#mason mount

[ithinkimokeei]

[k-wame]

[abrieflyelegantstudent]

[zeegaazeegaah]

Static

Pairing: 2021 Chelsea era! Mason Mount x Reader

Synopsis: You’ve spent almost a year making yourself invisible. He spent that same year learning exactly where to look.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Genre: Angst, Fluff, Avoidant Reader, Pining, Workplace Intimacy and he knows exactly what he is doing

Word Count: 11.5k

The thing about working in media at a football club is that you become very good at being invisible, and that’s what you’d told yourself when you took the job, fresh out of uni, practically vibrating with anxiety on your first day at Cobham. You weren’t a player. You weren’t a coach. You were the person who drafted the press releases, managed the post-match interview schedule, and made sure nobody said anything catastrophically stupid on camera. You were invisible, functional, and doing well, and it had been fine, for almost a full year, until Mason Mount decided to notice you.

It started because of a microphone. Post-training press availability, a Tuesday in February. You were setting up in the media room, wrestling with a lapel mic that kept cutting out, when the door swung open twenty minutes too early.

“Sorry– thought this was–” He stopped.

You looked up, and immediately looked back down, because looking at Mason Mount directly felt a bit like looking at the sun if the sun had very nice eyes and also made you forget basic grammar.

“Press availability isn’t until three,” you said to the microphone.

“Right.” He didn’t leave.

You could feel him watching you fiddle with the cable, the silence stretching, your face doing something terrible that you could feel without being able to stop it.

“You’re the new press one, yeah?” he asked.

“I’ve been here eleven months.”

A beat. “The relatively new press one.”

Something about the way he said it gently, a little amused and not unkind really made you glance up despite yourself. He was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, still in his training kit, with a small smile on his face.

“Y/N,” you said. “I’m Y/N.”

“I know,” he said simply, and then someone called his name from down the corridor and he was gone, leaving you sitting there with a broken microphone and the distinct feeling that something had just started that you were completely unprepared for.

You were desperately aware of the professional line. He was a player, you were staff, and your entire job depended on being neutral and unremarkable. Crushes were not in the press officer job description. He seemed to find your awkwardness genuinely interesting rather than off-putting, which was somehow so much worse, because you were used to people looking past you and you didn’t have a script for someone who looked at you. You filed it all away under inconvenient and got on with your job.

The second time, it was after a home win –2-0, he’d assisted both– and you were running the mixed zone, clipboard in hand, trying to direct traffic and make eye contact with precisely no one. He stopped in front of you instead of the cameras.

“You never watch the matches,” he said, not accusatory, just observational, like he’d been paying attention.

Your stomach did something inconvenient. “I watch the feed. In the media suite.”

“Not the same.”

“I know.”

He looked at you for a moment with that quiet, evaluating look you were already starting to recognise, then stepped toward the cameras. But right before he reached the journalists, he glanced back. “You should watch sometime. Proper watch.”

You wrote call about Thursday’s presser on your clipboard and absolutely did not think about it for the rest of the evening, which is to say you thought about it the entire evening.

-----

The away trip to Paris was not supposed to be a big deal, which is what your manager Diane had said when she handed you the travel itinerary –not a big deal, just a pre-season friendly, good experience for you– and you had nodded and smiled and then gone to the bathroom and stood very still for a moment, because it was in fact a very big deal to you specifically, given that you had never done an overnight trip with the squad before and were already mentally cataloguing every possible way you could embarrass yourself between London and France. The running total, so far: forgetting your press credentials, which you’d checked four times; saying something incoherent to a journalist, which felt probable; tripping in front of a camera, which was fifty-fifty; and doing something mortifying in front of Mason Mount, which was the new entry, recently added, and brought the total to four.

You boarded the coach to the airport with your head down, laptop bag clutched to your chest like a shield, and found a seat near the back next to Priya from social media, who was already on her phone and didn’t require conversation. You had your headphones in before the engine started and you did not look up when the players filed on, absolutely did not notice when someone sat down in the aisle seat two rows ahead and stretched his legs out and laughed at something Thomas Tuchel’s assistant said, and if you put your brightness down and stared at your spreadsheet with the focus of someone defusing a bomb, that was simply because you had a lot of work to do.

The flight was fine. The hotel check-in was fine. The pre-match media setup was genuinely fine, and for approximately three hours you felt like a competent adult professional person who had everything under control. And then you walked into a glass door.

Not through it –you didn’t break it, you weren’t injured, it was frankly the tamest possible version of this type of incident– but you had been speed-walking through the hotel lobby with your lanyard in one hand and a coffee in the other and the door had been more closed than anticipated and you’d walked face-first into it with a flat, resonant thunk that turned approximately six heads.

You stood there for a second. The door was fine. You were fine. Your coffee had survived. Your dignity had not. Okay, you thought, very calmly. Okay. That happened. That is something that just happened in the physical world and cannot be unhappened. Great. Wonderful. You pushed the door open correctly this time and walked through it with your chin up, because what else were you going to do, and you were almost in the clear when you heard it — a laugh, quick and surprised and genuine, not cruel, which somehow made it worse. You turned your head approximately three degrees, just enough to confirm what you already knew in your soul, and yes. Obviously. Of course. Mason Mount was standing by the lift with Ben Chilwell, hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking, and his eyes met yours and he held up both hands immediately –I’m sorry, I’m sorry– still laughing, mouthing something that looked like are you okay?

You gave him a thumbs up.

You turned and walked away at a pace that you hoped looked purposeful and not like the physical manifestation of wanting to be absorbed into the floor.

You avoided the lobby for the rest of the afternoon, which was professionally complicated given that your job required you to be in it at several points, but you managed through careful timing and a secondary route through the hotel restaurant that added four minutes to every journey and was absolutely worth it. By the time the pre-match dinner was underway in the hotel’s private function room you’d almost convinced yourself it wasn’t that bad. People walked into doors. It was a human thing. Probably he’d forgotten about it already.

“Seat taken?”

You looked up from your pasta.

Mason Mount was standing across the table from you, holding a plate, nodding at the empty chair directly opposite. The function room was busy –players, staff, coaching team, a few journalists from the approved pool– and there were other seats available. Several. Quite a few, actually.

“No,” you said, because what else were you going to say.

He sat down. You looked at your pasta. He ate in silence for a moment, and you thought — hoped — that maybe this was just a proximity thing, just a seat, no significance, absolutely —

“For the record,” he said, “the door was basically invisible. Very poor design.”

You looked up despite yourself. He had a completely straight face, but his eyes were doing the thing, the warm and slightly amused thing that you had already against your will catalogued and filed away and thought about more than once.

“I’ve seen it happen loads of times,” he continued, very seriously. “At least twice this year alone.”

“You’re being nice,” you said.

“I’m being honest.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Something shifted in his expression — small, quick, like you’d surprised him — and he tilted his head slightly. “Fair point,” he said.

Silence again, but different now, less like a gap and more like something taking up space on purpose. You ate a forkful of pasta. He poured water into his glass and then, without asking, into yours. You stared at your glass and told yourself: normal thank you, regular volume, like a person.

“Thanks,” you said. Normal. Fine. Good.

“So do you actually like this?” he asked. “The away trips.”

You considered lying — love them, great, brilliant — because that felt like the smooth and professional answer, and then you thought about how he’d said I know when you told him your name, like he’d been paying attention long before you’d noticed, and something about that made dishonesty feel like the wrong currency.

“I find them a bit overwhelming,” you said, to your pasta. “Lots of people. Lots of moving parts. I’m better when I know exactly what’s happening.” You added, quickly, in case it sounded like complaining, “But the work part I like. I’m good at the work part.”

“Yeah,” he said, like it wasn’t news to him. “You are.”

Your fork stopped moving. You didn’t look up, because you had a strong instinct that if you did your face was going to do something you couldn’t diplomatically explain, so you just sat there with it suspended over a piece of penne while Mason Mount ate his dinner across from you like he hadn’t just said something that was going to live in your head for no reasonable amount of time.

The thing was — the thing was that you were very used to being competent and overlooked. It was a comfortable arrangement. You did the work, the work got done, nobody particularly noticed. And he kept noticing, quietly and consistently, without fanfare, like it was just a thing he did, and you didn’t have a section in your mental filing system for that.

You ate your pasta. He said something to the physio on his left and laughed at the response, and you watched him for exactly one second — the way he laughed with his whole face, the easy way he had with people — and then looked firmly back at your food. Your phone buzzed, Diane asking for tomorrow’s schedule confirmation, and you answered immediately, grateful for the task, and spent the rest of dinner looking at your screen. But when you left, he said night, Y/N — just that, quiet, like it was easy — and you made it all the way to the lift before you let yourself close your eyes for a second. It had been a seat, probably. Nothing more than a seat. You took the stairs back to your floor and told yourself that twice.

The match was at nine PM and you knew this. You had written this, it was on the schedule you’d drafted and printed and laminated and distributed in three different formats, and yet somehow at 8:47 PM you were in the wrong corridor — not slightly wrong, comprehensively and architecturally wrong, the kind of wrong that suggested you had taken a turn approximately four decisions ago that had nothing to do with the media pen and everything to do with the fact that you’d been following the sound of crowd noise like a confused pigeon and had ended up somehow outside the away dressing room. The door was open. You spun around so fast your lanyard smacked you in the face.

“SORRY —” you said, to nobody, to the wall, to God, to whatever cosmic force had decided this trip was your villain origin story, and then you walked very quickly in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until you found a stairwell where you stood alone and pressed your back against the cold concrete and did a brief silent scream into your own scarf.

Your radio crackled. Diane’s voice. “Y/N, we need you in the media pen, kick off in ten.”

“Yep,” you said, into the radio, with incredible calm. “On my way.”

The match, at least, was good. Chelsea won 3-1 and Mason got the third — a low, precise drive from the edge of the box that made the journalists around you actually react, which journalists almost never did because they considered visible emotion unprofessional. You considered visible emotion unprofessional too, which was why you wrote goal, 79’, Mount very neatly in your notes and did not do anything embarrassing with your face.

Post-match mixed zone, and this was your territory. You moved through it with purpose — directing, coordinating, stepping in when someone asked a question heading somewhere diplomatically unfortunate, steering it away with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d learned very quickly that footballers and microphones were a combination that required management. You were good at this. You were calm at this, right up until Mason finished his camera interview, turned around, and walked directly into you. His shoulder caught yours, your clipboard went one way, your pen went another, and you made a sound — a genuinely involuntary sound, a sort of startled oh! — and grabbed the nearest stable thing, which was his arm, and let go immediately, record timing.

“Sorry — sorry, that was me, I was in the —” you started.

“No, that was me, I wasn’t looking —” he said at the same time.

A beat. He looked at you. You looked at him. He was still in his kit, slightly sweaty from the match, close enough that you had to make a conscious decision about where exactly to look, which your brain handled by suggesting perhaps the middle distance, which meant you were basically staring at his collarbone, which was not better.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Completely fine,” you said, to his collarbone.

He bent down, picked up your clipboard, and handed it back, your fingers touching briefly when you took it. You wrote nothing in your mental filing system about that because there was nothing to write.

“Good match,” you managed.

“Yeah?” He was doing the thing again, the looking thing. “You watched?”

“I was literally standing ten metres away.”

“You had your head down for most of it.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it. He was right, you had been looking at your notes, it was your job to look at your notes — but the fact that he’d clocked it, that he’d been aware of where your eyes were from the pitch while playing a professional football match, made your brain make a noise like a dial-up connection.

“I multitask,” you said finally.

He smiled — slow, a little devastating — and someone called his name from across the zone. He held your gaze for just a beat longer than necessary before he turned away, and you looked down at your clipboard to find you had written absolutely nothing useful for the last four minutes.

The coach back to the hotel left at midnight. You got on early, window seat, third row, headphones in, a buffer seat between you and the aisle filled with your bag, because you had learned from this morning. The players filed on gradually, loud and happy with the particular looseness of a team after a win, and you watched your phone screen with great concentration until the seat next to your bag dipped.

You looked up. Mason raised his eyebrows at your bag.

“Sorry —” you grabbed it immediately, shoving it onto your lap, and sat there with it pressed against your chest like a very awkward carry-on while he settled into the seat beside you, and internally you were asking why — there are so many seats, Ben Chilwell is right there, you are friends with Ben Chilwell, you chose this one specifically, why did you choose this one —

“You don’t have to hold your bag like that,” he said. “You can just put it in your lap normally.”

“This is normally.”

He looked at the bag, at your hands gripping the strap like it might escape. “Right,” he said, and looked out the window, and you could see the reflection of him almost-smiling in the glass. You let go of the strap, slowly, casually, like you had meant to do that all along.

The coach pulled out of the stadium and outside was Paris at midnight, lit up and thoughtless and beautiful in the way cities are beautiful when you’re tired and slightly off-balance and sitting next to someone whose arm is almost touching yours. Almost. You were acutely and embarrassingly aware of the almost.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

No, said your entire nervous system. “Sure,” said your mouth.

“Why do you always look like you’re waiting for something to go wrong?”

You turned to look at him properly for the first time all night. He was watching you with that same evaluating calm, and the question wasn’t mean or pointed — it was just honest, the way he kept being honest in this inconvenient and disarming way that you had no defensive strategy for.

“Statistically,” you said instead of deflecting, “something usually does.”

“Like today.”

“I walked into a door and then a person in the same twelve-hour period.”

“The door was badly designed.”

“You said that already.”

“Still true.”

The streetlights were sliding past the window in long orange stripes and somewhere behind you Reece James was telling a story that was making half the coach laugh. The seat was warm and his shoulder was an inch from yours.

“Does it help?” he asked. “Waiting for it.”

You considered the question genuinely, which you hadn’t expected to do. “No,” you admitted. “But it means I’m not surprised when it happens.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That sounds exhausting,” he said, not with pity but like he was saying something true.

Your throat did something you refused to acknowledge. “It’s fine,” you said. “I’m used to it.”

“Being exhausted?”

“Being —” you paused. Careful. “Prepared.”

He turned his head to look at you then, and you were looking at him, and the coach hit a bump in the road that knocked your shoulder directly into his and neither of you moved away after. The almost became something else. You both looked forward, out at the Paris night, and said nothing, and the silence had that quality again, the kind that wasn’t empty but full and pressing and patient. Your heart did something it would file a complaint about later.

This is fine, you thought. This is completely fine. You are a professional. You are invisible. You are —

His little finger brushed yours on the armrest. Barely. Could’ve been accidental, probably was accidental, and he didn’t move it, and you didn’t move yours, and you stared out the window at Paris and breathed very carefully and thought about absolutely nothing at all for the rest of the journey.

Three weeks passed. You didn’t speak about the coach and neither did he, and somehow that felt less like avoidance and more like an agreement — a thing held carefully between you, too new to name. You worked. You were professional. You were, as always, fine. And then it was a Friday morning.

-----

The story broke on a Friday, and not a rumour this time, not a blurry photo with a question mark caption — a proper, sourced, photographed story, Mason Mount Confirms Romance with Model Isla Reeves, with a red carpet photo from some charity event the night before, her hand on his chest, both of them smiling, and a quote from his representative that said Mason and Isla have been seeing each other for a few weeks and are very happy.

Very happy.

You read it at 7:51 AM on your phone in your car in the Cobham car park, engine still running, and you sat with it for a moment the way you sometimes sat with a work email that required a careful response — reading it twice, making sure you’d understood correctly, giving it the appropriate weight — and then you turned your engine off, put your phone in your bag, and went to work.

You were, professionally, the first person in the building who needed to have a position on this, and that was the thing about your job that you had always found clarifying: when something happened, you didn’t get to feel it first. You got to respond to it first, and feeling it came later, quietly, in your own time, in your own space, in a way that affected nobody and changed nothing about the quality of your work. By 9 AM you had drafted a brief internal note — player’s personal life, not club business, no comment required — and sent it to Diane, who replied with a single agreed, good and that was that. By 10 AM three journalists had called and you handled them pleasantly and said nothing useful to any of them. By 11 am Priya had appeared in your doorway with two coffees and an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral.

“I saw,” you said, before she could speak. “It’s not a club matter. We’re not commenting.”

“Y/N.” Her voice was gentle in a way you didn’t particularly want it to be right now. “I’m not here about the press line.”

You looked at her. She looked at you.

“I’m fine,” you said.

Priya had known you for eleven months. She had watched you walk into a glass door in Paris and give a thumbs up and compose yourself in under thirty seconds. She knew exactly what your fine meant. She picked up her coffee, said “Okay,” and left, and you turned back to your screen and said fine to yourself, and meant it more aggressively than usual.

You didn’t see him until the afternoon, having been half-braced for it all day in the way you were braced for things; not obviously, not in a way anyone would notice, just a low-level readiness in your shoulders that had been there since 7:51 AM. When it happened it was exactly as undramatic as it should have been: you were crossing the main corridor outside the training analysis suite, he was coming the other way with Jorginho, and you met in the middle.

“Afternoon,” you said, pleasantly, the same way you said it to everyone.

“Hey.” Something moved across his face, brief and searching. “You alright?”

“Great, thanks. Good session?”

“Yeah —”

“Good. Enjoy your evening.”

And you were gone. Forty-two steps to the media suite. You counted. You sat down at your desk, opened your laptop, and stared at the screen for a moment, then started typing with fingers that were completely steady, because you were fine.

That night, alone in your flat, you allowed yourself exactly one hour, which was a system you’d developed in your early twenties for things you couldn’t afford to carry around — grief, disappointment, embarrassment, the specific sadness of something that hadn’t even been a thing, technically, and therefore had no real right to feel like a loss. You made pasta. You put a film on that you didn’t watch. You sat on your sofa with your knees to your chest and let yourself feel the full, quiet weight of it, and you were honest with yourself during the hour, because there was no point otherwise.

The thing was that nothing had happened. You knew that. There had been a coach in Paris and some lingering looks and a water glass refilled without asking and a finger that had maybe, possibly, brushed yours in the dark. That was the complete inventory. That was the whole of it. It was nothing. It had felt like something, but it was nothing, and he was now very happy with a woman who had 800,000 followers and a face that photographers loved, and that was how it was, and you were going to be fine because you were always fine.

The hour ended. You washed your bowl, turned off the film, went to bed. In the morning you were going to be completely okay. You had decided.

-----

The decision held, and the thing about when you made a decision was that you committed, because the same rigidity that made social situations feel like a practical exam meant that once you’d set a course, you stayed on it. No wobbling. No revisiting. Forward.

So: forward. You bought a new work blazer, which was perhaps not a necessary step but felt symbolically appropriate. You accepted an invitation to Priya’s friend’s birthday drinks, which you normally would have declined. You were present. You were socially available. Three weeks after the story broke, you met Daniel at a media industry event — a sports journalist, easy smile, the kind of person who was comfortable at events like this in a way you’d never fully understood — and he found you by the drinks table and said you looked like someone assessing threat levels, which was accurate, and he asked for your number at the end of the night with the straightforward confidence of someone who didn’t make it complicated. On the train home you thought: good. This is good. This is exactly right. You almost believed it.

The problem was that Daniel was… obviously a journalist but also a sports one… meant you had to disclose it to Diane, and you did it that same afternoon, clean and professional. She said: “As long as there’s no conflict of interest on club matters, it’s your business. Just be sensible.” “Always,” you said, and left her office feeling organised and sensible and forward.

You turned the corner and nearly walked into Mason.

His hand caught your elbow for barely a second and you both stepped back, the corridor suddenly too narrow, a small collision of sorry and no, I before a beat of quiet stretched between you. He’d come from training, hair still a bit damp, and there was a tiredness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before Paris — or maybe it had been, and you’d only learned to read him well enough to see it now, which was its own problem.

“You’re in a rush,” he said.

“Always.” Your standard line. Safe.

He nodded slowly, his eyes moving over your face in that way, reading the page, and you held yourself very still because you’d gotten good at still.

“You look well,” he said, careful, like he was testing the temperature of something.

“Thank you.” Perfectly pleasant. Perfectly level. Something shifted in his expression –brief, complicated, gone– and he stepped aside to let you pass. You walked away. Thirty-eight steps this time. You’d gotten faster.

-----

It was a Tuesday in April when you had three deadlines and a 4 pm call with a journalist who always ran over and a sad desk sandwich that had gone slightly warm.

You were eating the sandwich when he knocked.

The media suite was empty, as it usually was by 6 pm, everyone having the reasonable instinct to go home, and you had stayed because you had the call and then the deadlines and absolutely no other reason. Mason knocked on the open door, and you looked up to find him still in his training gear, jacket half-zipped, with the expression of someone who had decided something and was committed to it, which immediately made you feel like you needed to be somewhere else.

“I’m on a deadline,” you said.

“I know.” He came in anyway.

You watched him pull out the chair across from your desk — Priya’s chair, the one nobody sat in unless invited — and sit down in it with the particular calm of someone who had specifically decided not to be moved.

“Mason.” His name, again. Still a mistake. “I have a call in–”

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Priya’s schedule is on the board outside.”

You stared at him. The sandwich sat on your desk between you like a small and unhelpful witness.

“I just need twenty minutes,” he said.

“For what?”

“To talk to you.”

“We’re talking now.”

“No,” he said, patiently, “we’re not. You’re managing me. There’s a difference.”

The sandwich sat on your desk between you like a small, unhelpful witness. You looked at your screen, then back at him, and he hadn’t moved and showed no signs of moving. “I’m busy.”

“I know.”

“I’m not– this isn’t a good time.”

“When is?”

“I’ll–” you reached for your notebook, reflexively, because holding something helped. “I can check the–”

“Y/N.” Quiet. Firm. “Stop.”

You stopped. The room was very still.

