stadium settles around it.
“You should come to another match,” she says. “If your schedule allows.”
You say, “Maybe.”
She nods. She looks back at the pitch. The groundskeepers are already moving out across the grass with their equipment and the lights are doing what they do at the end of games, slightly less charged somehow, returning to just light.
You collect your jacket. You stand. She stands beside you and you make your way along the row and up the steps and the warm Barcelona night comes in through the exits and the air is different to Manchester in every conceivable way and you walk out of the stadium into it and think to yourself, this was a good decision. Saying yes was a good decision.
You don’t examine the part where Alexia invited you to another game, or when you told her you had altitude training in three days when you absolutely do not.
You find a taxi. You text Mia: good night actually.
She replies in four seconds: elaborate.
You put your phone in your pocket. You watch Barcelona go past in the dark, lit and warm and alive in the April evening, and you think about Budapest four months away and the outdoor season starting in three weeks and the fact that you are twenty-three and the best in the world at something and there is, somewhere beneath the usual machinery of it, the faint and unfamiliar sensation of looking forward to something that is not a race.
4 times you almost got Alexia's shirt and 1 time you got something else instead.
Author's Note: I was SO innocent thinking I could write something SHORT and SWEET. This is neither of those things, and also nothing like I described it before. Honestly, no clue what happened. Read at your own risk.
Inspired by the format of the amazing @fruno. Also, Phantom Pains just got updated and y’all should go read it.
Word Count: 16k
WARNINGS: Smut. Bad smut but still.
1.
It’s your second season with Real Sociedad and you feel good about it.
First season is always harder: new club, new squad, new way of doing things. It helped that San Sebastián is beautiful and reminds you of your own coastal town back in Argentina — if you squint, that is.
You spent the whole season trying to find the perfect balance between giving too much without busting a knee and holding back without being forgettable. Now it's season two: your place more or less secure in the main roster. Actual friends with these girls. Actual love for this team.
You run a hand over the fabric of the jersey, soft under your fingers. You like the colors of it — blue looks good on you, and the stripes are a faint reminder of your national team. Be that as it may, today you want to exchange it.
Alexia Putellas is playing and you want her shirt.
Wanted it for a while. Didn't get many chances last season, when she was slowly getting back on her feet after her injury and you weren't racking up that many minutes to begin with.
Kept your eyes on her, though. How could you not? Girl deserves the attention she gets. Beautiful, tall, shy smile that is unbelievably charming, always a kind word to dish out — more than one of your teammates came back swooning from talking to her, brief words but meaningful.
"It's the accent," Lucía would go, grinning wildly inside the locker room after retelling her latest interaction. Itziar would swat at her with a towel.
"The accent is a detail. It's the cheekbones, I tell you. And the dimples." Cecilia would add it shyly, like the words cost her something. They would bicker the rest of the day, throwing lewder and lewder comments just to get a rise out of each other. You would stay quiet.
Personally, you think the whole package of Alexia Putellas is deeply attractive, bordering on unfair. But you wouldn't look twice at her if she wasn't so fucking talented — annoyingly so. And you can't quite explain how you know this, but: if you can't impress her with the way you play, she won't look at you twice.
And all the trash talk in the locker room will be nonsense.
Keep that in mind as you line up in the tunnel for the game. It's the third round, and you're starting against the boogeyman of the league: Barcelona. Home game for you, and even if your stadium is humble in comparison to the dazzling Camp Nou, you're proud of it.
Proud of the thousand or so fans who chant loudly and clap louder, doing their best to intimidate the mighty Barcelona.
You hear the shuffling behind you, a sudden nervous energy, and you know that here comes Barça.
And here comes La Reina.
You don't turn. Not right away. You shift your weight from foot to foot, roll your neck, look straight ahead at the small square of light at the end of the tunnel — your stadium, your home, your fans waiting on the other side. Pretend to be unbothered. Pretend you aren't tracking every footstep behind you, picking out the cadence of one in particular: unhurried, certain.
When you do glance over your teammate’s shoulder, you do it casually. Quickly. Just a sweep.
Alexia is three players in front of you. Captain's armband. Hair tied back in that effortless way that suggests she didn't think about it but probably did. She isn't looking at you. She's listening to something Patri is saying, half-smiling, head tipped down to hear over the noise.
You face forward again. Your pulse is doing something stupid.
Behind you, Itziar clocks your face and snorts.
"Respirá, che."
You give her the finger without turning around.
The first half is a clinic, and you are the textbook.
Barcelona moves the ball like they were born together, like they share a single nervous system that runs on touch and instinct and the sheer fucking audacity of it. Aitana ghosts past you in the eleventh minute and you don't even feel her go. Salma cuts inside twice in a row and the second time the cross finds Pina's head and it's one-nil before the half hour.
Then two. Then three right before the whistle, a set piece, a header you can't get a leg to.
You jog toward the tunnel with your jersey sticking to your back and the sun in your eyes and that particular Camp-Nou-comes-to-you taste in your mouth that is not despair, exactly, but is its cousin. Three goals. Forty-five minutes. You are doing the math in your head when you feel her at your shoulder.
You don't have to look to know.
"Good marking out there," she says.
You glance over. She's slowing her stride to match yours, eyes on the tunnel ahead like you're just two players going the same direction. Her cheeks are flushed. Hair stuck to her temple. She is, up close, even more annoyingly good-looking than from a distance.
You decide, on instinct, not to be sweet.
"Say that to me again at the end," you tell her. "If we make it to the whistle without conceding, then you can say it again."
She turns her head, then. Looks at you properly for what feels like the first time in your career.
You hold the look.
Her eyes are hazel and you weren't ready for that. You swallow.
Her mouth does something — not quite a smile, the shape of one starting. "Is that a promise?"
"It's a threat."
A small sound, something like a laugh she didn't plan to let out. She tips her chin like she's filing it away somewhere.
"Bueno," she says. "We'll see."
She lengthens her stride and pulls ahead of you and disappears into the away dressing room without looking back, and you stand for half a second with your hand on the cool concrete wall and your heart doing something even stupider than before.
You are, you realize, in trouble.
Second half, you don't think. You only run.
You run at every ball, every shoulder, every space they try to open. You scream at Lucía to step up. You point and shove and herd. You take a knock to the ribs in the sixty-third minute that you will feel for a week and you don't even register it. You are not playing football, exactly. You are defending a sentence. And somewhere on the other side of the pitch is the woman who said it.
You don't look at her.
You look at her so much you have to forbid yourself from looking at her.
The ball goes out for a corner in the seventy-eighth minute and you find yourself marking her, her arm against yours in the box, the smell of her close enough to touch — sweat and grass and something faintly floral that has no business being on a football pitch. She doesn't say anything. Neither do you. You stand shoulder to shoulder waiting for the kick and you can feel her breathing.
The ball comes in. You both go up. You don't get it cleanly but you get enough, the keeper claims it, and as Alexia lands beside you she grazes your hip with hers turning to jog out, and you don't know if that was on purpose.
Eighty-fourth minute. Eighty-eighth. Ninety. Three added.
The whistle goes.
3-0. No goals in the second half.
You stand in the middle of the pitch with your hands on your knees and you breathe, and your lungs are on fire, and you feel — improbably, ridiculously — good.
You straighten up. You scan.
She's already looking at you.
She's across the center circle, hands on her hips, jersey untucked, a little smile playing at the corner of her mouth like she's been waiting. She tips her head a fraction of an inch. Bueno. Acknowledgment. The smallest possible nod that still counts as a nod.
You start to walk toward her.
You make it three steps.
Itziar — Itziar your captain, Itziar your friend, Itziar who has played this league for a decade and knows exactly what she is doing — sprints past you like a woman possessed, throws her arms around Alexia, and within four seconds is tugging at the hem of the Barcelona shirt with the biggest fucking grin on her face.
You stop walking.
You watch Alexia laugh — a real laugh this time, surprised and warm — and pull the jersey over her head and hand it over. You watch her turn it the right way out for Itziar like a small courtesy. You watch Itziar's face do the thing it does when she's being a tease, watch her say something you can't hear.
You stand in the middle of the pitch in your sweat-stuck blue shirt with the white stripes and you feel, distantly, the funniest thing. Not jealousy, exactly. Something closer to I should have run faster.
Alexia, half-turned away, glances back.
She finds you across the green.
She mouths something. You don't catch it the first time and she does it again, slower, just for you.
La próxima.
Next one.
You nod, because what else are you going to do. You nod, and you turn toward your own bench, and you do not let yourself smile until you are halfway there.
2.
The next time is sooner than you think.
A recording day for the Liga F TikTok — a marketing campaign with some of the faces of the league. You're there with Lucía and Itziar. You've been playing well, even scoring, which is rare for a midfielder like you. But you have no illusions about what this is about.
Pretty faces. Itziar with her strong jaw and the shoulders that fill out the club's jersey nicely. Lucía who is youthful and has a good following on TikTok. Lavogez with her baby blue eyes. You, who — well, they say you're charming. Argentinian accent hits different. You don't care, but it's nice to have a free day for this.
Lavogez and Lucía are being stupid at your side. You find it funny that your fellow midfielder is almost thirty but downgrades to a sixteen-year-old boy whenever she's near Lucía, who is, in fact, a twenty-four-year-old idiot.
"I bet she tops," Lucía says, chin pointing at the cluster of Barcelona players on the other side of the room.
This has been going on for a while now. They've talked about every other girl in the vicinity, gossip over gossip. Who's beautiful, who's single, who just broke up, who they've kissed, who they haven't — it's suspiciously like a wildlife documentary, the narrator never once shutting up. Even Itziar got tired at some point and went off to stretch her legs.
You should have done the same. Now you're stuck here listening to Dumb and Dumber debate Alexia Putellas's preferences in bed.
"Hm. Yeah. I can see it." Lavogez squints to prove her point. "The arms. It's always in the arms."
You resist the impulse to roll your eyes. You've got your back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of you, really not trying to get into it. Barcelona sent Alexia, Patri, and Mapi. You figure Aitana was busy with something. Still a premium lineup. They're running their lines in front of the camera. You'll admit that Alexia's arms look very good indeed, peeking out of her blaugrana jersey.
"What do you think?" Lucía prompts from your side.
You actually do roll your eyes. "I think you two are horny."
"No te creo," Lavogez goes, wiggling her eyebrows. "There's no way you haven't thought about it."
You have, unfortunately, thought an awful lot about Alexia.
How pretty she looks under the studio lights. How the uniform hugs her body just so. How soft her hair looks with those careful waves. Her hazel eyes a little greener today, mellow.
You sigh, because it's not at all what they mean. "No. Actually, no."
"Lies! Where's your fire, che? El tango?" Lucía heckles you, tickling at your side.
You squirm out of reach, stretching out and flipping them off.
"You two keep up the running commentary. I'll be just over there." You smirk, backing away from them.
Lavogez and Lucía boo you, but eventually turn back to each other to continue their gossip. You take a spin around the room. Some girls you know, some you've only played against a handful of times. You wink at the two Brazilians on Atleti's squad — there's a nice rivalry there, and you see them often enough during international breaks.
Your feet are betrayers, though, and soon you find yourself at the edge of Barcelona's little recording scene.
Alexia sees you and her face shifts instantly, small smirk in place.
You stop a few meters off, hands in your pockets, eyebrows up. What.
She tips her head toward the camera setup. The director — a small man with too much energy for a Tuesday — is gesturing with both hands, explaining something involving the ball and a header and two takes from different angles. Patri is nodding. Mapi is openly not listening.
"Oye," Alexia calls over. "Ven, we need a fourth."
You glance behind you on instinct, like she might be talking to someone else. She isn't. Patri is watching with mild interest. Mapi is watching with significantly more than mild interest.
"There are like forty players in this room," you say, walking over anyway.
"Sí, but you're the closest."
"I was on the other side of the room two minutes ago."
"And now you're here." She shrugs, deadpan. "Qué casualidad."
Mapi makes a small noise that could be a cough.
The bit is simple. Four players in a circle, headers back and forth, last one to keep it up wins. The director wants it clean for the first take and chaotic for the second. He explains it twice, in the way of men who like the sound of their own voices, and Alexia catches your eye across the circle while he's still talking. Holds it. Doesn't look away when you raise an eyebrow at her. The director finishes. You nod once like you heard a word of it.
"¿Listo?" he calls.
You step into the circle across from her.
The ball goes up. Patri to Mapi to you to Alexia. Alexia's header is clean, professional, not even a real challenge — she's playing the bit, not the game. You send it back to Patri. Patri to Mapi. Mapi loses it on her third touch and curses in Catalan.
"Otra vez," the director calls, pleased. "Now make it messier. Push each other. Más caos."
Second take, Mapi immediately tries to chest-bump Patri out of frame. Patri retaliates by sending a header straight at Mapi's face. You laugh. The ball comes to you and you pop it up softly toward Alexia, deliberately easy, and she — instead of heading it back — catches it on her chest and traps it under her foot, looking at you across the circle like she's daring you to do something about it.
"That's not the bit," you tell her.
"¿No?" Innocent. Eyes very wide.
"You're breaking the bit."
"You sent me a slow ball."
"Because it's a bit, Alexia, it's not the Champions League."
Mapi is openly losing it now. Patri has her hands on her hips. The director is yelling something neither of you is listening to.
Alexia flicks the ball up off her foot and heads it at you — gently, but with enough on it that you have to actually move. You get under it, send it back. She gets under that one. You get under hers. Patri and Mapi have given up entirely; you can hear Mapi calling something to the camera that's probably going to make the final cut. You and Alexia trade headers six, seven, eight times. She's smiling. You're smiling. You don't realize you're smiling until your cheeks register it.
She finally lets the ball drop and catches it under her foot again, hands on her hips, breathing a little harder than the bit warrants.
"Bueno," she says. "You win."
"I didn't win anything."
"You outlasted me."
"You let the ball drop on purpose."
"Tal vez," she says.
The director claps his hands and announces a five-minute break. Patri claps you on the shoulder on her way past. Mapi mouths what was that at Alexia, who pretends not to see her.
You drift toward the wall. Alexia drifts with you. Neither of you discusses it.
You both end up against the same stretch of wall, a polite forty centimeters of air between your shoulders, watching the crew reset the camera. You can feel her there. You can feel the heat of her, even through the air.
You consider it. Decide fuck it.
"Hey," you say, not looking at her. "Are you very attached to that jersey?"
A beat. Then a soft, surprised sound — half a laugh.
"Es que I need it," she says. "To go back to the hotel. Otherwise I arrive desnuda."
You feel the word land in your chest and you do not show it on your face.
"I could lend you mine."
You make yourself look at her then. Slow. Sideways.
It works better than you expected. Her head turns toward you and stays there. You watch her face do a very small, very specific thing — a thing you weren't sure you were going to get to see. Her cheeks color. Just along the high edge of them, just enough. The smile she'd been wearing has gone quieter, something private about it now, and her eyes flick — quick — down to your mouth and back up.
Tops my ass, you think, and you have to bite the inside of your cheek not to laugh.
"You'd do that," she says. Not a question. Voice lower than it was thirty seconds ago. You're going to think about that voice for a week.
"It's an even trade."
She turns her head fully toward you now. Leans her shoulder against the wall so she's facing you a quarter-turn, and the forty centimeters becomes thirty, becomes twenty. You don't move. You let her come.
You always let them come. Very generous of you.
Her eyes are doing that hazel-green thing again. Up close it's almost unfair.
"Argentina," she says, soft. Like she's just landed on the word.
"That's me."
"You scored last weekend."
"You saw?"
"I saw."
You did not know she saw. Your stomach does something inconvenient. Before you can figure out what to do with your face, she does something with her hand — moves it the small distance to your hip, two fingers, the lightest possible contact. The hem of your jersey is right there. Her fingers find the edge of it and slip — not under, exactly, just along the inside of the fabric, the back of her knuckles grazing the bare skin of your hip for a second, less than a second.
You forget what air is for.
She withdraws her hand like she didn't do it. Eyes full of mirth.
"¡Atención todas!" The director's voice cuts across the room like a foghorn. "Quick announcement before we go again — for those willing, we're collecting signed jerseys today for a charity auction. Anyone donating, see Marta by the door. ¡Gracias!"
You close your eyes a second. Of course. Charity. When you open them, Alexia’s smiling in that way that means she's appealing to a god she doesn't believe in.
"Cariño," she says, "lo siento. La próxima.”
Next one. Again.
You let it sit in the air between you for exactly as long as you can stand to. Then you push off the wall, cross your arms over your stomach, grab the hem of your jersey, and pull it up and over your head in one clean movement.
You hear it. The small, audible catch of breath beside you.
Sports bra, bare arms, the cool studio air on your stomach. You don't look at her face yet. You give her the courtesy of a second to fix it.
Then you turn.
She is, to her credit, trying very hard. Her eyes have made it back up to yours. Her mouth has not entirely committed to a shape. Her throat moves.
"For charity," you say, sweet as anything.
You hold the shirt balled up in one hand, look her dead in the eye for one more beat — just long enough to make sure she gets it, that this is for her, that the charity is incidental — and then you turn and walk away from her across the studio in your sports bra.
You do not look back. You do not need to look back to know she's watching you the whole way.
Lucía sees you coming and her jaw actually drops.
"Qué carajo —"
You throw the shirt at her face.
"Vamos, hienas. Sign it. It's for a good cause."
Lavogez catches it before Lucía can, holds it up between two fingers like it's evidence at a trial. "Why are you not wearing this?"
“Didn’t you hear? Charity auction."
“And you needed to take it off?”
"Charity is a serious commitment."
Lucía is staring past you toward the far wall with a slow, dawning grin spreading across her face. You don't have to ask what she's looking at. You drop down between them, pull your knees up to your chest, and take a long, slow drink of water you didn't know you needed.
"Che," Lucía says, very carefully, eyes still fixed over your shoulder. "Putellas is staring at you."
"Sign the shirt, Lu."
"She is staring."
"Sign the shirt."
Lavogez is laughing now, pulling a Sharpie out of god knows where, scrawling her name across the front. She passes it to Lucía, who signs it without looking down once, eyes still on the far wall.
"What was that about no fire, porteña?" Lucía murmurs.
You don't answer.
You take another drink of water.
You do not look back at the wall.
You can feel her there.
3.
You love your country. You just wish it loved you back.
The federation is a horror show. The hotels are a joke when you can get them, the flights are designed to break you, the domestic league pays in pesos and prayer. You've fought for everything: meal money, training kits, the fact that anyone would pay attention to you at all. You're not so unaware of yourself that you don't know you're one of the lucky ones — you play in Europe, you get paid on time, you're a success story, whatever that's worth. You hate it. You resent it.
And still, when they call, you go.
This time it's a cheerful little FIFA Series, three friendlies in Mexico City — Mexico, Colombia, and Spain. Set in Mexico because that's "fair travel" for everyone, which means it's least fair to your team, who flew the longest and arrived earliest and got the worst of the heat.
You're the proverbial punching bag of this tournament. Everyone knows it. Your federation pretends not to.
Mexico City is heat that you can chew and noise that lives behind your teeth. You love it anyway. You like the food, you like the people, you like the way the locals laugh at your accent and you laugh back at theirs. You haven't been given the captain's armband yet, but you can feel it coming. You're young to be in line for it but Europe gives you a status the others don't have, and the older girls already defer to you in small ways — the way they look at you when there's a decision to make, the way they wait for you to speak. You take it seriously. You give them everything you have.
You wrangle a 1-0 win over Mexico under harsh boos. You dig out a draw against Colombia that feels like a victory for everyone but the press. By the time Spain rolls around you are tired, you are bruised, you are eleven kinds of homesick, and you have decided one thing.
If you're going to lose, you're going to lose with Putellas's shirt in your hands.
A red one this time, instead of blaugrana. Not as legendary as the Barça shirt — but still. A good trade for ninety minutes of being run through a blender by the World Champions.
That's the plan.
You should know better than to make a plan.
Spain are not playing, exactly. Spain are teaching.
Two goals in the first twenty minutes. A third before the half hour from a free kick that bends around your wall like physics is optional. By the time the whistle goes for halftime you're 4-0 down and Spain hasn't even put their first-choice midfield on yet. You walk into the changing room with your jersey clinging to your back and the taste of clay in your mouth, and your manager talks to you in the gentle voice he uses when he's stopped pretending you can win.
You drink water. You don't speak. You go back out.
Spain has subbed at the half. You see her before she sees you.
She's coming on alongside two others, jogging out of the tunnel ahead of you, pulling at the hem of her red shirt to settle it across her shoulders. The shirt is a deeper red than you expected — almost burgundy under the floodlights. You always pictured it brighter. It does something for her you weren't prepared for. Her hair is half-up today, the loose pieces catching the stadium light gold-brown, almost honey-colored where it touches the red collar.
You hate that you noticed.
She turns around mid-jog, scanning the line. Finds you immediately, like she knew exactly where to look. Holds your eye for the half-second you let her have, and then — completely unhurried, completely unmistakable — winks.
You are losing 4-0.
You look away first. You make sure your face doesn't move.
Behind you somewhere down the line, your captain mutters something about cocky captains. You ignore her.
The second half goes the way the first half did, only faster. Alexia is on the pitch and the game tilts toward her like water finding a drain. She doesn't even play that hard — she doesn't have to. She picks the ball up in the half-spaces and looks up and three Spanish players are already running. You spend twelve minutes trying to mark her out of the game and you can feel her enjoying it. Not cruelly. Just — enjoying it. She drifts past you on a touch in the sixty-second minute and brushes your sleeve as she goes and you almost lose your fucking mind.
Five-nil comes off a counter. Six-nil comes from a corner you should have cleared. You can hear your own teammates going quiet around you, that particular kind of quiet that means they've stopped trying to win and started trying to survive with their dignity intact. You can't do that. You have never been able to do that. You don't know how.
In the seventy-eighth minute Athenea picks the ball up on the right and starts running at you and something inside you snaps clean.
You go in two-footed.
You know it before you do it. You know it as you're doing it. You see her face, you see her change direction, you see the angle of your studs and the way her ankle is going to bend, and you go in anyway, because you cannot bear one more touch one more pass one more winked one more humiliation —
You catch her shin. You catch the ball. You catch her shin again on the follow-through.
The whistle goes immediately. Athenea is on the ground but already waving the trainer off, getting up, fine — Spanish anger flashing across her face for half a second and then dissolving into something almost amused, almost pitying, which is somehow worse. The referee is reaching for her pocket. You know what's coming and you don't bother arguing. You stand up, you put your hands on your hips, you watch the red card come out, and you walk off the pitch.
You don't kick the grass on the way. That would be theater. You're past theater. You walk straight, head up, jaw set, past your bench, past the fourth official, past Spain's bench where you do not look at her do not look at her do not look at her —
You disappear into the tunnel.
The crowd noise drops to a hum.
You make it ten meters before your legs decide for you. You drop down with your back against the cool concrete wall, you pull your knees up, and you put your forehead against your knees and you breathe.
You are not going to cry. You are absolutely not going to cry.
You don't cry.
You sit there.
You sit there long enough that the half must be ending. You hear the muffled rise of the crowd — final whistle, you guess. You hear cleats on concrete, voices, the trickle of players filtering past the far end of the tunnel toward the locker rooms. You don't lift your head.
A few minutes later, you hear footsteps coming the other way. From the locker rooms. Toward you.
You know them. You've been training your whole season to know them.
You don't lift your head.
She stops a few meters away. You can see her cleats from under your eyelashes — white today, scuffed red around the edges. She's changed; you can tell by the angle of the shadow she casts, looser fabric, a track jacket. But there's something balled up in her hand. You can see the corner of red.
She doesn't speak right away. Lets you have the silence.
"Hola."
You don't answer.
A beat.
"You okay?"
"¿Te parece?"
You say it to your knees. Another beat.
"Argentina —"
"No."
"I haven't said anything."
"You're going to."
A pause. She doesn't deny it.
"Take it," she says, quietly. You can hear her arm extending. The shirt held out.
You finally lift your head.
She's standing there with the red Spain shirt in her hand, sweat-damp and balled, holding it out toward you like a peace offering. She walked all the way down the tunnel with it. Her hair is loose now, freshly out of its tie. Her expression is kind. Soft eyes, soft mouth, that careful gentleness she does so well — the one your teammates always come back swooning about. The one she's been giving you all season in flashes between the flirtation.
You look at her face. You look at the shirt.
You laugh. It is not a good laugh.
"Are you serious?"
She blinks.
"You think I want it like this?" You're standing now, you don't remember standing. "You think I want your pity?"
"It's not —"
"What is it then?" Your voice is rising. You don't care. The tunnel is empty. The crowd is gone. There is no one in the world right now except her and you and the red shirt between you. "Is that what this is? Poor little Argentina, give her the shirt so she doesn't cry?"
"That's not —"
"Say it to my face." You take a step toward her. "Tell me to my face that this isn't pity."
"It isn't pity."
"You're lying."
"Argentina —"
"No me llames así." Don't call me that. "You don't get to."
Her eyes change.
The shirt is still in her hand but her arm has dropped. The kindness is gone from her face. Something else is there. You can't read it through the noise in your own head.
"Bueno." Her voice has changed too. Quiet. Even. "Then what do you want from me?”
"Nothing."
"Liar."
You move before you decide to.
Two steps and you have your hands fisted in the front of her track jacket and you have walked her back into the wall. The concrete makes a small dull sound when her back hits it. The red shirt drops to the floor between you. Her hands come up but not to push you off. They land at your wrists. Light. Not stopping you.
Her face is right there, even more beautiful. She has freckles, light dusting on her nose.
You are closer than the wall in the studio. Closer than the corner kick. Closer than you've allowed yourself.
She does not look afraid. She does not look angry. She is breathing hard and her pupils are wide and she is looking at your mouth.
"What," you say, and it comes out wrong, hoarse, "do you think you're doing?”
"I came to find you."
"Why."
"Tú sabes por qué."
You do know why.
You can feel her chest rising under your knuckles. Her warm-up jacket is unzipped a few centimeters at the throat and your knuckles, still fisted in the fabric, have ridden up against the bare skin of her collarbone. You feel her swallow against the back of your hand. You feel the heat of her through three layers and against your skin where there are no layers at all.
Her hands are still on your wrists. Her thumbs find the inside of your wrists where your pulse is hammering and hold there for one beat, two — and then one of them, the right one, slides up. Slow. Deliberate. Up the inside of your forearm, against the soft skin where you can never tan, the pad of her thumb tracing the line of a vein you didn't know was that sensitive. By the time her hand reaches the inside of your elbow you've forgotten how to stand.
"Cariño," she says. It sounds like she’s losing her breath.
You don't tell her to not call you that this time.
You are going to kiss her.
You are going to kiss her, in this tunnel, with her hand on the inside of your arm and the red shirt at your feet and the score 6-0 and the whole stadium emptying out twenty meters above your head.
You can feel it about to happen. Her face has tipped down. Yours has tipped up. The space between your mouths is a sentence. Two words. One.
Her nose brushes yours.
That's what does it. Not the words, not the hand, not the adrenaline. The small dumb tenderness of her nose against yours, the kind of contact that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with care, and the second you feel it you understand that if she kisses you now you will never know which one of those things she was kissing.
Whether it was you. Whether it was the bit. Whether it was her feeling sorry for the girl who lost.
You will never know. And she will know that you didn't know.
You let go of her jacket like it burned you.
You step back.
She stays against the wall. Her hands hang in the air for a second where your wrists used to be. Her face — Dios, her face. You were not prepared for her face. There is no kindness in it now. There is no flirtation. There is something else, naked and slightly wrecked, looking at you like you've just done something to her.
"Lo siento," she says. Very quiet.
You don't know what she's apologizing for.
You shake your head.
You bend down. You pick up the red shirt from the floor between you. You fold it once, neatly, and you hold it back out to her.
"Keep it." Your voice is almost steady. "I don't want it. Not like this."
"Argentina —"
"No."
She takes the shirt.
You turn around.
You walk down the tunnel in your sweat-stuck blue and white with the red card still hot on your record, and you do not look back, and your hands are shaking so badly you have to put them in your pockets.
Behind you, somewhere against the wall, you hear her say one more thing. Quiet. Not for you.
"La próxima."
You keep walking.
4.
Season is ending. You had no illusions of winning it.
Barcelona will lift the trophy two to four weeks from now, give or take the schedule. La Reina will break another record, probably, celebrate and then prepare for another Euros. You'll get your ass handed to you in another Copa América. Just the way things are.
But first, you get this last game. You get to make their life difficult just one more time. Home again. You'll make them work for it.
This time, you actually meet her eyes in the tunnel. They are clear, soft as the ending of the afternoon outside. A late game to escape summer's heat.
She's wearing their second uniform today. No blaugrana. You sigh, because this is your last shot at this. Your last shot at a lot of things. Still, Alexia turns around just a second to grin at you. You grin back. Her face does that thing where it lights up, just for you.
You haven't seen her in three months.
You haven't spoken to her in three months. You've seen her — clips, interviews, the Champions League knockouts on the TV in the recovery room. You've seen her enough.
She reached out, once. Two weeks after Mexico. A single message, no preamble. ¿Estás bien?
You stared at it for a long time. You wrote three different replies and deleted all of them. You locked your phone and put it face down on the bedside table and you went to training.
You never answered.
You think about it some nights, still. The fact that she reached out. The fact that she saw you like that — pinned-against-a-wall, snarling, crying-without-crying like that — and she reached out anyway. The fact that you didn't write back. The fact that she didn't ask again.
You think she let you have it. The silence. The space to come back from it on your own time.
Three months on, and here you are. Tunnel concrete cool against your shoulder. Her eyes finding yours like she's been looking for them.
You nod once. Small. Hi.
She nods back. Smaller. Hi.
That's the entire conversation.
It's somehow exactly enough.
___
You play light.
That's the only word for it. You play with nothing to prove and the strange, weightless feeling that comes when a season is almost over and you've already done what you came to do. Real Sociedad will finish in the top half. You'll get the European spot.
You did good. You did better than good. There is air in your chest that wasn't there a month ago.
So you play.
You play with them today, not against them. You jog into space because you feel like jogging into space. You take a touch you wouldn't normally take in the eighteenth minute and slip a ball through to Lucía that nobody saw, including Lucía, who buries it anyway. 1-0. Your stadium loses its mind. You laugh out loud and run to the corner flag and Lucía hits you so hard in the ribs you feel it in your teeth.
Barcelona equalize before the half. Aitana, of course. You don't even mind.
You're aware of Alexia the way you're always aware of Alexia, but today it isn't a frequency you have to tune to anymore. She's just — there. Across the half-line, tracking your movement with her eyes when she has time to spare for it, smiling once when you nutmeg Patri in midfield and Patri shoves at your shoulder, but no fire behind it.
In the fifty-second minute Alexia plays a one-two with Salma at the edge of your box and you read it before it happens, you cut the return ball off, and as you turn out of the tackle she ends up half-laughing, half-shaking her head, hands on her hips. Bien hecho, she mouths. You wink at her.
You actually wink at her.
You don't know where that came from.
She bites her lip on a smile and jogs back into shape.
She scores in the sixty-third. A graceful header off a cross from Mapi, clean as a knife. 2-1. She wheels away and points to the sky like she does, and as she's jogging back to the halfway line her eyes find you and she shrugs, very slightly, very apologetically, like what can I do. You laugh into your shirt collar.
You score in the seventy-first.
A scrappy thing — a corner that wasn't cleared, a half-volley you don't even mean to hit cleanly, the ball going in off the underside of the crossbar through sheer stubbornness. The stadium erupts. Itziar lifts you off your feet. You get tackled by what feels like the entire bench. 2-2. Your last home goal of the season.
When you finally get free of the pile and look up, she's standing on the halfway line with her hands on her hips and the most fond expression you have ever seen on a human face, watching you celebrate.
You do not wave. That would be too much.
You hold her eye for one second.
She holds back.
That's the whole exchange.
Barcelona scores again before the whistle. A late penalty, soft, the kind that gets given when the home team has stopped pressing because their feet hurt and their hearts are full. 3-2. You don't mind that either. You barely mind anything, today.
The whistle goes.
You have your hands on your knees. Then your hands on your head. Then your hands at your sides. You walk a slow circle on the grass and you breathe and you let the noise of the crowd come in and out like a tide.
Lucía finds you and kisses you on the temple. Itziar finds you and grabs the back of your neck and presses her forehead to yours for a second, hard, the way she does, overly affectionate. Bien jugado. You nod against her. You're maybe a little choked up.
You don't cry. That’s not you.
You walk to the stands. You clap to the Real end. They clap back, louder, the loyal lot who came tonight standing and singing your name — your name, not just the team's, the chant they made up halfway through last season, the one with your surname in it. You put your hand over your chest. You bow once, embarrassed and grateful, and they laugh, and you laugh, and you wave both arms over your head, and your whole face hurts from smiling.
When you finally turn around, you scan automatically.
She's at the far end of the pitch.
She's at the railing under the away supporters, hands on the metal, leaning down to the kids who lean over the top to grab at her — autographs, photos, a hand on her hair from a small girl who looks like she might pass out. She's smiling. She's good at this, a natural at this.
You see Lavogez approach her at one point, jersey already off, holding it bundled toward Alexia in clear swap? gesture. Alexia smiles and shakes her head. Lo siento. Lavogez shrugs and walks off.
A minute later, Onaiwu from your defensive line tries the same thing.
Alexia shakes her head again. No, perdón.
You watch this.
You watch this with a slow warmth spreading through your chest that has nothing to do with running.
She turns her head. She's been looking for you the whole time, you realize — she finds you across the pitch like she has GPS for it. Holds your eye. Tips her chin, very slightly. Come here.
You go.
You walk across the pitch in your sweat-stuck blue and white. The grass is chewed up. The stadium lights are starting to feel more real than the sky. You can feel her watching you walk the whole way.
You stop a meter from her.
"Hi."
"Hi."
A pause. Her eyes are doing the hazel-green thing. Her hair is sticking to her temple. There is a smear of clay across her cheekbone that someone should have told her about by now.
Flushed and beautiful.
"Good game," she says.
"It was, wasn't it."
"You played beautifully."
You shrug, embarrassed. “No high stakes tonight. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"You score when you have to. I score when I get to. Es diferente."
She tips her head. Files it away. You can see her doing it.
"Good season," she says. "Top half. European spot."
"You watched?”
"I watched."
You'd think by now this would stop doing what it does to your stomach. It doesn't.
There's a beat. The crowd noise behind you is starting to thin. Players from both teams are drifting off the pitch. You're aware, distantly, that you should be drifting too.
She looks at your shirt.
She looks at you.
"So," she says. "We're doing this. Finally."
Her eyes are warm. The corner of her mouth is doing something soft and slightly wry — the running joke given one last airing, gentle this time, no edge to it. Three rounds, two near misses, and a tunnel in Mexico City between us. Yes. Finally.
You laugh. You can't help it.
"Yeah," you say. "Yeah, we're doing this."
She is reaching, slow and unhurried, for the hem of her shirt — and you are reaching for yours, the small absurd parallel of it, the finally of it after a season — when a voice cuts through from the stands behind her.
"¡La Reinaaaa!"
Small voice. Reedy. Stretched out across the syllables in the way that small children stretch words when they want to be heard.
You both look up.
She's maybe five years old. Front row of the stand behind the goal, the one with the families and the kids, her face squashed against the railing and her tiny hands gripping a sign almost as big as she is. Her mother is behind her with both hands on her shoulders, half-apologetic, half-encouraging. The girl is wearing a Putellas 11 shirt that goes to her knees.
The sign is hand-drawn. Crayon and marker. Wobbly capital letters that lean right because she ran out of room at the edge.
LA REINA KIERO TU KAMISA
The K's are backwards.
Your throat does something stupid.
Alexia has already half-turned toward the girl, and you watch — you watch the exact moment she sees the sign. You watch her face. You watch it go through three full things in a second and a half.
First: the automatic warm smile she has for kids.
Second: the tiny stutter as her brain registers what she promised you, what she just said to you, what is sitting between your two hands right now.
Third: the gulp. Small. The throat moving. The decision happening behind her eyes — no. The shirt is hers. It's been hers for a season. The kid will understand.
You see her open her mouth. You see her start to shape the apology.
You don't let her.
You step in front of her.
"Pero claro que sí, chiquita," you call up to the girl, voice too bright, voice you didn't know you had. "Of course she will. Vení, Ale."
Alexia's head snaps to you.
You don't look at her. You can't, yet. You smile up at the kid instead, who has gone completely round-eyed, both hands flat over her own mouth now, the sign forgotten and dangling sideways from one wrist.
“What’s your name, princesa?”
“¡Martina!"
"Martina. Beautiful name." You glance, finally, at Alexia. Her face is doing something you don't have a word for. Confused, halfway into protest, but also softening, also understanding. You give her the smallest nod. Yes. Go on.
Then you take a step back. Out of the frame. You know your place. You know who the spotlight is for.
You don't even watch the shirt come off. You hear the cheer from the stand, the small high scream of a five-year-old realizing her wildest dream is happening, the warm general laugh of the families around her. You hear Alexia's voice — soft, careful Spanish, asking the girl her age, asking what position she plays, signing the inside of the collar with a marker someone in the stand hands over the railing.
You turn your back, fully, and you walk a few meters off.
You stand with your hands on your hips and you look at the grass between your boots, and you breathe in, and you breathe out. The heat has gone out of the day. You can hear your own pulse in your ears.
You did the right thing. You know you did. The look on the kid's face — the backwards K's — there was no other version of this where you take that home from her, no version where you walk into the locker room with a Putellas shirt under your arm and feel anything other than wrong about it.
It still hurts a little. You can be honest about that. Standing here, you can be honest about that.
You are still standing there when fingers close around your forearm.
Light. From behind. You feel her come up before she touches you and then her hand is around your arm, her fingers settling into the inside of your wrist, the place she found in the tunnel three months ago and apparently bookmarked.
"Argentina."
You turn.
She is — she is shirtless. Sports bra and shorts and a marker smudge on her forearm. The clay smear still on her cheekbone. She is standing close enough that you can feel the heat off her skin and her hand is still on your arm and her thumb is doing a small thing on the inside of your wrist that she may or may not be aware of.
"You didn't have to do that," she says.
"Yeah, I did."
“Cariño…"
"Did you see her face?"
She doesn’t need to answer.
"Then you know."
She is looking at you. Her eyes have gone soft in a way that is going to undo you if you let it. You don't let it. You meet them steadily. You smile, small, real.
"It's just a shirt, Ale."
She exhales something that is almost a laugh. Her thumb hasn't stopped moving on your wrist. You don't think she knows.
"It's not just a shirt," she says.
You don't answer that. You can't, really.
She looks at you for another beat. Then she clears her throat — the smallest, most uncharacteristic sound from her, the captain-of-Spain getting caught off her game — and her hand on your wrist tightens for half a second and then relaxes.
"I have a spare," she says.
You blink.
"Back at the hotel."
Her eyes are on yours. Her face has gone very calm, very even. The voice is exactly the voice she uses for press conferences. The hand on your wrist has not moved.
"If you want it."
The words are perfectly innocent. The body language is not. Her thumb is still on the inside of your wrist. Her chin is tipped down a fraction. There is a stillness to her that is the opposite of casual — she has thought about this sentence. She has prepared this sentence. She is offering you something dressed as something else and she is letting you decide what to hear.
You feel your own pulse jump under her thumb. You are pretty sure she feels it too.
Your mouth opens.
Closes.
You tilt your head. You make yourself look unbothered. You make your voice match hers — easy, even, friendly, the voice of two players exchanging shirts after a long season.
"Yeah," you say. "Yeah, okay. I'd like that."
Her thumb stops moving.
Her face does something quiet. The smallest exhale.
"Bueno."
She lets go of your wrist, slowly, and you can still feel exactly where her fingers were. She steps back. The stadium starts to come back in around you — the last fans calling out, the ground staff beginning to walk the pitch, your captain shouting your name from the tunnel. You don't look toward her. You keep your eyes on Alexia.
"I'll DM you," she says.
"Yeah."
"It's the AC Hotel. By the harbor."
"I know it."
She holds your eye one more second. Then she turns and jogs off across the pitch in her sports bra, picks up a bundled red bib to throw over and disappears.
You stand alone in the middle of the pitch with your shirt still on and your pulse still running and a sentence in your head that you are pretending is about a piece of fabric.
Bueno, you think.
Finally.
+1
There's no reason for you to come up to her room. No logical one, at least.
She could have just given you the shirt in the lobby. You give yours back. Clean swap. See you next season.
Except she comes to meet you in the lobby and sneaks you up like it's nothing. Hand low at your back to steer you past the front desk. Eyes forward. Her thumb brushing the small bare strip of skin between your jeans and your jacket where your shirt has ridden up, once, like an accident. You follow her into the elevator. Your heart at your throat.
The elevator hums. Neither of you speaks. She's standing close enough that you can smell her shampoo — something clean and faintly green, eucalyptus maybe, hotel-issue. Her hair is damp at the ends. So is yours. You both showered.
That detail, somehow, is what makes you understand what you're doing here.
The elevator dings. Eighth floor. She walks you down a corridor that is too long and too quiet, past doors with little signs about housekeeping in three languages, until she stops at a door near the end and taps a key card against the reader. The light goes green. She holds the door open with her shoulder and her eyes find yours for the first time since the lobby.
"Pasa."
You go in.
The room is nicer than the hotels you stay in on away days — quiet, neutral, the curtains half-drawn against the last of the evening. The bed is made. There's a Barcelona kit bag by the window with a sleeve hanging out of it. There's a half-finished bottle of water on the nightstand.
There is, you notice, only one bed.
It takes you a beat to register why that detail catches. Then it does. Captains don't share rooms. The veterans, the legends, the players who carry the team — they get the singles. You roomed with Lavogez in Mexico. You shared a twin bed in Pamplona last month because the hotel undercounted. You have never in your career walked into a room on an away day and found only one bed waiting.
It's the smallest possible reminder of who she is and who you are.
You set your kit bag down by the door and you do not let it land on your face.
"Oye."
You turn.
She's in the middle of the room with the shirt in her hand. Folded carefully, crest facing out. She's holding it the way you'd hold something fragile.
She holds it out.
You cross the few steps between you and take it. Your fingers brush hers.
"Thanks," you mumble, and you can hear how small the word is in this room.
She doesn't let go right away.
"Aren't you going to try it on?"
There is a small, careful smile playing at the corner of her mouth. The voice is light, almost teasing — the running joke given one last airing — but her eyes are not playing.
You look down at the shirt. You look back up at her.
"Yeah," you say. "Okay."
She steps back to give you space.
You hold her eye while you reach down and grab the hem of your t-shirt. You hold her eye while you pull it up — slow, slower than is reasonable, slow enough that she could close her eyes or look away if she wanted to. She doesn't. Her gaze drops the moment your stomach is exposed and you watch her watch it. The line of you from hip to ribcage to the soft cotton of your sports bra. Her throat moves once.
Your shirt comes off over your head. You drop it on the floor. You shake the blaugrana out of its careful fold, find the hem, and pull it on.
It settles over you, and it doesn't fit the way you expected.
It is longer than yours, yes, the hem brushing the tops of your thighs. But the sleeves catch tight on your biceps and the chest pulls slightly across your shoulders. You're not as tall as her, but you are built — a midfielder's body, a year of weights and pressing and physical duels carved into your arms.
You feel it. She sees it.
Her breath catches a little.
"Looks good on you," she says. "Blaugrana."
The room has gone very quiet. You can hear traffic from the harbor through the window.
"Hm." You tilt your head. "The name or the shirt?"
She swallows.
"Both."
The word lands somewhere behind your sternum.
"Are you flirting with me?" You ask, teasing. Almost amused. A challenge and an opening.
Something flickers across her face — surprise, then heat, then a small private smile that is not for the room. She doesn't answer. Her eyes drop to the shirt again. Stay there.
You turn before she can say anything else, careful and casual, and walk to the long mirror beside the wardrobe.
You stand in front of it.
You do look good. The dark blue and red against your skin, the way the cut sits tight across your shoulders. The wet ends of your hair curling against the high collar. You knew you would.
And then, because you cannot help yourself, you let your eyes drift up.
She is in the mirror.
She has sat down on the edge of the bed without you noticing. Hands flat on the duvet beside her hips. Watching you. Not your face — your back, the line of the shirt across your shoulders, the place where the hem cuts your thighs. Her face is open. Naked. She doesn't know you can see her.
You watch her in the mirror for one full second.
Her eyes lift to meet yours in the glass. She does not look away. She does not rearrange her face into to something less guarded.
You turn around.
She is still on the edge of the bed. She has not moved.
"Your turn."
She blinks.
You bend down to your kit bag and unzip the top compartment. The Real Sociedad shirt is right where you put it, bundled inside, still smelling faintly like grass and maybe sweat. You straighten up and you hold it out to her.
She rises. Two steps to bring her in front of you. She takes the shirt from your hands.
She turns away from you, holding the shirt, and crosses the few steps to the foot of the bed and stops with her back to you.
You watch.
She reaches down, both hands at her hips, and grasps the hem of the soft Barcelona training top she's wearing. She pulls it up, slow, over her head, in one smooth movement. The fabric clears her shoulders and her arms. She drops it on the bed beside her.
There is no bra.
You stop breathing.
Her back is — her back is decorated. Ink scattered across her shoulder blades and down her spine, half-hidden under the loose fall of her hair, words in a language you can't read in this light, dates near the small of her back, something curling along her left ribs that you'd need to lean closer to see. You hadn't known there was so many. You'd seen pieces of it in interviews, on Instagram, glimpses — but not at this distance, not under warm yellow light with her shoulder blades moving as her arms come down.
A thought arrives unbidden, fully formed: I want to put my mouth on every line of that.
It is not a thought you have time to be embarrassed about.
She doesn't turn around. She gives you that. She lifts your shirt over her head — Real Sociedad blue and white — and pulls it on. It settles on her, and on her it fits the way it was meant to fit — shoulders sitting clean, a little tight on her shoulders. She looks down at the front. Smooths it once with both hands.
Then she turns around.
Her face is a question.
You are crossing the room before you knew you were going to.
You stop in front of her. She is wearing your name across her shoulders. She is not wearing anything under it. You can see the soft shape of her where the cotton settles, the faint outline of where her body presses against your fabric, and you have to take a second to remember that you have been wanting this for an entire year of your life.
"Ale."
"Sí."
"Look at me."
"I am."
"No," you say. "Look at me."
You take her face in your hands. Both hands. Thumbs at her cheekbones. You make her look at you. You make sure she sees you make sure.
"It's not pity," you say. Quiet. "I know that now. I'm not asking. I'm telling you I know."
Her breath leaves her like she's been hit.
"Cariño —"
You kiss her.
You close the distance you didn't close in the tunnel. Both hands on her face, fingers sliding into the damp hair at her nape, the entire weight of a season pressing forward into the space between your mouths. She makes a small surprised sound against your lips — like she still didn't quite believe you were going to do it — and then her hands come up and find your hips, and find the hem of the blaugrana, and find the bare strip of skin under it.
The sound she makes when she touches your skin is too much.
She walks you backward two steps without meaning to. The back of your knee finds the edge of the bed. She breaks away to check, and you don't let her finish the question — you put both hands on her shoulders and you turn her, gently, and you lower her down onto the bed instead.
She lets you.
She lies back against the pillows in your shirt — your shirt, the blue and white of Real Sociedad, your number on her back — hair fanned out beneath her, looking up at you, waiting.
You climb up after her. Knee between her thighs. Both hands beside her ribs.
For a second you just look.
This is the woman you have spent a season being unable to beat. Game after game and not one of them yours. You have watched her lift trophies in the same shirt you are wearing now. You have watched her smile, polite and untouchable, at photographers in the tunnel. You have not been able to beat her at anything.
Alexia Putellas's pupils are blown wide and she is waiting to see what you will do.
You decide.
"Mírate." Quiet, like you're talking to yourself.
She makes a sound — almost a laugh, almost a breath she didn't mean to release.
"What?"
"Nothing." You bend to kiss the corner of her mouth. "Just looking."
"Mm?"
"At what I'm finally allowed to have."
Her hand fists in the back of the shirt — her own shirt, on you — and she doesn't say anything back.
You take her mouth.
Not slow this time. You learn her by going at her — open, hot, the kind of kiss that says you are not running this. She tastes like the gum you were chewing earlier, yours, transferred. She is making small sounds against your lips she doesn't seem to know she's making. Her hands settle on your waist, hold but don't direct, and you cannot quite tell if it's because she wants to let you have it or because she doesn't have the legs to fight you tonight.
You move to her throat.
Pulse hammering. You set your mouth to it, hard enough to feel her swallow, and something warm and possessive cracks open in your chest.
You sit back on your heels.
The shirt has ridden up across her stomach. Below it her abs are visible — long, defined, the soft-shadowed cut of obliques running down to where her track pants sit low. You knew she was lean. You hadn't known she was this. Footage flattens. In the lamp-light, with her breath moving the muscle and her stomach jumping under your gaze, she is something else.
You let yourself look. You let her watch you look.
"What."
"Just appreciating."
You drag your thumb along the line under her ribs and her stomach jumps. The muscle is warm. There's a faint twitch deeper in — the kind a body does when it's been pushed and hasn't been allowed to let go.
"Tired."
"Estoy bien."
"Hm."
You bite her bottom lip — gently, with intent — and her hands come up into your hair and stay there.
You take the shirt off her.
She sits up just enough to let you slip it over her arms, your mouth on the underside of her jaw the moment her face is clear. The shirt drops over the side of the bed. She is bare beneath you.
The tattoos you couldn't see from her back are here. A line of script across her collarbone. A date along her ribs. Something curling at her hip that disappears under the waistband. There is also — and your eye catches on it slowly — a bruise. High on the inside of her thigh, just above where the track pants sit. Fresh. Match-fresh. A knee, most likely. Purple bleeding to yellow at the edges.
She watches you find it.
You bend down. You kiss it.
Her breath goes out of her like you've struck her.
"Argentina —"
You climb back up the length of her — slow, deliberate, mouth tracing muscle on the way — and settle your weight onto her properly. The blaugrana rides up. Your stomach against the warm cut of hers. Bare skin. Her breath catches when your hips align and her hands slide up under the back of your shirt to find your spine, and she arches up into you, and for a single bad second you think no one in the world gets her like this, and you have to push it down because you cannot think about that and stay on top of this.
You go for her chest.
You take a nipple between your lips and the noise she makes is — not what you expected. You haven't done anything yet. She has arched off the pillows like you've put your hand much further south, her fingers tight in your hair, a small breaking sound at the back of her throat that does not belong to a woman who has won two Ballons d'Or.
You lift your mouth, just slightly, and look up at her over the line of her ribs.
"Oh."
Her eyes open.
"Don't —"
"That's interesting."
"Cariño."
You don't laugh. You take her properly this time — flat of your tongue, suggestion of teeth. Her nipple goes hard against your tongue almost immediately, the small tight peak of it, her whole areola tightening under your mouth. Her free hand comes down and twists in the duvet so hard you hear the fabric strain. Her hips lift against yours without her telling them to and you feel — through the press of her thigh between your legs — the heat of her. Through her track pants. Already.
You move to the other side. You make her wait.
You kiss the soft skin between, the inside of her ribcage, the curve under her arm. When you finally put your mouth on the second nipple her hips jerk and her back leaves the pillows and a sound spills out of her — half a moan, half a syllable of something Catalan you don't catch — and you make a private note. Not Spanish. She's slipped.
You give her teeth, just once, and her thigh tightens hard against your hip.
"No te entiendo," she breathes.
"Yes you do."
She makes a sound that is more vowel than word.
You move down.
You kiss the soft of her stomach. The curve of her hip. You hook two fingers in the waistband and look up at her one more time. She nods. Eyes very dark.
You take the pants off her. The underwear with them. Watching her face. She lifts her hips to help you and the sight of it — La Reina helping you undress her — does something to your pride that you'll have to think about later.
She is bare under you.
She is, you notice with a small startled tenderness, blushing — flush spread from her cheekbones down across her chest, the captain caught entirely without her armor. Her shoulder shifts a little stiffly when she settles back against the pillows; she favors the right side, careful, and you clock it without comment.
Match shoulder. You'll be gentle there.
Nowhere else.
"Ok?"
"Sí."
You settle between her thighs and push them open with your hands on the inside of her knees, and you look at her — all of her, lit warm, flushed, the small wet shine of her catching the lamp — and your mouth waters.
You bend down and kiss the bruise once more, just so she knows you saw it.
Then you put your mouth on her.
She is wet. Properly. The first drag of your tongue through her folds catches on slickness and she makes a sound that is bitten back and then released and then bitten back again. You don't ease in. You eat her. Flat tongue, then point, then flat again. You find her clit and stay there and she tries to close her thighs around your head and you put a hand on the inside of one and pin it open.
You learn her by what makes her break. Her hips jump when you suck — once, hard. She goes still and then shakes when you flick. She loses syllables when you push her clit between your lips and hum.
You catch the si us plau and nothing else. Catalan, soft and broken. You let her have it.
You bring a hand up. Tip of finger circling her entrance, asking. She nods against the pillow and you push one in. She is so wet there is no resistance. She makes a sound in the back of her throat that might be a laugh and might be a sob.
You add a second. You curl them. You start to fuck her properly.
You keep your mouth on her clit. You watch her — the way her stomach goes tight, the way her hand twists in the duvet, the way her head tips back and her hair goes everywhere on the bed. You pump your fingers. Slow, deep, the heel of your hand grinding against her every time you push in. The wet of her around your fingers. You can hear her too — the small grunts, the hitched breath, the way her voice breaks every time you curl.
You take your time.
You take your time even when her hips start chasing your rhythm. You take your time even when she says your name — soft, twice — and you have to make a decision in the back of your mind to hold it together at the sound of it. You stay slow. You stay deep. You keep her on the edge until her hand grips your hair and her voice breaks around a sentence she does not finish.
You push her over.
Her thighs go tight around your head. Her stomach jumps under your free hand. She clenches around your fingers — hard, hot, the body finally letting go — and the sound she makes is not the controlled sound, not the post-match-interview voice. It is raw and surprised and very young, like she hasn't allowed herself this in a long time. Her free hand has come up to cover her own mouth and you have a brief, savage thought of no, let me hear you, and you push it down. She gets to keep something. You don't take everything.
You let her ride it out around your fingers. You slow your mouth as she comes down — gentle, then gentler, until she is making small breathless sounds and her hand in your hair has loosened. Her thighs are trembling against your shoulders.
You start to ease your fingers out and she catches your wrist.
"No."
You go still.
She blinks her eyes open. Looks down at you between her thighs. Cheeks very pink. Hair a wreck. She has just come on your hand and she is, somehow, embarrassed about what she is about to ask.
"Quédate." Her voice is small. "Just — stay. For a minute."
Something lands in the center of your chest.
You climb up the length of her without removing your hand. You settle your weight half on her, half beside, your fingers still inside her where she's hot and slick and aftershock-tight, and you put your face against her throat. She wraps her arm around your shoulders. Her breath goes uneven against your hair.
"Like this?"
"Sí. Así."
You stay like that.
You feel her clench around your fingers a few times — residual, the body still finishing what the mind has stopped reaching for. Your fingers are very still inside her, becoming aware of the shape of her in a way they couldn't when you were moving.
She presses her mouth to the top of your head.
"No te vayas."
"I'm right here."
"I know." She breathes out. "I just."
"Yeah."
You don't make her finish.
The harbor through the window is doing harbor things. A horn. A distant voice. Water against stone. Your other hand is drawing slow circles on her shoulder and you have a thought you do not say out loud, which is that she was in your shirt and you are in hers and she has just asked you to stay inside her and you are not sure, suddenly, who has won what tonight.
You crook the fingers still inside her.
Her breath catches.
"Argentina —"
"Was that a no?"
A second. The smallest delay. You feel her decide.
"No."
"Good."
You start fucking her again.
Slower than before, but deeper. You don't go back down— you stay up here with her, face against her throat, fingers patient and curling, your thumb finding her clit and circling there with the kind of unhurried pressure that says we have all night.
She is more open like this. The first time she had her hand over her mouth and her eyes squeezed shut. Now her face is right there. You can see the small tremor at the corner of her jaw. You can see her swallow. You can see her decide, again and again, not to look away.
"Joder."
"Mm."
You kiss the place under her ear and she shifts closer, needy. A realization lands with strange tenderness: she was on a pitch four hours ago. She ran eleven kilometers. She got knocked into. She got back up. She lifted her arm to wave at the away end and her shoulder is the one that is sore now, the one you can feel her holding stiff against the pillow even with your fingers inside her.
You ease the angle. Take some of the work off her. She sighs, soft, like she didn't know she'd been bracing.
"You don't —"
"What?"
"You don't stop."
"I have a year of catching up to do. Aguantá un poco."
She laughs — the first real laugh of the night — and it cracks halfway and becomes something else.
You take her up slow. You make her feel it. Every drag. Every curl. Every press of your thumb. She is still oversensitive from the first one and you can feel it in the way she shudders when you change angle, the way her thigh keeps trying to close against yours and then opening again, helpless. You go with it. You let her shake. You let her grip your shoulder hard enough that there will be marks tomorrow.
A long quiet stream of Catalan spills out of her. You don't catch any of it. You don't need to.
It's the shape of it that matters — the way her mouth forms around words she isn't choosing, words she isn't translating for you, words that belong to whatever version of her that lives when she stops performing in everyone else's languages.
She is wet enough now that your fingers slide easy. The slick of you working her, obscene in the quiet of the room. She turns her face into the pillow at the sound and you lift your free hand and turn it back.
"No. Don't hide from me."
She goes still under your hand for a second. Then her eyes open.
Hair sticking to her face. Eyelashes wet. She is looking at you like she is being asked something much harder than what you have actually asked her, and she is — Dios — she is going to do it anyway.
When she gets close again you kiss the line of her jaw and you say it quietly, against her ear:
"Look at me."
She turns her head.
"I want to see you this time."
She doesn't say cariño. She doesn't say anything. She just looks at you.
She is the bravest person you know and she is looking at you with absolutely nothing left over — no captain, no Reina, no public surface — just her. Sweat at her temple, wet eyes, your fingers inside her, looking at you like you are the only thing in the room that exists.
You make her come like that.
It takes her over slower than the first. Longer. Deeper. The kind of orgasm that crawls up the spine instead of crashing through it. You feel it start in her thighs — long muscle going tight against yours — and travel up. The clench around your fingers building in slow waves rather than one breaking edge. She holds your eye through all of it and she says your name, your real name, one syllable at a time, and you watch every separate piece of her break and reassemble in your hand.
Something gives in her face at the end of it. The wet eyes. The slight crumpling. The look of someone who has not let go like that in a long time and does not entirely know what to do now that she has.
You kiss her. Once. Soft. On the mouth, then on the corner of it.
Her stomach is still jumping when she pulls you down to kiss you properly.
She kisses you like she means to thank you for something. She kisses herself off your mouth without flinching and you feel her smile against your lips and hear her breathe out a small unsteady laugh.
"Joder."
"Yeah."
"Joder, cariño —"
"I heard you the first time."
She bites you. Just a small bite, the corner of your jaw.
"Two."
"Hm?"
"You heard me twice."
You laugh into her neck.
You stay like that for a long minute. Her arms wrapped around your shoulders. Your face against her throat. Her breathing slowing under you, the warm tired weight of her body under yours.
The blaugrana is half-twisted around your hips and stuck to your skin in places. You don't move. You don't want to move yet. You ease your fingers out of her, slow, and she makes a small soft sound at the loss that you tuck away to think about later.
Eventually her hand finds your hair again. Different now. She combs her fingers through it. Slow.
"Argentina."
"Yeah."
"Ven aquí."
You lift your head. You look down at her.
She is smiling. Soft. Watching your face.
"Come here, por favor.” she says again. Quieter.
She rolls — slow, unhurried, finding her bearings — and she takes you with her, easy as breathing, until you are the one on your back against the pillows and she is the one above you. Hands beside your ribs. Hair falling forward to brush your collarbone.
She just looks at you for a long second.
You feel — you don't know what you feel. The high of having undone her is still in your chest. Your hands are still slightly unsteady. You did not plan for this part. You don't know what to do with your face. You realize, distantly, that you don't actually know how to do this part — not the mechanics, but the part. The part where someone you've wanted for a year is looking at you like she sees you and you are supposed to let her.
Something must show.
She tips her head. Slightly. Watches it.
"Hey." Soft. "Mírame."
You look at her.
"You don't have to do anything."
"Ale —"
"Shh." She brings a thumb to your bottom lip. Traces it. Slow. "You did so well, cariño. Tan bien. Now you let me."
Your throat closes.
She is still smiling at you. There is no challenge in her face, no demand, only that careful captain-attention turned all the way up — the way she watches a play developing, the way she reads space, the same quiet intelligence now reading you. She is not going to push. She is going to wait. She is going to wait you out the way she has waited you out all season.
You exhale. You don't know what comes out with it. Some of the pride goes. Some of it is still there. You are still the Argentinian midfielder who walked away from the tunnel with her hands in her pockets, and she is still asking you to put them down.
"I don't —" Your voice does not come out steady. "I don't really —"
"Lo sé."
"Don't laugh at me."
Her face goes serious for a second. Tender, but serious.
"Argentina." Her thumb is still on your lip. "The last person I would ever laugh at is you."
You avoid her eyes. Press your face against the pillow for a second because you don’t know what to do when your eyes sting like that.
She bends and kisses you.