“I just want to know how you are,” he said. “That’s all. Not work. Not the schedule. You.”

And there it was — the question, the real one, the one he kept finding new ways to ask — and you felt the familiar tightening in your chest that meant you were approximately ten seconds from saying fine and redirecting and closing the whole thing down, because you were good at that, you had built your entire professional life on being good at that —

“I’m fine,” you said.

He nodded slowly, like he’d expected it, like he’d prepared for it, and then he picked up your sad, slightly warm desk sandwich, looked at it for a moment, and took a bite.

You stared at him. He chewed. Set it back down. Looked at you completely normally, like he hadn’t just eaten your dinner without asking, like this was a thing that people did.

“What,” you said.

“You weren’t eating it.”

“I was about to–”

“You’ve been staring at your screen for ten minutes, you hadn’t touched it.”

“You don’t– that’s my–” you picked up the sandwich, put it back down, because now it felt weird to eat it, which was somehow the most annoying thing. “You can’t just– that’s mine–”

“I know, I’m sorry–”

“Are you?” Your voice came out sharper than intended, something loosening at the hinge. “Are you actually sorry, or is that just… something you say?”

He went still. You heard what you’d just said and felt the shape of it, and that wasn’t about the sandwich and you both knew it and the knowing sat in the room between you like a third presence, warm and uninvited.

Walk it back, said the professional part of your brain. Redirect. You’re tired, you’re stressed, it’s a long week–

“What does that mean?” he asked, carefully, not defensive, just honest.

“Nothing. Forget it. It means nothing, it was about the sandwich, I’m tired, I have a–”

“It wasn’t about the sandwich.”

“Was it about Isla?”

The name landed in the room like something dropped. You didn’t answer, which was itself an answer, and you watched him watch you understand that, and there was nowhere to go suddenly; no redirect, no clipboard to pick up, no corridor to walk away down at pace.

“There’s nothing there,” he said. “It was– it’s done. It wasn’t serious.”

“You don’t have to explain your personal life to me.” Your voice was impressively level. You were quite proud of it. “Genuinely. It’s none of my–”

“I know it’s not. I’m telling you anyway.”

“Why?”

The word came out louder than you meant, raw at the edges, and you felt it leave you and couldn’t take it back and the room absorbed it and went very quiet.

“Because you went away,” he said simply. “After Paris. You just… went. And I didn’t know what I’d done, and then the Isla thing, and you got even further, and I just watched you go and I didn’t…” he stopped, reset, “I didn’t like it.”

Your chest hurt. Not metaphorically– actually hurt, the specific ache of something that had been compressed for a long time being asked to expand.

“You don’t–” your voice had lost some of its level, which you hated, “you barely know me.”

“I know you take different routes to avoid the main corridor some days. I know you eat lunch at your desk when something’s bothering you. I know you give thumbs up when you’re mortified and you say fine when you’re the opposite and you’re the best person in this building at your job and you carry your bag like it might escape.” He said it all quietly and evenly, like a list of facts. “I know you find it overwhelming when there are too many people and you told me that in Paris and I don’t think you tell people things like that easily.”

You stared at him. Your eyes were doing something you were furious about.

“That's...” your voice came out smaller than you intended. The wall was there, you could feel it, but your hands were tired. You’d been holding it up for a long time. “That’s not— you were with someone else. You were photographed. And I know— I know nothing happened between us, I know that, it was a coach and a dinner and I’m not— I’m not naïve enough to think—”

“Hey.” He’d leaned forward, elbows on the desk, close enough that you could see the tiredness in his eyes. “What did you think I thought it was?”

You shook your head.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know.” Your voice cracked slightly on the last word and you pressed your mouth together and looked at the ceiling for a second. “I don’t know what I thought. I never— I don’t do this. I don’t read situations and I don’t make things out of nothing, I’m really careful, I’m always careful, and somehow I still—” you stopped. He waited, infuriatingly and tenderly patient. “And then you were with someone else,” you said, quietly. “And I was fine. I am fine.”

“You’re crying a little bit.”

“I’m aware,” you said, with some dignity.

There was a pause and outside the window the Cobham car park was going dark. “I ended it with Daniel,” you said, very quietly, and you weren’t sure why you were telling him except that you’d run out of things to protect. “Two weeks ago. I drove home feeling nothing and I think that was the answer.” He didn’t say anything for a moment and he didn’t look pleased about it, which you appreciated.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a speech, didn’t explain himself further. He just reached across your desk and put his hand over yours — still, warm, staying.

You looked at it. Looked at him.

“I ended it,” he said. “Weeks ago. Because it wasn’t — it wasn’t what I was thinking about.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. “I’m not asking you for anything right now. I just needed you to know that. And I needed to know you were actually okay.”

Your hand didn’t move. Neither did his. Outside the media suite the building was quiet, the particular emptiness of Cobham at evening, faint hum of the lights, distant sound of rain on the roof.

“I’m not okay,” you said, very quietly. The truest thing you’d said in months.

“I know,” he said, and he didn’t let go of your hand, and you didn’t let go either, and for a moment— just a moment— you let it be enough.

***

He noticed her because she was the only person in the room not looking at him, which could sound like ego, and he’d be the first to admit it. But it wasn’t — it was just that he’d been doing this long enough to know what a room felt like when he walked into it, the subtle shift, the awareness, and he’d gotten so used to it that the absence of it was actually the thing that stood out.

The media room, a Tuesday in February. He’d come in twenty minutes early by accident and she was crouched on the floor wrestling with a microphone cable, completely absorbed, talking to it under her breath — not to him, to the cable — like he wasn’t worth the interruption. When he said sorry, thought this was — she looked up for exactly one second and then looked back down and said press availability isn’t until three like he was a scheduling inconvenience. He’d stood in the doorway longer than he needed to. He found out her name that day by asking Priya from social, casually, like it was an admin question.

Y/N. She’s been here nearly a year.

Nearly a year, and he’d been in the same building the whole time and somehow she’d moved through it like weather: present, functional, completely unregistered until suddenly she was the only thing he noticed. He thought about that for a while.

What he noticed first, properly noticed, the inventory he built without meaning to, was how careful she was, not in a cold way but in a way that looked like someone who had learned that the world required navigation. She moved through Cobham with a kind of deliberate efficiency, always slightly purposeful and never lingering, like she’d mapped every room and knew exactly how long she needed to be in each one before the odds of something going wrong increased. He recognised it, vaguely, as something he’d felt at seventeen when he first came into the first team setup at Chelsea: that hyperawareness, that sense of needing to be useful enough that your presence was justified. The difference was that he’d grown out of it, more or less, and she seemed to have just refined it, made it a permanent operating mode, built a whole professional identity around being competent and contained and fine. He found it interesting the way you found a locked door interesting, not because you wanted to force it, just because you found yourself wondering what was on the other side.

The Paris trip changed something. He’d sat next to her on the coach back from the match because he’d wanted to, which was simple and true and he didn’t overcomplicate it. She’d held her bag like a shield and made him almost-smile in the dark for twenty solid minutes and then said something so quietly honest — it means I’m not surprised when it happens — that he’d had to look out the window for a moment because the directness of it had caught him off guard. She talked to him like he was a person, not a footballer, not a name, not someone to be managed or impressed, and then she remembered to guard it and shut it back down and went back to her screen. But he’d heard it. On the armrest in the dark he’d let his finger brush hers and not moved it because he wanted to see what she’d do, and what she’d done was go very still and stare out the window and breathe carefully, like she was handling something fragile. He drove home from the hotel that night thinking about the careful breathing.

When she went cold after Paris he went over it methodically, replaying the conversations with the analytical part of his brain he usually reserved for match footage and coming up with nothing concrete — just the gradual withdrawal, the different routes, the lunch at her desk, the responses that were perfectly professional and perfectly empty. The Isla thing was — he’d been honest with himself about the Isla thing. She was fine, they’d had a few good evenings, and the whole time there had been a low-frequency awareness that he was doing something for the wrong reasons, or not quite the right ones. He ended it after three weeks, quietly, kindly, without drama, and he didn’t announce it because it hadn’t felt like something that required an announcement. In retrospect he understood why that had been a mistake.

What he saw in her — if anyone had asked him to put it into words, which nobody did, which was perhaps why he ended up sitting uninvited in Priya’s chair on a Tuesday with someone else’s sandwich — was this: she was sharp, not in an aggressive way but in a precise way, choosing her words carefully, and when she said something real it landed exactly right and he could always tell the difference between her professional voice and the one underneath it, the quieter one that came out sideways when she forgot to guard it. She was honest, and even when she was deflecting, the honesty was in there somewhere — she just mostly kept it inside. And there was something exhausting and sad and quietly admirable about the way she carried herself through every situation with that careful composure, like she’d decided a long time ago that the safest version of herself was the useful one, the competent one, the one who didn’t need anything.

He didn’t want that version. He wanted the one that talked to microphone cables and gave thumbs up when mortified and said that’s mine with genuine outrage over a sandwich. He wanted the one that cried a little bit and said I’m aware with her chin up. He wanted — and this was the thing he’d been sitting with for weeks, the thing that had been building since February in a room with a broken microphone — he wanted her to know that being seen didn’t have to be the most dangerous thing in the world. He just had to wait for her to let him tell her that, and he was, if nothing else, patient.

-----

Nothing changed overnight, and that felt important to say — the hand on yours and the quiet room and the I’m not okay did not constitute a transformation. You did not float home on a cloud of emotional resolution. You drove home in the rain, ate cereal for dinner because you’d missed the sandwich window, and lay in bed for forty minutes thinking about the fact that you had cried, slightly, in front of Mason Mount over a desk sandwich. A desk sandwich, you thought, at the ceiling. That’s what broke me. Eleven months of composure and it was the sandwich. You fell asleep before you could finish being embarrassed about it.

The next morning you arrived at Cobham at your usual time and took your usual route and made your usual coffee and sat at your usual desk and were, externally, completely normal. Internally you were doing something that resembled a browser with forty-seven tabs open, several of which were frozen and one of which was playing music you couldn’t identify or stop.

Priya came in at nine, looked at you, looked at her chair — back in its normal position, no evidence of last night, everything tidy — and said nothing. “Morning,” you said. “Morning,” she said. She made her tea. You answered your emails. The world continued rotating.

At 9:47 your phone lit up with an unknown number, and then a text.

it’s mason. priya gave me your number. hope that’s okay.

You stared at it. Priya, you thought, with great feeling.

You typed That’s fine, deleted it, typed Okay, deleted it, typed Sure, no problem, this is Y/N by the way in case you weren’t sure, stared at that for a long moment, deleted it, and sent: That’s fine.

Three seconds.

how are you

You looked at that for a moment, at the intimacy of the lowercase, the lack of punctuation, the fact that it was a question he’d asked you many times in many corridors and this was the first time it felt like it was actually asking.

You typed: Honestly. Still processing the sandwich incident. Otherwise intact.

don’t be

the sandwich thing was my fault

I’ve been told I have boundary issues around other people’s food

Who told you that, you typed.

my mum

she’s right

You pressed your lips together against something that was almost a smile. I appreciate the honesty, you sent.

anytime

are you around later

The forty-seven tabs all tried to load at once. Around where, you typed, because you needed the specificity, because your brain required logistics when everything else felt uncertain.

cobham. after the afternoon session. just to talk. no sandwiches involved

You looked at your screen, then out the window, then back at your screen.

I finish at six, you sent.

I’ll find you

You put your phone down and picked it up again and put it down, and Priya said, without looking up from her computer, “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing.”

“Where you pick your phone up and put it down repeatedly.”

“I don’t do a thing.”

“You have several things.” You put your phone in your drawer. “I’m working,” you said, and Priya turned back to her screen with the expression of someone who had said everything she needed to.

He found you at six-thirteen, slightly later than six and slightly earlier than you’d spent the intervening hours catastrophizing about, and you were in the small corridor outside the analysis suite with your coat on and your bag on and ready to leave, which you’d timed deliberately, because being in motion was easier than being stationary when you were nervous.

“Hey.” He fell into step beside you, naturally, like it was easy.

“Hi.” You kept walking. He kept up.

“You were going to leave,” he said.

“I was going to coincidentally be leaving at this time, yes.”

“Right.”

“I had somewhere to be.”

“Where?” A pause.

“Home.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

You glanced at him sideways. He had his hands in his jacket pockets and the expression of someone who had absolutely clocked what you were doing and found it more endearing than annoying, which was honestly a little disarming. The evening was cool with that particular April coolness that couldn’t decide if it was still winter, and the car park was quiet, and he walked beside you with an easy unhurriedness that you found simultaneously calming and destabilizing.

“I wanted to say—” he started.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to.” Patient. Still. “I wanted to.” You closed your mouth.

“Last night wasn’t— I didn’t come in there to make things weird or to make you feel like you had to—” he paused, finding the words. “I just missed talking to you. The actual you. Not the press officer you.”

Something warm moved through your chest and you immediately distrusted it on instinct. “They’re the same person,” you said.

“They’re really not.”

“The press officer me is very competent.”

“She is,” he agreed. “She’s also a bit terrifying.”

You blinked. “I’m terrifying?”

“Not— no, not like—” he looked at you, caught something in your expression, and laughed, properly, that full-face laugh that you’d been cataloguing without permission since February. “You’re not scary terrifying, you’re just very— composed. You walk into a room and you know exactly what every person in it should be doing and you just sort of quietly arrange that without anyone realising and it’s—”

“Terrifying,” you finished.

“Impressive,” he corrected. “I was going to say impressive.”

“You said terrifying first.”

“As a compliment.”

“That’s a strange compliment.”

“You’re a strange person.”

The words landed and you looked at him, ready to feel the sting, and found him already looking at you with something so far from unkind that the sting never arrived. “Okay,” you said, quietly.

“In a good way,” he said, equally quiet.

You reached your car and stopped, and he stopped too, and the car park was empty and still and the sky above Cobham was doing that thing where it couldn’t decide between blue and grey. Somewhere across the car park a door opened and closed and you both glanced over instinctively, two people with the same instinct for discretion, and when you looked back at each other you were both almost-smiling at having done it simultaneously.

“I’m still—” you started. “I’m not very good at this. Any of this. I should probably tell you that upfront so you’re not surprised later when I say something weird.”

“You’ve already said several weird things.”

“That was a warm-up.”

He smiled, full and warm and aimed entirely at you, and your heart did the medically inadvisable thing.

“I think,” he said, “that we just— see how it goes. Quietly. No pressure.”

“Quietly,” you repeated, and something about the word settled something in you; the absence of performance, the permission to just be uncertain without an audience.

“Just us,” he said.

You nodded, slowly and carefully, like you were agreeing to something that mattered. “Okay,” you said. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear— just that, light and quick, like it was the most natural thing— and you stood very still and your brain went completely blank in a way that was actually quite restful.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he said.

“I have forty-seven browser tabs open in my head right now,” you said.

He stared at you. “Sorry,” you said. “That was one of the weird things. You’ve been warned.”

He was laughing as he walked away and you got in your car and sat for a moment and smiled at your steering wheel like an absolute idiot. Forward, you thought, but different this time, lighter. You drove home.

-----

The text came on a Thursday at 4:52 pm, not unusual in itself; you’d been texting for three weeks now, the kind of texting that had started as occasional and quietly become daily without either of you formally acknowledging that it had become daily. Short things mostly, observations, him sending something about training and you replying with something dry about the press implications and him sending back a single laughing emoji that you had, embarrassingly and privately, started to consider a form of affection. This text was different.

where do you live

You stared at it. Why, you sent back, because you were a person who required context.

just tell me the area

that’s not an answer to my question

Y/N

Mason— a pause, and you could almost feel him laughing at his phone—

i want to show you something. tonight if you’re free. what area

You looked at the text for a long moment. The sensible part of your brain —which had been gradually losing authority over the last three weeks but still showed up daily like a disciplined employee— said: ask more questions, get specifics, do not just give a man your postcode because he asked nicely.

Peckham, you sent.

perfect. I’ll send you an address. 7:30

That’s still not an answer

wear something nice

You stared at that for a genuinely unreasonable amount of time.

You almost talked yourself out of it twice— once at 5:30, standing in front of your wardrobe thinking this is insane, you don’t know where you’re going, and once at 6:45 when you were ready, navy dress and hair down, and you caught yourself in the mirror and your brain said this looks like effort and effort felt dangerous, effort felt like a declaration— so you grabbed your coat and left before the thought finished.

The address was a fifteen-minute drive, a street in Peckham you half-knew, quiet and residential, and when you pulled up you sat in your car looking at a small restaurant with its lights low and no sign outside, the kind of place that either didn’t need one or had decided signage was too much commitment. Through the window: candles, dark wood, small tables, the warm amber of a room specifically designed to make people feel like the rest of the world had gone quiet.

You looked at it. Looked at your dress. Looked back at the restaurant. Oh, said something in your chest. Oh, he absolutely did.

He was already inside and you saw him before he saw you —standing to greet you, dark jacket— and for a brief and unguarded second before he knew you were looking, he had an expression on his face that you didn’t have a word for yet. Anticipatory. Almost nervous. Mason Mount, nervous. You filed that away somewhere very safe.

Then he saw you and the expression shifted into something warmer and he said “you came” like he’d actually been unsure, which—

“You gave me forty minutes notice,” you said, sliding into the chair across from him. “I didn’t have time to talk myself out of it.”

“That was intentional.”

“That was manipulative.”

“Strategically timed.”

“Those are the same thing.”

“Are they?”

“I took a module on this—” you stopped. “You know what, never mind. Why is there no sign outside?”

“It’s a private dining room. Friend of a friend runs it, closes the main restaurant on Thursdays, does private bookings.”

You looked around at the low candles on every surface, at something that smelled extraordinary coming from somewhere, at a single table, yours, set properly with actual glassware and soft music from nowhere specific, the kind that existed to fill silence without demanding attention.

“So,” you said, carefully. “There’s no one else here.”

“No.”

“It’s just us.”

“Yes.”

“In a candlelit room.”

“Correct.”

“Mason.” You looked at him with great composure “Is this a date…”

He held your gaze, completely unbothered. “What do you think?”

“I think you should have said that in the text.” “Would you have come?”

A pause.

“…Strategically timed,” you said quietly.

He smiled.

The food arrived in small courses, unhurried, and somewhere in the middle of the second one you forgot to be nervous; not dramatically, just gradually, the nervousness losing its grip like a hand slowly unclenching, and what was underneath it turned out to be something that felt a lot like ease.

You talked, actually talked, not about work or schedules or anything that required a professional filter. He asked about your family and you told him about your mum who sent voice notes that were never under four minutes and your younger brother who you’d taught to cook badly and who had now surpassed you, which was both proud-making and annoying. He told you about growing up in Portsmouth, about being sixteen and terrified and certain he was one bad training session from being sent home, about the version of himself from that era that he wouldn’t fully recognise now.

“You seem very–” you searched for the word. “Settled. In yourself.”

“Now,” he said. “I wasn’t always.”

“What changed?”

He considered it. “Stopped waiting for permission to just be how I am, I think.”

You turned that over quietly. “I’m still waiting,” you said, before you’d decided to say it. “For permission. Or — I don’t know. For it to feel safe enough, maybe. To just —” you moved your hand vaguely, which was not a sentence but communicated something.

“I know,” he said, gently.

“It’s annoying,” you said. “About myself.”

“It’s not.”

“It takes me a long time to–”

“I know.” His voice was patient in that specific way that never felt like tolerance, just actual patience with no timer on it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The candle between you flickered and your stomach did something long and slow and warm that had nothing to do with the food. He looked at you differently in candlelight, or maybe not differently — maybe just more visible, the way candlelight stripped out all the ambient noise of a space and left only what it chose to illuminate. He looked at you the way you’d been quietly terrified of being looked at, and the difference — the thing that was different from every other time someone had looked at you and made you want to disappear — was that it didn’t feel like an assessment. It felt like recognition. Like someone looking at something they’d been looking for.

You picked up your glass to give your hands something to do. “Stop,” you said.

“Stop what.”

“Looking at me like that.”

“Like what.”

“You know like what.”

He didn’t stop. He leaned back in his chair with the particular ease of someone completely comfortable in their own decisions and looked at you across the candlelight and said: “No.”

“No?”

“No. You’re going to have to get used to it.”

“That’s very presumptuous.”

“Probably.”

“I could leave.”

“Your coat’s on my side of the table.”

You looked. It was. You’d put it there yourself when you sat down. “I did that.”

“You did.”

“That was an accident.”

“Sure.”

You looked at him for a long moment — this person who had walked into a media room twenty minutes early and noticed you talking to a microphone cable and had apparently decided, quietly and without fanfare, to keep noticing — and felt something shift in you that was past the forty-seven tabs and past the wall and past the careful practiced fine, something that felt, cautiously, like being glad.

“This is a very good restaurant,” you said, because you needed to say something that wasn’t the thing you were actually thinking.

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“The food is genuinely excellent.”

“Y/N.”

“The ambiance is also —”

“Y/N.”

“What.”

He was smiling. Soft, private, just for this room. “You’re doing the thing.”

“I have several things apparently.”

“The deflecting with commentary thing.”

“I don’t —” you stopped. “Okay I do that.”

“I know.”

Silence. The good kind. Full kind.

“I’m glad I came,” you said quietly. The truest available sentence.

His smile changed slightly. Warmer. Something in it that made you look at the candle for a moment because looking at him directly felt like a lot.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Don’t make it weird,” you said.

“I’m not making it weird.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“What face.”

“The — looking face. The one that makes my —” you stopped abruptly.

He waited. Very deliberately waited.

“Finish that sentence,” he said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Y/N —”

“The food is excellent,” you said firmly. “I’d like dessert.”