It is not how she has kissed you before. This one is slower. There is no point being made. She kisses you the way you would kiss a person you have been wanting to kiss for a very long time and finally have time to do it properly.
You feel yourself try to push up into it. Try to take it back. Your hand goes to the back of her neck and tries to deepen the angle and she — gently, without breaking the kiss — pushes your hand back down to the pillow beside your head. Holds it there for a second. Lets it go.
You laugh, soft, embarrassed. She smiles against your mouth.
“It’s difficult for you." Soft, not mocking.
You can't quite look at her.
"It's just —"
"I know."
She kisses the corner of your mouth. Then your jaw. Then the place under your ear where you discovered, an hour ago, hers was sensitive. Yours, it turns out, is too. Your breath goes out of you and your hand fists in the sheet beside your head and she hums against your skin like she's filing it away.
"Tranquila."
"I'm —"
"Shh."
She moves down your throat. Slow. She is taking the same time you took with her, exactly the same, and it is very clear that this is on purpose. She finds the place at the side of your neck where the shirt’s collar has been rubbing all night and she sets her mouth there and she sucks — careful, not punishing, just enough that you know what she's doing.
You feel it bloom. Small. Hidden under the collar. Tomorrow's problem.
She doesn't say anything about it.
She moves to the other side of your throat. Kisses the pulse. You feel her breathe out against your skin and the breath is almost a laugh, like she cannot believe she is getting to do this.
Her hands find the hem of your shirt.
She pushes it up, slow, and her knuckles drag up your stomach as she does. She gets it as high as just under your breasts and stops. Looks at you. Asks with her eyes.
"You can —"
"I know." A small smile. "I will. Not yet."
She bends and kisses your stomach instead. Just under your ribs. A line of small kisses across, slow, and you feel your stomach jump under her mouth the same way hers jumped under yours, and you understand for the first time tonight what it is she has been giving you — this, the being read, the being looked at without anything to deflect with. You understand why she made the small wrecked sound when you kissed the date on her ribs.
Her mouth finds a freckle on your hip you forgot you had and she presses her lips to it. Lifts her head. Looks at it for a second like she is memorizing where it is.
"Cariño —"
"Hm?"
You can't get the rest of the sentence out. Whatever it was.
She smiles, very small, and goes back to your stomach.
She works her way back up. She pushes the shirt higher — past your breasts now — and pauses. Asks, again, with her eyes. You sit up just enough for her to slip it over your head, sports bra too, and the cold air hits your skin and she is already there, lowering you back down, skin to skin from collarbone to hip, and the sound that comes out of you is not a sound you knew you could make.
"There," she says, very quiet. "Mejor."
She is not in a hurry.
She kisses your collarbone. The hollow of your throat. The line between your breasts. She takes a nipple into her mouth and the sound that gets pulled out of you is humiliating but she does not lift her head and does not laugh, just hums softly against your skin like she likes it. Her free hand finds your other breast and she touches with the same patient attention she has given every other part of you, and you feel — distantly, somewhere under the heat of her mouth — your hands trying to do something. Anything. Direct her. Take the kiss back.
She catches one of your wrists, gentle, and brings it down to the back of her neck. Lets you hold her there.
"Just here,” Alexia murmurs.
You let your hand stay.
She moves down. Slow. She kisses the underside of your breast, your ribs, your stomach again, the top of your hip. She gets to the line where your skin meets the waistband of your underwear — you'd forgotten you still had them on — and she hooks her fingers in and slides them down your legs, and you lift your hips for her without being asked because by now your body has stopped pretending it is going to fight her.
She settles between your thighs.
She looks up the length of you. The shirt is gone. You are bare. The lamp light is warm on your skin and she is looking at you the way you looked at her an hour ago — the same wonder, exactly the same, you let yourself look and she let her watch you look — and you understand suddenly, all at once, what she has been telling you with her mouth this whole time.
You close your eyes.
"Argentina."
"Yeah."
"Look at me."
You make a small sound. Half laugh. Half something else. Tomorrow's problem, you think, and open your eyes.
She is smiling at you, the smallest of smiles, and her hand is on the inside of your thigh, soft, and she is waiting for you to be ready.
You nod.
She lowers her mouth.
The first contact is — savouring. Flat tongue, no rush, no destination. She is still kissing you. That is the thing. She is kissing you, just lower down.
You feel yourself try to grip the sheet and she finds your hand without lifting her mouth and threads her fingers through yours, pressing it on the bed, beside your hip. Holds it there. Anchors you.
Your other hand goes to her hair.
You don't grip. You can't quite let yourself grip. You just rest it there — fingers in the damp at her nape, the same place you put your hand the first time you kissed her tonight — and she hums against you, and the hum travels through you, and your whole body tightens in a long slow wave.
She finds your clit.
She circles. She drifts. She comes back. Explores your folds with patience. You hear yourself make a sound that is more breath than voice, and she makes a small pleased noise against you, and your hips chase before you can stop them.
She brings up a hand. Slow. Asking. You nod against the pillow before you have time to think and she slides one finger into you and you feel the small in-breath she takes, like she is the one who has been given something.
She works you slowly.
Mouth and fingers, the rhythm patient, the kind of pace that says I am not trying to make you come, I am trying to be inside you. Your other hand comes up to your own face — half cover your mouth, half just somewhere to put it — and she lifts her head, just slightly, and reaches up and takes your wrist and brings your hand down. Threads your fingers together, one hand pressed to the bed beside your hips, the other clutching tightly at the sheets.
You are trying very hard not to cry. You don't entirely know why.
"Tranquila," she says again, into your skin. "Estoy aquí."
You feel it start in your thighs.
It builds slow — slower than you have ever come, the kind of climb that gives your body too much time to feel each separate moment of it. She does not push. She just keeps doing what she has been doing — patient, thorough, the sustained attention she has been giving you all night — and you understand, with the small clear part of your brain that is still functioning, that she could keep doing this for an hour. That she would. That she is happy here.
That undoes you faster than anything else could have.
Your hand twist in hers. She holds on. She licks your clit one more time and her fingers curl inside you and you come. Long, a wave that builds in your hips and shudders out through your chest.
And you hear yourself groan, almost a mewl and you do not cover your mouth because she is looking at you in wonder.
You ride it out. She slows her mouth as you come down, gentle, then gentler, until you are making small breathless sounds and the grip you have on her hand has loosened to nothing.
She lifts her head.
Kisses the inside of your thigh. Then the other one, reverently. Then she climbs up your body, slow, and she lowers herself onto you, bare skin to bare skin, and she puts her face against your throat, breathing you in.
You wrap your arms around her. Both. Shaking, slightly. You don't know when that started.
She kisses your jaw.
"Hi," she says.
You laugh. It comes out wet.
"Hi."
"Good?"
"Yeah."
"Mm."
Alexia is not moving. She is letting you have a minute. Her fingers are drawing the same slow circles on your shoulder that you drew on hers, and you understand that she has been paying attention to that too — every small thing you have done to her tonight, she is giving back.
You turn your face into her hair.
You stay like that for a long time. The harbor noises continue. Someone laughs in a corridor far down the hall and a door closes. The lamp is still on. Neither of you moves to turn it off.
Eventually she shifts, slow, and pulls the sheets over you both and lays her head back down on your chest.
"You're going to be sore tomorrow," you say.
"Yes."
"Shoulder."
"Yes."
"Sorry."
"Don't be." You feel her smile against your skin. "Worth it."
You don't say anything to that. You can't.
A minute passes. Two. Her breathing slows. You think she might be falling asleep. Then, very quietly, almost into your collarbone:
"Argentina."
"Yeah."
A pause. A long one. You feel her decide something. Then decide against it.
"Nada." Soft. “Tomorrow."
"Okay."
She settles further into you. Her arm tightens once around your ribs — small, almost involuntary — and then loosens.
You lie awake for a while after she's asleep. You think mañana, and you don't know what she was going to say, and you fall asleep with your hand in her hair before you can finish the thought.
La próxima.
You don't stay.
You wait until her breathing has been even for a long time, until the arm around your ribs has gone fully slack. Then you ease yourself out from under her, one careful inch at a time. You replace the warmth of your body with a folded edge of the duvet. She makes a small sound and turns her face into the pillow and does not wake.
You look at her. Just once.
You find your jeans on the floor. Your jacket. Your kit bag thrown by the door. You turn the lamp off. You let yourself out.
The elevator is empty. The lobby is empty except for one bored attendant who does not look up from his phone as you pass. You walk out of the AC Hotel into the dark with your jacket open at the throat, and the cold hits you like it's been waiting.
You don't zip up.
You let it find you. The Donostia spring at two in the morning, salt-sharp from the harbor. You feel it on your throat, in the vee where your jacket hangs open, along the line of your jaw where her mouth was. You feel it everywhere she touched you, which is everywhere, and the cold is doing the strange tender work of putting you back inside your own body where she had taken you out of it.
It would be easy to catch a cab but you decide to walk.
You think about why you left.
You think about it the way you think about anything important: at a distance, a little dryly. You left because Alexia Putellas does not need to wake up next to a midfielder from a mid-table side and decide what her face should do. She has training in two days and a flight before that. A Champions League final to prepare for. A national team camp after that. She did not ask to also have a morning on her schedule.
You left because she had been generous all night and you wanted to be generous back.
That's what you tell yourself.
You walk faster. The wind off the bay blasts your back but your face still feels warm from her. Your mouth still feels warm from her. The inside of your wrist where she pressed her thumb is the warmest part of you, like she left a brand there. You touch it absently with the pad of your other thumb as you walk.
You are a block from your apartment when you remember.
You stop on the pavement.
You patted yourself down on the way out the door — keys, phone, wallet, jacket. You did the small unconscious checklist of every away-day departure you have ever made. You were precise about it. You were so precise about it that you did not, in fact, look at the floor.
The blaugrana.
Your match shirt.
Tangled together on the carpet of an eighth-floor hotel room you are now half a city away from, the way clothes get tangled together when no one is paying attention. The way bodies get tangled together when nobody is going to be checking. Blue and burgundy in a small heap by the foot of the bed.
You stand on the pavement in the cold with your hand over your mouth and a sound starting in your chest that is a laugh, at first.
It bends you slightly at the waist, and you have to lean a hand on the wall to catch yourself, and the laugh keeps going for a few seconds because — because. Because you have spent an entire season chasing that shirt. Because you finally did get it. Because she folded it and put it in your hands.
And because you left it on the floor.
You straighten up.
You wipe your face with the heel of your hand. The cold has gotten in everywhere now. You can feel it on the wet of your cheeks where you didn't notice the tears arriving.
《 part 2, Children cry and laugh and play, slowly hair will turn to grey
》 Alexia Putellas x Physio!Reader
》 words count: +9.7k
》 No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place [Zen proverb]
THE DAY AFTER 20 APRIL, 2024
You have never been to Alexia’s house.
She is always in your space, your office, your apartment. But she never lets you get too close to her home. Boundaries and lines drawn around her private life almost as to protect her own heart.
It’s not like she doesn’t trust you.
She simply couldn’t allow herself to trust you too much.
When she opened the door you didn’t really have much time, or desire, to look around. The midfielder dragged you into the bedroom without even switching on the lights, moving on pure instinct and impatience.
You wash your face in the bathroom, cross the living room and linger into the kitchen.
Now, the morning sun’s rays coming through the windows, you wander around with no rush or fear of being invasive.
Her place is neat, clean in a way you have pictured without realising.
It’s so different from yours.
It smells lived in, like the stoves are daily turned on and evidence of use hides in plain sight. Like on the door on the top of the sideboard that doesn’t really shut completely or on the scratches carved into the wood table. On the few little plants near the window, herbs Alexia actually knows how to use. On the leftovers in a pot, waiting to be heated. On the coffee machine standing out from a corner with one too many accessories a coffee machine should come with.
It feels like a loved space, it feels like a space that has known love.
You fill a glass of water just to give your hands something to do.
“You move like a burglar”, Alexia’s voice comes in a measured way, clouded with sleep and an edge you can’t name this early in the morning.
“Should that be a compliment?”
“It’s actually quite scary, to be honest”
You turn completely toward her when you hear the smile in her voice, taking it all in for the first time.
She’s resting against the door frame, arms crossed with the fake confidence of someone who has not looked at themself in the mirror yet. Hair flying around, untamed, and eyes still fighting the sleep away. She picked an oversized, overworn t-shirt that makes you wonder if she’s wearing anything else.
You can get used to this version of her.
Even under your scrutiny, she feels comfortable. Not judged, not in the middle of a test she’s scared of not being able to pass. She doesn’t feel the need to compose, to put herself together for you.
She let you see her.
“I thought you’d left”
“Do you want me to leave?”, you ask, trying to hide something.
Disappointment, maybe.
Fear, most definitely.
Do you regret it? – it’s your question.
She says nothing, but she comes closer with a couple of steps, smiling.
There isn’t much space between you when she answers, “No. Do you want coffee?”
Do you want to stay? – it’s her question.
You kiss her.
Because it feels right to, because you want to.
Because you can.
The sun is rising in Barcelona, you did not die yesterday and you will survive to see tomorrow. Alexia doesn’t taste like a mistake, not that you had any doubt, and your heart may give out, but you will be fine.
“Yes”
~
APRIL TO MAY, 2024
Nothing is really different at work.
Around Barcelona’s facilities, Alexia Putellas is Alexia Putellas and you are you.
Captain and physiotherapist.
There’s trust, there’s support, there’s the kind of understanding that comes with passing so much time together in a safe space.
Impeccable professional behaviour.
Outside work, you and Alexia are just you and Alexia.
There’s still trust, maybe even more, and there’s support that goes beyond football and treatment sessions. There’s the kind of understanding that comes with sharing so much of yourselves, your lives, while building a safe space together.
It’s both impressive and, frankly, painful to observe from the outside.
Alexia, on her end, just wants to enjoy every moment.
Sessions run on schedule, physio appointments before or after training sessions growing in intensity as the final stretch of the competitions approaches.
You have to be around more, keeping an eye on everyone to make sure they all survive to see the last game of the season.
People close to her notice.
She trains with the same dedication, with the same passion that has defined the way she breathes football since the very first days as a kid.
She’s also more light-hearted.
Not superficial, never superficial, but she moves like she doesn’t have weights on her chest or have to roll an immense boulder up a hill. The smile on her face is a genuine one, playful most of the time, and she lights up at random during the day.
It’s difficult to miss, to be honest.
And people close to you both notice something else too.
“You’re not subtle, you know?”
Irene’s voice hits you right in the middle of a sunny afternoon session.
You’re observing from the sideline, focusing on Mapi’s movements off the ball and the way she adapts now she’s almost completely reintegrated with the squad. She’s been out for so long now and the medical team wants to make sure she’s ready to be back soon.
You may not have been assigned to her care, but she’s grown on you the past year.
“Aren’t you supposed to stretch?”, you say, not turning to look at the defender.
Irene sips from the water bottle, her gaze shifting from you to the small group busy with the drill. And back to you.
Alexia and Mapi are messing around, paying little to no attention to the coach explaining the exercises one to many times. They’re way too competitive for this late in the session.
Children.
Athletes are big ass children, you are more sure as you spend more time with them.
“I don’t know what’s happening”
“Nothing is happening”
“Things have been happening since you came here”, the Basque says, firm but not unkind. Because she knows more than what most assume, but also because she is one of the most loyal and supportive people you have ever met.
She’s the kind of person to be ready to fight by your side way before you even realise there’s a war to go to.
When you seem to tense under her eyes, still pretending to pay attention to the team wrapping up the session, she clarifies, “I’m not saying whatever is happening is a bad thing”
Alexia laughs loudly at something Jana whispers in her ear, the younger jumping around her like a kid who has just been promised ice cream for dinner, and a smile grows on your lips before you can hide it.
“It feels right”, you admit, right as Irene thinks you will not say anything about it all.
A beat passes, maybe longer.
Jonatan dismisses the team, urging them to stretch properly and go to sleep early. Tomorrow morning they have media and a video session to attend.
Irene nods, like she just decided something really important, “Make it right then”
~
MAY, 2024
You celebrate Barcelona overturning the defeat against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge late at night, hours after the team’s celebration dialed down and right before your alarm goes off.
In front of the other girls, you tease Alexia about Aitana joining her as all-time top scorer in the Women’s Champions League for Barcelona. In the privacy of her hotel room, you kiss her frown away.
Then they secure the league title, for the fifth consecutive season, winning away against Granada.
You watch the game at home, not traveling with the girls since you had to attend a conference in Madrid. Alexia shows up the next morning with a bag from your favourite bakery and a way too amused smirk on her face.
You balance the two things out and decide to let her in.
There are two versions of you and Alexia.
Barça completes the domestic treble winning the Copa de la Reina with a 8-0 scoreline that belongs in a different sport.
Alexia plays meaningful minutes, insists that Irene raise the trophy, and let you buy her dinner in Zaragoza just because she can.
But it’s not a difficult balance to maintain, you find out.
You’re careful, of course you are.
But you don’t have to be all the time.
You don’t want to.
Not when Alexia has her legs on your lap, a little bit too absorbed in a game playing on the TV. You didn’t even know your streaming subscription involved sports. It doesn’t really matter when you can type on the computer with one hand and caressing Alexia with the other. A touch you can finally indulge in.
It’s been a good night.
You have cooked, something the Catalan woman promised was easy enough for you to attempt on your own. She did supervise, though, even if her idea of supervision was wrapping herself around you and criticising the way you hold the knife.
Dinner was edible, thank you very much.
It’s been a good night.
You don’t want this to end.
Even if sometimes, when Alexia mutters a comment under her breath against the TV, you find yourself smiling like an idiot for no reason.
It’s the same thing that happens she places a gentle kiss on your temple, just because she is close enough to do so, your entire body exhales in relief and fills in contentment.
Or when she makes a joke, so bad people may think it’s strange but you discovered it’s pretty on character, and you can’t help but laugh.
“You’re quiet”
You don’t look up from the computer, “I’m always quiet”
“You’re the overthinking something kind of quiet”, she clarifies, sitting up to point a finger on your forehead. “You make a very cute face when your mind is running too fast for you to keep up”
“That’s– very specific”
“Thank you, I’m becoming an expert”
On the TV, someone must have scored a pretty impressive goal because the commentator goes wild in the way sport commentators usually do. Too much, too loud, too philosophical for a ball kicked into a net.
“My contract ends in June”
Alexia doesn’t look away, her smile doesn’t falter when your eyes meet.
“I know”
You are yet to talk about what it will mean for you, for the two of you.
You place the computer on the coffee table, turning completely toward Alexia without breaking any point of contact.
The fact you will leave is a topic of discussion you faced once, that night in December, and briefly mentioned in passing the past months.
Only acknowledged in moments of vulnerability, always on the back of your minds.
You’re always touching somehow, all the time.
“I’m still leaving”
“I know”
“Should we talk about it?”
“I don’t want to”, she says, one hand reaching for your face and smoothing some tension around the jaw. “I don’t want to pass the time we have holding back or calculating the days we have left. I want to be here– I want to be with you in all the ways I can until I can”
It’s an honest answer and a self-protective one too, but honest nonetheless.
“And I don’t want to hurt you”
“You are not”
“Alexia–”
“You’re not hurting me. You made a decision, I respect that. I’ve always respected your decisions”
“Even the ones that hurt you”, you mutter, just because you can not to.
“Even the ones that hurt”, she relays, vulnerable and yet fearless, “My decision is to enjoy what we have for as long as we have. For once, I’m not planning ahead. I just– I just want to be happy”
You grant her the same vulnerability when you say, “I’m happy too”
It’s quiet again, for a while, before she breaks the tension, “Do you wanna judge their poor ball possession with me?”
And you let go, for now.
Because Alexia asks you to, because she needs this from you now. Because you have both made decisions this time.
You answer her with a kiss, muting the TV when the commentator starts another rant and you really just want to hear the noises Alexia is making under you.
~
“You should definitely stop”
The protest sounds weak even to you and your wandering hands don’t really help the case.
But it’s too early and Alexia’s kisses are too tempting for you to be reasonable.
Since she found that soft spot on your neck, barely hidden in between your ear and your jaw, she’s been using it against you every time she wants something you’re giving as soon as she pleases.
She smirks, “You don’t look like you want me to stop”
As a good enough answer, you playfully pinch her side. But no sooner has she taken a step away, acting offended, than you’re already pulling her back towards you.
You know you shouldn’t.
Alexia entered your office while you’re watering the plants with a teasing smirk on her face and a paper bag in her hand, unannounced because now even more than before she feels like she doesn’t have to.
Neither of you even indulged in the unprompted breakfast.
She knows she shouldn’t.
Not here, not like this.
In your office, the facility quiet enough for you to catch up on some work before the first session of the day, but definitely not empty.
“I don’t want to stop”, you admit, hands traveling on her shoulder to put enough distance – much to her disappointment, “But we should”
She almost whines.
Alexia Putellas, world class athlete and one of the most prominent personalities of the country, genuinely just complaining like a child because you’re not letting her kiss you at work.
“You hate me”, she comments, wrapping her arms around your torso and hiding her face against your neck.
Like she doesn’t have to act with you. Like she doesn’t have to be her camera-smile on, like she doesn’t have to hold herself composed and stoic. Like she doesn’t have to be constantly overaware of the glances, the spotlights, the gossip.
You laugh at her playfulness, at the way she let you see such sides of her without thinking too much.
She is just so comfortable with you, she just trusts you like that.
Like she can just be.
Your hands find her face, angling her so you can find her lips.
The kiss deepens so easily you both get so lost into it.
Too lost.
“Oh, ¡Madre mía!”
The door slams close as fast as it was opened.
Not fast enough for you to ignore the fact Jana Fernández just walked into you kissing her fucking team’s captain.
“Of course this happens”, you mutter, taking a long breath as your eyes find the ceiling in search of God or some other heavenly help.
Alexia, on the other hand, seems to freeze.
You notice immediately.
Maybe because she’s still so close, maybe because she literally stopped up with your fingers still caressing her blushing face.
“You good?”
“Jana just–”
“Yeah, and whose fault is it?”, you whisper, making it clear you’re just teasing and you’re not really upset about it.
It’s not ideal, you know, but it could be worse.
And you brought this on yourselves, really.
When she doesn’t retort, when she still looks like something irreparable happens that will change everything forever, you realise the panic in her eyes has a name.
A name you know well enough.
So you try again, more firmly this time, “You good?”
She holds your gaze then, searching for the answer to a question she will not ask out loud.
A beat passes, maybe more. Long enough for the air in the room to soften, but not long enough to ignore Jana’s lingering steps by the other side of the wall.
“Yes, I’m good”
And that is enough for you, for now.
You place a gentle kiss to her forehead, trying not to beam with pride when you feel her entire body relax, before you reach for the door to find the younger girl pacing in deep thought.
“Jana–”
“I’ve seen absolutely nothing!”, she blurts out with a hit of panic in her voice, “I swear, I’m born blind. It’s a tragedy, really”
You can’t hold back the amusement, “Born blind?”
“Yes! Yes, of course. Have you never noticed? You are a terrible doctor if you haven’t noticed–”
“Shut up”, you silence her, barely hiding the smile on your face.
When the defender realises you’re strangely calm about it all, she feels reassured enough to calm down too.
“Sooo–”
“Came in”
“Alexia is still there”
“We’re on the second floor, Jana. Where do you think she could be other than where she was a minute ago?”, you reason, matter of fact.
It’s not like she could sneak out of the window.
You hope she hasn’t, at least.
If she has not killed herself trying to escape the situation, you definitely will.
Fortunately, when you walk in the office, Alexia is right where you left her – by the desk, even more flushed.
And, because Jana can be such a little shit, as soon as she looks at the midfielder she screams, “¡Ajá! You’re so embarrassed!”
“Jana”
Apparently you have to be the adult one.
“Silence, both of you”
“I’m just saying–”
“You say nothing”, you point a finger at the defender, gesturing to the treatment bed to then nodding at the door for Alexia, “And I will see you later”
Alexia hesitates for a second, nothing more, before placing a kiss on your cheek and leaving the office with a pleased smirk.
The session starts with an unusual calmness, not uncomfortable but definitely different from what is normal for your sessions with Jana.
But you can tell she’s trying so bad to not comment on what she walked into.
You work on her thigh with precision, asking questions about the pain management and how it feels after the first few minutes back.
She answers, she teases, she is the usual self.
The session is almost over when you joke, “It’s on you, really. You are never on time”
“And I will never be again!”
~
The day proceeds with the usual buzz.
The sun is up in the sky and warm on the skin, the Champions League’s final is approaching and the team is even more excited than as expected from a group of girls running around a ball for a living.
Alexia watches Jana attentively.
And Jana notices. Because she is not stupid, but mostly because Alexia is not subtle.
She may have a reputation. She may enjoy a good gossip and she may have blurred out a secret or two in the past. She may be a chatterbox, but she’s even a better friend.
“You can relax, you know?”, she tells the older woman when they are alone, walking together to the parking lot by the end of the day.
“I know, Jana, I trust you. I just– I don’t want to fuck this up”
The defender waits for a more elaborate thought, but when it’s clear Alexia doesn’t really have the words to do so, she comments, “She is the reason you’re so happy lately, right?”
Alexia stills for a moment, taken aback by the simplicity of it.
The realization arrives from outside, named by someone else, and becomes undeniably hers.
“Yeah– Yeah, she is”
Jana nods, looking away to find the key and opening her car, before turning back to her captain, “Good, it’s good. You were both really weird for a bit, it was painful to watch”
Alexia flips her off as a goodbye.
~
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL, 2024
The night in Bilbao feels historic even before you step into the pitch and you’re not even the one who is going to play.
The air around the stadium is heavy with anticipation and something you can’t name from where you stand, watching almost 40 thousand or so Blaugrana’s jersey filling the place. Many came in a flotilla of buses organised by the club, setting a record for the largest travelling contingent in women's football – Carlos told you, beaming with pride.
The first half ends too early.
Even you can tell this is not just a game, this is not any Champions League final, this is history in the making.
This is Barcelona, relentless and still haunted by past defeats, facing Olympique Lyonnais, the model for the development of women’s football for so long. Their biggest rival and the team that had broken their hearts before.
It’s a waiting game.
You spend the entire break massaging tired muscles and calming down tense nerves, pushing and grounding the girls with firm hands and even more confident gazes.
You know they can do it.
Lyon presses early, sharp and aggressive because they know how to fracture Barcelona’s structure, but Barça absorbs it. Pass by pass, triangle by triangle, they stretch the field until the pressure begins to thin.
When the teams reenter the pitch, you notice the way bodies move like they know something is about to happen. They settle, shoulders loose and measured strides. No panic, no tension spikes.
Then Aitana finds a seam and drives through it.
The kind of run that physios hate and love at the same time. Explosive acceleration, change of direction, full commitment. Dangerous, both for the body and for the scoresheet.
It ends in a goal.
After that, San Mamés is no longer a stadium. It’s a wave of waving flags and Spanish chanting. Every Barcelona pass is cheered before it’s completed, every Lyon attempt is swallowed by noise. The crowd senses what’s happening, what is coming.
The stadium erupts and you rise from the seat to celebrate with the other staff members – apparently that’s something you do now.
In the chaos, despite the chaos, your gaze meets Alexia’s and the smiles on your faces shift into something more private and deep.
In the middle of all that noise, Alexia enters the pitch.
The game is almost over, but she isn’t done.
You stand by the bench, arms crossed as to hold back the joy.
This is not just any match, this is not just another step of her journey. Not after the injuries, not after the long recoveries. Not after the doubts and the uncertainty.
Fights against monsters that look a lot like a mirrors.
This is a testament of all those silent hours in rehab rooms, sessions after session of doing the same movement again and again, rebuilding trust in a body that once betrayed her.
Fights behind closed doors.
Fights against the Federation, her own body, her own wants.
So when she steps into the box, there’s a split second where time stretches. When she positions herself is pure intuition, pure class. When she finishes, clean and composed, it is just Alexia.
A goal that means so much more.
You realise you’re crying just when Carlos teases you about it.
You can tell by the way she moves after. No hesitation, no protection. Full commitment to the sprint, the turn, the celebration.
Carefree, like she deserves to be – like you fight for her to be.
~
The whistle goes and no one cares about cramps and tired legs.
Confetti, photos, stupid celebrations.
From the sideline, you don’t even try to hold the excitement back – you learned to pick your battle.
The girls jump and run around like kids, holding each other and screaming in pure joy.
You will never get used to it all, but you’re a bit more willing to indulge in it.
Especially when your nephew is running around the pitch like he just won himself, kicking a ball with some of the younger girls. He refuses to wear Barcelona’s colours in any form, but he lets Alexia tie a Spain flag like a cape with little to no protest.
“You two are embarrassing”, Cris comments, nudging at you when Alexia kisses Toby’s cheek and his face turns as red as a tomato.
You say nothing, you do not defend yourself because you really have nothing to defend yourself from.
In the chaos of the celebration, celebration that doesn’t seem to calm down, Jana runs toward you with Toby in her arms and the boy’s ones secured around the trophy. Alexia is following close behind, chasing them playfully.
“Hide us!”, your nephew screams in between giggles and Jana matching ones.
They really try to use you as a shield.
You stand like that for a moment, just close.
“You can’t hide forever”, Alexia says, acting like she can’t just circle around you and recover what the two troublemakers apparently want to steal.
She smiles at you, conspiratorial, when your eyes meet.
Even when Jana sprints away, Toby’s laugh echoing, she doesn’t leave.
JUNE 2024, THE END
She stands next to you.
In the middle of the pitch, in the stadium where she just reborn. In the crowd, between confetti and noise. In front of everyone and no one but the two of you.
~
The team wraps up the season with three games in one week, saying goodbye to two beloved players like Mariona and Sandra who play their last games for Barcelona.
You ask the club to not disclose your own departure, you will inform the girls about it yourself.
The ACL research paper, the one you have been working on for the past two years, is accepted for publication in the biggest sports medicine journal.
When you receive an email right before they have to travel to Mexico for the 2024 Camp3onas Tour, you slam the computer shut so loudly it cannot go unnoticed.
You try to hide a smile for the entire day, breaking down just when Ona and Jana join forces to drive you absolutely crazy.
You let them tease you, invade your place like they truly belong there as they belong in your life. You let them eat snacks on the couch and pick up silly arguments with each other, card game after card game. You let them know your time in Barcelona is coming to an end and you let them unload about it, but you don’t let them try to convince you to stay.
The team celebrates the news with the same enthusiasm and commitment they reserve to major tournaments.
Some of the girls invite themselves to your apartment, bringing food and an obnoxious balloon ornament you don’t want to know how they managed to fit into the elevator.
Jana cries like you have personally offended her with a career choice, Claudia genuinely asks if you hate them, but then she ends up fighting Patri over who will inherit your plants. Mapi is surprisingly mature about it. Irene doesn’t say much, and her reaction is the one you fear most, but she seems to understand your reasons.
Alexia lingers around with the usual calmness. Right words at the exact right times, placing a hand on your back when you need it the most or smiling at you from the other side of the apartment when your eyes meet.
By the end of the night, they have accepted your decision – mostly.
Apparently, she is ready when you’re brushing your teeth in the bathroom and she’s putting on the stupid overworn t-shirt she insists on sleeping in.
The girls leave in small waves, soft goodbyes and long hugs fill the space until you and Alexia are the only two left.
She helps clean up, holding something close you know she will spit out when she is ready.
“Can I read it?”, she asks, gaze finding yours in the mirror’s reflection.
“What?”
“The research”
~
You don’t think too much about it, cleaning your mouth and crossing the room to dig around all the shit covering your desk.
You hand her a spiral-bound stack of papers – you’re the type of person to print it, obviously.
The next morning you wake up with a headache and the other side of the bed too cold for your liking.
You find her in the kitchen, sipping from the Atlético’s mug Toby gifted you for Christmas, bent over your research papers.
When Alexia sleeps at your house, she usually leaves the bed just when she absolutely has to. When she has a day off and she can sleep in, holding you close until someone, usually you, has to be the responsible one. When she has something to do or somewhere to be, she leaves with barely enough time to get ready for the day.
Today is not one of those days.
It’s the most confusing scene you have ever witnessed in your entire life.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading”, she answers simply, not looking up.
“You realise what you’re holding?”
Alexia observes the mug, maybe for the first time, making a face, “That’s why the coffee tastes like shit”
You laugh at her reaction, stepping closer to kiss the frown away and stealing the cup from her hand, taking a long sip – it doesn’t taste that bad.
You sit beside her, studying her face, “Interesting reading?”
She hums, still someway deep in thought.
The footballer is not going to pretend she understands everything in those papers. The abstract is clear enough, direct like medical researches usually are not allowed to be. Some passages go completely over her head, but some paragraphs speak to her in a way she can’t really describe.
She knows she is there.
Her injury, her tests and her results.
Her recovery journey.
What she’s been through is there, somewhere.
What she’s been through in the past two years, probably even longer. What she’s been through with you by her side.
But what is most striking is the conclusion.
Brilliant observations, clinical but human. Recommendations, suggestions. The reality of return-to-sport decision-making processes. The reality of different rehab’s paths. How clubs and leagues usually handle the situations, how it should change. The changes that must be done. By the athletes, by the medical teams, by the Federations.
“This is why you’re leaving”, she says.
Not as an accusation, not to start something.
Just a fact.
“Part of, yeah”
“The rest?”
You’re honest when you answer, “I’m still figuring out the rest”
~
JULY 2024, THE NEW BEGINNING
In between nights in the safe of your apartment and Alexia’s pre-Olympic preparation, your relationship keeps growing.
According to Alexia, training camps are good enough.
The transition from club to National team is not as bad as last summer, despite some tension and the fact you started to enjoy being a pain in the Federation’s ass.
Not being related with Barcelona anymore makes you an asset, sure, but it also means you don’t have to hold back to respect some political balance.
But you’re not her physio anymore.
They focus on tactical compactness and defensive transitions, but they still rely a lot on Barcelona group’ synchrony on the pitch. The load management is too prudent or too uncautious, nowhere in between.
You’re very vocal against it.
Carlos takes back his rule on Barcelona’ side, while her personal physio keeps her entertained the rest of the time.
It’s a shift in your dynamic. Not loud, not dramatic, but definitely intense. Strange, but not uncomfortable.
Officially, that is the only change in your relationship.
Even if she’s in your apartment for most of the time she spends outside of a football pitch, or in Barcelona altogether, discussing the latest Liga’s game on videocall with Toby.
She drops on the couch like she owns the place, hair wet from a shower that was supposed to help save water and ended longer than anticipated – you regret nothing.
Officially, she is just Alexia now.
Expect, maybe, framing Alexia so she could greet your nephew.
As soon as Toby gets a glimpse of her, it’s impossible to separate the two.
The call, eventually, ends in a rush when you hear Cris asking if he tidied up his room as promised.
With a few comfy clothes in your closet, a toothbrush and way too expensive creams in your bathroom, and her head on your shoulder as a stupid film plays out.
When she laughs, genuinely and uncontrolled, at a very silly joke made on the screen, you really don’t want to ruin the moment.
The words just slip out.
“We need to talk”
The footballer’s face drops, her eyes pop out almost comically.
“You can’t break up with me”
“Alexia, we are not even together”
“Yeah, so you can’t break up with me”
You can’t help but burst out laughing at her reaction, amused by the exchange but not missing the way her shoulders relax.
By September, this apartment will have another tenant.
It may not be as heavy as feared, but you still have to talk about your upcoming departure. About what you leaving will mean for the two of you.
It’s not something you can hide under the carpet anymore, especially since you had rescinded the lease.
You gain some composure, muting the television and sitting up on the couch, gaze fixed on Alexia.
“I’m going to Madrid”
“Traitor”, she mutters, mostly to ease the tension.
“Not like that, idiota”, you retort, lightly pushing her shoulder, “Madrid, the city. Not Madrid, the club”
“Still shit, but could be worse”
Despite the playful attitude, you are now familiar with Alexia’s tells. The way her eyes travel everywhere to hold back the tears, or the way she pinches the back of her hand to steady her breath.
So you add, “I will work with the FEB”
“I will oversee medical research and rehabilitation protocols from U-17 through senior level”
The Basketball Federation reached out right before the World Cup. You weren’t interested at first, not really seeing the appeal of working for a governing body.
Then the World Cup happened and an idea formed.
They came back and in December you found middle ground.
“For the Basketball Federation?”
“For the Basketball Federation”
A smile appears on the Catalan’s lips, open and genuine, “You really hate football that much, don’t you?”
You don’t have time to answer, Alexia jumps on you with all the force a professional athlete manages to hide under jumpers and a loose t-shirt. Her arms wrap around your shoulders and you don’t fall off the couch just because her body ends on top of yours first.
“I’m so proud of you”
~
“You’re kinda unemployed now”, Jana comments with her mouth full and the frankness of a child on a sugar-high.
“Chew your food”
Why did you accept Alexia’s invite to help her babysit a bunch of overexcited kids with a major tournament around the corner?
“She’s not wrong”, Ona adds, enjoying the sun crushing on the restaurant’s patio, her hands behind her head and the smirk of someone who is going to cause trouble. “When do you start the new fancy job?”
“September”, you answer, drinking the lemonade you ordered so not to be the only one indulging in alcohol – stupid athletes and their strict diets. “I’m taking the summer off, I think. I’m taking my nephew on a roadtrip in Europe. Backpacks, trains, different cities, all that jazz”
You let them talk, mentally taking note of a few places that aren’t in your detailed plan, but could fit in – you’re trying something new lately, spontaneity.
That sparks an animated debate.
About the fact it’s probably going to be the first vacation of your adult life, about which and how many cities you should visit in the three weeks.
It is Patri who asks, “Did Paris make the cut?”
Alexia doesn’t react, but you’re close enough to see how her leg starts to bounce under the table. Your hand finds her knee without too much trouble.
“We might be around during the Olympics”
Just a city you happen to visit at the same time, for two completely different reasons.
You drop the possibility out, letting the Catalan know it’s an option but it doesn’t have to be a box to tick out of a list or a big deal.
If she wants you there, just because you can, you will be.
No pressure, no drama.
~
AUGUST, 2024
For some reason, despite an whole year has passed and your relationship with Alexia changed in so many ways you couldn’t even keep track, this summer looks a lot like the previous one.
The midfielder goes radio silence, because that is what she does during a tournament, but the pictures are shared constantly.
It takes a few days and almost missing one too many train-connections, but you and Toby make a surprisingly good team – despite you being an overplanner and the kid wasting too much time inside historic buildings.
You share pictures of stretches of stones older than almost anything you’ve ever touched, Alexia shares bits and pieces of her life outside training.
The trip really kicks off in Rome.
In the thick of summer it’s loud, chaotic, and somehow the perfect start. You rent bikes, get scammed, fall in love with every corner. Toby plays with a few kids in a garden that should belong to a museum and decides he must buy a football jersey for each city you will visit. You try to fit three weeks worth of exploring in three days. Rome teaches the rule you’ll carry for the rest of the rest of the trip: do less, feel more.
Florence is smaller, but not less loud. In the afternoon heat, you escape into the Boboli Gardens where Toby runs ahead like it’s his own backyard.
This time, it’s all about breathtaking sculptures and majestic architecture, while Alexia frames cards and board games – you’re almost sure only the one she won make the cut.
You skip Venice, adding a few hours of train to make a stop in a quiet lake on the border with Switzerland. Mountains rise, the air cools a bit and the pace shifts. In Innsbruck, you’re surrounded by peaks in every direction and your nephew doesn’t complain a single time about the long hikes.
You share big views, riverside walks and mountain activities. Alexia shares the strange quietness of empty stadiums before kickoffs and ice baths.
The train to Vienna is added just to fulfill a personal dream and get a Billy Joel inspired tattoo on your ribs.
You send a photo of the freshly inked skin to Alexia and she doesn’t even try to pretend it doesn’t have a devastating effect on her.
Prague is a surprise, at least till you almost lose your overexcited nephew in Old Town Square at peak hours.
When Spain scrapes a victory against Colombia after penalties, you are just over with the tour of the three Pinakotheks of Munich and can easily detour toward France a bit earlier than planned. Toby is an easy sell to any new destination if football is somehow involved.
You include a few little stops to ease the travel and don’t look too eager to arrive in Lyon – from there, you have a few options.
On an overnight train you send Alexia a screenshot of your new plan, giving her a way out if she doesn’t feel like it’s the right thing at the moment.
She answers a few hours later with tickets and full access credentials you will not use.
The day in Marseilles is the only one with just a single picture shared between the two of you.
It’s a selfie of you and Toby after the game.
The kid is trying to show the number 11 on the back of his Spain jersey, you smile at the camera like the scoresheet doesn’t really matter to the way you feel for the footballer.
A few days later, as your roadtrip with Toby is approaching its end, Alexia calls from the airport, waiting to board her return flight to Spain.
It takes the two of you less than ten minutes to arrange a getaway weekend before you have to go back to reality.
The window in between the Summer Olympics and the start of Barcelona’s new season is short and bittersweet.
~
Like most players, Alexia has a break too brief to properly rest, but she’s beaming to rejoin the team for pre-season and looking forward to the tactical preparation under the new head coach.
On the other hand, she can literally hear the countdown of your departure to Madrid, like those scenes in movies when the bomb’s timer steals the show. The deafening ticking of the inevitable approaching, the certainty something will change when the time will come.
“Why are you wrapping my plates like that?”
“Like what?”, Alexia asks, twisting the object in her hands like it’s made of cheap plastic and not an overpriced ceramic.
Why do you even own such expensive shit?
Before answering, you inspect the boxes she filled already with a raised eyebrow, “Like you don’t want them to survive the journey”
“I’m doing an excellent job, thank you very much”
“You broke two mugs and mutilated a pot I didn’t even know I owned”
“It’s not that big of a loss then”, she retorts, carefully adding the plate into the box.
It’s a strange feeling, watching the kitchen emptying.
It looks a lot like it used to be, but, unlike when you first moved in, there’s a sense of emptiness now. As if something grew into it, took up the space, and now it’s forced to leave and will make the absence loud.
The entire apartment feels like this.
The Catalan’s arms wrap around your torso, hugging you from behind in a way that is becoming familiar enough to be second nature. Her chin rests on your shoulder, holding you as close as physically possible.
Alexia comes closer, noticing the way your eyes keep checking every corner of the place like a crime scene.
The furrow on your forehead doesn’t help either, a sign the midfielder learned to look for when your mind is driving into an overthinking mood and it will be too deep to drag you back.
She lets you analyse the situation, calculating in your head whatever is the situation you’re trying to assert.
It takes a few minutes.
“I have more things than when I moved in”
“You buy half a paycheck’s worth of cutlery last summer”
“I couldn’t keep letting literal World Champions eat off plastic plates”, you call back, half turning into her arms to make your point clear, “I’m not uncivilized, Alexia”
She hides her laugh into the hollow of your neck, sensing there’s something bigger under the jokes.
You have always packed light, used to being on the move and not really a homebody to begin with.
There are essentials that travel with you no matter what, changing place based on the new apartment layout.
The clothes fit into a few suitcases, the wardrobe is really the easier thing to update from city to city.
A lifetime of relocations taught you a way or two to move books without gambling your back so young and, since you keep accumulating them in huge piles, if they are not essential or don’t hold sentimental value, most are donated to libraries.
Plants, vibrant and luxuriant under your daily care, are gifted to the friends you made along the way.
Some things are stupid, like the pot plant your best friend gifted for your 15th birthday and still host different plants despite the cracks.
Some things are sentimental, like the framed photo of a kid version of you and your sister or a note Toby wrote for you when he just learned how to hold a pencil properly.
Some things are practical, like the surprisingly good garment steamer you treat like a prized possession, and some things have been with you for so long you can’t really picture your life without.
“Why do you own this shit?”
But, besides the few exceptions, packing has always been just another tick off the list before moving.
This time is different.
“Toby!”
The little bubble built around you and Alexia in the kitchen pops easily when your nephew comes marching into the room with the determination only an offended kid possesses.
“What is this?”, he questions, waving the offended items.
Alexia, still too close to be casual, answers with a smirk and the playfulness of a thirty years old woman who runs around a ball for a living, “Best club in the world’s jersey, my little friend”
The only thing stronger than Toby’s adorable crush for Alexia is his love for Atlético, much to your own entertainment.
He ignores her as if she’s not even in the room, “Why do you have this?”
“They gifted it when I first started to work with Barça”
“You do not work for them anymore, you can burn it”
“¡Oy!”
You shouldn’t laugh at the pictures of Alexia Putellas and your nephew fighting over a football jersey, you know by her posture and the boy’s tone this is a serious matter, but you really can’t help.
It’s ridiculous.
“If you want one too, you just have to ask”
A mini version of Cris, indeed.
As a good enough answer, Toby sticks his tongue out. He shakes his head, directing you a disappointed look too similar to his mother’s one.
When he leaves the room, you can clearly hear him mutter something along the lines, “This goes to the donation box”
“You handle that beautifully”, your sister comments, watching the exchange from close by, “You will have so much fun babysitting him”
That will be a privilege coming from the move to Madrid.
Being closer to Cris and Toby means more opportunity to be present.
To actually go see him play, even if he still has to master the art of change of pace. To actually be there for your sister, like she always has been for you despite the distance. To actually be around for birthdays and holidays and casual days that, for some reason, turn memorable.
“I will show up in full Barça gear and loaded with presents he will love”, Alexia jokes.
And she says things like that like it’s not a big deal at all.
It means something new can start.
Like it’s completely normal to assume she will be present in the future, like it’s implied she will stick around for you – for your relationship.
Like it’s inevitable.
Like this change, you moving, doesn’t mean it’s all over.
“I’ll hold you to it”, Cris retorts, because she can read between the lines and she will never miss an opportunity to act as the big, protective sister she is.
~
The jersey will not make it to Madrid and you love Toby too much to investigate the whereabouts of the item.
Alexia, however, will make her point during the housewarming party when she will place an obnoxious mug with a huge Barça crest right next to Atlético’s one, making sure Toby sees her doing it.
Another one will magically appear in the new apartment once you will have enough time to actually unpack, signed by the entire Barcelona’s medical team.
You will hide it in your new office, even debating to frame it – out of Toby’s sight, out of mind.
~
SEPTEMBER, 2024
You leave the apartment better than when you entered it.
Two years of your life fit perfectly into three suitcases, fifteen boxes and the boot of your sister’s car. Everything is sent to Madrid with a courier and will occupy Cris’ garage for at least two weeks.
One of which you’re spending at Alexia’s.
It’s not like you planned it.
You had to vacate the apartment, but you have to take care of some errands in Barcelona before actually saying goodbye to the city. Taking advantage of Alexia’s hospitality is just the most reasonable and practical option.
Trying to find a balance is surprisingly fun.
She likes to oversleep, and that’s something you still have to wrap your head around, but you will never complain about the few minutes she steals in the morning. She holds the sheet as if you could run away with them and drop her out in the cold, despite the lingering summer heat. She also squeezes the toothpaste right in the middle and leaves around the house way too many half-empty water bottles.
Little things you find out without really realising, without really putting effort into it.
It’s just something that happens in the comfort of sharing so much space in such a short amount of time.
~
You know it’s a temporary break from reality, a suspended moment that lives between her pre-season and your new job in Madrid.
It doesn’t mean you two will not enjoy it, every coffee shared in her kitchen and every night wrapped into each other is cherished as a precious memory.
The early afternoon sun is a heavy, golden pour that turns the Mediterranean into a sheet of hammered foil. It’s barely quiet outside Barcelona, summer still lingering in the corners of streets and tourist traps.
You’ve just finished a long lunch at a chiringuito, the napkins were thin and the floor was covered in sand. The wine was cold enough to make Alexia forget the new season is fast approaching.
Now, you are just walking.
You are halfway through a conversation about Vicky’s latest, failed, attempt to wedge the midfielder in a TikTok dance when her phone rings.
There is nowhere to be today. No physio session, no paperwork, no tactical analysis of the upcoming game or sponsor duty.
It is just the rhythmic sound of feet on the beachside pavement and the heat of Alexia’s palm against yours. Your fingers are interlaced. Not a tight grip, but a casual knot that feels way more permanent than it really is.
She checks the screen and her entire posture shifts.
“Hola, mamà", she says, her voice dropping into that melodic, rounded Catalan that always sounds like a secret meant only for family.
“No, no, tot va bé. Només– estic caminant. Soc a la platja–”, Alexia glances at you, her eyes looking for something you hope she finds without having to ask, “Sí, no– no estic sola–”
You slow your pace, to maybe also physically give her some privacy, but watching from the corner of your eye.
You can’t hear Eli on the other end, but you don’t have to. You see the way Alexia’s shoulders drop, you see her bite the corner of her lip to suppress a smile, looking down at her shoes like a teenager caught out.
Famously composed under the pressure of finals, but a terrible liar when it comes to her mother.
She shifts her weight, nodding at nothing, “Aquesta nit? Sí. No, jo– no ho sé. Deixa’m– mamà, deixa’m que li pregunti. Adéu, t’estimo”
You may not understand Catalan, but you can tell when the conversation shifts.
The footballer pulls the phone away, looking at you with a strand of hair plastered to her forehead by the sea breeze. She looks completely frazzled.
You can’t help it and a low, amused huff escapes your chest.
“You’re terrified of her”, you tease, bumping your shoulder against hers.
“Shut up”, she mutters, though the corner of her mouth is twitching, “She’s persistent. And she’s doing that thing where she talks in circles until I– I don’t know how she already knows– things”
“She’s your mom”
Alexia waits a bit, somehow preparing herself, before asking, “Do you wanna come to dinner tonight?”
Your heart does a strange, frantic little slide against your ribs.
Dinner at her mother’s isn’t just dinner, you know that.
And you’re moving to Madrid in a few days.
In the world of the Putellas family, after everything they’ve navigated and the inner circle she keeps so fiercely guarded, an invitation to that table is not just an invite.
It is a declaration, the understatement that something fundamentally changed.
“Ale–”, you start, your voice losing the teasing edge, “I’m not sure if it’s– if it’s the right time”
The ticking clock of your departure, which can’t really be ignored anymore, starts to hum in the back of your mind.
You look at her, really look at her, and you see the vulnerability she usually keeps tucked behind the heavy fabric of her oversized sleeping t-shirt.
It’s a stupid way to admit your fears. To point out the imminent moving, the distance. The unsaid. The known, not hidden, but protected.
She stops walking, her hand tightening around yours to face each other. The place is quiet, save for the distant laughs of kids playing somewhere nearby.
“We do not do right times, we never did”, she says, her gaze fixed on yours with that terrifying, beautiful honesty she only uses for the things that truly matter. “And I don’t want it easy. We’ve done the hard parts already, but I want everything. I want to hear you complain about papers and I want to watch you nod at your own notes. I want shared calendars, late mornings, dates, like this one, and I want you teasing me for basically everything”
“You sure?”, you ask, just because you feel like you have to.
“I trusted you with my pain, how could I not trust you with my happiness?”
They just need to be accepted.
You feel the professional resistance in you. The part of you that calculates risks and manages workloads simply crumbles.
You’ve spent two years trying to fix things, but as you look at her you realise some things don’t need to be fixed.
“Yes”, you eventually state and the word feels like a physical weight lifting off your chest, “Yes, okay”
“Okay?”
“Sure– I love her cooking anyway”
She beams at you accepting her invite to dinner, but really not just that.
Alexia Putellas just beamed. That radiant, ego-bruising smile that belongs only to her and you have been lucky enough to feel close to.
You pull her by her hand, cutting the rest of the afternoon short, “¡Vale! We have to bring dessert, at least, and I have to buy her something– Does she like flowers? What kind? Is wine better or–”
“Are you panicking?”, she teases with a huge grin, still matching your pace, “You have already met her, it’s not that serious”
“It is that serious and you know it”
“Is it?”
“Yes”, you say, turning just to find her gaze, “I’m meeting her as your girlfriend this time. It’s different–”
Alexia stops on the spot, stepping into your space. Her hands finding the small of your back, pulling you in until the salt-scented air is the only thing between you. Her expression is suddenly, jarringly serious.
“My girlfriend?”
You look at the woman who has become the center of your gravity, the one you’re willing to fight everything and everyone for, the one whose half-empty water bottles you’ve actually grown to find endearing.
“Yes, Alexia, your girlfriend”, you whisper, leaning in until your forehead rests against hers for a moment. “Now, let’s move! I have to change, buy flowers for your mom and for your sister– Alba! Is your sister going to be there too?”
~
You are standing in line at the pharmacy, on the phone with your new boss to discuss the impending arrival, when Alexia simply texts an address and time.
It’s not like it holds bad memories, not really, but for some reason you want to preserve it in a certain way.
You recognise it immediately, it’s the same cafeteria right outside Barcelona you said goodbye at before the World Cup. A place you never visit again after, despite being one of the best you have ever been to.
You enter the cafeteria five minutes earlier, but the midfielder is already waiting for you at a table in the farthest corner from the entrance.
For a second, you even think of proposing another bar, but you know that if Alexia wants to meet you there it’s probably trying to be sentimental.
Lately, she’s been really sentimental.
“Fancy meeting you here”
“You picked the place and the time”, you retort, sitting right in front of her with a matching smile.
“Yeah, but I also ordered your usual”
The drinks arrive a beat later, as if cued, and the conversation flows easily. The cafeteria is not full, but around there’re enough people to make you feel like you’re just any other couple.
“I have something for you”, she admits when her coffee turns cold.
You figured this was something more than an unplanned date.
She reaches into your bag to pull out a stuffed animal you haven’t seen in too long.
Dr. Wallace.
“We had a very important meeting when you were out this morning”, she says, placing the toy on the table like it must be part of this conversation, “Someone must come to Madrid to keep an eye on you”
The toy sits on an armchair in Alexia’s bedroom like it owns the whole place, you just recently found out.
The callback to last year doesn’t pass unnoticed, especially since it is so clear.
The meaning behind the gesture, however, definitely deeper.
It’s not just a symbol of the journey, the path taken together. The stops, restarts, the detours.
It’s the story of your journey together.
A path which, if it isn’t already mapped out, you want to build.
Of two distant paths that crossed, for some reason, and that learned to travel a stretch of the way together.
The story of how you lost sight of one another and yet continued to follow each other from afar.
The story of how you found each other again, despite everything.
The story of how you must keep moving forward, seeking a path that will allow you to continue the journey together.
“I never thought I could share custody of a stuffed toy”, you say eventually.
Right there, late afternoon in a cafeteria outside Barcelona, both you and Alexia know the toy represents more than an inside joke.
And when you kiss, there’s nothing truly hidden anymore.
Children cry and laugh and play, slowly hair will turn to grey
About the time Alexia decides for the both of you
《 part 1, We will smile to end each day in places we won’t walk ~ x ~ final part, The places we will walk 》
》 Alexia Putellas x Physio!Reader
》 words count: +12.7k
》 Tutte le strade portano a Roma [Italian proverb]: (lit.) All roads lead to Rome; (orig.) Refers to the Roman Empire’s road network: many consular roads were built radiating from the city, so travel and trade routes led toward Rome; (fig.) There are many different ways or decisions that can lead to the same goal or end result.
JANUARY, 2024
“We all agree, the plan sounds solid”
Patricio’s verdict is sharp, his voice final as only the voice of a renowned man closer to retirement than his glory days can be.
He is the head of the medical team of Barcelona FC for a reason.
You stand near the presentation board, your back straightened by years of orthopaedics books and by a room filled with people whose only job today is to judge your opinion.
Different suits and training gears, but familiar faces by now. Someone grins, someone else pretends to understand what is shown in the latest scans, Jonatan looks too deep in thought for this early in the morning.
“How long until she can be back?”
“After last week’s knee arthroscopy or after months of escalating discomfort and pain?”, the wry tone of your voice cuts off any pretence of objection.
The first time you found yourself in a similar situation, Alexia was questioning your presence in her space, not just your professional take of her ACL’s rehab plan.
This time around, a colder winter outside the windows, she is yet to talk.
Her eyes, however, are following you like she’s studying the most important match review of her career.
You entered the conference room already feeling her presence, you presented her case stealing glances when it mattered.
Last year’s recovery plan, the comeback, the lingering discomfort, the surgery.
The new plan.
In between, so much you don’t mention but sense in your bones and in the way Alexia looks at you the entire time. So much that trying to shove feelings into the cracks of delicate moments it’s pointless, rearranging memories like pieces of a puzzle you don’t really want to complete – even if you know exactly what picture it will reveal.
You try anyway.
You water the plants in your office first thing in the morning, fill out research papers after physio sessions and before your stomach loudly demands food, review colleagues’ data after work hours and videocall your nephew the evenings you attempt to cook instead of taking dinner out of a box.
Most days, that is it.
Pretending the past six months don’t have a hold on your heart so tight you can barely breathe properly.
Alexia speaks like she is the one to blame for the situation, “I trust the plan, I will do what it will take”
For Barcelona’s medical team to be reunited in a conference room, not different from any of the others in the facility if not for the papers scattered around the table and the scans of her knee projected on a whiteboard. For the third time in two years.
For the club’s management and tactical team to question her position, on the pitch just as much as on the squad.
For the chaos outside, the war someone is trying to fight at her friends and team’s expenses.
For the way you never looked at her differently, but, somehow, everything changed.
She blames herself for the voices in her head, whispering late at night remarks that make her doubt every decision under the Sun.
~
“You shouldn’t even be here this soon”, you mutter while your hands work carefully on Alexia’s knee.
The surgery was barely two weeks ago, the footballer moves on crutches like it demands a driving licence and spends more on ice packs than on her stupid shoe collection. She should be resting, letting her mother cook for her and annoying her teammates on the group chat.
Instead, she partakes in the recovery plan’s discussion with stitches and dressing still on.
Instead, she gives instructions and advice to the younger girls during practice matches she sneaks in.
Instead, she needs to be freshly taped in the middle of a video session because her knee swells up so much she can feel it in her ears.
“It’s not like you can ground me”, she calls back, trying, and failing, to hide a wince when you slightly bend her leg. “I’m already sidelining for only God knows how long”
“It’s going to be even longer if you keep testing God’s benevolence”
“God’s or yours?”
It’s a bait, you know that.
She is lending a helping hand that will drag you into a trap you will not escape – don’t want to, nor could.
A test, maybe.
A plea.
You’d know, if you could be brave enough to look up and meet her hazel eyes. But you don’t dare to find out, terrified of what you might discover.
So you focus on the rhythmic humming of the heating system, the distant chatting of people outside the treatment room. All of a sudden, positioning the black tape neatly around the midfielder’s knee is the most important task known to humankind.
You find your voice only after putting a safe distance between your hands and the person on the bed, “Ice it every hour for ten minutes and elevate it as soon as you get home”
When something doesn’t sit right with Alexia, for whatever reason, she clenches her jaw so tightly her entire body stiffens for a moment. It’s so subtle and brief no one could really tell and you have to pretend to not know her well enough to notice.
~
SUMMER 2023
After saying goodbye to Alexia in a secluded café just outside Barcelona you never returned to, the following weeks pass in a mad flow of unexpected events, football games at strange hours and research papers that finally start to make sense.
You watch the tournament when you can, even if you don’t really care about the results.
Paying attention to Barcelona’s girls, their movements and their wellbeing on and off the pitch, is what you care about.
Some of them text you when something is up, a few you hear from almost daily and after every call you get more upset. Not with them, never with them, but with a Federation clearly failing to make them feel safe.
Alexia goes radio silence.
It’s not unexpected, you are now familiar with her way to focus and lock in during major events in her career. Her body and her mind completely devoted to the cause.
You don’t take it personally, she is down there with a single thought keeping her alive and breathing.
The pictures, however, never stop.
It’s random, purely casual, whenever life allows it.
The footballer sends snaps from breathtaking sunsets, while you answer with the views behind your opened laptop. It’s messy breakfasts you spend half your day-off making or the screenshot of her new record in a stupid puzzle game. Nothing is really football related. Sometimes she shares updates about how well Dr. Wallace is doing, the toy carefully placed on a beach with sunglasses on, other times you share a page of the book she gifted you with highlighted phrases and notes scribbled on the margins like the nerd you are.
The group stage is a crazy turn of events, you can tell by the reports someone shared on the staff’s chat. Spain cruises through Costa Rica and Zambia, but then the disaster against Japan happens and you have to silence the group again.
The knockouts are a different monster. You miss Spain destroying Switzerland, which coincides with a seminar all the attendees wished to skip, but you’re on the edge of the couch for every one of the twenty minutes of extra time against the Netherlands. The next day, Alexia shares stupid pictures of Dr. Wallace “taking care” of her taped knee and not even your sister’s teasing can wipe the smirk off your lips.
The World Cup is demanding, both physically and mentally.
The team is apparently thriving, beaming with confidence and enthusiasm. The girls’ voices over the phone trying to portray a better picture of reality. They hide the edge of doubt and frustration well enough, so you’re glad they have each other to rely on.
However, you can’t help but question how Alexia is taking her new role.
For a player used to being the heartbeat of the squad, the center of the play, being reduced to a “super-sub” is a different kind of injury. She provides the veteran composure, her experience and class on the pitch, but the headlines belong to the teenagers.
“I think she hates it”, Jana confesses one night, phone placed on the ground to give you a better look on her swollen ankle. “But she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else”
For the semifinal, Spain decides to gamble and Alexia starts the game against Sweden. The midfielder plays an hour, a test of character as much of her condition. You follow the match on a glitching stream while you fill a medical questionnaire, flinching every time an answer doesn’t sit well with you or she takes another hit.