He laughed, full and delighted, the kind that meant you’d given him something he was going to keep, and you pressed your lips together against your own smile and looked at the menu with great concentration and felt, in the warm candlelit quiet of a room that was just yours, something bloom open in your chest that you didn’t have the words for yet, but you thought, maybe, you had time to find them.

Time did a thing at the restaurant, moving too fast in the parts where he was saying something that made you forget to monitor your own expression and too slow in the parts where he looked at you across the candle and you needed somewhere else to put your eyes, and by the time you both registered that the restaurant had gone completely quiet and the friend-of-a-friend had very politely stopped coming out of the kitchen, it was eleven seventeen.

“Eleven seventeen,” you said, looking at your phone with the specific horror of a person who had a 7 am press briefing.

“Eleven seventeen,” he confirmed, with considerably less horror.

“I have a 7 am .”

“I have a 6 am.” You stared at him. “And you’re not–”

“I’ve been here the whole time too,” he pointed out.

“Yes but you —” you gestured at him vaguely. “You seem unbothered.”

“I’m very bothered,” he said. “I’m just quiet about it.”

You stood up and reached for your coat –on his side of the table still, where you had put it accidentally on purpose three hours ago and neither of you had mentioned again– and he stood at the same time and reached it first and just held it open for you, naturally, like it was nothing, and you stood for a moment looking at it and then turned around and put it on and your brain said he’s right there and your body said yes I know and you said nothing and walked toward the door.

Outside: rain. Not light rain, not the fine invisible Parisian rain from the coach — proper, committed April rain, coming down in sheets across the empty Peckham street, turning the pavement to mirror, bouncing off the roofs of parked cars with a sound like applause. You stood in the doorway looking at it.

“Your car’s round the corner,” he said, from behind you.

“I know where my car is.”

“You’ll be soaked in about four seconds.”

“I have a coat.”

“It’s not a waterproof coat.”

You looked at your coat. He was correct; it was an aesthetic coat, a coat for looking put-together in mild weather, not a coat for this. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to —”

“My car’s right there.” He nodded at a black car parked directly outside. “Yours is round the corner in this.”

Logic. Infuriating logic. “Fine,” you said.

The six steps to his car still got your shoulders wet, and he knew the way without being told, which you registered and chose not to examine. The city at nearly half eleven was a different thing: quieter, amber-lit, rain making everything soft and blurred at the edges, and you sat in the passenger seat watching London slide past and felt the pleasant and dangerous warmth of someone who had eaten well and talked for hours and was now in a small enclosed space with a person they were — you looked at your hands.

Careful, said the sensible part of your brain, which had made a full comeback. Oh shut up, said the rest of you, which was new.

“Left here.” He turned left. “And then the next right. The building with the blue door.” He pulled up.

It was a converted Victorian townhouse split into three flats, yours on the top floor with big windows and high ceilings and the kind of bones that people used words like character to describe, and you were quietly proud of it in a way you rarely told anyone.

“This is yours?” he said.

“Top floor.”

He looked at the building, then back at you. “This suits you.”

“It does?”

“Big windows,” he said simply, and you didn’t know what that meant and also understood it exactly and decided not to pursue it.

“Well,” you said. “Thank you for dinner. And the drive. You should get home, you’ve got the six–”

“It’s still raining,” he said.

“I’ll go quickly.”

“Or I could come up.”

The words landed in the car. You looked at him. He looked at you, his expression even and open, nothing in it that was pushing, just offering — like he’d put something on the table and was waiting to see what you did with it. Every sensible instinct you had lined up and said: say goodnight, go inside, this is the right place to stop.

“It’s quite messy,” you said.

“Is it?” “Not… not chaotically messy. Organised messy. There’s a system.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m also out of decent tea. I have one kind and it’s not very good.”

“That’s fine.”

“And there’s a plant in the hallway that looks dead but isn’t, before you say anything.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about your plant.”

You looked at him for a moment longer. Then you got out of the car.

The flat was warm and smelled like the candle you’d left burning low on the kitchen counter, which you were privately grateful for because it meant the space had atmosphere you hadn’t had to engineer in the last thirty seconds. He came in behind you and stopped in the hallway and you watched him take it in: the high ceilings, the big windows running with rain, the warm lamplight, the bookshelves covering most of one wall in the living room, organised by colour because you’d gone through a phase and then committed to it. The plant in the hallway, which was fine and thriving and he glanced at but honourably said nothing about.

And the photos. The wall beside the kitchen was a gallery of frames, different sizes, no particular grid system, just things you’d loved enough to print and put up: your mum at the beach, your brother at graduation, a print of a painting you’d bought at a market in Lisbon on your first solo holiday aged twenty-four, terrified and proud of yourself, and a strip of photo booth pictures from a work Christmas party two years ago where Priya had dragged you in and you were laughing in every frame, genuinely laughing, the kind you couldn’t perform.

He drifted toward them and you filled the kettle because you needed something to do with your hands, watching him from the kitchen as he took his time, looking at each one with that same quiet attention he gave everything, and he stopped at the photo booth strip.

“This is you,” he said.

“Astute.”

“You’re actually laughing.”

“I do laugh.”

“I know. I just haven’t —” he paused. “I’ve heard you almost laugh. Where you stop it.”

You looked at the kettle. “Priya pushed me into a photo booth. I didn’t have time to stop it.”

“I like it.”

“The photo or the laughing.”

“Both.”

He turned from the photos and looked at you across the kitchen and the flat was small enough that across the kitchen wasn’t very far, and the rain was loud on the windows and the candle was still going and the kettle hadn’t boiled yet and —

“The tea really is not good,” you said. “I should warn you again. It’s some kind of —”

“Y/N.”

“— herbal thing that Priya left, I don’t actually know what’s in it —”

“Y/N.”

“— could be anything really, might be mostly —”

“Hey.” He’d moved, not a lot but enough that he was in the kitchen now, close enough that the forty-seven tabs all crashed simultaneously. “Look at me.”

You looked at him, which was a bad idea and an immediate regret, because he was looking at you the way he’d been looking at you all evening in the candlelight, the way that felt like recognition, and he was close and the rain was loud and you had genuinely just talked about herbal tea for thirty seconds to avoid this exact moment —

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said, quiet and straightforward, like he was simply providing information.

“Okay,” you said, very calmly. He leaned in. “Wait —” you said, and he stopped. “Sorry, I just —” you pressed your lips together and your heart was absolutely rioting, “I just want to say, for the record, that I’m normally a lot more composed than I’ve been the last few months, and this whole situation has genuinely been —”

“Y/N.”

“— a lot for me specifically and I don’t want you to think that I’m always —”

“Y/N.”

“— like this because I’m actually quite —”

You grabbed the front of his jacket. And kissed him.

It was not graceful, the first half-second, your timing slightly off and both of you adjusting, and then it was — warm and unhurried and tasting of the dessert wine from the restaurant, his hand coming up to your jaw like he’d thought about where to put it, the rain coming down outside and the candle burning low on the counter and the kettle boiling and clicking off and neither of you noticing.

When you pulled back you kept your eyes closed for a moment, and then opened them, and he was right there looking at you with that look, worse now somehow, more of it.

“For the record,” he said, quiet and a little rough at the edges, “you’re always composed.”

“I just talked about herbal tea for thirty seconds to avoid kissing you.”

“Composed and thorough.”

“That’s not what thorough means.”

“No?”

“No, thorough means —” you stopped. “I’m doing it again.”

“I know.” He was smiling, soft and private and just for this kitchen. “I don’t mind.”

His thumb moved, just slightly, against your jaw, and you were still holding his jacket, and outside the rain kept going, loud and committed and completely indifferent to the two of you standing in your kitchen at eleven fifty-three, figuring out something that had been waiting since February in a media room with a broken microphone.

“The tea really is terrible,” you said, very quietly.

“I’ll bring some tomorrow,” he said, equally quiet, and something in his eyes was warm and certain and patient, like someone who had decided and wasn’t revisiting it.

You nodded, once, small. “Okay,” you said.

And you smiled — not the almost-smile, not the stopped one, the real one, the Priya-photo-booth one — and he saw it and kept it like it was something worth keeping.

The candle burned. The rain came down.

Okay.

[vroomvroommbtch]

It will rain - MM x fem!reader.

Summary: It's been two years of bottled up feelings, and Mason has to find the words and admit what's in his heart before it's too late.

Warnings: Angst. Slight mention of smut. Jealousy jealousy. Mason being a little mess. Happy endings all over the place.

Words: 11.1k

Mason could easily fall asleep on the spot. He had spent the best part of his afternoon like that. The two days off he had were not enough for him to travel home or visit friends in London, so he stayed in Manchester. He told everyone he had no plans, but his favorite plan was actually in the city. Her place. A phone call, a question, then he was on his way. It was the same route he knew by heart. The same streets he had driven on for two years since they met. 

Every time, it started the same way. One of them headed to the other’s home, then they would catch up and act like nothing but friends because at the end of the day, that’s what they were. Just friends. With benefits, but friends. Even after two years, Mason absolutely hated it. 

It was never his intention for things to turn out that way. She was Licha’s friend. Licha's partner's home-town friend. He didn't want to be the guy who joined the team and started sleeping with someone's friend. Licha invited him to a lunch he had organized because of his Latin American generosity, and there she was, waving at him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. It wasn't his intention to become that man, but it happened. He didn’t want to be like that, but she was mesmerizing. He couldn't keep his eyes off her from the moment they met. He kept looking at her switch from impeccable English to too-fast Spanish and Mason had no idea what she was saying to Muri and Licha, but he loved it. It fascinated him so much that he couldn't stop wondering how complicated it would be to learn Spanish just because.

She was a bilingual goddess who, for some reason, ended up in Manchester. Almost two years older than him. A smile that could kill you. A laugh that could melt your heart. A face worthy of painting, framing, and hanging in museums. You could tell from her way of carrying herself that she had lived too many lives in one. Temptation in the form of a woman without even trying. Chilly once asked if he could get her number if Mason wasn’t making a move. It was right after Mason showed him a photo of her for the first time. Although it was a joke, Mason's gaze told Ben what he was thinking. That and a very calm "You want a second busted ACL, mate? Just tell me which one of your knees you value most". There were no more jokes after that.

Their relationship started by accident. He had no idea he was going to see her again, but it was like the universe laughed in his face. It was another lunch at Licha's. It wasn't going to be a big deal, just lunch and movies with friends so Mason could meet some people in the city. Mason thought he would have a normal day, but she was there, opening the door and welcoming him to hell. She gave him a friendly hug and it felt like a death sentence to smell her perfume. He had no idea which one it was, but it smelled of sin, flowers, and glory. Like a warm, sunny spring afternoon with nothing to do. Within two minutes, Mason had to breathe deeply and pretend he wasn't dying inside.

It started normal. They chatted like old friends making small talk, and then she joked that he could stay by her side to have a friendly face around. Mason knew it was a joke, but he followed her like a lost puppy seeking love and affection. At lunch, he sat by her side, listening to stories about the girls from back home. Another seven people were there talking too, but Mason had no idea what they were saying. No when she existed.

Later in the afternoon, the only free spot for movie time was by her side. Mason sat there, smiling like a happy boy when she insisted the seat wasn't saved for anyone. It would have been better for him to pretend and sit somewhere else, maybe even by Licha's side. It would have been a wise move, but his brain wasn't working at full capacity. He was still thinking about her accent, her jokes, and the smell of her perfume. He was still thinking how her hug felt.

For two hours, he had no idea how he coped with it. It wasn't just the jokes in the movie that made him laugh, it was the way she murmured she didn't like comedy movies, but she kept making silly whispering comments about it. He smiled not because of what Will Ferrell was doing, but because their hands were constantly touching inside a bowl full of sweet popcorn which she hugged like her life depended on it, but she insisted she was only sharing it with him. For two hours their arms and legs kept brushing, and she didn't seem to care, so Mason kept grinning while everyone kept thinking it was about the movie.

After that, Mason didn't see her for a month. He focused on work, training, and organizing his life. Football was the priority, but she somehow slipped his mind. He would drive around Manchester unconsciously searching for her familiar face. He would be at home and hear something on the TV that made him think of her. It reminded him of the smell of her perfume. Of the wrinkles in her nose when she laughed. Of the way her voice sounded when she whispered things to him. Of the way she would slap his arm playfully when he said something ridiculous.

It was only when he and some of the boys went to Licha's for a match that he saw her again. He didn't expect to see her, but there she was, drinking a glass of wine while seated at the kitchen counter. Suddenly, she was knocking the air out of his lungs again, and it felt like her superpower and the most horrifying curse he had ever known.

The girls promised they wouldn't interrupt while the boys were doing their thing, but all Mason wanted was to be bothered by her. He wasn’t sure he could focus on the match when she was in the house looking like a dream.

He made an effort to focus. He was able to do it for most of the first half. Kind of. Sort of. He tried not to let her gorgeous smile haunt him. He tried not to let her laughter bother him. It was disturbing when he could hear her somewhere in the house. Unless he was slowly losing his mind and imagining things. At that point, he wouldn't be surprised.

After surviving the first half of the match, he thought he had made it, but a trip to the kitchen ruined everything.

Mason felt it before he even saw her. He smelled her. He felt it in his bones, and then there she was, trying to open a bottle of wine without dying in the attempt. He didn't even ask if she needed help. In a gentle but swift move, Mason gently took the corkscrew and the bottle in her hands and opened it. A bit of a show off? Maybe. He didn't care, though.

There were many ways in which she could have thanked him. The simplest thing to do would have been to say 'Thank you' and walk away. He would have accepted anything she offered. Anything at all. Then again, she caught him off guard. She caught him by surprise. Mason didn't know what had happened, but suddenly her mouth was in his. Wine was the only explanation he could think of for how she kissed him, but he didn't care. There was nothing slow or hesitant about it. It was fast, rushed, and desperate. It was all tongues and teeth biting his lower lip. She smelled like sin once again. She tasted like trouble and glory. She acted as if she didn't need permission to claim him, and she was right. She didn’t. She marked him with the taste of sweet red wine and lip gloss and the feeling of her hands against him. Rings against his cheeks. Fingers running down his scalp and tugging at his hair just enough to make him groan. When she smiled, it made things worse. It made Mason grasp her hips and push their bodies together as if it was his last chance to survive. Like she was oxygen. Like she was the one thing keeping him standing.

Just as if she hadn't just turned everything upside down, as if she hadn't just struck him out of nowhere, she gave him the sweetest kiss. Like she was a completely different person than the one who made out with him for two minutes at a friend's house full of people. She left him confused, breathless, and dying for her after giving him a tiny, delicate kiss followed by a whispered 'Thank you for the wine, Masey'.

After that night, he sometimes saw her at Old Trafford. She was always there with Muri, tucked away in their box, looking like a goddess without even trying. The more Mason convinced himself he shouldn't try to run into her, the more he found excuses for doing so. That was his first mistake. It was the first of many mistakes.

On one particular Sunday, she looked dreamier than ever. There she was, wearing a red summer dress and a black jean jacket as if she wasn't ready to ruin his life. He saw her from the pitch when they stepped out to warm up, because how could you not see her when she was the definition of perfection? And he knew she was looking. His heart pounded inside his chest as she waved slightly, trying not to attract anyone's attention.

They ran into each other after the match as they waited for Licha to come out, Mason looking for an opportunity to talk to her. It was impossible to comprehend how she was even more stunning than before, but there she was. Maybe it was because he couldn’t do anything. Maybe it was because he knew how good strawberry lipstick tasted right off her lips. The only thing he wanted to say was hello, but while Muri and Licha hugged, she kissed Mason's cheek. Like it was normal. Like it was nothing. Like she wasn’t ruining him. Like his body didn’t shiver when he heard ‘Well played, Masey’ coming from her lips. She said it like it was a secret. A simple whisper he heard when everyone was distracted. 

The second mistake he made was looking for her on Instagram. It is said that curiosity killed the cat, and it was slowly killing Mason too. He wanted to know why she kissed him even when they could have been caught. He wanted to know if there was more to it than just flirting. He found her checking Licha's followers in no time. He probably shouldn't have sent her a DM from his personal account, but he did it anyway. He laughed too damn loud when she replied with a phone number and the words ‘I hate Instagram chat’. He didn't know whether it was an excuse or not, but he saved her number and texted her anyway.

What came after was almost inevitable. A week of texting back and forth, a lost match, and them pretending to catch up and say hi at Old Trafford. But her way of asking if he was okay cracked something open inside his chest. He couldn't recall the last time someone outside his family held his arm and asked. Because she stopped in the middle of the chaos to do it. She really wanted to know. But he couldn't do it. Not there. Not then. The best he could do was a sad smile and a 'I’ll tell you later' that wasn't very convincing. They weren’t having that conversation there, so Mason just pretended everything was fine.

He should have gone home that day. He should have gone home and stop thinking about her hand on his arm and their kiss weeks ago, but he couldn't. He texted her right after he got into his car. When she texted him back, he could still see her sitting in her car, just a short walk away from him. Mistake number three? Asking if she had any plans for that day. Mason shouldn't have asked and, for the same reason, wished she hadn't responded.

There were three dots. They disappeared. She then started writing again. Then she stopped. Suddenly there was an address. Another text followed. 'Gimme two hours’. Two long hours. 

Mason arrived one hour and forty-five minutes later after changing clothes at home and pacing the living room like a crazy man. He had no idea why he was so nervous when he got out of his car and walked to the red door. They already kissed, so that should have calmed the nerves for the uncertainty. He still had no idea why he was panicking, but he took a deep breath, pushed the doorbell button right by her flat number, and then took a deep breath again. Red door. Ten steps. First floor. The paper bag in his hand felt too heavy. Mason didn't want to go empty handed, so he got what he remembered she liked. A nice red wine. A bag of chips she snuck the first day they met. A bag of sweet popcorn. A box of Cadbury chocolates because he overheard her saying something about loving them. A bag with cookies from what internet said was the best place in Manchester. Random, but he hoped it was fine. He knew she had a sweet tooth, so he hoped it was fine.

He didn't have to knock on her door since as soon as he was in front of it, she opened it automatically. She didn't even give him a chance to think. As soon as he walked in, her arms were around him, giving him a hug. He didn't even realize he needed it. He refused to think he needed it after the game. But suddenly he was in her arms, automatically feeling lighter. Suddenly the air felt warmer and softer. Suddenly her perfume didn't smell like sin, it smelled like release.

They only talked for the first couple of hours. About their families, about her ending up in Manchester of all places, about work, movies and everything in between. They ordered takeout, talked more, and Mason finally brought up United. How he thought everything would be easier. How he thought things would be better. How it was more complicated than he expected. He finally admitted he missed London and Chelsea, his friends, and his life there. She didn't make a big deal out of it. Didn't try to give Mason advice he didn't ask for. Looking at him, she squeezed his arm and murmured, ‘It's normal and perfectly fine to feel homesick. It would be weird if you weren't’. Normal. That meant more than she would ever know.

His next mistake was accepting that glass of wine. He shouldn't have said yes, but it was the night after a match, the next day there was no training, so he could indulge. After all, he was the one who brought the bottle. It was just supposed to be a glass of wine for dinner. Then it turned into another one while watching a movie. That led them to sit closer and closer together. That led to her resting her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist.

It wasn’t his plan when he got there. He was not thinking about it, but the moment their lips touched, everything else disappeared. The whole world faded away. That kiss had nothing to do with the first one. It was full of passion, but it wasn’t rushed like the first time. It was needy but slow. It was desperate and deep. It was relentless and soft at the same time. Like they had nowhere else to be. Like there was no rush in the world. 

There was something addictive about her. From the way she moaned his name to the way she touched him, she was everything he had wished for and more. Nobody ever felt as good as she did. Nobody ever made him feel as wanted. Her body felt like oxygen. Like water after a long match. Like a warm sunny day after months of cold. Like being home after a long trip. Mason was sure he would never forget the way she sounded, like his name was the only thing she knew. He would do anything to hear it again, to hear her again, that’s why he spent a good part of his night between her legs, forgetting the rest of the world outside the walls of her room. 

It felt different with her. Sex felt different. There was a connection between them that he hadn't experienced with anyone else. There was nothing there but them, the scratches and crescent marks left on his back, and the hickeys he should not have left on her necks and shoulders. She kissed him like she wanted to leave a permanent mark on his soul. She touched him like she owned him. She rode him as if she were trying to prove a point. She had nothing to prove, but Mason never complained. He let her do whatever she wanted with him. Let her take whatever she wanted from him. In exchange, she left him breathless. Boneless. At a level of high that nobody could ever put him in. 

He stayed there after the first time they slept together. It was too late, too cold, and the rain beat against the windows, so she asked him to stay. "I won't kick you out like some random lad I met at a party. No need to cuddle if you don't want to," she insisted, placing her hand on his chest as they lay beside each other. Any other night, with any other girl, he would have left. Normally, he would have been out the door inventing some excuse, but not with her. Not when she was warm and soft, falling asleep by his side. Not when she looked like a dream right there in his reach. Mason would have left any other night, but that night he stayed. Although she said there was no need to cuddle, he moved closer, placed his arms delicately around her body, watching her relax, hug his waist, and mold to his body like they'd been doing it for a hundred years. He didn't say anything, but it had been a long time since he had slept so well.

From then on, that was how their nights went. Clothes forgotten somewhere on the floor, hands all over each other, lips covering every inch of skin they could reach. Her bed was his personal paradise, and her hands were his salvation. Everything felt lighter when he was buried deep inside her, no matter how horrible the week had been. There was a feeling that everything would be fixed somehow. It only took a few moans to silence all the noise in his head, and kisses to heal the scratches from tackles, and Mason was perfectly content with that.