Hours later, when you’re pretty sure it’s really late on the other side of the world, the Catalan breaks the only two unspoken rules she set for this World Cup.
The phone rings in your pocket, her voice too quiet.
“It feels– heavy. Not pain. But I- I turned on Angeldahl and the knee just– lagged, I think”
The Swedish team played a physical, high-pressing game. Alexia was hacked, pushed, and forced to pivot at high speeds. She played a demanding, high-intensity hour of football after months away from the pitch.
You don’t give her a pep talk, you are calm and clear in your instructions and professional words.
“It’s probably just fatigue in the tissue, ice and elevation. Let someone competent enough tape it and evaluate any damage. Call me as they do”
The fading-pink head shakes at your words, lips shifting slightly from a grimace to a smile, “They hate you”
“Good, means I’m doing something right or they’re doing something wrong”, you comment, already mentally drafting an email for your contact in the Federation. “Either way, I’m right”
It takes minutes, maybe more, but she feels better when it’s time to say goodbye.
“Will you watch the final?”
~
JANUARY, 2024
In the past month, Alexia’s personal physiotherapist has become someone you call and text more than your sister.
He is nice enough about it, grown comfortable with your lingering presence and loud opinions.
You have been on the phone for a while now, too long for not even being ten in the morning yet. The plants need watering, since you skipped two days already, and by this point you’re made of coffee more than water.
“Told you, we focused more on active exercise for the knee. No angles, just activation”
“That is by protocol”, you state while writing down some notes, “We both know she doesn’t follow protocol like that”
You can hear the hesitation in his silence.
“She could kill me–”
“I will definitely kill you if–”
“I’d rather make you mad, you can’t fire me”, he interrupts with a running joke between the two of you.
“Try me”
Alexia’s people are loyal to a fault, almost as much as her, but they always have her best interest at heart. That is where you found common ground last year, that is where you mean to stay.
“We may or may not have started simple exercises. Nothing dramatic, squats at minimal angle and short-arc leg extension…”
As he goes on about their private sessions since the arthroscopy, you scribble down every word and every number like they may reveal some sort of ancient mystery. Movements described meticulously, every small expression of discomfort, compensations, even changes in the sleeping schedule. You ask all the questions that cross your mind, trying to write down faster than thinking.
You have to ask him things you couldn’t even need to ask for last year.
The phone call ends just because your alarm drills into your ear.
You have a patient in five minutes.
Alexia.
The first physio session post surgery went so wrong you had to cut it shorter.
She was tense, stiff and holding on to something you couldn’t quite place. Her knee still too swollen post surgery. Her mind elsewhere.
Your hands, for the very first time since you know her and after more than a decade doing this as a living, unsure.
Where to place, how to move, if with enough pressure.
The athlete noticed, because of course she did, or because you made it pretty obvious when it took you almost ten minutes to change the dressing of the new incision.
The second session went better.
You’re a fucking professional after all and self-pep talks in front of the bathroom mirror work like a charm when you’re desperate.
The fact you were in the treatment room with Carlos, Mapi and Jana definitely helped to lighten the mood. The older defender doing most of the talking, while the other physio started embracing a more teasing role.
Still, something was clearly off between you and Alexia. And if Jana wasn’t so affected and upset by her own injury she could have pointed it out – blatantly and effectively, just like a younger sister could be.
But, because good things come in threes, today an assessment session will tell if the new rehabilitation plan is working or you should reevaluate it on top of most decisions made the past six months.
Alexia is twenty minutes late for a thirty minute appointment.
You’re ready to go full on about professionalism and respect for other people’s work, but as soon as your gaze lands on her face, you decide against it.
Clearly, something kicked her ass already.
No need to literally add insult to injury.
For a while, the wind howling against the windows is the only sound in the room.
You have to help her sit on the treatment bed, much to her silent dismay. She completes each asked movement with the usual commitment, answering your questions like this is all a test she has already passed million times.
“Any instability on lateral weight bearing?”, you investigate by the end, knowing she’s pushing ahead of schedule privately.
She doesn’t look surprised nor ashamed, “Sometimes. Mostly at the end of a long session”
“Note when, I want to map the pattern”
“Sure”
A beat passes as you hold the office’s door open for her, looking up from your notes just to add, “Alexia, do not forget I’m still in charge of your recovery”
This time, her reply is instant, “Act like it then”
~
PRE-SEASON, 2023
Barcelona’s team and the girls left behind are fully in training and playing friendly matches with the usual intensity.
The city is as calm as a tourist trap at the end of Summer can be, especially now that a non-superstitious person has probably already authorized the printing of Spain’s jersey with a star on the badge.
Thankfully for them, they actually make it.
You watch the World Cup final in a sports pub, a place you never entered willingly before, because even you know events like this must be lived in community. The air tastes like cheap beer and excitement, the atmosphere electric enough to wire your body with an inexplicable energy. A group of extroverted young girls on their first vacation without parents adopt you, making you feel both too old and too involved.
It’s a good day.
Alexia plays just a few minutes against England, but she’s on the pitch when they are crowned World Champion.
Cheers, waving flags, confetti, hugs and cries.
You smile as if you’re there with them, hesitating just a moment before sending messages that probably will go unanswered.
They answer.
In a different state of drunkenness and excitement, but all your texts are answered.
You type at least five different ones for Alexia, surprised by how many ways one can find to simply say “congratulation” when overthinking and other emotions you will not name are involved.
You delete each and every version.
(The midfielder will send a picture, so late in the night for her it’s probably already classifiable as morning – Dr. Wallace wearing a gold medal under white sheet.)
Your new friends are too distracted by a round of shots on the house to notice it, but the people who do freeze. Your hand clings to a beer bottle you will not finish, happiness turning bitter when you bite your tongue.
It’s so unfair.
The kiss it’s a shift no one could see coming.
The celebration turns to ash within hours, the flight home is a nightmare of pressure and coercion from the Federation. Spain is in turmoil when the team lands, half the people just want to party and enjoy being World Champions while the other half demand a revolution.
Alexia finds herself in the middle of the fire and, for the first time in your life, you feel useless.
Nothing could make the situation better, nothing really could change a thing.
The new season fast-approaching demands your attention more than you expected, pulling from trips overseas to hours and hours of massaging tired muscles. When you can, and when they let you help, you also offer a calm presence and a quiet place to any of the girls who would like to hide from a living nightmare.
Irene confesses once that the late-night meetings with the Federation are exhausting and oppressive, the pressure too much to handle alone. They hold on to each other, you try to be close enough if they need you to.
Your apartment becomes a refuge, the coffee is good and the four walls feel safe enough to make it bearable. They trust you, trust your intentions, especially when you look like you’d burn the whole organisation down if it would help – or just out of spite, to be honest.
Alexia closes off, adamant to fight a war without involving people who could end up being casualties.
The physio sessions are not as helpful as you wished for. The Catalan arrives tense in a way that has nothing to do with her knee or the sport itself and leaves only slightly less stiff. Sometimes she’s even late for the routine check-ups, other times you have to find a way to drag them out longer so that she could lie down and just breathe.
One day in the middle of September, Alexia walks into the treatment room with tired eyes and shaking hands. She hops on the bed, apologizing for forgetting your coffee. You recognise it, the physical expression of emotional weight, the way stress loads the muscles differently than training fatigue.
The burden of responsibilities crushing down on a single person.
When you break the silence, the tone of your voice is gentle but honest, “It should not be all on your shoulders”
“I can take it”
“I know you can, but it doesn’t mean you have to”
The muscles of her leg tense under your hands and the mask on her face cracks. The fearless leader, the captain who guided Spain on top of the world, allows herself to be seen – knocked down, tired.
Maybe no one really can hold the weight Alexia’s so adamant to carry alone, she could never let that happen, but maybe you can be someone she can lean on to rest.
For a moment, away from the spotlight, long enough for her to take a deep breath.
~
JANUARY, 2024
Taking advantage of the relatively empty facility, with the team away for a Champions League game, you set up the gym to test Alexia’s condition a month after the surgery.
Measurements, weight bearing, functional exercises – the whole package.
“Try loading through the heel rather than the ball of the foot, it distributes force better”
“I know”, she retorts, sipping from the water bottle, but subtly practicing the movement.
You notice, obviously.
The blonde ponytail skips from one series to another, soft music playing in the background to make it all a little more bearable and filling the silence between your corrections of her form and her muttered feedback at the end of each set.
By the end of the session, Alexia decides to be petty.
It’s been long, exhausting months.
A lot of pressure, an immense amount of weight to carry just because she has to. Being a present friend, good captain she can be for her teams, the best version of herself for anyone to see and rely on. Bearing burdens others put on her shoulders, even more the ones she puts on herself.
Because she has to, because she must.
Because she can.
So that her loved ones don’t have to.
All she wants is to be just herself with you.
You never treated her like she was someone to fix, or someone who needed to be fixed. A precious thing to protect, nor unshakeable. Indestructible.
You show her.
When she was broken, you saw her vulnerabilities.
When she was upset and angry, you saw the younger version of a legend she still holds close to her heart.
When she was silly and playful, you saw the younger version of a legend who still loves what she does.
When she built herself up, you saw her flaws and her qualities.
You challenge her, push her.
Trust her.
To be good, to be better.
To allow herself to be nothing more than just herself.
You see her.
And now you pretend not to because she asked.
The snap is both sudden and inevitable.
Alexia completes a set, purposely with a poor form and missing the point entirely. To provoke a reaction, evidence there’s still a part of you that cares about what you were.
A teasing comment, a retort. Something real. She needs a joke landing just right where once was a safe place.
A safe place she knows is still there.
You’re just lost somewhere else.
“Do it again”, it’s all you say, not even looking up from the tablet.
She’s in front of you in a beat, crossing the few steps with a newly found energy, her hands colliding with your shoulders before she can’t really think it through.
The push is hard enough to wake something in the both of you.
“I’m done with this!”
“Alexia–”, you try, accepting the provocation but not responding to it.
“No, no. I’m done with this– this playing pretend”
“I’m not pretending”
“You are”, she retorts, shaking hands still gripping on your shirt, “You’re pretending this is the only way we can– exist now. Fuck it, we are not–”
“You asked me”, you fight back, for the first time in a long time, taking a step closer so the space between you reduces to mere centimetres. “I’m doing what you asked me”
“I asked you– I asked you to be my physio. I need my physio back. I need– I need you to bring me back. I need the stupid playlists back, the challenges, the attitude. I need who we were before– before everything else”
She holds her breath like even the slightest movement could shift the axis of the Earth in the most catastrophic way.
The pull in your chest definitely feels of that magnitude.
“First of all”, you say after a beat, finding something in her eyes you will not indulge on right now, “You think my playlists are stupid because you’re tasteless”
The laugh that explodes out Alexia’s lungs is the most sincere one from the longer she’s comfortable admitting. Short, surprised. Real.
“Second, but no less important, you better redo that set properly if you don’t want me to start training you like a service dog – spray bottle and treats included”
~
Barcelona wins the Supercopa de España Femenina.
Alexia is in the stands, and so are you, because Barça is that kind of club.
The whole “we are a family” thing is still hard for you to fully digest. It tastes strange to someone used to relocating every few years and holding on to the few close people you mostly see in pictures.
She’s in the squad tracksuit, on crutches you convinced her to bring but go unused. The midfielder acts cool, even if you can see her leg bouncing and holding on poorly when a play goes exactly like she envisioned in her own head.
When the referee blows the final whistle, you can tell victory looks like pride and grief in equal measure for someone built for the game and forced to the sideline.
Mapi and Fridolina try to drag you on the pitch for the trophy presentation and the celebration, testing your mental peace as much as their own joints when they start jumping around on fragile limbs.
“I’d rather hose down the entire Camp Nou with a watering can”
From your privileged position, you see it all anyway.
You see Alexia, mostly, because your mind is truly fucked up and your eyes apparently reprogrammed to follow a certain blondie wherever and whenever.
The way she leans on the good leg during the guard of honor, her head hiding somewhere between her teammates as they lift the trophy, the compliments she redirects to the younger girls, the moment she indulges in the center of an improvised circle the squad created around the injured women.
The next session, Alexia brings in a completely renovated attitude.
You read out loud the latest match reports and sport-related gossip columns that come along with the individual awards recently announced.
It’s fun, it fires something inside the Catalan woman you can’t spark in any other way.
Pride, determination, competition.
“You should keep an eye on Aitana, she’s coming for you”, you tease while Alexia completes another set of step-ups.
Playing on the rivalry they are trying to create around the two midfielders is fast becoming one of your favourite pastimes. It’s so entertaining, especially when they both go along with the jokes and their teammates’ teasing comments.
The world outside has no idea they laugh at their own expense.
“She can try, I taught her half of what she knows”, she comments, loud enough for the other girl to hear as she finishes her own decompression exercise close by.
“You wish!”
“Don’t worry Aitana, you’re still my favourite”
Alexia’s eyebrow raises in challenge, “Still? Since when?”
“Since the very first days”, you admit with a smirk, “The best Barcelona’s restaurants recommendation”
Alexia takes it personally.
~
SEPTEMBER, 2023
When Alexia starts the #SeAcabó trend, you know it’s more than a hashtag.
She tells you herself, the two of you having weekly dinners with Irene and a few other girls. It is also the first time you meet Jennifer Hermoso in person, welcoming her in your apartment like you belonged to this circle for way longer than a year.
But Alexia trusts you and, apparently, that means more than you are comfortable indulging in for more people than you thought.
The shift is crucial.
The outrage turns into a collective movement that is really difficult to keep ignoring. Sponsors and global personalities condemn actions, FIFA suspends the shitty man, finally, and eighty-one players refuse to play until significant changes are made.
You’re equally proud and worried.
Time passes and the headlines become less urgent. The story moves into a quieter, more controlled space – the courtroom. But it stays in the women’s heads and everyday lives.
No chants, no applause, no crowds.
Alexia’s shoulders are always tense, Irene keeps her composure so controlled you see her genuinely smile only when her son is around. Patri holds something so close to her heart is difficult to even imagine how she may feel.
But they are not alone.
What started on a pitch as a single moment, almost lost in the chaos, became something much larger.
Not just a scandal, not just a protest.
From silence, a single voice, to a collective demand.
From power imposed to power reclaimed.
Another shift.
Alexia speaks in court and it’s a turning point. The next day, she knocks at your door late at night, breaking in your arms like it’s the only safe place in the world.
You hold her like it is.
~
FEBRUARY, 2024
Your sister Cris calls you as you try to find your way out a street market because her timing is always perfect.
“What are you even doing outside?”
“I go outside”, you fight back, even if you know it is a battle you already lost by taking her bait, “The sun is good for the body”
“It’s February”
“It’s Barcelona”
“Your plants see more light than you”
An old lady smiles at you when you eye up her flower stall.
The colours are a good welcoming contrast against so many dark coats. You’re more of a plants person, more comfortable with the consistency needed to keep them well and alive than the joy from the moment required to really appreciate flowers.
You chat a bit with the woman as she wraps together a small bouquet of violets and marigolds, your sister excusing herself to make sure Toby has not done something too reckless after five full minutes of complete silence.
“How is your footballer?”, she asks eventually, because she’s physically incapable of not testing your patience.
“Which one?”
“Don’t try to deflect with me, I taught you how to do it”
“Such a great teacher, indeed”
Cris has good intentions, as always. But like any other eldest daughter in the world, her approach is questionable and her methods should be assessed by a court.
You take the shortest way back to your apartment, just to find some excuse to end the call before revealing something you know she will use against you sooner than later.
“I’m going to look in the whole ‘not-telling-Cris-things’ option more seriously”
She scoffs, “You never tell me things. I have to read between the lines and interrogate you when something slips through the walls”
“Did you talk with my therapist?”
The call doesn’t end when you get home. Your sister’s voice fills the space as you attempt making a new recipe Keira shared.
If a Brit can do it, you can too.
You refuse to switch to video twice, not in the mood for the teasing if you fuck this up too.
Toby takes the floor with a detailed recalling of a Math lesson and yesterday’s football practice. Apparently, he is convinced to be the reincarnation of both Newton and Pelé. Blessed youth – he still do the calculations with his hands and tripped on an invisible kid last match you attended.
The conversation tracks back on your personal life when your nephew gets bored and Cris finds another hook to drag you into an impromptu intervention.
Maybe you shouldn’t confess some doubts, some insecurities. Some feelings.
Or a lot of feelings.
But Cris is your sister and your sister never let you believe your weaknesses make you weak. Never let your walls grow so tall you end up trapped in. Never let your feelings be unheard.
“I’m just saying–”
“Don’t you ever think about saying nothing at all?”
“I’m just saying”, she continues, ignoring the weak protest, “You should allow yourself to actually feel what you’re feeling right now”
“It’s not that simple”
“It is”
“Cris–”
“No, it is”, she waits for you to actually pay attention to what she is telling you before finishing, “You don’t have to act on it, you don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with. But please, please, allow yourself to feel it”
~
OCTOBER, 2023
The apartment you rent in Barcelona is different from the previous ones you have haunted in the past years all around the world.
It feels different, bigger in some ways, but maybe it is the constant noises outside that help make the walls useless.
The kitchen is nothing more than a spotless stove, a fridge coming straight from the 80s and a table your sister built saving one too many screws. For the cooking you do is more than good.
The bedroom is a shoebox barely fitting in a king size bed and a closet. Half the space is covered with clothes you daily decide if they are clean enough to spend another week on an undefined surface or if they must be washed.
The real deal is the living room.
Many windows facing the good side of the street, huge sofa and, for reasons you will definitely not discuss with the landlord, so many bookshelves you still have to fill up completely.
And not for lack of trying.
Books are everywhere.
On top of the washing machine as you wait for the cycle to end, doubling down as pocket emptier by the door, even balancing out a shorter leg of the coffee table. No surface is safe in your house. The books are not neatly organised, as someone may think. They are just around. Lying flat open, piled up one on top of the other with receipts and pencils as bookmarks. Your nephew’s coloring books and medical manuals are equally important.
And with books, plants came too.
Wilder than in your office, more variety in shapes and size. They have more personality, more sprawl. They appear more opinionated too, like they are judging the way you share the space they actually own.
But the apartments started to feel lived in just recently.
Papers move from the table to undefined places, because Alexia insists only food and small talks belong to the kitchen. A forgotten sweater on the sofa that you don’t even remember who belongs to. Energy drinks you don’t like, but apparently fed the girls well, mysteriously stock in the fridge.
Signs of shared moments, intertwined lives.
By October, around the place there is always a pottery mug Matteo made for his mother and quite a variety of Barcelona’s gears and merch.
It’s way past midnight when Irene leaves, calmed after the call she received from the Federation and the email you had to revise so as not to be used as evidence in court.
Alexia lingers by the door, half because she doesn’t want to say goodbye and half because she can’t say what she actually wants to.
“It should not be all on your shoulders”
Her smile is pained when she answers, “It must be, I can take it”
“I know you can”, you whisper, knowing it’s too late for this vulnerability, “But it doesn’t mean you have to”
“If I stop–”
“Don’t stop, but let me– us, let us help”
~
FEBRUARY, 2024
After a few more tentative ones, the physio sessions with Alexia gradually start to look more like what they used to be.
Music back on, the commentary is sharper and even more teasing than before. For some reason, the clock goes slower when you’re timing the midfielder’s exercises and she complains even knowing it will get her to do a set more.
Dr. Wallace is still on sabbatical, but it’s now a running joke between the whole team – you never mentioned to anyone the toy was gifted to Alexia before the World Cup, and she doesn’t say a word of its whereabouts.
By mid-February, anyone watching from outside would say nothing changed from last year.
Or, if they had paid attention the past months, something got back to place.
The warmth, the comfort, is back, but heavier.
It carries the summer’s weight, the responsibilities.
Duties.
Sorrow.
Regrets.
“You told Jona I can’t go back to training”
You felt her coming, you knew she was coming, so you don’t even look up from the papers spread on the table when you say back, “Yeah, beacuse you can’t go back to training”
“Why?”
The facility’s cafeteria is not empty, but most people lingering around are too busy with their lunch to pay any mind to Alexia. Her posture is strong, arms crossed and a frown breaking her face, but you do not meet her gaze when you hand her a paper from the pile.
Formal bilateral strength test: affected side at 68% of baseline.
The Catalan, used to your handwriting, focuses on the way you cross the T right in the middle and don’t dot the I’s. It’s far more interesting than the words scribbled, that means nothing to her but that she can’t go back to training yet.
“Now explain it to me like I do not have a medicine degree”, she mutters, loud enough for you to hear the insecure note in her voice.
Your gazes lock then, holding something more than the easy banter you both are used to.
“The strength deficit between good leg and bad leg is too significant. If I allow you back to training, best case scenario you will look like a baby deer trying to find balance”
“People do say I have doe eyes”
You pretend she says nothing, but you can’t help rolling your eyes.
“The injury risk is almost as high as the embarrassment one. I will not allow you to go around messing my work like that”
“I’m your finest work”
“You’re my biggest–”
“Do not finish that sentence”, she interrupts, trying to hide a small smile growing on her face.
She makes a scene of moving away the papers on the table to sit right in front of you, messing them around just to be extra annoying. It goes as far as stealing chips from the half-empty bag playing as your lunch.
“What do we do, Doc?”
“We need to get it at 85% before running”
“Fastest realistic path?”
“Three weeks if we do it the careful way, two if we do it the Alexia Putellas way”
The discussion ends with a full smile on Alexia’s face.
Or so you think.
“Is that your lunch?”
~
OCTOBER, 2023
“Is that your lunch?”
“What does it look like to you?”
Maybe having your break in the office was not as safe as you hoped. No prying eyes, no question. Just you, your sad tupperware, and regret.
But God has other plans for you.
Plans involving a curious footballer with her own definition of boundaries once someone is in her close circle.
You, apparently, now have to deal with the most annoying teaser on Spanish soil.
“It looks like health-code violation”
“It’s paella”
As soon as the words leave your mouth, you know it’s going to end badly for you.
Alexia’s laugh fills the room like it can bounce on the wall to hit you in the face. She’s literally in stitches, both hands on her stomach as if she can’t physically hold in.
It may even be cute, seeing her so carefree, if it’s not at your expense.
“Fuck you, Alexia”, you try to be stern, but her laughter is off the charts it brightens the sour mood.
It takes her a few minutes and being hit by a surprisingly well thrown pen to pull herself together long enough, a smile still fixed on her face.
“Paella?”
The rice is almost grey.
“I followed the recipe by the book”
You really did.
Searched online the recipes with all positive comments and the ones that used the word “easy” the most. Compared doses and ingredients. Opted for an only-meat version just because adding fish too sounded a bit risky for this first attempt.
You set the bar too high anyway.
Now you have enough grey rice, way too pale chicken and dried peas for the next three days.
“You know I’m a loud advocate for homemade food, but I’m saying this with your best interest at heart”, she starts, not trying to contain the mocking tone, “Please, never again”
You don’t throw at her the entire container just because you’re not going to waste food – not even the one that tastes like sadness and failure.
~
STILL FEBRUARY, 2024
“Is that your lunch?”
“Yes”, you confess, not in the mood for a telling-off about your diet.
Alexia’s neat ponytail shakes out of the corner of your eye, somehow still surprised how a doctor, allied health professional, can put so little effort into taking care of themselves.
Do as I say, not as I do – you repeat to Jana every physio session, religiously.
The silence spreads, once again comfortable between the two of you.
The footballer rests her cheek on the palm of the hand, almost contemplating.
The way you rearrange the papers on the table, used to the need of “touching” the tests and the medical results on your fingers to really get a sense of the data.
The way you nod unconsciously every time something adds up.
The way your bodies feel close to each other, pushed by a force acting against some physical law.
She asks before she’s decided to, “Why leaving?”
Before she could regret not doing so.
You look up from the last scans, you don’t need her to clarify what she is talking about – what old bones she is digging up.
The pause is long.
Alexia holds your gaze, perhaps finally ready for a conversation no one really knows where it will lead.
Not even looking for a conversation.
A closure.
A sentence, hopefully.
The cafeteria is emptying, the afternoon just continues in between training sessions and daily tasks. Outside, if paying enough attention, the B team can be heard taking too seriously a scrimmage. Inside, if paying any attention at all, people are saying their goodbyes.
“I was always going to leave”, the voice that comes out of your mouth sounds both like yours and completely stranger. “I’m not a settler. I’m not even a permanent-position person. I come in, I fix what I can fix, and I go”
“You fixed me”
I broke you – you want to say.
“You fixed yourself, I just annoyed you into it”, you settle for.
Alexia knows it is the truth, it’s not like you ever lied to her.
Never.
Not when it could have been the easy choice, not even when it was the best choice.
She knows you’re not going to start now that every word means so much more than what it says.
~
19 NOVEMBER, 2023
Your phone lights up with a notification because, apparently, now you have notifications on for the club’s accounts.
[COMUNICAT MÈDIC]
La jugadora del primer equip femení Alexia Putellas té unes petites molèsties al genoll esquerre produïdes per un cop que va patir en l’últim partit contra el SL Benfica.
És baixa i la seva evolució en marcarà la disponibilitat.
You don’t understand Catalan, but you know what it is about.
Of course you know.
You told her yourself, explaining the scans and the precautions needed. You pretended not to notice the veil covering her eyes, focusing on Patricio’s calm attitude and the medical room’s heater humming.
You hold her, later that night, when she shows up at your door with a pain in her knee almost as difficult to ignore as the ache in her chest.
~
FEBRUARY INTO MARCH, 2024
Barcelona’s all-wins record for the season ends when they hold to a draw against Levante.
Despite the team’s efforts, despite playing at Johan Cruyff, despite never dropping points at the home stadium since it was opened in 2019.
Alexia takes it personally, obviously, even if she keeps saying she doesn’t like knowing those stats, even if she knows those aren’t really important.
The only thing that matters is winning.
She needs to get back to winning games.
On the pitch.
The sessions get more intense, more structured. Not like they were sloppy before, or unfocused, but the programme unconsciously shifts into a more forceful path.
The midfielder passes each new test with flying colours, breaking benchmark after benchmark.
Her determination is contagious, so much so that you start setting joint sessions with Jana, Mapi, and whoever is sidelined that day. They drive in competitiveness and tease, they push in the best when holding each other to the highest standard.
And you couldn’t ask for anything more.
With the healthy players away for a game, you gather the limping ones outside. You let them chat and mess around as you set cones and little stations alongside the midfield’s line.
“Now, please, pick a weapon and find your place”, you smirk, pointing at the tennis balls and the tiny water guns.
Mapi’s smile spreads so fast on her face you almost question your idea.
Almost.
You explain what you want from them, pushing on the playful side of the younger girls and the better hidden messy side of the most seasoned ones.
Fridolina looks like this is the best thing happening in weeks, Jana looks like she just got assigned with a national-security level job.
When Alexia reaches you on the field, she knows she’s walking into a trap.
You welcome her with a smile, “Jog from here to the pitch’s end”
“What are they doing there?”, she grumbles, pointing at her teammates spread on the grass with their hands behind their backs. Trying, and failing miserably, to not act suspiciously.
As a good enough answer, you whistle right into her ear, clapping to signal her to start moving.
So she does, even if reluctantly.
A straight-line jog.
Nothing happens.
The Catalan passes between the other players, eyeing them like chaos is a step away to explode, but without problem.
When she reaches the other side of the pitch, you motion for her to come back without even looking up from the tablet in your hands.
As soon as she reaches the midfield circle a splash of water hits her right on her cheek. She stops in her tracks right there, trying to murder Jana with only her gaze.
“What the fuck–”
“Keep moving, cap”, you scream, tapping the watch on your wrist, “You know we have time benchmarks to meet if you want to get back”
Her eyes lock with yours, despite the distance, and she feels the familiar force pulling her toward you.
Annoyance, maybe.
Amusement, mostly.
A want to get closer to slap the back of your head.
A want to get closer and kiss you.
She moves.
Mapi doesn’t waste time, throwing a ball that doesn’t hit her right in the face just because she cuts to her left fast enough.
A smirk.
An understanding.
She pushes a bit to avoid Fridolina comically waving two tiny water guns, then she circles back around a cone to avoid another tennis ball.
It never took her so long to cross a football pitch.
“You are out of your mind”, she states as she stops right in front of your face, not even trying to hide the smile on her face.
“You are 13 seconds over the mark”, you call back, pretending to be disappointed about her performance. “And your hip-rotation compensation was embarrassing”
“Mapi was trying to kill me”
“Her meniscus is barely able to keep her upright–”
“I can hear you both!”
You ignore the interruption, “Do it again, back and forth”
She doesn’t have time to react when you materialise, apparently out of nowhere, another water gun and hit her right in the middle of her forehead.
“Vamos!”
~
NOVEMBER, 2023
Patricio is a man of few words, carefully balanced and placed.
Everyone at Barça respects his opinion, from the young intern just added to the marketing team to the club’s president himself.
And everyone knows Patricio hates gossip.
There’s a story whispered in the facilities’ corridors for years now. A story from when he still had thick black hair and a marked Galician accent. Every version is different, every version has a different prompt, but they all end in the same way.
A well-placed punch.
So, when Patricio finds Alexia after a late morning training session, she can imagine anything except how the conversation goes.
“I wanted to ask your advice, unofficially”
“About?”
“Your favourite physio”, he answers, slightly conspiratorial.
He is well-meaning and catastrophically mistimed, smiling under his mustache assuming the captain is on the same side.
Alexia’s smile doesn’t falter, she is too good at this game by now. Practised in fixing her face in front of cameras and curveballs. She postures up, the strap of the bag weighing on her shoulder.
“She refused the updated contract, but that you already know”
She does.
You mentioned Patricio coming at you with a proposal by the end of last season. A proposal you declined as soon as the new one started. You didn’t indulge in details, but it was late and your walls were down enough for her to understand it wasn’t what you wanted.
He continues, taking her silence as confirmation, “And she made it clear she won’t extend either”
This is brand new information.
The Catalan can tell her mask cracks, something breaking somewhere she will not feel enough to find out.
“What is management’s position?”, she asks, because she’s supposed to.
“They are pushing, really want to keep her around”
She could like that too.
But then the most unexpected sentences ever to leave Patricio’s lips, “I heard rumors”
“Rumors?”
“Yeah, rumors from Madrid”
“The club?”
Over her dead fucking body.
“Could be the club, could be research-based. Could be any sports federation of the country, for what I know”, he mutters, hand caressing his chin as a b-movie detective resolving some kind of mystery. “Maybe you can find out something”
“Thanks for letting me know”
Patricio nods, apparently content with her reaction, and leaving her with her own spiraling thoughts.
I will handle it, I will talk with her and fix it – that’s what he hopes for.
If someone can, it’s charming Alexia Putellas.
I will punch something – is what Alexia wants to do, walking toward the parking lot.
She goes home, she sits with this new information like the destiny of humankind depends on the way she will face it – the way she will feel about it.
But the more she thinks about it, the more things change in shapes and textures.
You decided to leave.
You decided to leave months ago.
You have been in your apartment, welcoming her and taking care of her closest friends in the most vulnerable times. You have made coffee and jokes. You have been close, you have been everything she needed and more. You have taped her knee, teased her every physio session like nothing changed – like nothing will change.
You didn’t lie, you just didn’t tell her the truth.
Choosing not to tell her you decided to leave is a kind choice, Alexia knows.
But it doesn’t hurt any less.
~
10 MARCH, 2024
The afternoon in San Sebastián feels, at first, like a routine league fixture.
You travel with the team because the plan is to play it well enough to make it safe for Fridolina and Alexia to return to the pitch.
From the opening minute, the team imposes the rhythm. The ball moves with the familiar Barça cadence, quick triangles and rotations to suffocate control.
Vicky scores first, she bet with someone she could have done it to welcome Alexia back.
Salma doesn’t just score, she storms the game like she has something to prove. Attacking the space with a sprinter’s instinct and a sticker’s precision. Composed, exactly in the right place at the right time. By her fourth goal, Barcelona is not just winning, they are dismantling the opponent’s defence and determination.
Caroline scores too, because of course she does.
And then, not even 70 minutes in, the moment everyone has been waiting for.
Fridolina steps back into the pitch six months after her meniscus tear. You are thrilled for her, really, but your eyes are on Alexia.
You’re only human.
The tempo doesn’t change when she is subbed on, but the energy does. There’s a presence she brings that goes beyond tactics. Calm authority, spatial intelligence, the sense that something meaningful might happen at any moment.
The goal arrives like the other six.
Deadly precise, built in fluid motions.
Accurate in a way just this team can manage.
A composed finish on the captain’s part, almost understated compared to the chaos before it, but loaded with significance.
Alexia’s 185th goal for Barcelona, pushing her up in the club’s all-time scoring rankings.
By the final whistle, the scoreboard told one story. A statement performance, a celebration of dominance.
But the stories underneath are deeper.
A team evolving, on and off the pitch.
Young stars exploding, lighting up the future.
A legend returning exactly where she belongs, once again, to prove, once again, what history is really built on.
~
EARLY DECEMBER, 2023
The international break is, once again, more mentally than physically tiring – and that’s really saying something.
The relationship between the Federation and the team is still very tense and in transition after one of the biggest crises in football history.
They reach agreements, but it’s not real peace.
It’s a truce, maybe even a standoff.
The calm is not comfortable, but a tense, fragile feeling that could break easily. A well-placed word, a decision perceived as rebellious, a pin dropping at the right place at the right time.
A ticking time bomb waiting for someone to cut the wrong wire.
You can feel it too.
In the way some of the girls speak in hushed tones or in the way they move like on a minefield.
In Patri’s smile, always aching by the edge.
In Aitana’s posture, hardened by battles she’s been fighting for years without anyone noticing.
In Jana and Vicky, and all the younger girls’ attempts to light the mood in loud actions and quiet gratitude.
In Irene, in command of the ship.
In Alexia, always.
“Shoes off the couch”, you reprimand Claudia, hitting her playfully behind the head without being able to distract her from the conversation.
Your living room is filled with footballers, fed on carbs and sugar-free energy drinks. They’re chatty, borderline invasive, and definitely amused by your idea of organized chaos, but they are also comfortable.
They feel like they can breathe properly here and you’re not going to deny them that peace just because they’re trying to convince the apartment absolutely needs a pet.
“You need a cat”
“I definitely do not”
“It may be good for you”, Irene throws in, moving through the kitchen with the ease of someone who has been around long enough to know where you keep the good snacks.
“I’ll kick you all out if you don’t drop this”
Jana snorts, as a good enough answer.
“Would love to see you try”
You shake your head, joining the group around the couch.
Marta and Aitana are full deep into a conversation in Catalan so fast you can barely point out the few words you know. Jana and Ona are on the floor, comfortable enough to ask way too personal questions when the room falls silent for more than three seconds. Vicky claimed an armchair because, apparently, you have adopted her too.
So you find your seat on the couch, pushing Alexia’s leg away to make enough space. You know the discomfort in her knee is getting more painful, but you will not call her out. Not here, not right now.
You place her leg on your lap without thinking too much about it, unconsciously but carefully massaging her knee. The easy banter with the girls loud enough for you to pretend not feeling Alexia’s muscles relax under your touch or finally deeply breathing without some invisible weight on her chest.
You notice.
And Irene notices too.
“I’m just saying she is better in person!”
“I’m just saying, we do not care”
“Yeah, Claudia, it’s sound a lot like you’re trying to defend your actions”
You smile at their playfulness, the way they tease each other knowing it comes from a place of care more than anything else.
Your hands still when something makes Alexia laugh out loud, getting back to their job as soon as your eyes meet.
It’s warm, the way you exist around each other.
It feels easy, simple.
It shouldn’t be.
The evening passes in a blur of giggles, bad jokes and half-arranged plans for the next week.
Alexia and Irene linger in the apartment, always the last to leave. The conversation turns calmer, but stays on light topics.
How Mateo is doing at school, Alba’s latest shenanigans, another failed attempt of cooking dinner and not heating it out of a box.
“How can you be so bad at something so simple?” the Catalan jokes, too amused about the whole thing to not mention it at every possible occasion, “You have a medical PhD”
“And you have a personal stylist, but I don’t question your latest outfits”
“I have excellent taste”
“Debatable”
Before the defender could leave, you excuse yourself to get her some leftovers to take home. She holds Alexia’s gaze for a few moments, not unkindly, but firm enough to convey the message.
Irene may not know what’s happening, what had happened, but she knows her friend well enough to understand there’s something underneath the surface.
Something running deep, spreading with force and precision.
Something reaching far and filling cracks.
When you two are the only ones left, when there’s enough room for both on the sofa, you still drop right next to her.
You refuse her offer to help clean after the girls, you dismiss her half-hearted protest of taking too much space and time in your life outside Barcelona’s facilities. You just hold her a bit closer without the need to fill the silence.
But every time your hands linger a bit too long, every time your words are a little too carefree, that familiar strange feeling builds inside Alexia.
Every time your walls drop down, she falls harder.
A whisper, a tremor in her voice that stills you, “Stop doing that”
“Doing what?”, you ask, unconsciously creating some distance between your bodies.
A deep fear shakes you. The terrifying knowing you have been crossing so many lines already, blurred others just to pretend there’s nothing wrong in the way you touch the younger woman.
In how you feel.
In what you feel.
She gestures vaguely around with trembling hands, “This”
“I don’t know what–”
“Don’t play stupid with me”, Alexia interrupts, her voice breaking, “Don’t– don’t make me feel stupid”
Silence.
You don’t stand up, not wanting to unbalance the situation even more, but you strengthen your back and swift to the other end of the couch.
Your gazes are still locked, understanding not needing words between the two of you, but maybe now some things must be said outloud.
Must be acknowledged.
“Patricio told me”
Lied out under the artificial light of your apartment.
“Patricio told me you’re leaving”, she adds, even if neither of you need the clarification, “He thought I already knew, he thought I could– that I could convince you to stay”
“It’s not about you”
“I know it’s not about me!”
A single tear falls from the force of her sentence, hands not fast enough to catch it before you. Alexia tries to compose herself, tries to gain some composure, but she really just can’t hold it all back anymore.
“I know you leaving is not about me, I’m not that stupid. But you’re– you can’t keep doing this. You can’t decide to leave and just– just pretend it doesn’t change things”
“I didn’t want for anything to change”
“Are you talking about before or after the kiss?”
Both.
You don’t answer.
You don’t say out loud that things changed even before the kiss.
That after, it was just easier to shove the feelings in the darkest, most hidden side of your heart.
That after, it was impossible to ignore the pull anyway.
“You decided for the both of us”
“It was the right thing to do”, you defend yourself.
It was the right thing to do and you had to do it.
“And you’re deciding for the both of us again”
She’s not talking about you leaving, she knows that is just your choice to make. She’s talking about you not telling her, you hiding the truth behind physio sessions and late nights in your apartment.
“You can’t be–”
Her physio, but also her friend.
Her something.
Not everything.
The shoulder for her to lie on.
Your hands massaging her, caressing her, holding some weight to allow her to breathe properly for a moment.
A safe, warm place where just be herself.
For as long as she needs, sure, but at your conditions.
At the conditions of not talking about the kiss, the feelings.
At the conditions of letting the pulling force drag you close, as close as possible, but never really closing the distance.
At the conditions of touching her. Professionally, always, but lingering in a desperate way sometimes – never granting the same sin.
At the conditions of crossing lines and drawing new ones.
Until you will leave.
“I know that”, you fight back, weakly.
Alexia wants you to fight.
She wants you to argue, to hold the ground with the determination you bring to everything you believe in.
She wants you to fight for this, whatever this is.
You don’t.
“I can’t do this anymore”, her voice shakes but the words don’t fail her. “I can’t have you be– everything and nothing. You can’t be what you want just when you want”
You still because you know she’s right, because you know where this will end.
“I’m sorry”
“I know, but it means nothing”
The footballer stands from the couch, limping slightly as she drops the coat on her shoulders. You follow her, clenching your fists behind your back to avoid reaching out. When she turns toward you, a hand on the door’s handle and tears cutting through her face, you have to look away.
“I decide now. You can be my physio, but– but just my physio. You fix me again, I get back and you leave”
The silence after is the kind that fills space when someone accepts something they don’t want, but they have to.
You accept Alexia’s decision the same way Alexia accepted hers after the kiss. Not with her dignity, filled with self-pity and regret, but with the same aching heart.
Without fighting.
Alexia knows exactly what it costs you, but she can’t fight this battle for you too.
Because, even if she’s the one deciding to set this final line, you’re still the one deciding for the both of you by not fighting.
~
MARCH TO APRIL, 2024
March ends on a good note.
Barcelona defeats Real Madrid in the third El Clásico of the season, extending the lead at the top of the league table.
They advance to the Champions League semifinals for the sixth consecutive time, Chelsea confirmed as the opponent in a rematch of last year.
The month ends with a comfortable away win against Levante.
Even though the team had a busy schedule, with eight matches across three competitions, they managed to win all of them.
You scrape by chugging down more coffee than water, filling more research papers you will ever be able to actually read, and letting Cris trick you into a two-day rest by calling in sick for you.
By April, the injury book is almost empty and you can finally breathe properly now you just have to make sure they all stay healthy until the end of the season.
The routine is more stable than ever.
You water the plants first thing in the morning, set the office for the day. Open the new email from the Federation, read it, close it. You make coffee and review your answer three times before sending it, just to be sure.
Morning sessions – easy, comfortable.
You have lunch, sometimes with your colleagues and sometimes with one of the girls when you are proud enough of the latest cooking attempt. When you forget to eat, Alexia drops by with something simple enough to pretend is normal.
Afternoon sessions – more demanding, still comfortable.
There’s a different edge on your relationship with Alexia now that she is back from the injury.
Something unnamed, once again, but not sharp like before.
The new tension doesn’t have teeth, it doesn’t leave a sour taste in your mouth when you indulge into it.
You don’t fight it.
“Come on, give us something!”, Jana complains from the treatment bed, legs wrapped in compression boots.
Lucy Bronze in the same situation, egging the younger player on just to be entertained. Ona lingers around, equally bored, while the gym loosen after a long day.
Alexia is somewhere nearby, doing her own exercises after missing almost the entire training session for media duties.
“I will give you half an hour more in that thing if you don’t shut up”, you retort, ignoring the protest as you type something into the tablet.
It’s been a very long day.
“I feel like I know nothing about you, I’m not even sure I know your full name”
“Ona–”
“I know her full name”
A well-thrown roll-tape is all needed to silence Jana, even if for a moment. “¡Ay! I just need advice from an outside perspective”
“Ask Bronze, she has great experience on the matter”
The English woman burst out laughing, her dating history significant enough to be general discussion material. She is old and insightful enough to offer a pretty solid point of view, but maybe Jana is too young and too in love.
You maintain neutrality as the girls discuss personal relationships between teammates, fragile dynamics and detailed retellings of the past.
They trust you enough to open up with you too, feeling safe with their bodies and their hearts alike at your mercy. It makes you feel accepted, proud even.
That’s why when Jana asks again for your opinion, you don’t deflect, “I don’t have the best track of office romance, to be honest”
That gets Jana’s attention.
And Alexia’s too.
“Do tell?”
“It’s only fair”, Lucy adds, teasingly but not unkind.
“Fine”
You see the girl straightening up as kids ready for a highly anticipated bedtime story. Children, literally.
“I was fresh out of medical school, won an internship in the States–”
“Showoff”
“Means I was really young and I had the clouded judgment of a very confident idiot”
“Sounds about right”
“If any of you interrupt me one more time–”
Jana holds her hands up, encouraging you to continue.
“She’s a few years older than me. A consultant. Brilliant. She was that kind of brilliant that pushes you to work harder just to keep up, just to make her think you deserve to be in her space”, you smile, conjuring a version of this woman you remember well but it’s now blurred at the edges. “We overlapped completely on what we were researching, working overtime and falling into a relationship as overwhelming”
“How it ended?”, Ona wonders.
“The internship ended, we had no reason to continue something born from closeness and closeness only”
The foundations of that relationship weren’t solid enough to hold on, maybe there weren’t even foundations at all. She was beautiful, charming enough to make you forget who you were supposed to be. It was intense, burning fast.
Your story entertains them long enough to end the recovery session on a laugh, you all teasing each other on old crushes and embarrassing moments.
Ona and Lucy leave together, still discussing your past as if you’re not right there too. Jana waits for Alexia to finish her set.
“What?”, the Catalan asks when the younger defender raises an eyebrow at her direction.
“Your form was embarrassing”
“Shut up”
~
Three days later, you hide in the office after your morning sessions with an overexcited Jana, comeback impending, and a freshly injured Norwegian winger.
Music is on, a playlist suggested by Vicky you regret trusting, while laughter of a youth team taking advantage of the warm sun bouncing on your windows.
You always found it comfortable, the way you can feel life outside the room.
“Can I come in?”
“When did you ever ask?”
Alexia walks in with a small smirk on her face, hands behind her back.
It always means trouble.
“Did you eat?”
“Yes”, you look away from your laptop to meet her raised eyebrow, “You didn’t specify when”
She takes the seat right in front of you, placing two containers on the desk with one hand and closing the computer with the other one.
“I was working”
“And now you’re eating”
The smell invading the office is so good and so tempting you don’t even pretend to fight, opening the disposable cutlery coming with a suspiciously homemade paella. You offer her to share, like you’re supposed to, but she declines with a smirk.
She opens the second container, revealing two chocolate cupcakes and letting herself indulge into one.
You enjoy each other’s presence for a while, talking about something inconsequential just when the space feels too comfortable.
“You owe me churros”, she states by the door before leaving.
“Thank your mom for the paella, it was too good to be your doing”
~
APRIL, 2024
Besides that one time you kissed Barça’s beloved queen in a secluded corner of a beachside restaurant, you never got yourself too involved with your patients.
You never intertwined your personal life with theirs, never crossed so many lines.
But, maybe because you have a soft spot for Jana, or maybe because Barcelona itself made you softer, it doesn’t take her much effort to convince you to join the celebration.
The defender is back on the pitch, excited and overjoyed, and it’s really just a good excuse for the team to go out and unwind before the final stretch of the season.
The place is big enough to welcome anyone, but not so much to feel impersonal. A long table, nice food, and music so loud you can barely hear properly the people sitting next to you. Therefore, you eat and lean closer to whoever decides to involve you in the conversation.
Keira’s English is more difficult to follow when she gets too enthusiastic about the argument and you have to let Lucy translate for you more times than not. Aitana nods like she’s perfectly capable of leading the conversation with passion and passion only.
She’s not wrong.
“Can I steal her for a moment?”
It’s not like Alexia needs to ask, you’re already on your feet and following her into the pub’s patio.
“I figured you needed a break too”, she says, watching your shoulders relax against the calmer night’s air.
The silence drags for a few minutes, either of you feeling the need to fill the space with words yet.
When you do, it’s a genuine question, “How do you do that all the time?”
She waits for you to clarify.
“How do you keep going so fast for so long? Never stopping, not really. You’re just– running, all the time”
You think about game after game, training when there’s not a game. League, international, club, National. Media, sponsors, events. Journalists’ inquisitive questions, public scrutiny, even their own Federation undermining them.
It’s not a never-ending competition.
It’s a small race after the other.
You cross the finish line of one just to realise is the starting point of the next.
And if you don’t keep up, they leave you behind.
“You just learn when to hold on the ones who cares about you”, Alexia answers, finding your gaze. “You learn to listen to your body, to your mind, and you stop when you need to. You let others help, for as long as you need”
“Coming from you–”
“Ohi!”, she laughs, her shoulder bumping with yours, “I’m learning too”
~
20 APRIL, 2024
It’s an exciting night at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys.
More than 40 thousand fans fill the seats, loud and confidently. You take your place next to Carlos, sporting an easy smile despite the challenging game awaiting.
Barcelona walks out like a team that has not yet known defeat, Chelsea comes in disciplined, almost defiant, knowing they just entered into the lion’s den.
From the first minutes, the girls take the ball and bend the rhythm to their will. Possession flows through them, wave after wave, as if the goal must come eventually. It always does. The passes are crisp, the movements intelligent because that’s who they are, but something is missing.
So Chelsea waits.
Play after play, tension builds. The crowd starts to murmur and you can’t help but look around. Supporters on edge, chanting, but confused.
And after so long around such brilliant footballers, you see it coming too.
A loose situation. A defensive lapse. A lost fight and a recovered ball. It rarely happens here, but tonight it does. Barcelona hesitates and suddenly Chelsea is there.
A goal, right before halftime.
You follow the team into the dressing room, silence spreading long enough to touch nerves. Then someone breaks the tension, the coaches give out instructions that half the team listens and the other half cancels out. Alexia says few words, mostly to herself, still wearing the warm-up kit.
You take care of sore muscles because that is all you can do now.
The team returns on the pitch with urgency and pride. They push harder, faster, searching for the equalizer that would restore the natural order. You know it’s a matter of desperation when Jonatan sends Aitana and Fridolina further forward, gesturing for Caroline and Salma to attack more freely.
Each play feels more sloppy, each miss echoing louder in the stadium.
Time begins to slip.
Alexia comes on to add more firepower.
Her first attempt on target, from a close range shot, finishes wide.
Right before full time.
The first defeat of the season.
Against Chelsea, in the first-leg of the Champions League semifinal.
“First loss at home in over five years”, Carlos mutters – he simply cannot hold back those stats.
You see Barcelona bleed for the first time.
But it all comes crashing down when you meet Alexia’s eyes.
She’s shaking hands, the slump of her shoulders immediately corrected because she knows she’s being watched. She can’t be seen defeated, not by her opponents nor her teammates.
You reach the tunnels before the stands completely empty, offering steady hugs to the players without indulging into pointless encouragement.
They will sulk tonight, they will thrive tomorrow.
The captain is one of the last to leave the pitch, cutting through the remaining people with blind purpose. She pushes toward you, fast, dragging you by the wrist.
“Alexia!”
The corridor she pulls you into is far enough into the stadium to be quiet, but not dark.
Her jaw is clenched almost painful, frown creasing her face in a way that always makes you want to smooth it with a gentle caress.
She looks at you with the expression of someone who has been holding on too much for too long.
You remember this same expression.
“Ale–”
“I don’t need you to–”, she interrupts, voice thick, “I just– I just need you”
It’s all it takes.
You reach for her, you act.
You close the distance as it is an answer on its own.
The kiss is hard, pure force.
And she responds immediately with the same intensity.
Like she’s been waiting, like she’s been standing on an edge for so long she forgot how flying really feels.
Your hands find her waist, firmly, and hers grips your shirt – grounding herself, desperately. You can feel the tension, the frustration, the weight of being the one who has to hold everything together.
A hand comes up to her face, thumb brushing along stubborn lines, just because you allow yourself to.
The kiss deepens without asking permission.
You don’t think.
Thinking is what kept you apart for so long.
Thinking, resisting, faking control where there never was any.
So you press harder.
Against her lips, toward her. You push her sore body into the wall and she exhales, shakily, without really breaking the kiss. She breathes out your name. Barely a sound, almost a confession.
It’s not just want.
It’s relief and it’s grief.
It’s all the words you never said, the fights you didn’t fight.
All the times you walked away instead of staying.
It’s anger too, subtle but present.
For the time lost, for the fear that kept you both pretending you didn’t feel this.
And you realise, with shocking clarity, that this was never something you could avoid.
You’ve been orbiting each other for so long. Drawn in by an inevitable force, pulled back by willpower only, never quite breaking free.
Life filled the space after the first kiss, after you asked her to pretend it never happened.
It twisted into sharp words, into fights that meant more than they should, into breaking things just to piece them back together.
And somehow, through all of it, you find your way back to each other anyway.
The world outside still exists.
The loss, the club, the expectations.
The decisions.
It’s all waiting like a storm you’ll both have to walk back into.
It doesn’t matter now.
Kissing her is not a choice – it never really was.
It’s a slow day when what you can only describe as a dive into the Twilight Zone occurs.
It’s the only way to describe it, really.
Mid-afternoon on an unassuming day, you and Hayley are up front tending bar and the usual patrons. Norman and his perpetually sour face, on his third Guinness of the day and eating a deeply suspicious-looking sandwich. The usual cluster of construction blokes grabbing something quick between breaks. Mal and her two or so friends. A cackle of old women who look like a proper witch coven and still frown at Hayley’s short skirts even in foul weather.
The Royle Family, truly.
You are leaning over the bar, apron tied at the waist, pretending to clean one muddy pint glass with a rag while Hayley retells her latest failed date when it happens.
A shift. The cling over the front door.
You don’t even look up at first. Someone’s taken a wrong turn. They’ll take one look at the chipped tables, wobbly barstools, old TVs hanging off the walls and questionable decor, then make a U-turn faster than Hayley can flash her tits.
Except they don’t.
Someone clears their throat.
Hayley stops mid-sentence and taps your shoulder.
“Jude. Fit women. Over the door.”
“Huh?” you say, your brain trying to catch up to the glitch in the perfectly established routine of the place.
You look up.
You frown.
You do a once-over. Rub at your eyes a little.
That can’t be right.
That cannot be Aggie Beever-Jones standing inside your pub.
Your shitty pub.
Is she being kidnapped?
Then you look at the girl beside her.
Oh.
Cute.
Wait. You’re pretty sure she’s a footballer too. Spanish centre-back, if you’re not mistaken. London City.
Jana something.
You blink.
What the actual fuck?
“Do you think they’re lost?” Hayley whispers at your side, mouth hanging a little open. Hayley is used to being the only pretty girl in a five-mile radius of the pub. Now the count has gone up to three and she is a little dazed.
You can only nod.
They are definitely lost.
No other explanation.
*
Aggie stands tall, taller than she looks on TV, and impossibly blonde, clad in a comfy jumper but carrying the distinct body language of someone who does not trust the environment enough to touch anything. You don’t blame her. You do a half-arsed job of cleaning these tables.
Jana, you are pretty sure it’s Jana, smiles brightly. Too brightly. Like she can push sunshine into the bleakness of the pub. Glossy chestnut hair tucked under a cute beanie with a pompom, round chocolate eyes darting across the room like she’s cataloguing everything. She’s slender, not quite as tall as her friend, but adorable.
Cute together, you think. You will pass the gossip on to Charli as soon as you can.
Hayley cuts through your musings with a rushed whisper. “Should I go over there or wait for them to turn around and leave without making it awkward?”
“Uh.” You answer eloquently because you don’t quite know what to say. Usually whoever wanders inside by accident takes one look, smiles with barely concealed disgust, then turns around.
These ballers are just standing there.
You and Hayley wait a beat, side by side, partially hidden behind the counter and the beer taps.
Then Aggie catches the two of you and raises two fingers. “Table for two?”
She says it like she doubts her own words, eyes flicking back to Jana.
“Are you su...ugh?” Hayley jabs your ribs with her pointy elbow before you can finish it, then turns to the footballers with a smile so bright it borders on hostile. They look, fairly enough, a bit concerned.
“Yeah, for sure,” Hayley calls out, throwing you a dirty look and grabbing two old menus on the way. Not that they’ll need them. At this hour you basically just serve sandwiches and fish and chips.
Suddenly, you want very badly not to look pathetic in front of these two very hot, very successful ballers. You pat your hair under the cap so the curls falling out of it sit a little more tamed, wipe your hands on your filthy apron, take a deep breath, and head over.
Back at the table, Jana, at least, looks amused. She looks you up and down as you approach, hands shoved into the pockets of your too-dirty jeans so you don’t fidget too much.
Not smug. Just... entertained. Bright. Like she knows they’ve caused a small civic disturbance just by walking in.
Aggie scans the room once before sitting, still wearing that expression like she suspects the table might bite. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen here.
Hayley hands them the menus anyway, and they both look down at the laminated cards for long enough that your shame begins to itch.
You lean towards Hayley.
“Tell them there’s a chef’s suggestion.”
Hayley turns to you slowly. “There is not.”
“There will be one in, like, ten minutes.”
“Jude.”
“Trust me.”
“I absolutely do not.”
“Hayley.”
Across the table, Jana is now fully smiling. She has definitely heard every word.
“Are you the chef here, Jude?” Jana asks, eyes shining.
The way she says your name reminds you a little of Alexia. Same musical accent. It gives you a little courage.
“Yeah. Order the chef’s special. You won’t regret it.” You try to sound more confident than you feel.
Hayley looks like she’s debating whether to leave you to die alone and save herself.
Instead, with the grim loyalty of a woman who has seen worse and stayed anyway, she pastes on a smile and says, “Two chef’s specials, then?”
There is a beat.
Then Jana closes the menu. “We’ll have that.”
Aggie looks at her. “We don’t know what it is.”
Jana shrugs. “Adventure.”
Aggie looks around the room again. “That is not the word I’d use.”
You are already halfway into the kitchen before they can change their minds
*
You hit the kitchen at speed. The door bangs loudly against the wall. You wince, pretty sure you’ll have to fix a hinge later.
Carl looks up from the fryer with the immediate, spiritual exhaustion of a man who already knows you are about to ask for something unreasonable.
“No,” he says.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I do. It’ll be stupid.”
“It’ll be good.”
“It’ll cost money.”
“It’ll make us look less like a public health warning.”
Carl stares at you.
You press on.
“There are actual footballers out there.”
“There’s always footballers somewhere. It’s a disease.”
“Carl.”
“No.”
“Please.”
He goes back to poking something pale and doomed in the fryer basket. “What do you even want to make?”
You open the fridge without asking permission, because that would only invite discussion. Sausages. Potatoes. Onions. Frozen peas. Butter. Mustard. A stray shallot. A bit of thyme. Some cream. Good enough.
“Bangers and mash,” you say.
Carl snorts. “That’s not very French of you.”
“I can do proper English food as well. I just choose not to because it’s gross.”
“I’m gonna throw this knife at you.”
You turn to him with both hands out. “Please.”
He looks at you a moment longer than necessary. At the open fridge. At the hatch. At the dining room beyond it, where two international footballers are, somehow, waiting for food in your pub like this is not the most suspicious thing to happen all month.
Then he sighs.
“Why does it matter so much?” he asks, holding the fryer tongs like a weapon.
Yeah, why does it matter so much?
Maybe because you want to feel like less of a loser for a minute. Maybe because you want to impress them just a bit.
Maybe because one of them has a Spanish accent you’ve become fond of.
“Because it’s important to me.” You go for the heart, make big pleading eyes, the way Taco does when he wants three more grains of food.
Carl sighs again, his huge arms crossing over his chest.
It is the sigh of a man caving under the unbearable weight of talent and theatrics.
“One dish,” he says. “And I’m not saving your arse with sandwiches if this all goes tits up.”
You grin. “I love you.”
“That’s enough of that.”
He jerks his chin towards the counter. “I’ll do the sandwich delivery. You cook.”
You beam at him. He grumbles back.
Just one of those quiet, practical kindnesses Carl hides under swearing and smoker’s lungs.
You nod once and get moving before you can ruin it by saying thank you too sincerely.
You start with the onions.
Low heat. Butter. Time.
Then sausages into the pan to get proper colour on them, not the anaemic boiled look Carl tolerates on a bad day. Potatoes already on. You peel, chop, salt, drain, steam them dry. Plenty of butter, hot milk, mustard, black pepper, enough to make Aggie what’s-her-face see God through carbohydrates.
The French bit comes in the gravy.
Shallot with the onions. White wine nicked from the shelf where Paddy keeps things he pretends are for cooking and that are obviously not. A little stock. Mustard. Cream right at the end to soften it, make it smooth. The peas get butter and mint. The sausages go back through the gravy once it shines.
The kitchen starts to smell like an actual place people might want to eat in.
Hayley appears at the hatch and sniffs once, suspiciously.
“Jesus,” she says. “The kitchen only smells this nice when we order from outside.”
“Get out.”
She doesn’t. Leans farther in instead. “Can I have some of this later?”
You pinch her side. She squeals.
You glance through the hatch.
Aggie has a Guinness. Jana has something lighter, half gone already. Both of them are pretending not to look towards the kitchen every six seconds.
Hayley squints at the plates as you start building them. “That looks fit.”
You don’t answer. Too focused, a tiny bit nervous. You spoon the mash first, generous and smooth. Sausages over the top. Onion gravy glossy enough to matter. Peas bright on the side.
Pub food, technically.
But better. Smarter. Cleaner at the edges.
The sort of thing that makes the whole room smell like maybe life is worth the effort after all.
Hayley takes one plate. You take the other because some stupid part of your brain has already decided this matters more than it should.
At the table, Jana looks delighted before she’s even tasted it. Aggie looks like she is bracing for a fight.
“Right,” you say, setting the plates down. “Chef’s suggestion. Try not to hold the pub against it.”
Jana smiles up at you. Bright. Curious. Almost too bright.
Aggie eyes the food. “That’s bangers and mash?”
“Depending on how much respect you think I deserve, yes.”
Jana laughs. Aggie cuts into a sausage.
You take a step back before your face does anything humiliating.
Back at the hatch, Hayley presses herself against your shoulder to watch.
“Why are we watching them eat?” she murmurs.
“It is called service.”
“It is called stalking, but alright.”
You ignore her.
Aggie goes for the mash first.
Jana tries the gravy.
Both of them go still.
Then Aggie blinks once and takes a much bigger second bite, like she doesn’t trust herself yet and needs confirmation. Jana just lets out a tiny, involuntary sound that makes your whole chest sit up straighter.
“Oh, wow,” she says.
Aggie points her fork at the plate. “That’s annoyingly good.”
You look down at the rag in your hand so you don’t grin like a twat.
Jana laughs once into her wine. “I think this is the best English food I’ve ever had.”
Aggie makes a wounded noise. “Bit harsh.”
Then takes another bite and shrugs. “No, fair.”