He made the mistake of thinking he could keep her at arm's length. He said friends because he didn't want to deal with anything else in his life, and she agreed, saying it was totally understandable after such a big change. They kept on being friends, chatting, texting, and running into each other at matches. She waved at him every single time she was in the box. He felt the same flip in his stomach every time. 

Eventually, it became an almost weekly thing when he wasn't away. They followed the same pattern every time. Dinner at his or her home, a drink, a movie, and one of them would be all over the other. The problem was how Mason noticed himself hugging her tighter every night they spent together. He kissed her a little longer. He smiled like a fool whenever she fell asleep on his chest. His body relaxed instantly as he lay against her.

Even then, he kept running away. He always found an excuse to stay at a certain distance when he had too many days off. Visiting friends in London. Seeing his family at home. A golf trip. A training camp. He knew it, but he didn't want to admit it. Deep down, he knew he was running away from her. From everything she made him feel. From the way he knew he would end up knocking on her door looking for love and shelter like a strangled puppy.

It started as a way to not think whenever he was stressed, but then he couldn't stop thinking about her. Suddenly everything became an excuse to run to her because he missed her. Lost a game? Red door. Win? Red door. Bad day? Red door. Missing home? Red door. Something good has happened? Red door. Every single time he was with her, he was terrified at how amazing everything was, but when he was away, he missed it more than anything. She was Mason's only constant in Manchester. That red door. Those ten steps. Her hug. That smile on her face every time she opened the door. The sweet ‘Hey Masey’ that welcomed him. The red berries scent in the air. The smell of her perfume. The brown English roll arm sofa she hated. Her kisses. The cuddles. Their dinners. Those nights in her bed. Her ability to just let him be and take a breath. No expectations. No explanations. With her, he wasn't just a name and a number. She was just Masey. Clear and simple.

She was full of calm and magic, because there was no other way to describe how she could make the tension in his shoulders drain slowly but surely with her hands on his back. Everything seemed to disappear when she was around. Stress, worry, physical and mental pain. She didn't ask any questions. Nothing about work, nothing about what happened, nothing about how everything felt apart. She knew he didn’t want any questions. He had been avoiding them. Ignoring the fire until it burned out. Meanwhile she just waited for him to talk. She let him take all the frustration out of her, then looked after him like the most precious thing in the world. With her there were no training sessions, no bad matches, no weird pitch positions, no strategies, no expectations, no football, no United mess, and no journalists wanting a piece of him after tearing him apart every week. There was no Chelsea and no shattered dreams. It was just them. Her. Her bed. Her smell. Her bedroom and the warm pink light and colorful sheets on her bed. That was his personal heaven, but Mason wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself.

Mason tried to keep a certain distance, but he couldn’t. It didn't matter how hard he tried not to think about it, everything reminded him of her. A glass of red wine, chocolate bars at the grocery store, random songs, and even watching a Disney movie with Summer. She was everywhere and Mason had no idea what to do. The real problem started after Licha got injured and she stopped attending matches. It was as if she had been ripped from a part of his life. He still saw her, had dinner and ended up in her arms, but Mason missed her. He missed her presence there. Missed seeing her in the hallways and getting a smile from her. There was something out of place when he looked up while he was in the pitch and didn't see her there. Though he would never do it, he missed the feeling of dreaming of scoring a goal for her.

Slowly but surely, his decisions began to take a toll. He was beginning to feel more at peace with everything. Manchester, the club, and being away from home. And once things began to feel like they were finally falling into place, Mason began to regret his decision to only be friends. After a while, he started hating the word. He didn't like the way it sounded when it was about her. It didn't sit well with him when it was about them. When his family asked him why he was grinning at his phone, he couldn't say ‘Just a friend’. It didn't feel right. He didn’t like the fact that she couldn’t attend to important matches just because. After a while, Mason started to hate the fact that he couldn't invite her to random places just because. He could, but everyone would know if someone saw them, and that wasn't what was supposed to happen. Her life was normal. She was Licha's friend. They weren't supposed to be together.

There was also the little detail that no one knew about them. At least nobody in Manchester knew. Only his best mates and her sister back home. They were always lying. More than once Mason saw her lying on the phone saying she couldn't go out because she had things to do. The only thing she was doing was him. She talked on the phone like it was nothing, but meanwhile she used her mouth to leave kisses on his thighs before she took him to the hilt, sucking him like a starving woman. On days like those, when Mason had to bite his cheek to keep himself from laughing or moaning, that's when he knew they could work it out. They could be good together because they already had a good relationship. It was amazing in its own way. It wasn’t forced. It was easy. It flowed. There was a magical comfort that came naturally and without effort. But the big question burning in his head day and night was how to say it. It was agreed from the beginning that they would be friends who had sex. She never mentioned wanting something different. She never gave him a hint.

As weeks passed, Mason didn't know what to do. He stopped spending international breaks away from Manchester. He kept going back to her instead of escaping. He kept knocking on the red door, and she kept opening it with a smile on her face. A kiss on the cheek was always waiting for him. There was always a hug. It was anchoring. It was grounding. It was familiar.

There have been months since then. Mason moved to a new house, Ace became part of his visits to her place. Licha returned back to the pitch. She was back at Old Trafford and took the space she would always occupy right next to Muri and the new Martinez family member. Mason kept looking up, she kept waving at him knowing how things would end. 

The holidays came and Mason hadn't seen her for a month. She travelled home to see her family, putting her an ocean away. Her Christmas present was hidden in his closet, away from his family and from any questions. He got texts from her promising to bring cool stuff for him to try. As soon as he was alone in his room on Christmas Eve, he called her, hearing her voice saying something about the crazy time difference. ‘We're living in different days!’ she giggled, making Mason wish he could be right by her side, kissing her wrinkled nose. He opened the box with her present too many times, still overthinking it. He didn't want to go too crazy with it. He wanted to keep it simple but meaningful. He found those earrings somewhere online by coincidence. It was a pair of rose-gold hoops, but the dangling charm attached was the important part. It was Scarlet Witch's crown with a heart-shaped red stone attached under it. Marvel movies were their thing. That was the first thing they discovered they had in common. That was her favorite character in the whole world. When Mason saw them, he didn't even think twice, but he couldn't help but wonder if it was too much.

Somewhere deep down, he knew that things weren't going to be easy in the New Year. It wasn't that he was pessimistic. He wasn't that kind of guy, but saying Happy New Year to her through a screen was somewhat upsetting to him. The fact that he couldn't kiss her at midnight somehow hit him harder than he expected. The fact that she was away didn't really contribute to a year that didn't start well. Ruben was sacked. Two managers. He was benched, then injured. Every single dream about going to the World Cup was slowly banishing from his hands, completely disappearing in front of his eyes. The first part of January felt like a nightmare, at least until she returned.

When they saw each other she didn’t kiss his cheek, she just went straight to his lips. She kissed him like she needed it, not caring if they were at her door. If any neighbor saw them then it was their problem for walking in. She was back, tanned, beautiful and Mason couldn’t be happier about it. She was back soft, warm, solid, grounding. The same red door. A soft smile, a tender kiss, a warm hug. For her, it wasn’t the number of matches he missed or the amount of injuries he had. He was still Masey. She still held him like he mattered above everything else. Like he was worth beyond football. 

That's how the afternoon found him. The rain was hitting the window of the tiny living room, the air smelled of red berries, the TV played softly, but neither of them paid attention to it. Ace was sleeping in her bed, offended because the sofa wasn't spacious enough for the three of them. Mason tried to complain about it, saying she was spoiling the dog, but then she would smile at him, insisting that she was treating Ace like the fluffy king he was. There was not much he could say after that.

He didn't want to fall asleep, but it was impossible to resist. Part of his body rested on top of her, his leg lazily crossed over tights, and his arms encircled around her waist like he didn't want to let go. And he didn’t want to. Not really. Especially when his face was buried in her chest, feeling her warm skin against his cheek while she wore that ridiculously tiny tank top with thin straps. She had a cardigan on, but thankfully it wasn't doing much to cover her.

It was even more difficult to stay awake when her face was buried in his hair. One hand scratched his scalp and played with his hair, the other wandered aimlessly over his back and shoulders. Whenever her fingers pressed harder against his skin, he kissed her chest, tightening his arms around her. Every time that happened, he felt her smile against his hair, kissing whatever part of him she could reach.

Those were the days Mason dreamed of. He dreamed of lazy afternoons with her without letting go. He wanted to see her every day without having to make ridiculous excuses. He wanted that without needing any reason to spend time with her. He wanted her, and it was awful. It was scary. It was all-consuming. It was full of yearning and need. There was a paralyzing feeling, and Mason was angry with himself for getting into such a mess. Maybe things would have turned out differently if he hadn't said anything about being friends back then. It wouldn't be a cat-and-mouse game. He wouldn't be praying that no other man would appear in her life and take her away from him.

He tightened his arms around her at the mere thought of it. He closed his eyes again, trying to erase the thought from his mind as he buried his face further into her neck. 

“Are you alright there?” she asked out of the blue. Mason nodded, unsure what he would say if he spoke. “You sure?”

As her lips touched his forehead, Mason nodded again. He made a path of kisses around her skin. From her neck to her collarbone, from his jaw to her chest. He even kissed the lobe of her ear and the earring she never took off after Mason gave them to her. Then he realized he had to do it. He needed to talk to her. Ask her out. Anything. Living in the weird limbo of pretending to be something they weren't was the only thing he didn't want to do. Either way, it could lead to something much better or break his heart completely, but he needed to be out of it.

"Are you going to stay there the rest of the weekend?" After two years, he knew her voice tones well enough to recognize them. He didn't need to see her face to know that she had that easy smile, the one that came out only when she was comfortable and somewhere familiar. It was the one she always gave him when they spent a lazy day in comfy clothes or half naked knowing there was nowhere to go. “You know I gotta make dinner at some point, right?” 

"Takeout exists," Mason murmured, finally speaking after what felt like a lifetime without doing it. “Whatever you want just name it. I know it’ll be Italian, though." 

“You know me too well, don’t you?” she asked sweetly, kissing his forehead again. And again, Mason kissed her on the jaw and nodded. He hated how easy everything felt. How good it felt. How at home he always felt with her. He hated how he couldn’t have that every day of his life. “We can order something else if you don’t feel like Italian. I don’t mind."

"I know I'm in for an Italian ride when I come here, so I'm fine. I was mentally prepared for it.” The sound of her giggle made his heart leap and flip. It made him wonder how he could have been so stupid from the very beginning. “We can order from that place with nice ravioli? That one you like.”

Mason didn't care where they ordered dinner. He couldn't care less about whether they ordered Italian or Mexican food. All he wanted was for her to be happy. If a plate of ravioli from a posh restaurant could make her smile, he was more than willing to do it. Especially when he knew she never ordered from that place because of its price.

“But I’m paying. I’m tired of you paying for dinner." 

“You know there’s no way that’s happening, Bear.” 

And there was his favorite smile, the one she saved for him. The one that came out when he used the nickname he gave her after one Halloween party and she loved it because nobody ever gave her a special nickname. When she smiled like that, no matter how bad or how hard his day was, everything became brighter. 

"Then I'll cook." 

"No, no, no!” Mason exclaimed, tightening his grip on her. "You'll pay next time." 

“Pinky promise?” she asked, offering her little finger. He didn't doubt it. Looking up at her eyes, he untangled one of his arms from around her and laced their fingers. Then, once their hands were finally together, he took his time to kiss her knuckles, making it his own way to seal the deal. “You better remember it next time. You don't want me to cut off your finger." 

A chuckle escaped Mason's lips as he rested his head against her chest once more. However, he didn't let go of her. Half-laced hands rest against her chest right by his face, within easy reach of another part of her body for him to kiss.

Ten minutes passed without anyone saying anything. Mason knew there was a true crime documentary on TV, but he didn't pay attention. His eyes were closed, focused on the sensation of her fingertips and lips against his skin. She still kissed every inch of him that she could reach. Her hand still stroked his head. There was nothing more natural than her thumb running against his knuckles. She was tenderness personified. She was a balm for his heart. She was the calm in the storm. She was his home away from home.

Mason was so completely in love with her that he had no idea what to do anymore. 

“You still miss the longish hair?" Mason broke the silence.

“I do miss Hair Prince Masey. But I told you, I still can work with this. You still look handsome and I can still grab it, so we are good. As long as it isn't too short, I'm good. And as long as this stays,” she smiled, stroking his jaw while brushing her fingers through his beard. 

“What? You didn’t like me shaving?”

"You know it's not that I didn't like it. But I do prefer it like this. I like how it feels. But if you want a change, you can always go back to blonde hair. It was sexy as fuck," she giggled, ruffling his hair. Sometimes he wasn't sure why she gave him the time of day when he had that blonde-in-the-middle-of-a-crisis hair. Mason didn't understand why she liked it, but he didn't complain. "But it doesn't matter what you do, you're cute no matter what." 

It didn't take Mason long for his cheeks to turn red. In two years, she told him uncountable times that he was handsome, but each time he blushed uncontrollably. It wasn't the first time a girl told him something like that, but it was different with her. It hit him differently when the woman of his dreams said those words. It always left him hanging and looking at her like she hung the whole galaxy for him.

"Shut up."

"You're even cuter when you're blushing. However, I must get up, good sir," she told him, kissing his forehead again as she untangled herself from his body.

“Oi! What? Why? It’s not fair!" he complained as he looked up at her, doing grabby hands and pouting to make her stay. “I was comfy!”

"Me too, but some things can only be done in the bathroom. I’ll be back in a second and then we can check out dinner?"

Mason nodded, still pouting at her. At least he got a long, slow kiss that left him smiling as he watched her walk away. He knew he was going to ask her out that night. He was going to ask her while they were having dinner. With the excuse of Italian food, he planned to ask her out to dinner at the same restaurant they were going to order from. It was Valentine’s Day, so he could use it as an excuse. A date. An actual date. A real thing. Picking her up, opening the door, and pulling her chair. He wanted to make sure he was doing it right. He wanted to tell her the truth. Only he hoped that he wouldn't end up going home alone instead of going to bed with her. 

Minutes later, she left the bathroom, but she didn't immediately go to the couch. As she passed by, she ruffled his hair, then walked to the kitchen. “Want some water?” 

“Nah, thanks, babe. You're ordering the same thing as last time?" Mason asked, grabbing his phone off the coffee table where it had been forgotten all day. 

"Maybe? Gimme a second and I’ll tell you.” 

As Mason hummed in agreement, he opened the app to find the restaurant. Whatever they ordered didn't really matter, but one thing was certain: the focaccia with tomatoes. Even if she didn't mention it, Mason always included it, seeing her face light up every time because he remembered how much she loved it. He had no idea what he was going to order, but as soon as he secured her focaccia in the cart, he began looking at the menu.

It was then that he heard it. 

'B, you know I can't make it on Saturday. Got a date with a cute guy named Charlie.'

Listening to other people's conversations was not in his nature. Even though he wasn't that kind of guy, he heard it loud and clear. Just like he heard her from the kitchen, he was surprised that she didn't hear his heart breaking.

It wasn't a date with him. He didn't know she went on dates. Mason understood that it wasn't his concern. He knew there was no exclusivity agreement. They had a deal. If they slept with anyone else, there would be a heads up. Health safety measures. That was it. In the past two years, there have been no mentions of it. She didn't mention anything. He didn't either because he didn't want to sleep with anyone else. He wanted her and for a second he thought she wanted him too. He let himself dream and believed she wanted him, but perhaps he was just a fool. He might have been too late after all.  

“Okay, now tell me, what are we having? I mean, besides the wine," she joked, walking into the living room as if nothing was wrong. Like she didn't tell her friend about her date when she never said anything about them. “Masey?” 

“You have a date? Since when?”

He didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did. He didn't intend it to sound as accusatory as it did. Neither of them owned anything to the other, but it just slipped from his lips. He couldn’t help it when his heart bounced into his chest. He could feel a knot forming in his stomach. The lump in his throat. The pain in his chest. There was a voice in his head yelling him he'd lost her, that he'd lost his chance. He sat there paralyzed, staring at her like it was the biggest betrayal of his life. 

“Perdón?” 

Mason might not have had a lot of Spanish knowledge. He learned some words and managed to pronounce them in a messy English accent. His two years in Manchester with an Argentinian and an Uruguayan had given him enough exposure to the language, but she taught him the basics. They spent so many nights lying in bed together, her fingers tracing lazy lines over his chest, laughing like idiots while she taught him insults he could use in a match. He knew some words she used to talk to him and melted every time she called him 'amor' instead of 'love' out of the blue. He was familiar with the basics, which is how he knew she dropped an annoyed 'Excuse me?'.

He looked at the floor completely ashamed, not even daring to look into her eyes. Week in and week out, he faced players that were much larger than him, ready to break his bones in order to win, but no defender was as frightening as her. The fact that she said it in Spanish made it even more scary because Mason knew how her brain worked. Her mother tongue was only used when she was surrounded by friends who spoke it or when she was angry. He never imagined he could screw up so badly that it happened, but there he was, not knowing what to do.

“Bear, listen-“ Mason tried to explain. He wanted to say something, fix it, get back to their normal evening, and leave everything behind. When he opened his mouth, he instantly regretted it. It would have been easier for him if he had never heard a word, so he could live in utter ignorance. He just wanted to order food, have dinner, kiss her, and go to bed by her side. He tried to explain that he didn't mean it that way, but she interrupted him.

“You were listening to my conversation? Since when?” she asked completely in disbelief. He couldn't blame her for looking hurt. They were not like that. That was never them. 

“I just- You always talk on the phone in front of me and-“

“That’s not what I asked you!” she exclaimed, crossing her arms against her chest like a shield between them. "Since when do you care whether I have a date or not? Because last time I checked, you made it clear that you were my friend. It was your idea to start with.” 

"I thought it was the right thing to do and you agreed!" Mason knew that his words weren't making things better. Even though he knew things would get worse, he wanted to remind her how she agreed with him at the beginning. They agreed on everything. They were on the same page. “But I thought there was something good between us. I thought we were onto something good. I didn't think you would date anyone."

"You didn't think, and now that you believe someone stole your toy, you're jealous? Jesus, Mason.” 

She paced the floor while he was still there, frozen in place. He wanted to hold her hand. He wanted to ask her to stop, but he didn’t think he had the right to touch her. No when it felt like there was a bridge between them. It was not the distance he felt that hurt him the most, but the fact that she thought she meant nothing to him. That was what he needed to clarify first, even when the knot in his throat was a constant threat.

"You think this is just about that? You think I just use you as a toy? You think that makes me jealous? I'm mad at myself for taking too fucking long to ask you out. It took me too long, and now you're clearly going out with someone else on bloody Valentine's Day. But it’s fine. You’re right. That was the deal. It was my idea. Friends.” 

“You’re unbelievable, Mount.” She fought to hide it. She tried to do it quickly so Mason wouldn't see it. She tried to pretend it didn't matter, but Mason could see her wiping a tear from her cheek. It wasn't the first time he had seen her cry. He dried her tears on bad days when she just wanted to hide away, holding her until she felt better or fell asleep. However, he never made her cry. The promise he made to himself to always make her smile was broken that night, and everything felt even worse. “You could have heard Charlie was not a guy if you listened to the whole conversation rather than just the part you wanted to hear” she added, turning toward her living room window. 

“What?”

"Brooke and Sam have a new cat. He's too tiny and it's their anniversary, so I’m taking care of him. That’s my date. You never mentioned a thing about Saturday so I thought you didn't care.”

It hit Mason like a truck. A slap on the face would have been better. It was worse than any hit or injury he ever had on the pitch. He acted like a jealous idiot and made her cry for nothing. He hurt her for nothing more than a ghost. He was destroying the best thing he had out of fear. He had never felt so stupid in his life. He had never felt so ashamed of himself. He couldn't understand why she wasn't kicking him out. It didn't make sense to him why he wasn't outside the flat, going back home with Ace.

“Bear… Baby, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m- God, I’m an idiot. I’m an utter cunt. I’m so sorry. I know I don’t have the right to ask anything of you. I know you owe me nothing. I know it's not a justification, but I really panicked." 

Mason stood up from the couch, but didn't move close to her. There was nothing he wanted more than to hold her in his arms, but he didn't want to push. He knew she was stubborn. She had a tendency to close when she got mad. She always needed a moment to calm down and regain her composure. It was her thing and he respected it, so Mason stayed there, trying to breathe through the panic of losing her and the reality that maybe he already did. 

"I should have told you sooner. I should have done it long ago, but I couldn't figure out how to just sit in front of you and say 'Hey Bear, I broke rule number one and I'm falling for you'. That wasn't the deal, and I didn't want to stop seeing you. I tried to stop it instead. I tried to stop how I feel. I swear I tried. God knows I tried, but that’s not how it works. There’s no switch to turn it off. I tried, but then you kiss me and that’s it. I- God, I forget about everything else. You text me and I come running because I want to be here. The only reason I'm not going insane here is because of you. There are all these rumors about the club and me and-" He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the knock in his throat. He took a deep breath, too, but it was all for nothing. The only person who could help the pressure on his chest go away didn't want to look at him, so he just sucked it up and kept talking. "If that happens then I know how this ends. I know how this is gonna go and I don’t want to. Leaving Manchester means losing you and that’s not how I want things to be. It feels like a never ending nightmare and every single time I feel I’m gonna lose it I see you and everything gets better. Every time I see you at my couch with Ace or here doing your thing, I feel like I can breathe again. I can pretend that things are normal. I can convince myself that nothing will change for a while. Then I go out there or you leave my place and it all goes to shit again. But the noise stopped for a while when we were together. It was enough to let me sleep through the night. I’m not trying to justify what I said. I’m sorry I jumped. I know I shouldn’t have. I know I don’t have the right to. But I- I don’t wanna lose the one good thing that happened to me in this city. I don’t wanna let this, you, us, go. Not until they-"

He couldn’t keep going. He couldn’t say it. Saying it made it real and he didn’t want it, not that night.