Hayley kisses your cheek so suddenly you nearly elbow her in the throat. You paw at it while she pulls you closer. You try hard not to blush at her tits pressing against your arm.
“Told you,” she says, beaming. “You’re the secret sauce of this place.”
Jana looks up at that.
Something shifts in her face you can’t quite catch. Just a little suspicion, quick and sharp, like she’s filing the detail away for later.
You don’t know what to make of that.
Instead, you try to leave them to it. You really do. You are satisfied. You served proper food. You saved yourself and this hellish place from public humiliation.
That is the polite thing. Serve the food, back away, let the hot footballers enjoy their lunch in peace without hovering like an over-eager fan, which you aren’t.
Except Jana does not let you escape.
“How long have you worked here?” she asks just as you turn.
You glance back. “Too long.”
She smiles. “Helpful.”
“Almost one year,” you say. “On and off. Mostly on.”
Jana nods like that matters more than it should. “And you’re from London?”
“Not really. Seaham, actually.”
“God, you’re Northern northern,” Aggie pipes up from her plate. You throw her a look.
“Let me guess, southie? You’re all very polite and still somehow unbearable.”
That gets a laugh out of Jana. Aggie, still eating, looks between the two of you and then back at her plate with the expression of a woman who has decided the food is currently more interesting than the social dynamic.
Jana keeps going.
“That shirt on the wall,” she says, glancing towards the framed Durham top behind the bar. “You support Durham Women?”
You follow her eyes. Charli’s shirt. Of course.
“My sister plays for them.”
Jana lifts her eyebrows. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s why you recognised us?”
“That and the fact I possess eyes.”
Aggie snorts into her Guinness.
Jana doesn’t stop there.
“You go to the games often?”
“When I can.”
“Bet you cook for them.”
“Sometimes.”
“I think some teammates of mine must have played against your sister.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Jana barges on, unrelenting. Question after question, only stopping to take a bite.
“You always make things like this?”
You look at her properly then. Hands on your hips. Adjust your cap again.
Because that is a lot of questions. More questions than Paddy asked when he hired you.
Not offensive. Not quite. But personal in that odd, light-touch way that gets under your skin more than blunt nosiness would.
You wonder, suddenly and with great confusion, if she is flirting with you.
Which is weird.
Mainly because Aggie is sat right there. Not saying much, but also not behaving like a woman abandoned on a lunch date. More like someone watching a very specific species of nonsense unfold and deciding whether to intervene.
Jana tilts her head. “What?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
She smiles, pretty dimples on her face. You have the distinc impression you do know her face from somewhere, aside from football that is. “You notice.”
Hayley appears out of nowhere with another napkin and the expression of someone trying very hard not to grin.
“I can take over if you’re busy, Jude,” she says, which is obviously not what she means.
You shoot her a look that should kill her on contact.
Jana’s mouth twitches.
Aggie finally joins the conversation properly, gesturing at the plate. “To be fair, if someone cooked me this in a pub that looks like this, I’d ask questions too.”
You look around at the chipped tables, the sad beer tap, the old men welded to their tables like relics, the television bolted to the wall at a threatening angle.
“Yeah,” you say. “Fair.”
You wipe your hands on your apron and squint at Jana properly.
“Right,” you say. “My turn. What are you doing, exactly?”
Aggie snorts into her Guinness.
Jana smiles over the rim of her glass. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you walked into a pub that looks like tetanus and ordered mystery meat from a stranger. One of you is either very brave or very badly brought up.”
Aggie raises a finger. “I tried to warn her.”
“Yet you still stayed.”
“She made me,” Aggie says, jerking her chin towards Jana.
Jana looks delighted by all of this. Which is, frankly, suspicious in itself.
You tilt your head. “You’re not from here.”
Jana’s smile sharpens. “No?”
“No. Accent.”
Jana ignores Aggie. “Where do you think I’m from?”
You narrow your eyes. “Spain.”
“Tan inteligente.”
You feel a stupid flicker of satisfaction anyway, even if you also feel like you are being mocked a little. “Right, well. Good. I’m not fully thick, then.”
Aggie mutters, “Debatable.”
You point at her with the rag. “Chelsea can stay quiet.”
That gets a laugh out of Jana.
Then you say, because now it is sitting there in your head and apparently you have lost all ability to keep thoughts to yourself lately, “I know a good paella recipe, actually.”
Jana stills a fraction.
Not much. Just enough to notice if you are already looking.
“Oh?” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Is it good good, or English person good?”
You put a hand to your chest. “Cruel.”
Aggie says, “Fair question.”
You ignore her. “No, actually good... I guess. A proper Spanish person taught me.”
Jana’s smile goes a little strange then. Not bad. Just... knowing.
“Catalan, is it?” she asks.
You frown.
“What?”
“The recipe.”
“I mean...” You scratch your jaw with the edge of the rag. “Maybe? Sort of? I don’t know. It was explained to me quite aggressively once.”
That gets a proper laugh out of Jana now, quick and bright and private in a way you do not fully understand.
Aggie looks between the two of you like she is missing one page of a script and does not like it. You think you are missing something as well.
You glance at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I’m just enjoying the part where neither of you are making any sense.”
“Jealous because I’m being culturally nuanced,” you say.
“Right, for a Northerner.”
You snort. Fair point.
Jana is still smiling.
You don’t know why that feels like a tiny win.
By the time they finish eating, Aggie has abandoned suspicion for appetite and Jana has asked enough questions about your sister, the pub, the bike outside, and your general life that you are somewhere between flattered and convinced she is trying to steal your identity.
Hayley appears at your shoulder just as you’re clearing plates.
“So,” she says brightly, “do famous people eat like normal humans, then?”
Aggie deadpans, “Only when supervised.”
Hayley gasps. “I knew it.”
You collect the plates, then stop halfway to the kitchen because a thought lands all at once.
“Actually,” you say, turning back.
“My boss is obsessed with sports.” You gesture vaguely at the wall with its clutter of framed nonsense, signed tat, and one broken cricket bat nobody has thrown away out of fear or sentiment. “Would either of you sign a napkin so he can add to his collection? He’s a proper fan of women’s sports. No shit.”
Jana nods enthusiastically. Aggie leans back in her chair.
“A napkin?”
“I know,” you say. “Bleak. But honest.”
Aggie glances towards the bar with its humble knick-knacks tacked to the wall.
Then she says, “Fine. Give me one.”
Hayley makes a noise of improper excitement and darts off to find the least stained napkin in the building.
They both sign.
Jana’s handwriting is neat and slanted. Aggie’s looks like the signature of someone who has done this in moving vehicles and under threat.
When Hayley brings the bill over, you take it off her before either of them can.
Then wave most of it away.
Jana notices first. “No.”
“Yes.”
“We’re paying.”
“You’re really not.”
Aggie leans over and frowns at the receipt. “Why am I being charged for the Guinness and nothing else?”
You tap the line with one finger. “Because fuck Chelsea, that’s why.”
There is a beat.
Then Jana folds over laughing.
Aggie stares at you in wounded disbelief. “That is incredibly hostile.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It was one pint.”
“And yet.”
Aggie looks to Jana for support and finds absolutely none.
Jana is still laughing when she says, “We’ll come back with shirts, then.”
You blink. “What.”
“For the wall,” Jana says. “A real souvenir.”
Aggie sighs like a woman accepting a deeply regrettable alliance. “Fine. I’ll bring one too.”
You point at her. “Chelsea shirt goes near the toilets.”
“You know she plays in London as well, right?”
“Eh, they just got promoted. If they’re still around next year, I’ll give her hate then.”
Hayley actually has to grab the bar to stay upright, laughing.
They stand to leave.
Jana pulls her coat on, still smiling in that bright, odd way of hers. Aggie drains the last of the Guinness she paid for under protest and shakes her head at you like she is half amused and half annoyed.
As they reach the door, Jana looks back once.
“We’ll be back, jefe.”
That does something weird to your stomach.
You ignore it on principle.
“Bring the shirts,” you call back.
The door shuts behind them.
There is half a second of silence.
Then Hayley grabs both your shoulders and shakes you once, hard.
“What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” you say honestly.
“You fed professional footballers in this pub.”
“Yes.”
“And they liked it.”
“Yes.”
“And one of them is coming back.”
“Apparently.”
Hayley kisses your cheek again, louder this time. “You are the secret sauce.”
“Stop saying that, it sounds unhygienic.”
From the end of the bar, Norman lifts his head from his pint at last, grumbling like a man called to civic duty.
“I’ve never been offered mash,” he says. “Not once. And I’m a faithful customer.”
You turn to stare at him.
“Fuck you, Norman. I give you extra chips all the time.”
He sniffs. “Well. Now I want mash.”
Mal, from her table, calls over, “I’d have it.”
One of the builders near the window points his fork. “Yeah, same.”
The witch coven mumble among themselves, then one of them barks, “If it’s good enough for the blonde one, it’s good enough for me.”
You look around the room.
At Norman. At Mal. At the builders. At the old women. At Hayley already grinning because she sees where this is going before you do.
Then Hayley slaps the bar and shouts toward the kitchen, “Carl! Chef’s special for six more!”
There’s a pause.
Then Carl’s voice, from the back:
“I hate all of you.”
Hayley turns and kisses your cheek a third time. You blush a little this time.
“You’re cooking,” she says, delighted.
You look at the pub. At the suddenly interested faces. At the terrible atmosphere and the sticky floor and the weird little life of the place shifting, just slightly, around one stupid dish.
You think you have just stepped into a glitch in the Matrix.
You don’t mind all that much.
Then you sigh dramatically, stretch your arms a little, and head back into the kitchen.
Behind you, Norman calls, “Make mine with extra gravy.”
You don’t even turn around.
“Get fucked, Norman.”
*
Later, you are exhausted, sneaking a fag in the back alley before you have to go clean up in the kitchen. The air is chilly at best, but you are satisfied in a way you have not been in a while.
Happy.
Happy to be cooking actual food.
The usual pub suspects loved it. Like, really loved it. They even tipped, which made Hayley poke her head outside to check whether the world was ending at noon.
You rest your head against the cold brick wall, watching the ash burn down the tip of the fag.
Good.
You think your mother would be happy, wherever she is.
Carl comes out two minutes later, nods once, and pulls out his own fag. Crouches down near the opposite wall. For a while you just sit together in silence, the late afternoon giving way to evening.
“Thanks for today, by the way,” you say at last, not looking at him. Suddenly shy, your voice cutting through the honk of cars and the occasional bark of a dog.
Carl grunts. “Don’t mention it.”
“I just mean...”
“No. Really. Don’t mention it.” He flicks the butt of his cig off to the side, still not looking at you.
You shove your hands into your pockets, cold now but stubborn.
“It’s just... you never let me cook. Ever. Why this time?”
“Seemed like it mattered to you.” He shrugs, as comfortable with feelings as a grizzly bear. “The other times... it was something you thought you should be doing. Not something you actually wanted to do.”
That stops you.
You want to complain, deny it, say it’s not quite like that.
Except it is.
You wanted to cook before because you thought that was what you were meant to be doing. Because ending up in the pub had felt like failure and you wanted to claw something back from it. Today, you wanted to cook because you wanted to make two people smile.
Weirdly insightful from Carl. But he is surprising like that.
You kick a loose bit of cobble, sending it skittering into the dumpster further down.
“Did you just pull a Mr Miyagi on me?”
Carl squints. “Depends. The classic one or the Justin Bieber one?”
“Classic. Always. Can’t believe you even had to ask.”
“Then yes.”
You snort, not entirely sure whether you passed some test or not.
Carl straightens up and jerks his head towards the door. “Come on. Enough with the mush. Let’s clean up.”
You grin.
Enough with the mush it is then.
*
You get home buzzing.
A wired, tired, skin-too-tight sort of way, like your body still hasn’t caught up to the fact the day is over and you are back in your damp little flat with Taco snorting at your trainers and the smell of old radiator heat greeting you like a threat.
You clean up first because you have enough self-respect left not to call Charlie with smears of dirt on your face.
Face washed. Teeth brushed. T-shirt stolen from the clean pile. Hair shoved back and still smelling faintly of pub.
Then you flop onto the bed, prop yourself up on one elbow, and ring your sister.
Charlie answers on the third ring.
“What?”
“Hello to you too, sis.”
“Get on with it. You know I have to sleep early.”
You grin into the phone. “I got to cook for two proper ballers today.”
There is a beat.
Then: “I’m not a proper baller, you twat?”
“You are, like, my favourite baller.”
“Like?”
“Don’t get needy.”
Charlie makes a deeply offended noise. “Explain yourself.”
You roll onto your back and stare at the ceiling.
“I mean they had no blood relation to me,” you say. “And they liked the food anyway.”
Charlie snorts. “Ringing endorsement. Who was it?”
You tell her.
There is silence on the other end for one full second.
Then Charlie actually yelps.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“In your pub?”
“In my pub.”
“The pub pub?”
“Yes, Charli, the haunted one.”
She starts laughing so hard you have to pull the phone back from your ear.
“How?”
“No idea.”
“What did they eat?”
“Bangers and mash.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“French-enhanced.”
“Of course.”
You grin to yourself, suddenly stupidly proud all over again. “They loved it.”
“Obviously.”
“No, like. Properly.”
“Jude. You cooked them proper food. They probably nearly proposed.”
You tell her about Jana’s questions. About Aggie looking like the table might bite her. About Hayley nearly falling over herself and Carl, miracle of miracles, letting you cook without needing to be bribed, blackmailed, or sedated.
Charlie listens in that exact way she does when she’s pretending not to care more than she does. Little hums. Short questions. One or two rude interruptions for texture.
“So Jana was weird,” she says when you finish. “And Aggie was posh?”
“Very.”
“She does look posh.”
“She drank Guinness like she was being punished.”
“That tracks.”
You smile into the pillow. “They were nice, though.”
Charlie is quiet for half a second.
Then, softer: “I’m proud of you.”
That lands.
Straight through the ribs.
You go still without meaning to.
“Gross,” you mutter, because that’s the law between sister.
“Shut up.”
“No, genuinely. That’s foul.”
Charlie laughs. “I mean it. You got to serve Chelsea and Barça royalty and they loved it. Also, getting complimented by a Spanish person on food? That’s high praise.”
You frown.
Lift your head from the pillow a little.
“Barça?”
Charlie pauses. “Yeah.”
You sit up properly now.
“What do you mean, Barça?”
“Jana Fernández,” Charlie says, like this is obvious. “She came from Barcelona. Friends with Alexia Putellas and that lot. Insane, right?”
Something in you goes very still.
Not the floor dropping out. Just a click.
A penny dropping.
A whole line suddenly connecting in the dark.
You say nothing for one second too long.
Charlie notices, of course. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t sound like nothing.”
“No, I’m just...” You swallow. “I knew I saw her face from somewhere.”
Charlie laughs. “You know half the footballers in Europe from somewhere. It’s creepy.”
“Cheers.”
“You alright?”
“Yeah.”
Which is not a lie exactly. Just not the whole shape of it.
You nod along to the rest of the conversation. Let Charlie talk about the match next weekend and some new physio and the state of the ref from Sunday and whether Graham is definitely getting more deaf or just selectively so.
Then you hang up.
Slowly.
The room is quiet around you.
Taco, at the foot of the bed, lifts his head once and then decides whatever human nonsense is happening doesn’t involve snacks, so it can wait.
You stare at the wall for a second.
Then reach for your phone.
Instagram.
Alexia’s profile first because that is the shortest road now, your pulse already beginning to do small, irritating things under your skin.
You had thought Jana looked familiar, yes. But in the vague football way. New club colours. That awful London City teal. A face moved from one mental filing cabinet to another when the girls came up and you weren’t paying close attention because, frankly, your loyalties live in the second division gutter and stay there proudly.
You scroll.
Do not need to scroll much.
There.
Jana.
Jana from the pub with the too-bright smile and the weirdly invasive questions and the big doe eyes.
Standing beside Alexia in older photos, both in Barça colours, grinning under stadium lights, arms thrown over shoulders in the easy way of teammates who have shared too much for the camera to matter.
You stare at the picture.
Then the next one.
And the next.
Different hair. Different shirts. Same girl.
Your stomach twists.
Because, obviously.
Of course it was not an accident.
Football stars do not wander into your pub by coincidence. Not Barça-adjacent ones. Not Chelsea-adjacent ones. Not both at once like some fever dream sent to test your blood pressure.
Alexia did it.
Alexia sent her.
And the thing that gets you, more than the weirdness of it, more than the absurdity, more than the fact you apparently fed reconnaissance lunch in your apron, is that she did not tell you.
You sit there with the phone in your hand and try to work out what the feeling is.
Not rage.
That would almost be easier.
Something smaller. Meaner. A little bruised.
Betrayed, maybe.
Or embarrassed because Jana had looked at the pub, at you, at the framed Durham shirt, at everything, not like a stranger who’d wandered in hungry, but like someone checking details off a list.
Maybe that is unfair.
Maybe.
Still.
Alexia knew. She obviously knew.
And Alexia did not tell you.
Taco huffs in his sleep.
The room stays stubbornly ordinary around you.
Your cactus is still dead on the windowsill. Your curtain still doesn’t quite close. Somewhere next door someone is laughing too loudly at the television.
Your small, stupid, slightly pathetic life. Up for analysis. Doesn’t sit right with you.
And in your hand, your phone lights up.
A notification.
Alexia.
You look at it. The screen bright in the dark room.
Your thumb hovers once, stupidly, as if it might move on instinct like it always does now.
It doesn’t.
Not tonight.
You turn the phone face down on the duvet and lie back without opening it.
Taco shifts, warm and heavy against your feet.
Your heart feels dumb and sore.
You stare up at the ceiling and for the first time in almost a month you let Alexia’s message sit there in the dark between you, unread.
*
Jana calls that night.
Not immediately. Which Alexia hates.
It keeps Alexia on edge for the whole day. She trains in the morning but could not tell you what she actually did during it. Waits around lunch and comes this close to chewing on her nails, a nasty habit she despises. Childish. Spends the day pacing around with only a thumbs-up emoji as confirmation the lunch even happened.
If it had been trivial, Jana would have called immediately, laughing before Alexia even picked up. If it had been catastrophic, she would have called immediately too, speaking in that falsely calm tone people use when they are about to say words like hospital or police.
The delay suggests something worse.
Detail.
Alexia answers on the second ring. “Well?”
Jana laughs softly on the other end. “Hello to you too.”
“Well?”
“I went.”
Alexia sits up straighter on the bed. “And?”
Jana takes her time in the way only annoying close friends can. Alexia can hear street noise on her end, a car horn, general city noise, London moving around her in cold metallic sounds.
“And,” Jana says, “the pub is horrible.”
Alexia closes her eyes. “Jana.”
“No, really. It looks like a jail cell. Not in a charming way either. Not in a moody, old-London way. In a the walls have seen things way.”
Alexia presses her lips together.
“But,” Jana adds, and Alexia hears the smile before the words, “it was fun.”
That loosens something immediately.
Not enough. But some.
“There was football on,” Jana says. “Women’s football, even. Which feels important somehow. Like, don’t get me wrong, it looks awful, but it’s very authentic in its awfulness.”
Alexia leans back against the headboard and sighs, because a careful description of the atmosphere is not exactly what she’s holding her breath for. “And?”
“And she’s real.”
Alexia sits up straight, reflexively, like the words start something inside her. They land more heavily than they should.
Of course Jude is real. Alexia knew that. She must have known that or none of this makes any sense.
Still, hearing it said aloud, from Jana, who has actually seen her move through a room and speak and exist under bad pub lighting, steadies something in Alexia’s chest that she had not admitted was unsteady.
Jana keeps talking.
“She’s very real, actually. Which is maybe the problem.”
Alexia frowns. “What does that mean?”
“It means she’s exactly the way she says she is.”
Something warm moves under Alexia’s ribs.
“How?”
Jana laughs once. “How is she exactly the way she seems?”
“Yes.”
There is a beat.
“Messy,” Jana says. “Funny. Surprisingly sweet. Weirdly charming.”
Alexia says nothing.
Jana hears that and keeps going, clearly enjoying herself now.
“She was wearing this cap,” she says. “Hair sticking out under it. Shirt too tight across the shoulders, very flattering by the way, don’t tell Aggie that I noticed. Tattoos all over her arms. Nice ones. Not try-hard. She looked...” Jana pauses, searching for it. “Very cool, actually. Comfortable. Like she belonged there even though the pub itself should be condemned.”
Alexia stares at the dark window across the room.
Those details shouldn’t matter.
They do, though.
If the camera were on, Jana would already be teasing Alexia for the faint smile on her face.
It feels safe to imagine Jude now, just existing.
Jana is handing her a body, not just a voice. A shape. Shoulders. Arms. A girl moving through a real kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron, saying dry little things with that same tone Alexia already knows in messages.
It should not feel like this much.
“She cooked for us,” Jana says.
Alexia sits up again. “Yeah?”
“I think she bullied the kitchen man into letting her cook.”
That gets a startled laugh out of Alexia before she can stop it.
“She made this English thing. Sausages, mash, onion gravy, peas. But good. Like, genuinely good. Good-good.”
“Best English food I’ve had,” Jana says.
“That is not difficult.”
“That is exactly what she said, more or less.”
Of course she did.
Alexia can see it too easily. Jude in that pub, in that ugly apron, pretending not to care and caring a great deal. Looking up from the stove with those sharp eyes and a careful smirk.
The image is so vivid that for one absurd second Alexia feels not relief, but absence.
Like she missed it.
Like something happened in the world, something ordinary and small and real, and she was not there.
“She was happy,” Jana says then, quieter. “Trying not to show it. But happy she was serving us. I think.”
That does something mean and soft to Alexia at once.
“Good,” she says.
Jana lets the silence sit for a second.
Then, casually, almost too casually: “Side note: I think she may be hooking up with the waitress.”
Alexia frowns before she can help it. “What?”
“The blonde one.”
Alexia says nothing.
“There was a cheek kiss,” Jana continues. “Very familiar.”
Alexia’s hand tightens on the phone without permission.
“That’s weird,” she says, faster than she means to. “She never mentioned a girlfriend.”
There is silence on the line.
Then Jana makes the slow, delighted sound of a woman finding an unlocked door.
“Alexia.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Jana’s voice has that underline of teasing that Alexia had grown used to and hates. “But you said it’s not like that, right?”
Alexia stares at the bedsheet gathered in her fist.
There’s a bitter taste in her mouth.
Immediate. Private. Embarrassing.
“Shut up.”
“No, seriously. I need to know the official parameters so I can conduct future field work correctly.”
“Jana.”
She laughs, and because Alexia is still half-caught in that knot of relief and irritation, she cannot even properly be annoyed.
The guilt arrives right after.
Just as quick.
Because she did this.
She sent Jana there.
Sent someone to look at Jude in real life. To verify her. To check the edges of her existence like she was something to authenticate instead of a person who had trusted Alexia enough to stay in the thread.
Alexia rubs a hand over her face.
“What?”
Jana’s voice softens at once.
“I shouldn’t have sent you.”
There is a pause.
“No,” Jana says, and this time there is no teasing in it. “You probably shouldn’t have.”
Alexia exhales.
“But,” Jana adds, “I get why you did.”
That helps and does not help.
“She’s…becoming your friend,” Jana says more gently. “You wanted to know she was who she said she was.”
Alexia stares at the floorboards.
Yes.
That was how she had justified it to herself.
Not because she thought Jude was lying exactly. Because everyone else had put that doubt in her head. The strangeness of the way they met. The thread. The shopping lists. The fact that none of it should have become this.
And because once Alexia realized Jude had quietly become friend in her own mind, the uncertainty became intolerable.
If Jude was her friend, then Alexia needed Jude to exist solidly in the world.
Not just on a screen.
And now she does.
Jude exists.
Exactly as she said she did.
Exactly herself.
Messy. Warm. Sharp. Proud. Real.
It should settle Alexia completely.
Instead it creates something new.
A strange ache.
Not for the thread. For the room Jana described. For the fact that Jude was there, smiling and cooking and moving around in real space, and Alexia only got it second-hand.
She has been enjoying the fantasy of it, maybe more than she wants to admit. The safety of the phone. The safety of voice notes and text and timing. The version of Jude that arrives in pieces Alexia can hold one at a time.
Real life is different.
Real life means Jude seeing her too.
Not just the person in the thread.
The myth. The footballer. The face people know before they know anything else.
And maybe that ruins it.
Maybe Jude looks at her in a room and can only see Alexia Putellas, not Alexia.
Maybe that is why the fantasy has felt safer.
And maybe that is why hearing Jana describe Jude so vividly has left this little, stupid feeling in her chest like she missed out on something she had no right to want in the first place.
“Alexia.”
Jana’s voice again.
She blinks. “What.”
“You’ve gone very quiet.”
Alexia swallows once. “I’m here.”
Jana hesitates, then says softly, “I may go back.”
“For the food?”
“For the food,” Jana says, and then, because she is still herself, “And because your weird pub girl is unfortunately charming.”
Jana makes a disbelieving noise but lets it go. They talk a little longer after that. About Aggie. About London weather. About the pub name, which Jana can’t approve of because there were no dogs wagging their tails there. Then they hang up.
The room goes quiet again.
Alexia sits there with the phone in her hand, the afterimage of the conversation still moving around inside her.
Jude is real.
Real and exactly herself.
Not polished differently in person. Not false. Not less.
And Alexia smiles before she means to.
Then feels bad immediately after.
Because Jude never asked for any of this.
Never asked to be checked on. Verified.
The smile stays anyway.
She unlocks her phone without really deciding to.
Opens the thread.
Looks at it for a moment too long.
Then types, because she has that strange, small ache of maybe missing Jude a little.
@alexiaputellas: the sky was grey today
@alexiaputellas: very english, you would like it
genuinely one of the most entertaining fic I have read in sooo looong, coming from the same person who made me resurrect my ao3 account to keep up with waves
summary: 4 times you and Alexia fail to be exes and 1 time you fail even harder
wc: 7.5k
notes: sorry this took me years i lost track of it but now it's here so woohoo. also this will make sense later on but when is say syrup i mean specifically lyle's golden syrup BUT high quality maple syrup is also officially described as amber. the more you know ig
oh and the title is from baila me by the gipsy kings bc i love that song
1:
“Why were you at your ex’s house this morning?”
Alexia's ears twitch, shoulders tensing as her good mood is instantly ruined. Bombardment in the changing room – what a way to start the day. She turns her head slowly to the offending teammate, generational rotation really obvious now as Vicky’s prying supplants what once would have been Mapi, and while the girls beside Vicky shrink back in fear, the teenager is defiant in her smirk.
“I was not,” comes Alexia’s defence, voice cool as if she hasn’t been caught out.
“Que sí,” Vicky insists. “I have your location.”
“Why do you have my location?”
The younger player shrugs. “From when we went out.” That Alexia does remember, specifically upon noticing a line of empty glasses on a sticky table at a bar and thinking, I hope she makes it home okay. In that moment of responsibility, Alexia shared her location with the younger girls so that they could always find her if they were in need of help, asking for theirs in return to ensure they ended their night free from risks of murder or abduction. And apparently she has forgotten to turn it off. Big mistake.
“Why were you checking it?” Alexia pries, hoping the interrogation will distract Vicky from getting the answers to her own questions. “That’s creepy.”
“I was going to ask for a lift.” She bats her eyelashes. Fair enough.
Vicky waits patiently. Alexia is still hovering in the doorway because she never really got a chance to settle and prepare herself for the day at training before being attacked by nosiness. The captain wants to drop down into her cubby but that would involve turning her back on the group of teenagers and, right now, she feels hunted. She’s already vulnerable.
A few other teammates filter in, mostly unbothered by the tension across the room, used to witnessing teasing. Clara and Aïcha, who flank Vicky, get up and slink off to the toilet. It’s a standoff now. Vicky knows things, too many things; Vicky knows that you’ve been in LA for months and that Alexia has moped for the same amount of time. It’s captain-destroying information and it is just the drama she needs and wants in life.
She strikes. “Are you back together?”
Her grin is wide but this excitement twangs a certain thread of annoyance in Alexia that reminds her exactly why she hates people knowing things about her. She’s a closed book and she likes it. Otherwise she gets people asking her stupid questions like this.
It is this frustration that makes Alexia’s cheeks turn red. Definitely. Not at all embarrassment – she will not allow Vicky to have that effect on her.
Vicky’s grin widens. She leans forwards, elbows propped on her knees, chin in her hands like she’s watching reality TV and some idiot has made a very bad decision. The comparison (although made in her own mind) makes Alexia’s eye twitch.
“No,” Alexia bites out. “We are not back together.”
“Then why were you at her house?”
Ah. It’s a reasonable question that unfortunately has no reasonable answer. How does she explain that she received a message last night about a new home gym? Hardly cause to visit, and arguably a pathetic excuse for you to even reach out. But the gym had nice LED lighting and you’d goaded her into it, really, because you claimed it was better than her own and that was bold. Alexia, only human after all, decided that for research purposes the best thing to do would be to visit. Because she is an idiot. Because she has no self-control.
You know how to push her buttons. And you were glad to be back in the city and see her again after licking your wounds in the people-filled isolation of LA.
“She wanted to show me something,” Alexia summarises, voice flat.
Vicky’s eyebrows climb towards her hairline. “Show you something. At seven in the morning.”
“It was not–” Alexia stops. Rewinds. Realises her mistake. The defensive heat crawling up her neck betrays her before she can formulate a recovery and win back her dignity.
Last night. Last night you showed Alexia your new gym. And then you suggested a bottle of wine to celebrate, and Alexia didn’t drink that because she wouldn’t with training the next day, but she did discover it was a very nice pinot grigio after tasting it on your tongue not long after.
Vicky gasps, pieces falling into place. “You stayed over.”
“I did not stay over.”
“But you were there this morning.” The implied date and time of the invitation to be shown something hangs in the air after Vicky’s statement. Yes, whatever, you’ve worked it out.
Alexia’s jaw clenches. The trap is closing in on her, and Vicky’s delighted face will be the last thing she will see before the world swallows her whole. Maybe disappearing would be a good thing.
“She had a new home gym installed and she wanted to show me.” It’s almost admirable how determined she is in sticking to her story.
“She wanted to show you her gym.”
“Yes.”
“At night?”
Early evening but Alexia won’t admit to spending that much time with the culprit for the messiest breakup of her life. (And that classification has been awarded even with Olga in the mix.)
“She said it was nice.”
“Alexia, you have your own gym. You have a state-of-the-art gym.”
“She said it was better than mine,” Alexia replies weakly. Maybe she will elicit some athlete camaraderie for the struggles of a competitive nature.
Of course not – it’s Vicky. “You fell for that?” She’s laughing. Alexia is spending her morning being laughed at by a teenager.
Vicky’s eyes drop to the exposed skin of Alexia’s neck. There’s nothing there but her captain’s visceral reaction is to slap her hand to cover an imaginary hickey. Vicky’s proud of that tactic. And mystery solved, she guesses.