It was only a few minutes, but it felt like hours. His heart arched. The air felt thick to him as he breathed. A room that had once seemed like home had now become a war zone that he brought upon them. And there he was, with his heart in his hand, waiting for her to move.

From all the relationships he had, this was the first time he was truly terrified of endings. Even though he never fully had her, he was afraid of losing her. Of losing what they had. Of walking through that door for the last time. Of knowing those hours on the couch, in her arms, in her life, were going to be the last. It made his heart ache to think that little kiss before she went to the bathroom might be their last. He should have kissed her more. He shouldn’t have hugged her more. Tighter. Longer. He should have said something before. He should have done it because he knew she wouldn't mention anything no matter how much she wanted it. She was too respectful of his time and career. He knew how much she respected his need to keep his life private. He was the one to blame considering how well he knew her. 

Now, she was the one not saying anything, which made it terrifying since she was always saying something. He wanted to beg her to talk to him. To yell at him. To tell him to fuck off. But there was nothing more than the distant noise coming from the TV, the rain hitting the window and her soft sobs that she was trying to hide. 

"I accepted the goddamn agreement because I was stupid enough to convince myself that having you somehow was better than not having you at all," she finally murmured. Mason stayed silent, letting her speak before regretting her decision. "I told myself to give you some time, thinking that maybe if I was lucky you'd like me enough to change your mind one day. I thought maybe one day you would change your mind about us and what you wanted. Maybe one day we could- I don't know. Every time you knock at my door or text me to come over I get all excited thinking, 'Maybe this time'. But it’s never that time, so I say ‘Maybe the next one’. I guess I was an idiot. I was stupid enough to think a girl like me would stand a chance with you and your shiny life like in some ridiculous fairy tale."

“What? Babe, no. Why you...?” He didn't have to finish the question.

“You needed time. You needed to figure things out. But now? I have no idea what we're doing. I know you're dealing with United and the injury, but I don't know what to do. You come here every week and we do this, we act like we’re something we're not. We play house on the weekends and then I think it’s over and you call again and it’s getting harder, Mase. Letting you go gets harder. It hurts. It's really painful to tell myself that's the way it is. Wanting something you won't get is hard. There is no way I can explain how painful it is to want someone you'll never have. I don't know how long I can still be your dirty little secret, Mase."

After two years of coming and going, running one after the other, of nights spent in her bed, of lazy afternoons held in his arms, Mason knew her. He grew to know her body like the back of his hand. He knew if anyone else had that conversation with her, she would run away. That's why he knew he should give her time. The time to take a breath, to think, to even overthink things. He should give her space to decide what to do and what was going to be her next step. He knew better than to push himself into her bubble unless she asked him to. He knew better to stay away unless she came to him. But that night, Mason broke every single rule in the book about how to handle her bad mood and sadness. He wasn’t gonna give her time when she was thinking he didn’t want her. He wasn't going to give her space, especially if it would give the wrong impression. 

Though he never said it, he understood everything she was going through. The situation was getting harder for him as well. Leaving her bed, leaving her space, her arms and her kisses. Feeling like a couple doing domestic things, but then leaving and returning to being her friend. He had a constant feeling of panic in the back of his mind. There was a constant feeling of terror inside his chest. Fear of losing her. Of her finally getting tired of him. Of having someone better show up and give her everything she deserves when Mason was dying to do so. 

Slowly, Mason grew closer to her with calculated steps. Firstly, he stroked her arm, his fingers caressing her smooth skin. Seeing that she didn't move, he placed both hands on her hips. When she stayed, when she sobbed louder than ever before, Mason rounded her body. His arms rested around her waist and his chin rested against her shoulder while his chest touched her back. He could only think about how she didn't push him away and how she said 'Mase'. No Mason, no Mount. It wasn’t the usual 'Masey' she would go for, but it was something. There was still a crack where he could get through among the tall walls she built around herself. If she said 'Mase', then not everything was lost. 

“You aren’t a dirty little secret. You've never been that. You could never be that,” Mason clarified first, making sure she heard that before he kept talking. "I swear it isn't like that. 

"That's what it feels like." 

"I promise you that's not what it is. I have wanted this since we met. I've always wanted you, this, and us, but I was a mess. I wanted to give you something good, but I didn’t know how. I didn't want to drag you into a storm because I had no idea what to do with myself. You know my job involves a lot of ridiculousness, and I wanted to protect you from that. I wanted to keep the bubble around us as long as possible, especially since I had no answers when anyone asked me what we were." Mason explained carefully, softly, trying to make his voice calm even when he was a mess.

There wasn't a need for him to see her face to know she was slowly relaxing. When he kissed her shoulder and she didn't push him away, that's when he knew she was with him. It gave him hope. “I thought you wanted things to stay the same because you never came to matches when I invite you. The minute I mentioned going somewhere, you said we shouldn't. I was about to ask you out when I heard you talking about a date. That's why I snapped even when I shouldn't have."

She was still hugging herself. She still had her arms glued to her body even when Mason hugged her waist. He recognized that pose. He recognized the tension in her shoulders and back. He had seen the ‘I'm trying to hold myself together’ many times before. Several times after work, he had opened his house's door and found her like that. It was normal back then for her to let Mason keep the pieces together for her. The first step would be a long hug by the door. This time he could see her shoulders slowly relaxing, but her arms were still in their place. All Mason expected was her letting him hug her and he was fine with that. It would still be a victory to not be kicked out of the flat, even if it meant sleeping on the couch. But slowly, tentatively, timidly he felt the tip of her fingers touch his arm. Heaven knows, he had to bite his cheek so he wouldn't smile.  

“I said no because I didn’t want to be a bother. I didn’t want you to get into trouble. There's no excuse for me not to be there if Licha isn't playing. A quarterfinal and a semifinal I can lie about, but the rest? I wanted to be there, but didn't know how. I didn't want to cause you more trouble. I didn’t want to be another burden” she finally admitted, voice almost a whisper. He didn’t know how much it took for her to admit such a thing. It probably took as much courage as it took her to slowly unwrap her arms. 

It felt like he could breathe again when he felt her hands over his. It felt like heaven. Like home. Her fingerlaces laced with his felt like a glimmer of hope. But sadly, Mason had to let her hands go for a moment. He didn’t go away, just moved around to stand in front of her. For a second he wished he didn’t because the sight in front of him broke his heart even more. Her beautiful eyes, normally full of light, were now full of tears, all red and sad. Her cheeks were wet. And her mouth was a tiny pout that Mason wanted to kiss until it turned into a smile again. But he didn't dare kiss her. He wasn’t going to push it that far. The only thing he did was place his hand on her cheeks, meeting her gaze. 

“You could never be a bother,” Mason assured her softly, gently stroking her cheeks. "You could never be a burden to me, baby. Not even if you tried. If anything, you have been one of the most amazing things that have happened to me since I moved here. I’m sorry I made you cry. And I’m sorry I made you wait so long. You weren't the problem, it was me. So if you still want to do this, I'd really love to take you out. The whole deal, you know?”

“You’re an idiot.” It wasn’t a question. There was no doubt about it. It was an affirmation and Mason knew she was right about it.

"I know, I know. But I’m an idiot who’s ready to beg you not to kick him out tonight because he really wants to cuddle with you. And probably for the rest of his life. I'm an idiot, but I want to be your idiot, holding hands, taking you on dates,anything you want."

She still had a serious expression on her face. She still looked like she was mad as hell at him. Her forehead was still frowning, and her face was red from crying, but out of the blue, she rested her hands over his chest as she always did. It took everything he had not to smile like a silly kid in love. He had to take a deep breath and pretend he was fine, but she was surely feeling his heart jumping inside his chest. There was no way she wouldn’t notice. 

“I’m not kicking you out tonight, but you’ll have to work for it. Now dinner is definitely on you. You are definitely taking me on a date. And you’re the one talking to Licha about this” she affirmed, poking his chest with her fingers at everything she named on the list. 

"Licha's gonna kill me, baby. You know it."

"Then you should have thought twice before kissing me."

"You kissed me first!" 

"Then you should have thought about it before getting inside my pants."

"Did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? How could I resist?" 

“Look who’s talking,” she murmured, shrugging slightly. “One last thing. I want a jersey with your name to go to Old Trafford. I’m gonna be that kind of bad bitch.” 

“Hey, don’t call my girlfriend a bad bitch. She’s just badass as hell.” And finally, she smiled. There was a tiny, shy and adorable smile on her precious face after what seemed like a lifetime. It was a beginning, but it meant everything to Mason. “Oi! She smiles! Look at that! All I had to do was say the magic word!” 

It was impossible to describe how relieved he felt when he saw her smile. It was like a breath of fresh air. Like breathing again after holding it for too long. It felt even better to say the word he had wanted to use for months. He couldn’t describe the happiness of finally calling her his girlfriend and the fact that she didn't tell him it was too much. She didn’t reject him. She didn’t push him away. She just had that cute, small smirk that could melt icebergs just as easily as she could melt his heart. 

“I still can kick you out,” she replied quickly, slapping his chest in revenge. Mason didn’t mind. He just grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each one of her knuckles with nothing but patience and love. "Or better yet, I can change you for a cat. He’ll probably behave better than you do.” 

“Yeah, we'll talk about that Charlie guy later. I'm not a fan of it. I don't think Ace is gonna like it either. What if he licks you or something? He pointed out with complete fake seriousness. Now that the storm had passed, he was there to make every joke about it. 

“What if he takes me on a date and all?”

“Low blow, I deserve it. But hey, I can take you on dates and lick you too!”

He didn’t think about it, he just leaned over, but instead of giving her a kiss like he would normally do, he licked her lower lip like a cat would do. The giggles that came from her were all he ever needed. Now she sounded like herself, full of joy, light, and warmth. It was like being back to hours earlier when they were laughing together on the couch. 

“You’re seriously ridiculous. You're lucky I'm crazy about you." He knew he was lucky. Heaven knew he was a lucky guy for too many reasons, but he was happy to add her to the list. Mason was lucky enough to be able to kiss her head and keep her close to his body. “Hey Mase?”

“Mmhm?”

“The whole United thing? I hear you. I don't want you to worry about us. It doesn't need to end. We'll figure it out if it happens. At the end of the day Manchester is just another city. That's not really what matters. "Not to me," she whispered, resting her hand on his chest. 

“You mean it?” 

“Hundred percent. As long as I have you and puppy eyes I’m all good. But I want cheese ravioli with bolognese. And for breakfast I want those yummy cookies you got me once. And cuddles. Lots of cuddles. I think I deserve a kiss as well. After the trauma, the tears, and especially calling me your girlfriend without even asking. I think you should close the deal." 

He didn't think. He didn't say a word. His hands moved under her shirt and over her cheek as he kissed her. It wasn’t just to keep her close, but to keep himself grounded by her warm skin against his. It was their first kiss as something else, but definitely not as friends. It was their first kiss while shifting into a couple and somehow it was the same, but better. It was sweeter than usual. 

As she took off his shirt and threw it to the side, Mason couldn't help but think that if all those mistakes had led him to that -that the red door, to that exact moment, to her place, to that kiss, to her arms, to pasta and movies in front of the TV, to her colorful sheets, to her- then he would do it all over again without a single doubt on his mind.

[footballuver]

Where Do Babies Come From, Daddy?

pairing: mason mount x reader

word count: 2.6k

overview: one bedtime question turns into chaos when Leo decides he needs all the baby facts - so he asks his parents the big one: “where do babies come from?”

authors note: thank you so much for the kind comments on my last post! here's another fic for you, and please feel free to send requests, i've got way too much time on my hands!

The curtains fluttered as a breeze swept into the bedroom, the faint hum of London life drifting in with the morning light. You stirred in bed, buried beneath the duvet, one leg tangled in Mason’s. His arm was slung over your waist, face half-squished against the pillow.

“Babe,” Mason mumbled into your shoulder, voice hoarse with sleep. “You’re breathing too loudly. It's aggressive.”

You snorted, elbowing him lightly. “Your snoring sounds like a tractor having an asthma attack, but please—by all means, lecture me on breathing etiquette.”

He cracked one eye open, a slow grin creeping across his face. “You love my snore. It’s like white noise. Sexy white noise.”

“More like nightmare fuel,” you retorted, rolling over to face him. He reached up to brush a strand of hair from your face, letting his fingers linger against your cheek.

Just as his lips brushed yours—

“MUMMY!!! DADDY!! WAAAAAAKE UUUUUUP!”

A tiny, determined voice shrieked from the hallway. Seconds later, the door burst open, and a blur of curls and Paw Patrol pyjamas flew onto the bed.

“Leo, mate—” Mason started, narrowly avoiding a headbutt to the jaw. “You’ve got to stop launching yourself like that. You’re gonna break my ribs one day.”

Leo grinned mischievously and wriggled between the two of you, plopping himself dramatically in the middle of the bed. “I missed you both,” he said, curling into your side.

“It’s been nine hours,” you said, ruffling his hair.

“Exactly. Forever.”

Mason laughed, rolling onto his side to face Leo. “You’re such a drama king. Wonder where you got that from.”

You both turned to look at each other, raising your eyebrows.

“I don’t know,” you said innocently. “Certainly not from me.”

Leo sat up suddenly. “Can we have pancakes today? With the chocolate chips that look like footballs?”

“Only if Daddy makes them,” you said quickly.

Mason threw a pillow at you. “Oi! I made them last week!”

“And the week before,” you added sweetly.

“And they were burnt,” Leo chimed in.

Mason looked wounded. “It was one time!”

“Three,” you corrected, holding up fingers. “Three times. You literally set off the smoke alarm and blamed it on the toaster.”

Leo giggled. “You said it was haunted!”

Mason buried his face in the pillow and groaned. “You two are impossible. Fine. Pancakes it is. But if I burn them again, it’s on purpose.”

Leo leapt off the bed. “YAY!”

He tore down the hallway like a rocket.

You turned to Mason, raising an eyebrow. “So what’s the plan, Chef Mount?”

“Plan is,” he said, stretching, “we get through today without setting the kitchen on fire or telling Leo how he was made.”

You laughed. “Why would we need to do that?”

He gave you a knowing look. “He’s four. He’s been hanging out with our nephew. That kid knows too much.”

“Oh God,” you whispered. “Not Charlie.”

“Yep,” Mason said, already heading toward the kitchen. “Charlie’s been giving Leo The Talk, and we’re probably a day away from getting asked how babies get inside tummies.”

You gasped. “You’ll handle it.”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “That’s a mummy question.”

The kitchen smelled like cocoa and chaos.

Mason stood at the stove, trying to flip pancakes while Leo sat cross-legged on the counter beside him, nibbling a rogue chocolate chip he’d sneakily stolen from the bowl.

“Leo, mate, you can’t eat all the chips before they go in the pancakes,” Mason said, trying to be firm.

Leo grinned, cheeks full. “I’m the taste-tester.”

“You’ve taste-tested half the bag,” you said from the sink, rinsing off blueberries. “At this point, there’ll be more chocolate in his belly than in the batter.”

Leo shrugged. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Mason said, nudging him lightly with his elbow. “You just had a banana.”

Leo leaned toward him dramatically. “That was like four years ago.”

You burst out laughing. “He’s got your sense of time. Remember when you said your nap lasted ‘a century’?”

“That nap felt like a century,” Mason defended. “You two talk a lot.”

Leo gasped. “You said naps were boring!”

“They are,” Mason whispered like it was a secret. “That’s why Daddy needs extra snacks too.”

Leo giggled as you shook your head. “Great. Now he’s going to start requesting a ‘Daddy snack’ during every nap.”

“Good,” Mason said. “More snacks in this house. It’s a win for the people.”

Leo threw his arms in the air. “Power to the snack people!”

You put your hands on your hips. “Okay, Snack People. Who’s cleaning up this chocolate chip explosion?”

Silence.

Leo looked at Mason.

Mason pointed at Leo.

Leo immediately pointed at you.

You rolled your eyes. “Of course. I do everything around here.”

“You said it,” Mason grinned, tossing the spatula in the sink. “Come on, let’s eat these before Leo taste-tests the table.”

Later that night, after bath time and one too many rounds of “Ten Little Dinosaurs,” Leo lay curled up in his bed, hair damp, fingers curled around the corner of his blanket. You and Mason sat on either side of him.

“Can I ask a question?” Leo asked suddenly, voice muffled against the pillow.

“Of course,” Mason said, brushing back his curls.

Leo blinked up at both of you, eyes wide and curious.

“Where do babies come from?”

The air went still.

Mason’s hand froze mid-stroke on Leo’s hair.

Your eyes locked with Mason’s.

Leo blinked again. “Like… do you grow them in the garden? Like sunflowers?”

Mason made a choked noise.

You cleared your throat. “Um. Not quite, sweetheart.”

“Because Charlie at nursery said he came from his mummy’s belly, and I was like, what? That’s not where people come from!”

Mason laughed nervously. “Well, it’s… sort of true.”

Leo sat up a little. “Did you plant me in mummy’s belly?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Mason looked like he wanted to sprint into another dimension.

This was it. The moment of reckoning.

Leo looked between you both with genuine innocence.

“I just wanna know if I came from seeds or magic.”

Mason exhaled loudly.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. So…”

Leo sat cross-legged on his bed, freshly bathed, curls still damp, and the most serious look on his little face.

“So,” he said again, like he was conducting an interview. “Where do babies come from?”

You and Mason exchanged a look — the kind of silent, panic-infused glance only parents mastered.

Mason cleared his throat. “Well, mate… you see, that’s a big question.”

Leo blinked. “Is it a secret?”

“Kind of,” you said carefully. “It’s something people learn when they’re a bit older.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. “Charlie said grown-ups don’t like telling because it’s weird.”

Mason gave a strained smile. “That’s… not entirely wrong.”

Leo leaned forward. “So was I planted in Mummy’s tummy like a seed? Did Daddy just drop me in and water me with apple juice?”

Mason let out a snort-laugh and quickly disguised it as a cough. “No, no apple juice watering was involved.”

“Then how did I get in there?”

You were now frozen in place, holding Leo’s Paw Patrol pajamas like they were your last line of defense.

Mason rubbed his jaw like he was trying to conjure wisdom from his stubble. “Right. Okay. Time to be brave.”

You raised an eyebrow. “You sure about this?”

Mason gave you a nod that looked more like a flinch.

“Alright, Leo,” he began, turning toward your son like he was about to give a press conference. “So, babies… they start in a mummy’s tummy. But! They don’t just appear. Mummies and daddies work together to make them.”

Leo tilted his head. “Like a science project?”

“Exactly!” Mason said, relieved. “A very special one.”

“Do you use glue?”

You bit your lip.

Mason shook his head. “No glue. There’s… a special kind of love that helps the baby grow.”

Leo stared blankly. “Like a love potion?”

“Sort of?” Mason glanced at you for backup.

You jumped in. “When two people love each other, their love creates something called an embryo, which is like the tiniest, tiniest baby.”

Leo’s face lit up. “A baby seed!”

“Kind of, yes,” Mason said quickly. “And the baby seed grows in the mummy’s tummy until it’s big enough to come out.”

“How does it come out?”

You and Mason froze.

Leo, unfazed, added, “Charlie said it comes out your belly button.”

You took a deep breath. “Well, some babies do come out of a special door that doctors help open. And sometimes, doctors help take the baby out from the tummy with a special surgery.”

Leo sat back like this was fascinating news. “So I’m not from the garden.”

“Nope,” Mason said. “You came from Mummy. And it took a long time and a lot of effort. And her ankles looked like footballs.”

You slapped his arm, laughing. “They did not!”

Leo gasped. “Mummy turned into a football?!”

“No, no,” Mason said, trying to fix it, “her ankles just puffed up a bit—”

“Because I was kicking her from the inside?”

You nodded. “All the time. Like a little ninja.”

“I was practicing!” Leo said proudly. “For my real football debut!”

You leaned down and kissed his forehead. “You were worth every swollen foot.”

Leo yawned and cuddled back into his pillow. “Okay. That’s enough science for now.”

Mason pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Sleep now, future football ninja.”

Just as you turned to switch off the lamp, Leo added dreamily, “Daddy?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“I think when I’m big, I’ll plant a baby seed too. Maybe two. I’ll use apple juice just in case.”

You stuffed a hand in your mouth to keep from cracking up.

Mason grinned and gave you a sideways glance. “Well, that’s… something to look forward to.”

“Night, Mummy. Night, Daddy.”

“Night, Leo,” you both said in unison.

As soon as the door was closed behind you, you both burst into quiet laughter in the hallway.

“Oh my God,” you whispered, clutching your chest. “He wants to water his kids with apple juice.”

Mason shook his head. “I knew Charlie was going to corrupt him. This is just the beginning.”

You grinned, tugging Mason toward the stairs. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t try to plant one in the backyard tomorrow.”

Mason sighed. “I’m hiding the watering can.”

The house was quiet. Finally.

You were curled up in bed under a thick duvet, your head on Mason’s chest, one of his arms draped lazily around your shoulders. The baby monitor sat untouched on the nightstand — because Leo was officially too big for it now. The nursery had turned into a dinosaur-themed “big boy room,” and Leo had declared himself “the king of bedtime” just two nights ago.

It lasted until exactly 8:47 p.m. when he got up asking for more water.

Now it was nearing midnight, and the house was blessedly still.

Mason’s voice was low, almost tentative. “You ever think about having another one?”

You lifted your head slightly to look at him. “Another what? Banana? Nap? Brain cell?”

He laughed softly, tugging you closer. “Baby.”