“We didn’t–”
“You didn’t what?” Vicky asks sweetly, hammering nails into her captain’s coffin.
“This is inappropriate to even be discussing.”
“I thought nothing happened.”
Alexia takes a deep breath. Fucking facetious kids. “You should be focused on training.”
“I am. Just briefly distracted by my favourite couple getting back together. You’re the one getting all defensive.”
This is what Alexia gets for being responsible. This is what she gets for caring about whether teenagers get abducted. This is what she gets for ever letting her guard down around anyone under the age of twenty-five.
“We are not back together,” she repeats slowly, deciding Vicky finds it difficult to comprehend simple statements and needs it to be spelled out to her. “We will not be back together. The gym is nice. I looked at it; I left. End of story.”
“You left this morning.”
“End of story.”
Vicky’s smile softens into something almost fond. It’s worse than her being smug. “I really liked her, you know.”
It stings to be reminded. Alexia doesn’t need this. Not here, not now, not from a nineteen-year-old who doesn’t understand that some things break and stay broken, regardless of healing being non-linear. Not that there’s much healing going on.
“Good for you,” Alexia manages, throat tight. “You can have her.”
“She doesn’t want me.” Vicky shrugs. “She wants the woman she can ensnare by sending a picture of dumbbells.” The most Alexia-catered booty call ever.
The laugh that escapes her is startled out, unexpected and unwilling. It does break some of the tension, just a little. A pebble thrown onto a sheet of ice and soon after just a small crack appears. Alexia rolls her eyes.
“So is it nice? Her gym?” This is genuine. Vicky wants to know because she likes you and she thinks you’re really fucking cool. She has no doubts that your gym is amazing but she wants to hear Alexia say it, wants to force it out of her because this is easier than making her captain confront what truly lingers beneath the surface.
Alexia hesitates. The memory surfaces unbidden: the sound of your breathing as she inspected the room, catching a glimpse of you in the mirror and that glimpse being mutual confirmation of what she knew she was getting herself involved in. And then the sofa and the wine and then the bedroom. And the softness of your skin. Of your legs tangled with hers under your duvet this morning. Of a chef bustling in the kitchen while she fought with the complicated coffee machine to wake herself up before going to training.
It was all domestic and natural, from last night to this morning, and that has been the worst part of this series of unfortunate events. But Alexia won’t tell Vicky that. This is something she’ll save for her therapist, who drains her money because of her own stubbornness to not get over her fucking ex.
“Of course it was.”
Vicky leans back, satisfied. Fine. She’s picked up the tinge of sadness in Alexia’s tone and she does agree that she’s used up all her luck for today.
Except, she can’t help herself. “You should take some pictures next time. I want to see it too.”
2:
The premiere is full of people. Naturally. Everyone loves a bit of sun and a new, exotic location like Barcelona, swapping out Californian palms for Catalan and commenting endlessly on the aesthetic similarity.
It’s showing off, having this here, because it proves that someone higher up has backed you, has invested in you, and has let you have your whims. Alexia feels a sense of pride at that. After she learns what it means.
Alba’s with her, and that’s slightly comforting, because Alba never takes anything seriously. Her dress is too tight and Alba says that it makes her look fuckable, and that distracts her for a moment because she self-consciously doesn’t want to appear that way, doesn’t like the idea of parading herself around at her ex’s premiere as if she is on the hunt for someone else. She isn’t on the hunt for someone else. No one else will do.
She walks down the red carpet, stopping and posing when required, smiling awkwardly at cameras that are too scrutinising, too hungry. Her heels are already hurting her feet. She wants to go home but knows that it would feel worse if she did.
It’s almost like fomo. She was invited by you, invited by other companies too, but your message was the most important, and now she can’t miss out, can’t let others claw at you and compete for ownership – not when she still feels that it belongs to her. Protective, perhaps. Or, if one were to be less forgiving, jealous.
Green tints her vision anyway when she sees you, for however subtle the monster was before she got a glimpse. There’s a woman on your arm, talons wrapped around your wrist like a cursed bangle, laughing at whatever you’re saying. Your frown tells her that you haven’t intended to be funny. You’re nervous.
Despite the glitz and glamour, your look of discontentment is obvious to anyone who actually thought to care. You’re scanning the crowd, looking for someone, and Alexia knows it’s her even before your eyes find hers across the sea of people. The woman on your arm grazes your collarbone, settling at the neckline of your dress in a possessive linger, but your reaction doesn’t come. You’re too busy holding Alexia’s gaze.
Then someone steps into her line of sight and the moment is gone.
Alba gasps softly beside her, which only makes him preen more, suit pristine and gaudy, teeth blindingly white as he smiles. Your father. Alba’s never met him but he’s famous and, well, everyone knows who he is. Everyone heard his songs on the radio back then, back when he wasn’t a fading star, back when Mami and Papi would clean together on Sundays, chasing her and her sister about the house with feather dusters.
“Fancy seeing you here,” your father says with a deep laugh, beaming at Alexia as though he has come to save her. She now understands the tension in your shoulders. You have a tricky relationship with your parents.
Alexia forces a smile. This is one she gives to journalists she doesn’t like, never letting it reach her eyes. No, instead her eyes say, “fuck you.”
“It’s lovely to see you,” she says aloud, masking the hatred poorly. She can’t stand the man. He’s fake, phony, and he doesn’t care. Self-interested. She feels a breeze by her side and realises Alba has drifted off. “I didn’t know you were coming. I thought you lived in Miami?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” He spreads his arms wide, taking up an obnoxious amount of space as awestruck people clamber to get out of his way. A star in this city, regardless of the fact that he left it behind and left his family with it. “My daughter’s big night. I suppose that’s worth the trip across the Atlantic.”
Of course, he cannot bring himself to be proud of you. It’s a duty that he feels, must keep up appearances and give his offspring enough attention to keep her begging for more. Alexia’s face sours and she quickly schools it into something more neutral.
“She’s done well.” Someone has to say it.
“She’s done fine.” He waves a hand, dismissive, can’t picture you doing anything because he’s never witnessed much past the occasional dinner. He can’t fathom the nights of work, endless calls, tears and dry eyes from staring at a screen, and Alexia’s hand rubbing at your back even if staying up with you ate into her sleep. “What a faff to have it here, though. But of course she demanded to have it in Barcelona.”
“It’s home.”
“Her mother’s home.” His lip curls slightly at the term. Mother. His biggest regret past not using a condom, she supposes. “She can be so picky. I’m sure you know that – you know how she is.”
Alexia does know. Alexia knows that you are dedicated and passionate and all you have ever wanted is rolled into this red carpet – your biggest film yet! And Alexia knows that you will never feel that you are good enough. She knows who has told you that, too.
“She’s talented,” Alexia says carefully.
He takes a sip from the champagne flute in his hand. His fingers bulge out of rings. A new ring sits proudly, too, which hadn’t been there the last time she had spoken to him. “I think it’s more that she is lucky. Someone saw potential and she had the right connections. It all comes down to that. You’d know, wouldn’t you, with football! Lucky to be scouted, eh?”
Rage bubbles up in her, jaw clenching, fists itching by her sides. She has self-control and she wouldn’t, but, oh, if she could just punch him right now…
The thing about Alexia is that she doesn’t believe in luck. She believes in hard work, determination, making things happen. She believes that she wins because she trains. You are successful because you sacrifice everything else to be. The project is the most important thing in your life and it has to be, just as football is in hers. Like when she let the weight of the relationship fall on her shoulders because you had a different priority. Like when you repaid the debt when she prepared for the Champions League. None of that is luck.
“Amor.” His wife appears beside him. A new stepmother. Younger, naturally. She cups his cheek and smiles softly, with genuine adoration that Alexia can’t understand. “They’re asking for some photos of the family.”
You catch her eye again. There’s panic in your expression and Alexia isn’t surprised. Your mother is already in your ear, telling you something that you don’t want to hear.
“Of course.” He hands his wife his drink – she will not be in this photo. “Alexia, it was so great to see you again. Enjoy your evening.”
She once asked you about having children and you were deeply rooted in your refusal.
“I wouldn’t know how to do it,” you had said. You were afraid. Terrified.
3:
It’s a text message that does it. Not unusual on your busy phone but it makes your throat dry and distracts you enough to make your assistant producer clear his throat over the Atlantic. You hold one finger up, pausing the Zoom meeting. Weird to have so much power but the chatter stops. The nervous screenwriter, a new one trying to sell a new script, is staring dead-eyed at the screen. He thinks he has blown his chances now that you’re looking at your phone.
“Everything alright?” another voice asks, this one with equal weight. A certain level of impatience comes in her tone. Hollywood doesn’t rest.
You nod. “Hm. Yeah. Something’s just… come up.”
“At 7pm on a Sunday?” The afternoon sunlight of LA pours through the small windows of globalisation on your screen and you briefly wonder how they have calculated the time difference so quickly. But whatever. “You off?”
The message is a blob of panicked words. Alexia is in a pinch and she’s spiralling (you can tell from the way this has clearly been typed out under a table).
In a meeting. Dinner at my mother’s tonight. Will be late but told her I’d bring you. And forgot to mention. Sorry. Coming???
Three question marks. Three. Alexia Putellas does not use punctuation lightly. She definitely doesn’t use three question marks unless she’s panicking.
You should say no. You’re busy, you’re working, you’re supposed to be sorting out your next project and capitalising on your new release’s box office success and the momentum it brings to your career.
Your fingers type: When?
The response is instant.
Now. Hour’s drive to Mollet right? Will meet you there.
Mollet. With Alexia’s mother and what seems to be a family dinner. You understand Eli’s reason for the invitation, ignoring ulterior motives and taking the face-value innocence of her wanting to thank you for asking them to your premiere. And it was her birthday recently and you sent her flowers. And you hired a pilates instructor to help her strengthen her back. Just a few sessions.
Your eyes go back to the writer. He’s biting his lip; his fate is in your hands and your hands are too focused on what’s being relayed through a mobile phone. A mercy: “if you resend me the script I’ll look over it tomorrow. I have to go – family emergency – but we can pick this back up another time? I’ll have my assistant get in contact to rearrange.”
The script is about love. Two people on a plane, about to break up, and then the plane crashes. A disaster film in a sense but more emotional than anything else. You don’t particularly care for it. You have your own catastrophes to worry about.
An hour and a bit later, you’re knocking on Eli’s door with a bottle of wine in your hand as if it will settle the impending sense of doom thrumming in your chest.
She’s delighted to see you again. She pulls you into a motherly hug that your own mother has never quite afforded you and she takes the wine and thanks you and then thanks you for coming. And for the birthday gifts.
“Ale is late,” she tells you once you’ve been ushered inside. And what Alexia neglected to mention was that ‘dinner at her mother’s’ included her aunt and her uncle and her cousins and her younger sister. And no Alexia as of yet.
Eight pairs of eyes blink at you.
Eli’s hand rubs your shoulder, rough, working hands smoothing down the cashmere of your jumper. “Who would like a glass of wine?” she announces in question to the room, throwing a stone to break the ice that has frozen everyone. Someone gasps. Hands rise into the air. You take a step back, almost running away, about to turn and escape, but Alba launches herself at you, flanked by cousins, and now you’re really trapped.
“Hello, hermana,” Alba says slyly, shit-eating grin plastered wide on glossy lips. “Nice to see you.”
“I hate your sister,” you groan into her ear as she wraps you into a tight hug. It seems as though Alexia has thrown you to the wolves. Her reasoning isn’t hard to deduce – you guess that she is sick of being the victim of endless interrogation. And maybe her family missed you just as much as you missed them.
Alba laughs, something loud and genuine, pulling back just enough to look at you. “She misses you too, you know. That’s why she did this.”
“Did what? Trick me?”
“Strategically position you,” she corrects. “She’s not stupid. She knows if she shows up with you everyone will be too busy interrogating you to interrogate her about why you’re not together anymore. You’re a sacrificial lamb.”
“I’m a lamb,” you repeat. You had already known this.
“A very pretty lamb.” She pats your cheek. “Come on. La tia has been asking about you for months. You can’t hide.”
She drags you into the living room by your wrist and suddenly you’re surrounded.
For however quiet a person Alexia may be, her family is the opposite, always causing a cacophony of love and fussing and slightly invasive questions. Tonight seems to spur them on even further. There have always been two aspects that have hooked them: your career and your relationship with Alexia. Both are unfortunately topics you hate to discuss but you make an exception.
Alexia’s aunt squeezes the breath out of you as she hugs you – firm and smothering, just as you remember. She calls you beautiful but too skinny. Tired-looking, too, but that could be from a lack of sleep and – oh? Is that from heartbreak? Because she is happy to give you her opinions on your breakup, interspersing that with gratitude for the pilates instructor which she declares is hers by relation. Her knee problems have been cured, apparently.
It ripples and expands until everyone is also involved in the conversation about the pilates instructor. And the flowers which you sent Eli. A room full of adoration that you feel you are not entitled to. Not anymore. But then someone makes a joke and you’re laughing, a proper laugh that crunches in your ribs, and you’re wedged between Alba and Miriam on the sofa and it feels natural again.
The conversation splinters. Alba goes on her phone, checking where her sister is, and this gives Miriam and Paula the opportunity to ask about your premiere. Or, more accurately, to relay what Alexia told them and see if the stories match up.
“Who did you go with?” Paula asks with a raised eyebrow. “Alex mentioned you weren’t alone. You’re not single?”
“I’m single,” you reply, dispelling that. You’re not sure why you feel the need to. It probably just encourages them even more.
“You’re single but you had a date to your premiere?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“If you wanted a date,” Miriam says, “you should’ve asked Alex. She would’ve jumped at the opportunity.”
“She had that opportunity.” Never took it. Alexia never wanted to be that public.
Paula giggles and shares a look that you’re not supposed to be privy to. “Weird thing to do, inviting your ex-girlfriend to your premiere, eh?”
An intervention from Alba: “I was also invited.”
“Yeah, but Alba you were just an excuse to make it look like Alexia wasn’t on her own. And suspiciously present.”
You shift in the little space you have. Alba’s legs twitch and then fall into your lap and it’s a nice move, one that says she’s on your side. She usually is the instigator of shit-housery but maybe this is too far, even for her.
“Què hi insinueu, tafaneres?” Your eyes narrow.
They burst into laughter. You handled that well.
“Nothing, nothing,” says Miriam. “Alex has been pathetic since you left, you know. It’s getting very boring. And she’s been avoiding us because we ask her about things she doesn’t want to discuss.”
You see your way out.
“That would have been a very good idea,” you joke, but before they can latch on for further information, you’re standing up and walking away. “I think I heard Eli calling my name.”
You slip into the kitchen, engulfed by the smell of onions simmering in paprika. It will stick to your clothes but that doesn’t matter because you have sought refuge and you have found it. You grip the edge of the worktop and exhale deeply.
Eli turns around, aware of your presence. She’s smiling. Self-satisfied, you think.
“Avoiding them all?” she teases gently, quickly assessing your state before turning back to the stove and stirring the onions. The worst part of dinner is the fact that dinner is never ready. The dinners are designed for conversation, with dinner being too light on its own, and this means that Eli has a hiding place. What’s the catch? Eli is just as dangerous as the others. More so, perhaps.
You nod. “I’m hearing things I don’t want to hear.”
“About themselves?”
“About Alexia.” Her full name is so rarely spoken in this house. Eli’s hand stills and the dull thud of her tapping off the excess from the spatula resonates as she waits for you to continue. You check over your shoulder – no one is coming. “It’s not fair of them to tell me. Not when she’s not here to defend herself.”
Her hum is pensive. “What have they been saying?” She knows her daughter and her nieces very well; she can imagine but imagination isn’t everything.
“I just don’t need them to tell me how bad this whole thing has been.”
It’s a bit ironic to be having this conversation with Alexia’s mother in her family home surrounded by her relatives. If there were a prize for the most effective way of getting over someone, you would not be a recipient. But, that being said, Eli has been part of your life for two and a half years and she has managed to make herself essential. She has enveloped you in her care and that is always a hard feeling to detach yourself from.
“How are you?” she asks, suddenly very serious. Very genuine. It’s a simple question but it has no simple answer and you blink, briefly stunned, because many people forget to ask you that. “Really.”
You take a moment, knuckles paling as your grip tightens on the worktop. As if to provide the illusion of privacy, she goes back to stirring, heat sizzling in the pan. Your confession sizzles with it, sitting right on the tip of your tongue. Your mouth goes dry as you refuse to swallow. Out pours your heart.
“I miss her so much.”
The truth. So obviously the truth and not something you have made an effort to hide. You invited her to your house. You invited her to your premiere. And you haven’t fucked since she toured your gym months ago but that has taken a lot of self-control.
Eli doesn’t seem surprised which only affirms your lack of subtlety. Her sympathy comes with trepidation, as if she is worried you are going to explode and run away. She’s accustomed to dealing with fragile individuals, after all. She isn’t sure that what she is going to say will be the right thing, but she can’t help herself. She has to make this known. “I never quite understood why you broke up. You were both so happy. You were perfect – exactly what a mother wants to see. It came as quite a shock. Alexia never seemed to be able to explain it.”
“It was my fault,” you confess, voice drenched in regret. Maybe a lie, maybe a bit of self-sacrifice. “I left.”
“No one ever leaves without a reason,” Eli replies. The words crack you open. You press your thumb into your cheek, stopping the journey of a tear as it rolls down flushed flesh. Eli’s lips curve into a sympathetic smile; “I know that Ale is my daughter but I also know that no one is perfect.”
“She is perfect.”
“She’s not.”
“It wasn’t her. It was… it was the idea of it. You say that it was a surprise and that’s because we were fine, we were more than fine, but it wasn’t the present that was the issue. It was the future. Our future. My future.”
And it all resurfaces once more. That hopeless feeling of inadequacy, of not being enough and failing everyone who has made the mistake of trying to love you.
It was pressure from Alexia. She hadn’t meant to but her hypothetical ‘someday’ with a lost look of awe at a passing baby in a pram or the news of yet another friend getting engaged had clamped down on your throat and made you think about things. After a lot of thought, you realised that a future would not be breaking the cycle you sought to escape from. A future with kids and marriage when you had never had good examples of either? With limitations of when and where you could work? It didn’t seem right.
But it was right. Right for Alexia because she had wanted that – had wanted to be married if she already knew who’d be joining her at the altar, had wanted to have a baby and the baby remember what it was like to see her play.
You look at Eli and you are consumed by her love for her daughter. You understand why Alexia craves these things. You understand how different experiences influence different approaches. But for all the understanding you have compelled yourself to learn, it doesn’t seem to hurt any less.
4:
Your mother’s dogs are akin to rats. They’re insufferably tiny and whiny and they wiggle about as you attempt to clip their leashes onto the pink harnesses they have been fitted with.
She had been very sceptical when you had appeared this afternoon and asked to walk them. You hate dogs. You hate speaking to your mother. You hate going to your family home and experiencing the unsettling experience of being partially roped into your mother's book club with her gossiping friends.
“Marc was going to take them around the gardens,” she had emphasised as you picked up one fluffy rodent from her lap. This one, Rex, squirmed out of your grip immediately. “They like Marc.”
Marc, the dog walker, was certainly confused to see you carting off the animals in the backseat of your Porsche. You had waved as you passed him but he was too shocked to reciprocate.
And now you’re here, at a particular beach in Barcelona, known for being exceptionally quiet and private and beautiful at sunset. It’s a little windy but the dogs don’t mind, yapping as they trot along beside you, fur matting with sand already.
You’re walking your mother’s dogs. It’s a terrible idea. You hate dogs. You hate sand! You go to the beach and stay in a cabana ( you only go to beaches with cabanas after all) because the feeling of sand makes your skin crawl. And you hate that you’ve been walking for twenty minutes and there’s no sign of her and you’re starting to feel like an idiot.
Then you round a bend in the shoreline and there she is.
Jogging. Of course. In shorts and a long-sleeved shirt that clings to the contour of her stomach that you can see even at a distance, headphones firmly on her head, ponytail swinging behind her. She’s completely unaware that you’ve orchestrated this entire miserable experience just to accidentally-on-purpose cross her path.
The dogs spot her before she spots you. They yap. They pull. They’re terrible at everything including this, because instead of running towards her like normal dogs, they just sort of tangle themselves in your legs and each other and you nearly faceplant into the sand. Which is a nightmare in itself.
What makes it worse is that now Alexia has seen you, not as windswept and chic as you had intended to appear, but she is definitely looking over. She trips, a shell crunching under foot as she stutters – which is classed as ‘tripping’ in Alexia’s mind – in her stride. She pushes her headphones down to rest on her neck and you find that you’re staring at the juncture of tanned skin and sharp collarbones as the profile gradually increases in size.
“You,” she says. She’s standing a metre away.
“Me,” you agree.
She looks at the dogs, then at you, then at the dogs again. She recognises them. You can tell because her lips quirk up in a smirk. “Those are not your dogs.”
“They’re not.”
“You hate dogs.” Alexia will never forget the day you met Alba’s dog and screamed when it jumped up and pawed at your knee. You insist you’re not scared but simply irritated by the animals. You prefer cats; more demure, more attuned to your way of life.
“And I loathe these specific dogs.” One of them – Rex, or possibly Coco, you can never remember – is trying to climb Alexia’s leg. She’s so close that there is still slack in the leash. Despite the sand being smeared on her shin, Alexia reaches down to scratch his head. “They’re rats. Tiny, hairy, annoying rats.”
She’s fighting a smile. She has always been amused by this and you hate it, hate that she can’t take you seriously. “So you’re walking rats. For fun.”
“For exercise.” You pause. “The rats need exercise.”
“Doesn’t your mother have a full body of staff?” It’s not really a question. More of a point for her to make. About the uselessness of your dog-walking attempt.
“Marc wasn't available.”
“Oh?”
“Something about the flu.” You shrug. Alexia shakes her head in disbelief but she’ll entertain it, of course she will, because there is nothing that makes her day better than seeing you. However unorganically random it may be.
“So you’re walking them. At this beach. At this time.”
You roll your eyes at the way she’s dragging out your humiliation. Well done, Alexia, for receiving information and processing it. “It’s a nice beach.”
Alexia looks at you for a long moment. The other dog is at her other leg and you’d forgotten how much these dogs loved Alexia. Briefly, you relate to them.
“It’s my beach.”
Your eyebrows raise. “Your beach?”
“I run here every evening when I’m home.”
You know that. You’ve spent the last six months carefully not thinking about how much you know that – how much you know about her routines – and how intertwined that became to your own life. Two busy people with two schedules memorised. That was how it was, back when it was.
“Small world,” you say.
She snorts. It’s an undignified sound from someone so stoic. You love it.
The dogs, bored of your conversation and over the novelty of seeing Alexia, have started digging. Sand is flying everywhere, covering your shoes and Alexia’s Nike trainers, and flecks fly onto her thighs which you notice when you glance down at them as subtly as you can. Alexia’s gaze follows. There is sand on your cheek, too, and she wants to wipe it off. She could reach out to touch you but she doesn’t.
“How long have you been walking them?”
“Too long.”
“I’m surprised your mother let you leave with them.” Your mother believes you to be a gallivanting good-for-nothing. Her dogs are her most beloved creatures. “You must have done something extra responsible.”
“I’ve changed,” you say, and it must be the wind that dampens it, making it sound more quiet and vulnerable than you had intended. You don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. It’s not a lie.
Alexia holds what she wants to answer on her tongue and swallows, gulping back that sentence although it claws down her throat as it goes.
“They’re filthy,” she says instead, gesturing vaguely at Coco and Rex.
“I know.”
“You can’t return them to her like that.”
“I know.” The dogs have their own bottle of cologne. They are not allowed to get dirty.
It’s only a matter of time. You look at Alexia, she looks at you. You can hear her running playlist faintly through her headphones. Her watch beeps as if to hurry up her decision. But you already know that she has made her choice.
“I think I have dog shampoo left over from when I looked after Viruta.” The invitation is implied.
And then you’re at Alexia’s house. It’s a nice house, a good house; lived-in much more than the mansion you call home. It’s not as overwhelmingly big as your own, which is good because even though you were once in a relationship, Alexia is just as alone as you are. Well, maybe not. She has her family and her teammates and her friends. What do you have? A life scattered across continents? Friends with ulterior motives? An ex who you can’t seem to shake despite needing to be free being the reason for your loneliness?
“I don’t think your gym is better than mine,” Alexia says when the dogs are clean, shaking out the wetness on her patio. It’s warm enough to leave them out there until they dry.
“Really?” you tease, because it’s funny that she’s still hung up on this.
Alexia nods. It’s final. She’s behind the kitchen island, chopping tomatoes. Dinner comes included with the dog grooming.
You tell her about your plans. You’re travelling in Southeast Asia for three months this summer. You lack inspiration and you think you’ll find it there, and at the very least, it’s far away and new and different.
She points out that you’ve been to Bali before but you counter that a five-star hotel while working on a film was hardly experiencing the culture in the way you intend.
“I was considering moving away,” you say quietly, following a long silence in which dinner was served and the dogs passed out on the patio. Alexia’s fork scrapes against her plate, pasta half-disappeared, as she forces herself not to look up and react like she has a right to. It makes your skin itch and you regret telling her.
“Why?” It’s an oversimplified response.
You take a sip of the lemonade she has poured out for you, sour on your tongue but not as sharp as the daggers of words you’re trying to form. Alexia’s opinion shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t. But it does.
“It’s easier to be in LA. For work.”
“Do you not like Barcelona anymore?” She’s accustomed to the excuse. Work. As if they don’t make films in Barcelona. But fine, allowing you Hollywood, it’s not as if you are unable to split your time and return home when you can, just like you are doing now. You have an empty house that needs the dust blowing off the surfaces every once in a while. And she likes seeing you. Likes knowing that you are nearby.
“I was considering – I’m not going to.” Stupid to dredge up the past but alas here you are, sitting opposite Alexia eating dinner, so maybe you’re already too far gone. “I think I just wanted to run away.”
“From what?”
“Who,” you correct.
Her eyes narrow. “I don’t understand.”
“You do.”
A moment. She takes a deep breath and you take another sip of lemonade, and you both let your eyes find the other, locking in place. It hurts to see your soul reflected in someone else. Not yours anymore but always will be, in a sense. Should still be, if it weren’t for other factors.
“Why are you here?” Alexia breathes out.
“You asked me.”
“You were at the beach.”
You think about it. You choose honesty. “Wanted to see you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
The kitchen goes very quiet. You can hear the dogs shifting on the patio. The hum of the fridge. Your own heartbeat, loud in your ears, thumping away with instant regret.
Alexia hasn’t moved. She’s still holding her fork but it’s suspended halfway to her mouth, forgotten. Her eyes haven’t left yours.
“You know why,” you repeat, softer.
She sets the fork down. Her arm flexed slightly with the movement and there’s tension there, held where she controls herself. Alexia loves control and feeling in control and that had always been something you’d clashed about, because being restrained and reined in is a nightmare for you. The fork doesn’t even make a sound with the precision that she places it. A cushioned landing. Perfection.
“We can’t keep doing this,” she says, but she’s already out of her seat, already pulling at your wrist and gently manipulating your body so that you’re now pressed lightly against the table. The ledge is a hard line beneath your flesh but Alexia is soft on the other side, impossibly close all of a sudden. “We broke up for a reason.”
“We did,” you agree, although the words leave you breathlessly.
“We broke up,” she repeats. It seems to be aimed at herself, like some reminder that exes are not supposed to find themselves in each others’ company like this. Not willingly. You don’t have to orbit Alexia and she doesn’t have to orbit you, yet here you both are.
You’re not going to tell her that you regret it. You don’t. You do in some respects but it was the right thing to do at the end of the day. Surely.
“I don’t know how to stop wanting this.” A finger traces the line of your jaw, gentle and curious. It curves and follows your silhouette and Alexia is looking at you with desperation, looking to be anchored. You could swim in it. You could drag her down but that was the exact reason you left.
A dog scratches at the door. Alexia’s head turns slightly and the moment shatters. You push her away.
+1
Darkness in Alexia’s kitchen. You hadn’t meant to be here but this is where you are, late at night. Or maybe it is morning. Not committed enough to show the day, to show the pink of the sunrise, but it’s not yesterday.
Yesterday was a good day. Victory for Barça as always, painting a large smile on Alexia’s face. Elation surged through her body and it stayed because you were watching, upon her invitation. An odd thing to do, invite your ex to your first match back in the stadium of your dreams, but can you even call each other that anymore? The label doesn’t stick as clearly as it once did.
And now you’re here, Alexia’s warm hands on your waist, sneaking under the pathetic barrier of a baggy t-shirt, grounding you into her floor. Like the branches that billow in the wind, you sway, connected more than sex could let you be. Engineers ensure all structures to gracefully accommodate some level of movement. Flexibility; ready for the environment to change. Alexia’s holding you still but you are not still and that is fine.
You’re humming. She rests her chin on your shoulder.
“I didn’t know what to do when I lost you,” she says. It’s hard for her to admit things like this. She is so mapped-out, so cautious when it comes to that, and disorientation had not been a failure she had accounted for. “I thought that I could move on.” She doesn’t need to tell you she can’t.
“I wanted you to move on,” you confess, and she seizes up for a brief second as though the thought is unbearable before she exhales in a release of the tension. She shouldn’t be surprised. It would have made sense to plough through; find someone new and get married and have children and live in comfortable contentment. Even if this leads to a spark in a dying fire, you will always feel the embers of guilt. To whatever extent you have derailed that part of Alexia’s plan. Maybe she has convinced herself that that is what she would like. Or maybe she is just at peace with it.
Maybe it’s not for you to decide.
She huffs. It’s a laugh. The low sound of it echoes in her empty kitchen – too big for one person anyway. You find yourself responding in kind, leaning into her as you shake with unprecedented giggles, all the emotions coiled in your chest contracting and spilling out of you in this way.
It doesn’t subside for a while, but when it does, when the fit is over, Alexia separates just for a moment. The air rushes in between you and it chills you. It’s colder without her so close. Her eyes catch the glow of the orange lights of appliances on standby, burning amber like syrup in your hands
if you don't have ADHD, the concentration span of a toddler on drugs, groundless and unnecessary perfectionism, roughly five free hours a week and a detailed outline for a story you can't find the right words to actually write
Hi!!! I love your writing so much!! Honestly thank you for blessing us with your gift 🙇♀️
Your story “We will smile to end each day in places we won't walk” has such a chokehold on me, would you ever continue it?
Hii, thank you sooo much tooo nice!!
I should find nicknames for my stories ahah
The chokehold it had on me, you have no idea. I first drafted it in June, last year. The amount of times I abandoned it, almost deleted it, fixated on it,
However, the Part 2 took a turn I didn't expect so I need time and willpower to get back on it. I will, eventually, finish it 🫡
janainaart
ellievsbear
vaporwave
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