You blinked, resting your chin on his chest. “Are you serious?”

“I mean… yeah.” He traced slow circles on your arm. “Leo’s growing up so fast. Sometimes I think... maybe it’d be nice to have a tiny one again. A little sibling for him.”

You tilted your head, considering. “Would this new baby also think bees are ‘angry fairies’ and try to glue googly eyes to the dog?”

Mason smirked. “If they’re ours? Definitely.”

You stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it.”

His eyes lit up. “Really?”

You smiled softly. “Don’t get too excited. I said thought about it. You were not the one who carried a watermelon-sized Leo and waddled like a penguin for nine months.”

“You waddled very gracefully.”

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” you muttered, poking him in the ribs.

He laughed, catching your hand and kissing it. “We could do it better this time. Not that Leo isn’t perfect — but we were clueless.”

You sighed contentedly. “Still kinda are.”

“But we survive,” he said.

You nodded. “We do.”

There was a beat of silence. Peaceful. Warm.

Then—

Creeeeaak.

Your bedroom door opened just a little.

You both turned your heads.

Leo stood in the doorway, hair tousled, one sock on, and his stuffed dinosaur clutched under his arm like a weapon.

“Mummy. Daddy,” he whispered loudly. “I think I’m having a thought.”

Mason sat up, rubbing his eyes. “A thought?”

Leo padded into the room, serious as a scientist. “Yes. A big one.”

You reached out your arms, and he immediately climbed up into the bed between you, curling into your side.

“What kind of thought, baby?” you asked softly.

He looked up at the ceiling dramatically. “If babies come from love… then what happens if you love someone SO much you get, like, three babies at once?”

Mason blinked. “Wow. Going straight for the multiples, huh?”

Leo nodded. “And where do those babies come from? Do they grow in different corners of the tummy? Or is it just one big baby that splits like a biscuit?”

You pressed your lips together to stop from laughing.

Mason rubbed his jaw like he was trying to be scientific. “Sometimes, Leo, some mummies do grow more than one baby at a time. They’re called twins, or triplets.”

“Triplets,” Leo whispered like it was a sacred word.

“They all grow in the same belly,” you added. “Very cozy in there.”

Leo gasped. “Like a baby sleepover!”

“Exactly,” Mason said, smiling. “But without snacks.”

Leo shook his head. “That’s boring.”

You leaned back on the pillows, tucking the duvet around all three of you. “It’s very late, sweet boy. Can we save the rest of the science talk for tomorrow?”

“One more question?” Leo pleaded, blinking up at you.

You sighed, already knowing you’d say yes.

He looked up at Mason. “If I came from love, does that mean if you and Mummy love me too much… I’ll make a baby by accident?”

Mason nearly choked on thin air.

You smacked his chest. “Breathe.”

Leo looked between you both, eyes wide. “It’s just… I don’t want a surprise baby falling out of me.”

You pulled him closer, trying not to burst out laughing. “Leo, sweetheart. Boys don’t have babies. That part is just for mummies.”

He looked relieved. “Oh, phew. Because I hugged Mummy super hard earlier and I was worried something started.”

Mason wheezed beside you, completely red in the face.

“I promise,” you said gently, kissing Leo’s forehead, “you didn’t start anything.”

Leo yawned, finally relaxing between you both. “Okay. But if you do make another baby… can I name it?”

You raised your eyebrows. “That depends. What name were you thinking?”

He didn’t even hesitate.

“Apple.”

You blinked. “...Apple?”

Leo nodded, eyes already drooping. “It’s strong. It digs things. It’s perfect.”

Mason buried his face in a pillow to muffle his laugh.

You groaned. “We are not naming our baby Apple.”

Leo snuggled deeper under the covers. “Please think about it.”

Mason grinned, whispering, “She’ll think about it.”

“I will not.”

“You said that about naming the dog Waffles and now—”

“Do not bring Waffles into this.”

Leo was already dozing off, face relaxed, little fingers curled around the collar of Mason’s shirt.

Silence returned, warm and familiar.

Mason whispered into the dark, “So... still thinking about it?”

You stared down at your sleepy boy, his feet somehow under your thigh, like a puzzle piece he’d slotted himself into.

You said sarcastically. “Yeah. Apple's got a lovely ring to it.”

[paucubarsisimp]

cockblock

pairing: mason mount x reader

summary: in which mason’s dog, ace is fiercely protective of you

warnings: ace being a little menace

taglist: @barcapix, @universefcb, @joaosnovia, @ilovebarcaaaa, lmk if you’d like to be added!

mason loved ace. he really did. he picked him out, raised him, spoiled him.

but lately, he was starting to think his dog might actually hate him.

or worse—see him as a threat.

because ever since you moved in, ace had gone from loyal sidekick to jealous little tyrant. and mason? mason had been completely and aggressively cockblocked.

by his own dog.

it started with the couch. mason would sit down, arm already reaching for you, only for ace to jump up first and plop right in your lap. every. single. time.

“move,” mason said, nudging him gently with a cushion.

ace didn’t move.

he just adjusted—so now he was lying between you two, staring mason down like, go on, try her, see what happens.

you giggled. “he just wants cuddles.”

“so do i, but you don’t see me launching myself into your lap.”

“you literally did that last week.”

“that was one time. out of desperation.”

mason would lean in for a kiss and—without fail—ace would bark. or sneeze. or make some cursed little grunt that made it very clear: this was not allowed.

“i can’t even touch you anymore,” mason groaned one night after another failed attempt to kiss your neck. “i get growled at for hugging you.”

“you’re being dramatic.”

“he headbutted me earlier. i have a bruise.”

“okay, that was a little dramatic—”

“i’m living in fear. i have to look over my shoulder before i kiss my girlfriend.”

and god help him if he tried to spoon you at night. ace always wormed his way between you, like a tiny, furry wedge. mason would reach for your waist and hit dog. every time.

“this is hell,” he muttered into the pillow.

you snorted softly. “he just wants to be close to me.”

“i want to be close to you! that’s the whole point of this relationship!”

you reached around ace and brushed your fingers through mason’s hair, which helped. kind of. but ace sighed in the middle like he was disgusted with both of you.

mason stared at the ceiling. “he thinks i’m the side piece.”

the mornings weren’t any better. mason would wake up to find ace already on top of you, tail wagging, licking your face like he hadn’t seen you in years.

mason would reach for your hand—ace would step on his fingers.

once, mason actually tried to pick ace up and move him. ace looked him dead in the eyes and let out the most offended noise mason had ever heard. like, how dare you, in my house?

you were absolutely no help.

“you’re just mad he’s a better cuddler,” you mumbled, hugging ace tighter.

mason sat at the foot of the bed, dramatically betrayed. “you used to cuddle me. remember that? when we were in love?”

“we’re still in love.”

“are we? because i think you’ve fallen for a 20-pound frenchie with an attitude problem.”

ace wagged his tail.

and honestly? mason couldn’t take it anymore.

he tried everything. new toys, new treats, walks just the two of them. nothing worked. ace still shot him dirty looks every time he touched you.

“i just want five minutes alone with my girlfriend,” mason told ace one night, hands on his hips. “just five.”

ace barked once.

“that a yes or a no?”

ace walked away.

“you’re a menace.”

later that night, mason waited until ace was fully passed out before quietly sliding into bed next to you and spooning you from behind. his arm wrapped around your waist. his nose pressed to your shoulder.

peace. bliss.

he didn’t even move when ace shifted a little in his sleep—because for once, he was too tired to cockblock. he let mason have you. and mason was going to cherish it.

“this is the best night of my life,” he whispered.

you laughed softly, already half-asleep. “because i’m cuddling you?”

“no. because he’s not.”

don’t forget to leave a request!

[mountttmase]

Secrets Out

Note - happy Valentine’s Day sweet humans 🩷 just and fyi, y/f/I is your first initial so if I was reading it, it would be L. I know the formatting isn’t perfect but I tried so many times and the app just messes it all up but I hope you enjoy anyway and feedback would be appreciated as always 😘

Pairing - Mason Mount × Reader

Word count - 15.1K

Warnings - fluff

‘What the fuck? That can’t be right’ Mason muttered to himself, his eyes glancing over his schedule for the day and to say he was confused was an understatement. 

‘What’s up?’ Bruno asked as he walked behind him. His eyes looking over at the screen attached to Mason's locker as he pointed at it in hopes he saw the error too. 

‘I’ve got clashing plans this afternoon. Apparently I’m meant to be doing media at the same time as gym’

‘They’ve probably just forgotten to move something in ops. Let them know, they should be able to change in for you’ Bruno told him but the thought of having to talk to them this morning was the last thing Mason wanted to do. 

‘That means I gotta ring them though right? I think Carol thinks I’m a right twat after last week’ 

‘Can you blame her?’ Bruno laughed, knowing the exact reason why as Mason's cheeks burned at the memory. ‘Do the live chat then, it’s new on the app. They’ve hired someone else who takes care of that so you won’t need to speak to Carol at all’ 

Bruno quickly showed Mason where it was, and whilst he’d probably been told at the new system induction meeting they had a few months ago, it was hidden in a place he’d never thought to look. He quickly got to typing once it was all set up though as he didn’t know how long this would take and took a seat at his locker in hopes someone would get back to him soon. 

Mason #7: Hi, sorry to be a pain I think there’s been a mix up? I think my schedule’s wrong for this afternoon. It says I’ve got gym and media at two? 

y/f/i (Operations): Hi Mason, no worries! Your gym slot is correct, your media was moved to tomorrow at 3:30. Apologies, someone forgot to press save.  (Not naming names but it was definitely Ken)

Mason laughed at your response, not expecting your cheeky sense of humour to come through on the first message but he appreciated it nonetheless. Talking to the admin staff filled him with nerves half the time as he always felt like he was being needy and annoying but thankfully you’d put him at ease straight away. 

Mason #7: Poor Ken. Thanks for sorting, I thought I was going to have to clone myself!

y/f/i: If cloning players becomes part of my job description I think I might quit

Mason #7: Please don’t quit, I would definitely get more wrong than I already do without you lot

y/f/i: You say that like you didn’t turn up at the wrong training ground last week 

Mason laughed out loud this time, his cheeks flushing at the way you knew his silly secret he was trying so hard to hide but for some reason he didn’t mind that you knew. He knew nothing about you except the first letter of your name yet he liked you a lot already. You came across as warm and kind and a little bit silly and he couldn't stop the smile that spread across his face even wider. 

Mason #7: That was one time. I see Carol's been talking about me

y/f/i: Of course, you’ve been a hot topic in the ops room this week and us girls love a gossip

Thank god she’s a girl he thought, his heart thumping in a weird way he couldn’t explain right now but he knew he wanted to keep the conversation going even though his problem was fixed. 

Mason #7: Google Maps betrayed me

y/f/i: Whatever you say, Mason

Mason #7: Okay, wow. I didn’t know the ops staff were allowed to tease players? How do you even know this about me I was told you were new

y/f/i: I’m allowed to tease the ones who forget their right from their left.  And I’m fairly new, yes, but I still know everything

Mason #7: Wow you’re ruthless

y/f/i: I prefer efficient

Mason #7: Whatever you say boss! Thanks though, honestly. You made all that way less stressful.

y/f/i: That’s my job. And you’re welcome

Mason #7: Right. I’ll leave you alone now Have a good rest of the day

y/f/i: You too. Try not to get lost on the way home

Mason #7: 😑

‘What are you laughing at?’ Mason suddenly heard, his eyes snapping up to Luke who’d just walked in and Mason tucked away his phone immediately like he didn’t want anyone to catch him doing anything he shouldn’t be. 

‘Nothing, just sorting something out’ he lied smoothly, standing up to open up his locker and try to think about anything other than the interaction he’d just had with you. 

He tried all day in fact to forget about you, yet you always crept into his thoughts whenever he was alone for more than five minutes. Not even sure what he was thinking as you could have been anyone but his mind was trying to piece together anything it could and imagine what you might be like. 

He carried you with him all day, even when he got home and was going through his usual routine he kept losing focus and drifting back to your conversation. Replaying every message in his head like a script he was trying his best to learn and each time he remembered your cheeky replies his cheeks would hurt from smiling. 

This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were staff, someone he should’ve interacted with only when absolutely necessary but there was something about the way you messaged him, warm, thoughtful and slightly sarcastic that had lodged itself under his skin far too easily. He kept catching himself imagining your expression as you typed, whether your cheeks flushed just like his had or whether you’d smile when you teased him about getting lost. 

How do I message her again without looking desperate? He asked himself as he slipped into bed that night. You had only exchanged a few messages yet it felt like so much more to him. You felt different from anyone he had spoken to in a long time and you didn’t talk to him like he was some big deal, which he found weirdly refreshing.

He reached over to his bedside and pulled his phone out again, swiping into the chat before typing something but before he got carried away he deleted it instantly. Trying again a few moments later before he deleted it again and he groaned softly as he rubbed a hand over his face. Dropping his phone back on the side as he let his head fall back as he stared at the ceiling, wondering if you were still awake and if you were thinking about your conversation too or if he was reading too much into the way you spoke to him so easily. Telling himself to move on and to stop overthinking but even as he finally forced himself to get comfy and try to unwind, he already knew the truth. 

He was going to find a reason to talk to you  again tomorrow and he couldn’t wait.

Mason was in early the next morning. His hand on his phone like it was a loaded gun as he ran through his options about what to message you, but before he could think too long his fingers were flying across his keyboard. 

Mason #7: Morning y/f/i, sorry quick question. Is the training meeting at 10 still on? Or did I imagine that because I was half-asleep? It’s not in my schedule

y/f/i: Morning! 😂oh that’s weird, It’s definitely still on and you weren’t imagining it although I can’t promise you’ll be half asleep again by the end of it

Mason #7: No worries, and I’m sure I’ll survive, I like to think of them as thrilling 

y/f/i: Thrilling? You’re raising expectations dangerously high I think I hope the coffee’s strong enough to match and if you’re quick enough I’ve made sure there’s some biscuits 

Mason #7: Oh, it will be but I think it depends on what biscuits they are

y/f/i: Chocolate digestives 

Mason #7: A woman after my own heart. I’ll get there early just for those then Looks like the meeting is back in my diary, thanks for that!

y/f/i: That’s okay, though the system is telling me you deleted it yourself? 

Fuck he breathed. Outed by a computer and his brain scrambled to think of how to answer you without looking too silly. The last thing he wanted was for you to catch on to his silly little scheme as he had no idea if his feelings were one sided.

Mason #7: Must be those sausage fingers of mine, i’ll be more careful next time sorry! You’re too good at your job I think 

y/f/i: Well you’re too kind, I’ll try to keep it up!

Mason #7: I’m counting on it. Though I guess I shouldn’t get used to talking to you like this at 9am, right?

y/f/i: Why not? I don’t mind, I quite like it

Mason couldn’t wipe the silly smile off his face at your response. She likes talking to me too, I’m not imagining it he thought to himself and he wanted to let you know right away that he felt the same. Imaging your face lighting up with a smile just like his as he told you the same.  

Mason #7: Yeah me too 

y/f/i: Well then I’ll take full credit for starting your morning off well 😉

Mason #7: Full credit accepted, you’ll have to let me thank you properly one day 

y/f/i: We’ll see 

Mason wanted to reply with something silly, imagining your laugh and shy eyes at his words but he knew if he didn’t leave soon he’d be late and miss out on the biscuits so before he could think of anything he dashed off and thought of ways he could talk to you this afternoon. 

The training meeting may as well have been background noise to him. No matter how hard he tried his thoughts always drifted to you and what you might be doing right now and if you were thinking about him too. A million different scenarios running through his mind on how he would speak to you or maybe even see you and as soon as he was out of the meeting he was working on his master plan. 

Mason #7: y/f/i I’ve lost my water bottle The black one with the silver cap Please tell me it’s in the office?

y/f/i: Let me check

Mason sat with his heart thumping in his chest as you looked for it. He had left it until the next day to speak to you so as to not seem too suspicious and to give him some time to put his plan into action for this morning. Realising work stuff was safe and he’d made a list of things to ask about over the coming days but the only thought in his head right now was putting a face to your name. Not that he even had your name at this point but there was a need within him to know what you looked like and in his mind this was the perfect way of getting to hopefully see you. 

y/f/i: Found it It was in the laundry basket Do I want to know why?

Mason #7: I wish I knew Thank you 😅

y/f/i: No worries at all!

Mason #7: Can I come and pick it up from you later?

He sat with his heart in his mouth as he saw you type. Your little bubble popping and disappearing multiple times before eventually you sent something through that made his shoulders sink. 

y/f/i: That’s okay, I’ll get one of the kit boys to pick it up and drop it off to you

Mason #7: Am I not allowed to see your or something? 

y/f/i: Not really, the big boys want to keep me separate 

Mason #7: Really? Why is it such a big deal if we meet? It’s not like I’m going to cause chaos I literally just want my bottle

y/f/i: It’s not the bottle It’s… the anonymity thing

Mason #7: Anonymity?

y/f/i: Yes. My job works best when players don’t know exactly who’s behind every message, every schedule change, every annoying early-morning gym slot It stops things getting personal

Mason #7: So you’re saying you not having a name or a face is on purpose?

y/f/i: Pretty much, It’s how we keep everything smooth and professional. Then no one feels awkward complaining when they don’t know which admin they’re actually talking to

Mason #7: Okay but I’m not complaining about you

y/f/i: I know (I hope!) but rules are rules and I’d like to keep my job 😅

Mason #7: So if I turned up outside the office doors right now?

y/f/i: I would politely refuse to open them

Mason #7: What even for me?

y/f/i: Unfortunately. Just call me ‘dedicated to procedures’ 

Mason #7: Okay fine, but I want it noted somewhere in your files that I did try to meet you. For a perfectly innocent reason

y/f/i: Noted Officially Even though you’re very dramatic

Mason #7: Well you’re very mysterious

y/f/i: That’s the whole point

Mason #7: And I’m supposed to just wait until whenever they decide to let us meet?

y/f/i: Pretty much. Maybe if you behave we can work something out 

Mason #7: No promises I don’t like this at all I’ve met Ken and Carol and they’re both in your team right? 

y/f/i: That’s us, the fab three  They’ve been here a while though so that’s normal for you to have met them Don’t worry I won’t be hidden forever it’s just for now 

Mason #7: Better be or I’ll kick off 

To say Mason felt deflated was an understatement. He understood the rules and where you were coming from but the thought of not being able to see you or talk to you in person really put a dampener on things. 

He tried not to let it get to him too much though, you had admitted to him already you enjoyed talking to him so he held onto it and each day found something new to ask you about until one day you messaged first and he felt all the blood rush to his face as he scrambled to see what you wanted. 

y/f/i: Hi Mason, I hope your morning’s going good! I’ve just finished updating the training rota for next week. Want your times now, or should I let you enjoy the rest of your day first? 😇

Mason #7: That sounds like a warning Better give them to me now then, let’s rip the plaster off

y/f/i: Alright but don’t say I didn’t prepare you Monday: 7:00am gym session Wednesday: 9:30 tactical meeting Thursday: 6:30am conditioning Friday: 10am team review And before you say anything, I didn’t make the schedule. I’m just the messenger 😂

Mason #7: 6:30am on Thursday? That’s that’s evil

y/f/i: I know 🙈 I genuinely tried to see if I could move things around for you, but no luck On the bright side, you’ll be done early?

Mason #7: You have a unique ability to see the good in everything it seems 

y/f/i:It’s a gift 😌

Mason #7: You realise this means I’m going to show up looking half-asleep and grumpy, right?

y/f/i: I’m sure you’ll cope. You’re supposed to be resilient, right? Isn’t that what you tell the media all the time? 

Mason #7: Hey, I am resilient. But 6:30 is a test I wasn’t prepared for

y/f/i: I’ll bring extra chocolate biscuits on Thursday for your emotional wellbeing

Mason #7: Wait really?

y/f/i: If it helps stop you complaining then yes 😄

Mason #7: That actually does help And for the record, you’re very lucky you’re cute, otherwise I’d be filing a complaint

The word cute slipped out of nowhere, but it had been on the tip of his tongue for days and he couldn’t help it. You were cute, unbelievably so, and he could picture you now with your hands covering your smile as you blushed at his words.

y/f/i: You don’t know that 

Mason #7: I have a sixth sense

y/f/i: Stop it, I’m trying to work here

Mason #7: I’m just being honest

y/f/i: You’re trouble Mr Mount Anyway, that’s your schedule Try not to hate me too much for it

Mason #7:Impossible

As the days progressed, Mason was finding it harder and harder not to talk to you, often spending his nights reading back through what you'd spoken about that day in order to feel a little bit closer to you. This night was different though as he really needed your comfort and as he logged on he saw the little green dot next to your chat that let him know you were online too. Eventually taking the plunge and sending you a message in hopes you'd see and maybe want to talk to him too.

Mason #7:What are you doing online this late? 

y/f/i: Insomnia is my toxic trait.  I was almost asleep and I remembered something I hadn't done for tomorrow What about you?  Is everything okay? 

Mason #7: Not really Today was… rough

y/f/i: Want to talk about it?

Mason #7: Only if that’s okay

y/f/i:It’s okay

Mason #7: We lost again I missed a sitter, like a really fucking stupid one And I know everyone says ‘shake it off’ but it gets in your head Feels like I’m letting everyone down every time I play and i barely even get to do that anymore

y/f/i: You’re human, Mase, not a machine One mistake doesn’t erase everything you did right tonight 

Mason #7: Feels like it does

y/f/i: I don’t know if this helps but I hope it will You’re allowed a bad game and you’re allowed to be frustrated and disappointed But you also deserve to breathe and start fresh again tomorrow

Mason #7:Y ou’re good at this

y/f/i: At what?

Mason #7: Making things feel less heavy Even through a screen

y/f/i: Then I’m glad I can help. Because I’ve noticed you carry more weight than I think you realise. I know things have been hard lately, we’ve even felt it upstairs with all the changes so I cant imagine how you must be feeling 

Mason #7: I wish I could know who you were properly You know everything about me 

y/f/i It’s my job to know everything about you not the other way around 

I wanna make it my job to know about you Mason thought to himself, his body relaxing into his mattress as you evaporated the stress from his body.

Mason #7: fine, but I’m not happy about it

y/f/i: it’s okay, you’ll get over it  

Mason #7: I don’t think I will 

y/f/i: hmmm we’ll see  You should sleep, but we’ll speak tomorrow yeah?

Mason #7: You bet Thank you for tonight Sweet dreams, y/f/i

y/f/i Sweet dreams, Mase

Mason managed to go to sleep feeling a lot lighter and went into training the next day with a spring in his step. Most of the boys with their boots on already but Mason had stayed behind for a moment staring at his phone like it held the secrets of the universe when Bruno had noticed immediately. Jogging over with a towel around his neck before giving Mason a look that was equal parts captain and protective older brother. 

‘Alright, spill. Who’s got your head in the clouds?’ Bruno asked, folding his arms over his front as he looked down at him.

‘What? No one’

‘You’re not a very good liar, Mase. You’ve been grinning at your phone for days and you run faster to check your messages than you do during training’ he told him and even though Mason tried not to smile he couldn’t help it when he thought about you. 

‘It’s just someone I’m talking to, no biggie’ 

‘Talking to? What like someone from a dating app or do you know them?’ 

‘Neither’ Mason gulped, wondering if he should divulge and tell Bruno what was really going on as he could use an outside perspective but he wasn’t sure if he could take someone raining on his parade. ‘It’s um- it’s someone from the club’

Bruno’s eyebrows shot up so fast Mason almost laughed, his mouth hanging open in confusion like it was the last thing he was expecting him to say. 

‘Wait they’re from the club? Who? And how? And most importantly, why do you look so happy about it?’

Mason shrugged, but it was a helpless kind of shrug. Wondering if he should have kept his mouth shut but he was in too deep now. 

‘It’s that new girl in ops, I don’t know her name or anything but she helped me with my schedule the other week and we just… kept talking. She’s funny and smart and she really gets me, you know?’ Mason told him but he just gave him a long, suspicious stare in response. 

‘I don’t know man, I feel like this is how horror stories start’

‘Mate-‘

‘She could be anyone, like literally anyone.  A forty-year-old, she could be someone’s grandmother for all you know’ 

‘She’s not a grandmother-‘

‘You don’t know that, you know nothing about her. She could be married with three kids and a dog called Biscuit!’ He exclaimed and even though it made Mason laugh he realised straight away that wasn’t the intention. ‘You have no idea who you’re talking to. No face, no voice, not even a name and you’re already obsessed. It just feels a bit dangerous’ 

For the first time that morning the smile faded from Mason’s face and a flicker of doubt crept in. He couldn’t deny he’d thought these things once or twice before but every time he messaged you those doubts left his mind instantly but what if Bruno was right? What if he was being stupid?

‘She’s not like that at all I just… I feel like I know her already’ 

‘Those are famous last words, Mase’ he told him but Mason shook it off. Yes at first he wanted an outside perspective but now he was feeling protective of you and felt the need to stand up for you and whatever was going on between the pair of you. 

‘Listen whatever it is, whoever she is, I’ll deal with it cause whatever’s happening feels different and I’m not going to freak out over what ifs. I know what I’m doing mate, I promise’ he proclaimed and Bruno let out a long sigh as he realised one chat wouldn’t be enough to convince Mason what the pair of you were doing was crazy. 

‘Alright, If you say you’ve got this then I trust you, just please be smart’

‘I will, I promise’ Mason told him confidently as Bruno clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Good, now stop staring at your phone like it’s going to kiss you’

Mason laughed, shaking his head as they made their way outside but even though the semi reassurance stayed with him he couldn’t deny what Bruno had questioned him on had shaken him a little bit. 

In fact, Bruno’s voice followed Mason all the way home, his stupid comments about her maybe being 50 or married with kids was playing on his mind and even though he told him he’d been careful Mason knew he hadn't been. Not really.  

By the time Mason dropped onto his sofa, he realised he hadn’t stopped frowning since he’d this morning. He wanted to trust his instinct, to trust whatever was happening between you both but Bruno seemed to have planted a seed. 

In the end he unlocked his phone and stared at your chat, thinking if he should ask you a few things, just enough to feel like the pieces fit together and from why he could tell you were still online. Wondering if you were waiting for him to message and his heart melted at the image of you checking your phone for him. 

Mason #7: Hey, you still awake?

y/f/i: I am indeed. Is everything okay?

Mason #7: Yeah all good I just realised I don’t actually know much about you. I thought maybe we should fix that

y/f/i: Oh? What do you want to know? You know i said this wasnt allowed

Mason #7: Nothing scary, just normal stuff. You can still keep anonymous i promise

y/f/i: Normal stuff is okay I think 

Mason #7: Okay then let’s start easy. Morning person or night owl?

y/f/i: Night owl, 100%. Morning people scare me

Mason #7: Favourite song?

y/f/i: if I tell you then you can’t laugh at me 

Mason #7: I won’t I promise 

y/f/i: …I Can’t Help Falling in Love

Mason’s stomach dropped as soon as it sunk in. Oh God. That’s an old song, she must be old. Bruno was right in falling for a pensioner what am i gonna do

He tried to reply casually, not wanting to make a big deal out of her answer as a song by Elvis was the last thing he was expecting but he knew he was taking too long to reply and quickly typed the first thing he could think of. 

Mason #7: Classic

y/f/i: You’re laughing at me I can feel it though the screen 

Mason #7: I’m not! I promise, I just wasn’t expecting that 

y/f/i: Not the original, okay? I like 21 pilots version, it’s prettier 

Mason physically relaxed, head falling back against the sofa as he let out a deep death. Surely a grandma wouldn’t know who they are right?

Mason #7: Ah, right that makes more sense

y/f/i: What’s that supposed to mean?

Mason #7: Nothing I swear, it’s just not the most current song out there is it

y/f/i: Ah I see what you’re doing now

Mason #7: I’m innocent I swear 

y/f/i: Hmmm I’m not so sure And for your information I’m not 100 years old 

Mason #7: Good Because I wasn’t ready to meet your grandchildren

y/f/i: I can’t believe you Let move on, I think it’s my turn to ask you something now What’s your favourite place to be other than the pitch?

Mason #7: My kitchen late at night, when everything’s quiet

y/f/i:That’s very specific

Mason #7: That’s when I think the most

y/f/i: What do you think about? 

Mason #7: You mostly 

He knew it was bold and he wondered if he’d pushed too far, especially when no answer seemed to come from you instantly like they had been until exactly three minutes later your typing bubble appeared again. 

y/f/i: Mason… You shouldn’t say things like that when I’m trying to be sensible

Mason #7: Maybe I don’t want to be sensible

y/f/i: Well then you have your question answering rights taken away Ask me another question Something small

Mason #7:Okay… Favourite season?

y/f/i:Autumn

Mason #7: Why?

y/f/i: I love the cold and fluffy socks and being cozy. Plus that means Christmas is nearly here

Mason #7: That’s cute 

y/f/i: Mason…

Mason #7: Favourite co worker 

y/f/i: I like Carol but Ken always brings me biscuits so he just inches it

Mason #7: Got competition have I? 

y/f/i: Mason, he’s old enough to be my dad 

Mason #7: Just checkingWhat did you have for dinner?

y/f/i: …That’s your question?

Mason #7: of course 

y/f/i:Why?

Mason #7: I need to know if you’re the type of person who can cook or if you survive purely on takeaways

y/f/i: Pasta And no, not from a jar From scratch

Mason #7: Okay, that’s impressive So… you cooked enough for one? Or are you secretly feeding five children?

y/f/i:One Just one

Mason #7: Okay… last question And I promise it’s harmless

y/f/i:Hmm Go on then

Mason #7: When you’re having a bad day, like a really bad one, who’s the first person you usually talk to?

y/f/i: My best friend, or sometimes my mum but mostly my friend

Mason #7: No boyfriend then?

He regretted it the second he hit sent it, he was being too direct and he knew it but he was done beating around the bush and he needed to know if there was any chance of this maybe working out. 

y/f/i: No No boyfriendWhy? Would that change anything?

Mason’s heart did a full somersault, a huge grin breaking out on his face as this changed everything. Mason was no home wrecker and whilst he would have still wanted you in his life even if you did have a boyfriend, knowing you were single was exactly what he wanted to hear. A hopeful flutter erupted in his chest at the relief and excitement he was feeling and he couldn't help but laugh at his phone.

Mason: I just want to make sure I’m not texting someone’s girlfriend at midnight 

y/f/i: Well then Good thing I’m not anyone's girlfriend Or anyone’s anything 

Mason #7: That makes two of us then

‘Is the live chat down?’ Mason asked as Luke sat himself beside him the next morning. He knew it was, he hadn't been able to message you for hours and whilst normally he would have waited he had an actual issue this morning with his schedule he needed fixing. 

‘Yeah I think I heard something about maintenance? You’ll have to call’ Luke told him yet this was the last thing he wanted to hear. Calling meant talking to Carol as she manned the phone and whilst she was perfectly fine, she wasn't you. She also loved to make jokes and after Masons mix up at training a little while ago he knew she would be itching to say something  

‘Carol’s gonna rip me a new one’ he sighed, hitting the call button so he could get this as quickly as he could and thankfully the phone was answered in just two rings.

‘Operations speaking, how can I help?’

‘y/f/i?’ Mason questioned, his heart in his throat as he knew this wasn't Carol's voice and it definitely wasn't Ken. A small gasp on the other end of the line making his breath catch and he knew right then it was you

‘M-mason?’ you stuttered, your voice soft and shy and he felt his whole chest swell at the sound

‘Yeah’ he laughed softly. ‘Hi. I, uh… didn’t expect you to answer’

‘I-I don’t usually, but Carol's on break’ you stuttered and his heart skipped at how nervous you seemed. ‘What’s up?’

‘Oh uh- I think my schedule did that thing again where it tries to ruin my life. I didn't do it myself this time though. I would have messaged but the chats down’

‘What’s wrong with it this time?’ You laughed quietly and he swore it was the most perfect sound he’d ever heard. Thinking of things he could say to get you to laugh again but he was so nervous himself at hearing you talk his mind went blank. 

‘I’m apparently in two places at once again tomorrow. Gym session and a sponsor meeting at 1pm’

‘Okay, hold on one sec’ you said, typing away quickly as his heart raced in his ears, still not quite believing you were on the other end of the line. ‘You’re only in the sponsor meeting. The gym is moved to tomorrow morning’

‘So I don’t need to be a superhero? Great news’ he sighed and once again your musical laughter filtered through. ‘Thanks, y/f/i’ he whispered ‘Sorry for calling out of nowhere’

‘It’s fine, really’

‘I, uh… it’s nice to hear your voice’ he admitted quietly and he knew you were flustered on the other end of the line as you giggled. 

‘O-oh’ you stammered. ‘T-thanks, yours too’

‘You sound shy, where’s my favourite human embodiment of sarcasm?’ he asked, a small amount of courage building up inside of him as he knew he had to try anything to keep you on the line for just a little bit longer.

‘She’s still here just … hiding’ you whispered but he could hear the smile in your voice and melted him. ‘It’s easier to message, I’ve got time to think about what I want to say and I can’t hear your voice talking back to me’

‘Well just know every message you send me now I’ll hear your voice in my head’ he told you and he could have sworn he heard you gasp a little. He thought it was adorable how nervous and sweet you were and he knew his cheeks were flushed just like yours probably were. ‘Okay well, I’ll let you get back to saving the world in there’

‘Have a good day, Mason’

‘You too, y/f/i’

Mason couldn't wipe the smile from his face as he took the phone away from his ear and popped it in his locker. Thanking his lucky stars no one else seemed to have noticed his little interaction before he caught himself grinning like a fool as his face grew warm.

Damn, she's got me good he thought to himself. Not even caring what this meant right now as all he could focus on was the warmth in his chest and the lightness in his shoulders that you seemed to have made him feel with a silly conversation about a schedule.

He had to focus though, training was about to start and he didn't need a reason for anyone to start on him so he grabbed his boots and tried to ignore the little flutter in his tummy as he remembered your voice on the other end of the line. 

Training went well, the team and his coaches asking what he’d had for breakfast that morning to put him in such a good mood but he knew it was nothing he had eaten. Running in as soon as practice was over so he could check to see if he could message you again and lucky enough for him everything seemed to be back up and running.

Mason #7: You know, your voice is not at all what I imagined, but at the same time it is 

y/f/i: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Mason #7: A really good thing, like annoyingly good

y/f/i: Annoyingly?

Mason #7: Yeah Because now I can’t read your messages without hearing it

y/f/i: That sounds like a you problem

Mason #7: It absolutely is and I’m suffering big time 

y/f/i:Stop being dramatic

Mason #7: I’m not You have a really… warm voice Kind of soft and very cute

y/f/i: Mason

Mason #7:What? It’s true

y/f/i: We’re supposed to be professional

Mason #7: Right Professional AbsolutelyBut if I wasn’t being professional, I’d say your voice is my new favourite sound

y/f/i: I could say the same about yours, except I’ve been reading your messages in your voice this whole time

Mason #7: Oh yeah?  And how would you describe my voice? 

y/f/i: Southern 

Mason laughed at your attempt at humour, knowing you were feeling a little awkward from all the fact he finally knew what you sounded like and all the compliments Mason was sending your way.

y/f/i: I’m kidding (sort of) Yours is warm too And calming 

‘You look even more in love than yesterday, what’s happened?’ Mason suddenly heard, looking up to see Bruno looking over him with his hands on his hips and a curious scowl on his face.

‘We spoke on the phone this morning. It was just to sort my schedule out but she’s… yeah she’s something else’ Mason laughed, reaching for his boots so he could undo his laces as Bruno sat down next to him with a thump.

‘Define something else’ Bruno squinted. ‘Was I right? Is she forty? Elderly? Married?’ He reeled off but Mason just laughed as he shook his head. 

‘None of that, no. Her voice sounded young like my age. And she’s funny and nervous and I could listen to her talk for hours’

‘So not a grandmother?’

‘No, mate. Definitely not’ he told him with a laugh and Bruno let out a long, dramatic sigh of relief. ‘I actually messaged her last night and tried to ask things without actually asking. But I found out she lives on her own, and she’s single and she’s nowhere near old enough to be a grandma’

‘Alright fine I can work with not a grandmother but you still don’t know what she looks like’ 

‘I don’t care’ he answered instantly and really hit him then that it didn’t matter to him what you looked like. ‘Not right now at least. I like her voice, I like how she thinks I like… her. What she looks like is the last thing on my mind right now’

Bruno studied him like he was analysing his own performance after a game but soon enough his concerned frown turned into a smile and Mason felt himself relax. 

‘You’re in deep’

‘Yeah probably but I don’t mind’

‘Just don’t do anything stupid’ he told him, tapping his chest before he stood up. ‘And if this goes wrong, I’ll pretend I never approved of it’

‘You never have approved’

‘I guess not’ he laughed but before he left he gave Mason one last look of concern. ‘Can I give you one more bit of advice?’

‘If you must’ 

‘If things are… progressing, you might wanna stop talking on an internal platform. If they think something's up they’ll be able to see it all’ Bruno told him carefully and Mason's ears pricked up. He'd been so caught up with the need to talk to you that he hadn't thought about the consequences and thought of either of you getting into trouble for his feelings made his stomach twist uncomfortably. 

‘That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said to me in days’ he huffed, already planning how he was going to broach this topic with you when he was back from training.

Mason #7: Hey, you free to talk?

y/f/i: Of course, everything okay?

Mason #7: Yeah just wanted to say hi

y/f/i: Hi 😊 You sure that’s all?

Mason #7: Well no actually, I wanted to talk to you about something Something was said to me today and it stuck 

y/f/i: Oh, that sounds serious 😅 What’s going on?

Mason #7: I’ve just been thinking

y/f/i: About?

Mason #7:Us Talking on here

y/f/i: Oh okay

Mason #7: I just think maybe it’s not the best idea to keep messaging like this on an internal system. I’d hate for you to get into trouble 

y/f/i: No you’re absolutely right Sorry if I’ve caused any issues I just got carried away I think. It feels normal talking to you but you're right 

Mason #7: No you didn’t cause anything I promise 

y/f/i: It’s fine, I get it I promise. If you need anything I’ll still be here but I guess I’ll see you around? (Or not 😉)

Mason #7: Wait no, I don’t want us to stop talking That's not what I meant

y/f/i: What did you mean?

Mason #7: I meant that this isn’t the right place to keep talking 

y/f/i: Right Yeah Of course

Mason #7:y/f/i

y/f/i: Yes?

Mason #7: If you still want to talk to me you can

y/f/i: How?

Mason #7: My number’s in my file Feel free to take it and text me

y/f/i: Are you sure?

Mason #7: More than sure

y/f/i: Okay I will

Mason #7: Good Because I wasn’t ready to stop talking to you

y/f/i: Me either 

Mason #7: Send me a message later I’ll be waiting for it

y/f/i: I will Promise

Mason #7: Good

Mason's heart was hammering when he sent the last message. Locking his phone and popping it away as he got ready to leave but he couldn't help but feel a little deflated. What if you forgot to text him? What if you were just being polite and had no intentions of talking to him anymore? You'd grown to become part of his day, his favourite part, and he'd left it all in your hands as the weather the pair of you spoke going forward which was terrifying.

He let it go though, jumping in his car and making his way home for another night with you on his mind and for the first time in a while he didn't want to look at his phone and feel disappointed just in case you hadn't messaged him yet. 

He gave it an hour, picking it up out of habit in the end but the text from an unknown number from two hours ago caught his attention immediately.

Unknown Number: Hi, it’s me. y/f/i From ops I hope this is okay Sorry i’m not sure what to say 😅

Mason froze, reading your messages three times before he was grinning like a fool. He was hoping you'd text him as soon as possible and it looked as though you didn't want to be without talking to him either so quickly changed your contact from an unknown number to the only piece of information he knew about you with a silly emoji.

Mason: y/f/i? As in my y/f/i?

y/f/i 🙈: Well I’m not your anything I just meant Sorry This is going terribly

He laughed out loud, shaking his head. He loved it when you were flustered and loved it even more when it was him that made you that way. You came across so cool sometimes when he tried to be a little bit flirty but this felt different. Like all bets were off and he couldn't wait.

Mason: Relax I’m just teasing you I’m really glad you texted

y/f/i 🙈: Really?

Mason: Really Texting you here feels… Different Better

y/f/i 🙈: Me too It feels… closer? Which is scary but also… Nice

Mason: It is closer You feel closer I like it

y/f/i 🙈: Me too

Mason: Okay, important question Are you planning to stay mysterious forever? I still don't have a name to put in my contacts and I've just seen your picture is a dog 

y/f/i 🙈: I… don’t know Maybe? I get shy

Mason: Shy? You’re the bravest person I know You almost risked your job just to talk to little old me

y/f/i 🙈: Yeah im starting to question if that was the right choice You're giving chaotic 

Mason: Wow Attack me more I like it And don’t think you can distract me. Why the secrecy? Are you a spy? A secret agent? Princess of a small European country?

y/f/i 🙈: STOP I am literally just a normal person

Mason: Mm… A normal person wouldn’t hide their face and name like you do

y/f/i 🙈: I’m shy, Mase I don’t want to disappoint you I don't get why you want to see me so bad anyway

Mason: y/f/i Look at me Well, metaphorically You couldn’t disappoint me if you tried And I want to see you because I like you I don’t know if I've made it that obvious

y/f/i 🙈: Okay… Well that’s very nice… Please stop being nice I’m going to combust

Mason: Sorry I can’t help it I like talking to you too much

y/f/i 🙈: …Mase?

Mason: Yes, love?

y/f/i 🙈: Thank you for trusting me 

Mason: You don't need to thank me, i like this Finally feels like we’re talking for real Like you’re actually here

y/f/i 🙈: I’m here As long as you want me to be. And for the record, i like you too

The pair of you were up into the early hours messaging. Both tired but both not wanting to leave each other alone as you spoke about everything and nothing. He noticed you opened up a bit but still kept things to yourself. He learnt about your family and your favourite foods yet he still didn't know the important bits and he could tell you wouldn't be giving them up easily as you always deflected away with a joke.

You began to learn the typical rhythms of each other's days, knowing when you could and couldn't talk more freely and knowing when you had to wait longer for replies. You were both busy during large chunks of the day and it was like you knew each other's schedules better than the other at some points.

He looked for you constantly, his eyes on the main building whenever he pulled into the carpark to see if he noticed anyone different but he never did. Teasing you constantly that you must be ai or they were keeping you locked in the basement but when you sent him a message to say you'd caught a bit of training from your window and seen his goal he was ready to kick things up a notch.

Mason: Did I just walk past you?

y/f/i 🙈: Why do you ask?

Mason: Because I've worked out what window is yours and I saw your head move as I walked back in

y/f/i 🙈: Coincidence

Mason: Hmm Something feels suspicious here

y/f/i 🙈: You didn't  Hate to disappoint but I haven’t been over to the window all morning It was probably one of the finance girls, there’s some big meeting and they popped in for something 

Mason: Now I’m DEFINITELY suspicious

y/f/i 🙈: Mason i’m serious You didn’t see me

Mason: I didn’t say I did

y/f/i 🙈: Then why ask?!

Mason: Cause I hoped it was you I want to see you 

y/f/i 🙈: I hate you

Mason: No you don’t And relax, I still don’t know who you are Promise

y/f/i 🙈: Good

Mason: But now I’m going to be looking 👀 Just saying

y/f/i 🙈: Don’t you dare

Mason: Too late Challenge accepted

Now the pair of you were messaging more frequently, Mason learnt that his text-self was even more of a tease that message app Mason as he finally let you see him fully. Not in a bad way, he was still respectful and charming but he wanted you to like him so he made sure he kept things silly and fun whilst being not afraid of telling you how he felt at all. That he liked you and was desperate to see you when he was allowed to but little did he know it could be sooner than he thought. 

The Valentine’s gala was something new that the club would be hosting this year, and when he found the invitation taped to his locker he wondered if you’d placed it there yourself. His eyes glancing quickly over the words as his cheeks burned at the thought.  

He saw the words under his name, the plus one insignificant to him as the only person he wanted on his arm was you and this time he was determined to get his own way. 

Mason: You’re going to the charity night on Saturday, right?

y/f/i 🙈: I’ll be there… technically I’m helping organise it, so I’ll be running around most of the night

Mason: That still counts I’ll take it

y/f/i 🙈: Take what?

Mason: I don’t care what you say about keeping anonymous anymore and I’m going to find you I’m getting desperate now This is starting to feel like you’re torturing me for fun

y/f/i 🙈: I promise I’m not I’m also definitely not going to walk up to you and confess who I am 

Mason: Then I’ll find you

y/f/i 🙈: You don’t even know what I look like

Mason: Minor detail I’ll talk to every girl in the room until one of them gets flustered enough to be you

y/f/i 🙈: That’s a terrible strategy

Mason: Why?

y/f/i 🙈: Because I get flustered very easily

Mason: Okay Now I really want to see you

y/f/i 🙈:Mason

Mason: No i’m serious I want to know the face behind all the late-night messages The laugh I swear I can hear even when you type The girl who makes my entire day better without even trying If you don’t want to see me then just tell me but I really want to see you, okay?

y/f/i 🙈: You’re going to be disappointed

Mason: You need to let me work that out for myself  And I really don’t think I will be

y/f/i 🙈: You don’t know that

Mason: I know you That feels like enough

y/f/i 🙈: I take it you got your invite today then, I designed them all last week

Mason: I did indeed. I wondered why there were extra hearts on mine

y/f/i 🙈: I can’t with you Anyway, it's Valentine’s and I don’t know if you saw but you’ll need a plus one

Mason: Is that you asking?

y/f/i 🙈: No I’m asking who you’re bringing

Mason: I wasn’t planning on bringing anyone The only person I want with me is organising it. Unless you fancy sitting yourself next to me on the seating plan 

y/f/i 🙈: You can’t turn up alone It’s literally a Valentine’s charity dinner

Mason: Then maybe I’m hoping the right person finds me If we can’t go together this year then what about next year?

y/f/i 🙈: Next year huh? 

Mason:Definitely 

y/f/i 🙈: You’re going to be busy at the event, you probably won’t even remember I’m there 

Mason: You’re silly Very cute But very silly 

y/f/i 🙈: I’ll be busy most of the night, I don't know when I'll be able see you it might be late

Mason: That’s okay I’ll wait

y/f/i 🙈: We’ll see

Mason: That sounds like a yes

y/f/i 🙈: It sounds like a maybe If youre lucky then maybe i’ll save you the last dance too

Mason: Lucky's my middle name I’ll take that And when I find you, I hope you let me be happy to see you

y/f/i 🙈: I’ll try

Mason: Then I can’t wait for Saturday to see you

Mason couldn’t deny he was excited about the prospect of seeing you, this feeling like the occasion it could happen the most as you hadn't shot him down and he’d been walking on air all day until later that night when you messaged him after a few hours of silence. 

y/f/i 🙈: Can I be honest with you about something?

Mason:Always

y/f/i 🙈: I think I’m scared that the version of me you’ve built in your head Isn’t really me

Mason: Scared how?

y/f/i 🙈: That you’ll meet me and think That’s not what I imagined

Mason: I need you to know something too then I’m nervous too Properly nervous

y/f/i 🙈: You?

Mason: Yeah. Me. Because I don’t want to mess this up And because I know the second I see you I’m going to care even more than I already do I haven’t made you into some perfect idea i promise I’ve just gotten attached to the way you are and I've been having the same thoughts like what if I’m the letdown? What if you meet me and realise I sound better through a screen?

y/f/i 🙈: I don’t think that’s possible

Mason: See? We’re both scared of the same thing But I don’t want the idea of you I want the girl who gets shy mid-sentence and says cheeky things when she’s comfortable and worries too much about disappointing people

y/f/i 🙈: Okay That makes it feel less lonely

Mason: Good Then we’ll be nervous together And I think that’s kinda perfect

The days all rolled into one until the night of the gala. Everyone getting to leave a bit early to go home and get ready but unfortunately Mason hadn’t heard from you for most of the day. Wondering if you were just busy trying to sort everything as you had been all week but around 5pm your name popped up on his screen and he couldn't help but open it straight away. 

y/f/i 🙈: Sorry ive not messaged all day I’ve had to deal with three players wanting their schedules changed One of them kept flirting with me to get his way 🙄

Mason: Which one

y/f/i 🙈: Why do you want to know? 

Mason: Who was it?

y/f/i 🙈: Not telling you 😂 It doesn’t matter

Mason: It does if he was flirting with you

y/f/i 🙈: What, are you going to fight him?

Mason: Depends who it is

y/f/i 🙈: Oh my god 😂 You’re jealous?

Mason: I’m not jealous I just don’t like imagining someone else trying to make you smile

y/f/i 🙈: That’s literally jealousy

Mason: Fine Maybe i am a little

y/f/i 🙈:Why?

Mason: Because I want to be the one you talk to like that Not some idiot trying his luck for a better time slot

y/f/i 🙈: Mason… You can’t say things like that

Mason: Why not? I’m allowed to feel things And i dont like this, you’re mine 

y/f/i 🙈: I didn’t mean to make you mad

Mason: You didn’t They did

y/f/i 🙈: You’re ridiculous. But in a weirdly sweet way

Mason: Just don’t let him flirt with you again

y/f/i 🙈: I didn’t let him the first time

Mason: Good Because you’re mine to talk to

y/f/i 🙈: If you say so 🤣 Now… very important question

Mason: I’m listening I feel like I should be sitting down for this

y/f/i 🙈: What do I wear tonight?

Mason: Finally I’ve been wondering when we’d get to this part

y/f/i 🙈: Don’t get excited I’m panicking, not flirting

Mason: Those two things are not mutually exclusive

y/f/i 🙈: Option one or option two? Be honest

Mason: You’re asking the wrong question

y/f/i 🙈:Oh no

Mason: The real question is why I’m being shown photos from a website

y/f/i 🙈: What do you mean?

Mason: Unfortunately, I’m now going to be very unhelpful

y/f/i 🙈: Mason please

Mason: I need to see you in them

y/f/i 🙈: Absolutely not

Mason: Worth a shot

y/f/i 🙈: I barely let anyone see me in photos You’re not getting a private fashion show

Mason: I’m wounded I was going to give my very professional opinion

y/f/i 🙈: You’d tease me

Mason: Probably But only because you’d be adorable about it I really can’t wait to see you in either of them But i think my favourite is the black one 

y/f/i 🙈: Thank you I guess I'll see you later on then?  Unless i run away

Mason: I’ll be running straight after you

It felt like if you let yourself stop moving, you knew you’d panic. So you didn’t.

You checked seating plans for the third time, making sure Mason was somewhere far away from you and in the middle of the chaos so he couldn’t work out who you were from all the staff running around. You straightened place cards that were already perfectly aligned and double-checked the running order so many times you could have recited from memory. Anything to quiet the noise in the back of your mind.

Busy was safe, busy meant you didn’t have to think about him or the fact that in less than an hour you’d finally be standing in the same room as the man you’d only ever really known through words on a screen.

You still didn’t quite understand how it had happened. It had started so professionally, a message to admin about a schedule change and a lost water bottle. Normal and harmless but somewhere between teasing replies and late-night conversations that felt too easy, Mason had stopped being just a name attached to a profile.

He listened and he remembered things. He made you laugh on days when you hadn’t realised how much you needed it and he made you feel like you got to see a side of him that no one else didn’t 

You knew you liked him a lot, even before you’d ever spoken you’d thought he was cute but you’d never expected him to want anything to do with you like he did and you still couldn't believe any of it. 

Yes you could be funny and cheeky with him, but behind the scenes you felt invisible. You were the one who organised, fixed and smoothed things over, never the one anyone noticed twice and the quiet voice in your head that kept asking why he’d chosen to keep talking to you at all wouldn’t seem to shut up tonight.

You adjusted the table names again, hands steady despite the flutter in your chest as you caught sight of his name. Tonight wasn’t supposed to be about any of this, it was a charity event with a room full of donors and players and polished conversations not a potential game of hide and seek with the boy you shouldn’t be talking to but you wanted more than anything else. 

You knew you could do this, you were good at this but yet you could barely concentrate and your phone felt heavier in your pocket than it ever had.

You hadn’t told him exactly where you were going to be, keeping your messages light and reassuring him that you were fine and that everything was under control. You didn’t want him to hear how nervous you were, didn’t want to risk him realising how much tonight meant to you as meeting him wasn’t just a reveal.

It was a risk, but it was one you were definitely willing to take. 

Yes it was scary, and yes it didn’t make sense to you but you were tired of pretending like you didn’t want more from this no matter the cost. 

You took a breath, smoothing your dress once more, the one he’d picked for you, and forced your shoulders back.

Just get through the set-up, you told yourself. One step at a time.

People had started arriving whilst you were directing sponsors toward the auction table, but you did your best to focus. Not looking for whoever it was coming in or if it was Mason or not and when you finally had a second to yourself you felt your phone vibrate in your hand.

You didn’t need to look to know who it was.

Mason: You alive? Or have they worked you to death already?

You smiled despite yourself, feeling like you were fully out of the frying pan and into the fire yet the sight of his name made you grin. Your thumbs hovering over the keyboard before you typed.

y/f/i 🙈: Still alive. Just about. I’m sorry if I’m quiet, it’s because I’m running around, not because I’ve vanished

Mason: I figured You’ve got that I’m pretending I’m calm but I’m actually doing ten things at once vibe tonight

Your chest tightened, heart hammering at the way he always seemed to see through you, even like this when you were trying so hard to hold it together. 

y/f/i 🙈: Is that so obvious?

Mason: Only to me

You swallowed, taking a peek around the corner you were hiding in and glancing around the room. Everything looked perfect even though you felt anything but however you didn’t seem to see the one person you were looking for.

y/f/i 🙈: You here yet?

Mason: Just pulled up No pressure, I know you’re busy. I just wanted to check you were okay

y/f/i 🙈: I’m fine. Honestly Just… a lot of people

Mason: Then we take it slow We do this your way

Your throat burned at how sweet he was being. Wanting him to burst through the doors so you could throw yourself in his arms but you held back and took a calming breath.

y/f/i 🙈: Thank you

Mason: Anytime I’m not going anywhere

You locked your phone, heart racing not from nerves now, but from how real it was starting to feel. He was really about to be in the same room as you and you couldn’t figure out how to feel about anything, your hands constantly smoothing over your dress with a slight tremor as your shoulders tensed but before you could think any further Carol was rushing over to you in a panic. 

Your phone had been buzzing in your pocket off and on again for around half an hour and you knew exactly who it was. Only just now managing to get five minutes peace so you could check on him and you felt a wave of guilt wash over you. 

Mason: I’ve got a feeling you’re not as okay as you’re saying you are

You swallowed, almost laughing at how well he could read you when you’d hadn’t spoken to him since he’d arrived but it wasn’t because you were scared or nervous this time it was because you’d only just had a second to breathe.

y/f/i 🙈: I’m fine i promise, there’s just been a slight change of plan and they’ve stuck me out the back running the food service. The head kitchen manager is sick and they thought I’d could do it so I’m just making sure everything gets out on time but it feels like a lot of pressure 

Mason: Hey Take a breath for a second, okay? They wouldn’t have put you there if you weren’t capable You’re good at this and I know you can make it work

y/f/i 🙈: Thank you, just feels like a lot all at once

Mason: I get that But I also know you’ll be incredible, even if it doesn’t feel like it right now And when you're done, I’ll be right here waiting for you 

y/f/i 🙈: That actually helps Thank you

Mason: Anytime You’ve got this   And soon I’ll have you

y/f/i 🙈:  😘

You tried to focus on what Mason had said but the kitchen was relentless.

Plates were being stacked faster than they were cleared, voices overlapping and the heat clung to your skin no matter how many times you stepped out to breathe. 

After a while it felt like you were moving on instinct, calling times, checking tickets and smoothing over small disasters before they turned into big ones like you’d worked here 100 times before. You didn’t have time to think about anything else, especially not the way your phone buzzed untouched in your pocket.

Your shoulders ached and your dress clung uncomfortably to your back, catching your reflection in the stainless steel of the pass every few minutes and now you barely recognised yourself. Your hair no longer perfect, cheeks flushed and mascara smudged under your eyes. The thought of walking into that room looking like this, of seeing Mason for the first time when you felt anything but composed made your chest tighten. You were exhausted and overwhelmed and not the version of yourself you wanted him to meet.  

You stepped out of the kitchen as the final set of plates left the kitchen and into the quiet corridor. Pressing your back to the wall so you could take a deep breath and have five seconds of peace but before you knew it your phone vibrated again and this time it was a call.

Mason.

Your first instinct was to decline it. You’d only ever spoken on the phone that one time when he called the ops hotline but you knew the sound of his voice would calm you so you answered before you could overthink it. Not caring he was only in the other room and this felt quite intimate as all you wanted was to feel close to him. 

‘Hi’ you whispered softly. You heart in your throat as you waited for him to reply and you felt your eyes well up at the sound of his voice. 

‘Hey’ he replied, voice instantly gentler and you could tell how worried he seemed about you. ‘Talk to me, where are you?’

‘I’m still out the back’ you sighed as you closed your eyes, your voice faltering slightly as you tried to hold in your tears. ‘It’s just louder than I expected and there’s so much going on and I look like a right mess now like I’m all sweaty and hot and I’ve barely had time to breathe-’

‘Hey, hey it’s okay’ he whispered, cutting you off to stop you from spirilling. ‘It’s okay’ he said calmly. ‘We can stop’

‘Stop?’ You frowned, not sure what he meant by that but you could feel the tears blooming in your eyes again.

‘We stop trying to meet tonight if it’s too much’ he told you quietly. ‘No pressure, no disappointment. I’d rather you be okay than force something if you’re not feeling it. I can hear it in your voice, you’re overwhelmed, love’

‘I wanted to be brave’ you whispered, a few tears spilling over from your eyes but you tried your best to keep your voice steady. ‘I wanted to get through tonight and prove to you I could do it, I just… don’t think it’s the right time’

‘That’s okay’ he replied instantly. No hesitation and no disappointment which made you feel better instantly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything bad’

‘I don’t want you thinking I don’t want to see you’

‘Hey, it’s okay. I know you do’ he said gently. ‘And I want to see you too but not like this. Not when you’re pushing yourself and you’re not comfortable’

You leaned your head back against the cool wall and you felt all the pressure leave your body. The thought of meeting Mason tonight had scared you but now you knew it wouldn't be happening you felt a tiny wave of disappointment roll through you. 

‘I feel like I’ve let you down’

‘You haven’t’ he said firmly. ‘You’ve trusted me enough to be honest with how you’re feeling and that matters more to me’

‘So maybe another day? When I look less like a hot mess?’ You asked hopefully, patting your eyes dry and it was almost as if you could hear him smile down the phone. 

‘Yeah, definitely’ he agreed softly. ‘Another day. Somewhere quieter, just us’

‘I’d like that’ you smiled, the knot in your chest easing just a little. ‘Are you really sure you don’t mind’ 

‘I’d mind if you were pretending you were fine just for me’ he replied. ‘That’s not what this is, I know this is a rough night for you’

‘Thank you’ you just about got out. Looking down at yourself and wishing you had worn something different now you knew Mason wouldn't be seeing you in it. ‘I feel like I got all dressed up for nothing though’ 

‘You wearing that dress I liked?’ He asked, his voice suddenly low and a little bit sexy which in turn made your cheeks redden. 

‘Yes, not that anyone’s even seen me in it apart from the chefs’ 

‘Lucky them’ he laughed. ‘Well in my imagination you look beautiful tonight, okay?’

‘Thank you’ you giggled, almost forgetting everything the pair of you had just said and running into the main room to find him but you couldn’t. Your name suddenly being called from the kitchen again and you straightened up with a huff. 

‘Anytime’ he said. ‘I’m hanging around for a bit but no expectations, yeah?’

‘Okay’ you whispered. ‘I have to get going again but just text me, yeah?’ 

‘I will. Happy Valentines, y/f/i’

‘Happy valentines, Mase’

You both ended the call gently, a little disappointed but comforted too at the way he’d reassured you and handled everything. You wanted to meet him when you were less sweaty and wound up and could enjoy the moment with him. 

Mason couldn’t stop checking his phone. He wanted to text you, to send you something else reassuring to let you know he really was okay with seeing you some other time but he couldn’t deny he was disappointed. 

The night had blurred into polite conversations and half-heard laughter and maybe he should have paid more attention to what was going on but he was so aware of your presence the entire time it was difficult. Somewhere in the building you were there. Close enough that he could feel you get far enough away that it made his chest ache. 

It had been killing him and whilst he now knew tonight probably wouldn’t be the best time he couldn’t get the thought of you in that dress out of his head. 

Most of the people he knew had left or were gathered in conversations. Mason himself knew he should have gone rather than sit and wait for something that wasn't happening but he was nursing a drink near the edge of the room when he saw Ken. 

‘Mason? I thought you’d gone already’

‘Was about to’ Mason admitted. ‘Long night’

‘Tell me about it’ he laughed. ‘They’ve had us run ragged, I’m surprised Carol's still standing. You got time for one more?’

Mason hesitated, then nodded. One drink before he headed off would do him no harm so he followed Ken back toward the bar, still painfully aware of the absence beside him. The person he’d spent the entire night half-expecting to appear was nowhere to be seen but he didn’t want to be a grump so he plastered on a smile and popped himself on a stool.

He liked Ken a lot, he'd really made him feel welcome when he first joined the club and from what he could tell he'd done the same for you. Wondering if he could try and pick his brain about you a little bit without being caught but their drinks had only just been placed down in front of them when Mason heard a soft voice coming from the other side of Ken. Mason trying not to pry as he had no idea who had come to speak to him but it looked serious.  

‘There you are, sorry Ken, they're asking for you near the prize table. Said it shouldn’t take too long’ 

‘Of course they are’ Ken groaned, turning back to Mason quickly to apologise with a sorry smile. ‘Sorry mate’ Ken huffed before jumping down and bringing the girl he’d just spoken to into view. ‘Mason, this is y/n by the way. She works with me on my team, absolute lifesaver. Y/n, this is Mason.’

The world tilted in that one moment.

Mason’s breath caught so sharply it felt like a punch to the chest. For half a second, neither of you moved as your eyes flicked to his. Recognition slamming into place so hard your heart stuttered.

Mason.

‘Oh’ you breathed, barely audible as Mason stared at you. His glass forgotten in his hand as he looked back at you in shock.

It was you.

He knew it instantly, not because of how you looked in the dress he’d chosen, but because of the way his chest tightened and how the noise of the room faded into nothing.

‘Hi’ he said quietly, carefully. ‘Y/n’

You knew Ken sensed something as he glanced between you both, wondering what he’d walked into here but you couldn’t wipe the smile off your face as you took Mason in. 

‘Do you… know each other?’ he asked and it was you who found your voice first as you felt your cheeks warm.

‘We’ve… spoken’ Mason smiled, his grin growing as he looked at you and he knew then and there he was done for

‘Small world, eh?’ Ken laughed, trying to ease the tension slightly. ‘I’ll let you two catch up’ he told you before he finally wandered off, blissfully unaware of what he’d just set in motion.

Silence fell between you both again. Thick and charged but not uncomfortable but you felt your eyes fall to the floor as your nerves took over. He was so much more beautiful in person, his smile bright and wide and it disarmed you immediately. 

‘So’ Mason said finally, voice low. ‘This is you, and you have a name’

‘This is me’ you nodded, nerves fluttering in your tummy as you tried your hardest to act normal. ‘And yeah I guess the secrets out now’

‘I love it, it suits you, y/n’ he told you, your name sounding like something precious when he said it. ‘I’m really glad I didn’t leave now’ he said and you finally met his gaze. Your heart steady even though it was thumping hard.

‘I’m so sorry’ you said quickly. ‘I- I didn’t mean to make it awkward. I was just- Carol asked me to pass something on and I-’ you stopped, your breath hitching as you realised you were rambling but Mason didn’t interrupt. He just watched you like he was afraid if he spoke you might disappear. ‘You probably expected… I don’t know. Someone different’

Your words came out small, fragile and you hated that he could probably hear the fear in them. Your eyes flickering over him and searching his face for any disappointment, for even the slightest shift that might confirm the doubt you had been carrying for weeks but even if he did he was hiding it well. 

‘This is me’ you added quietly. ‘I know I’m not-‘

‘y/n’

He said your name so softly yet firmly that it stopped you mid sentence. Looking up to find his expression wasn’t uncertain or assessing or polite but like he'd been lit up from the inside. Taking a small and careful step closer towards you like he was still giving you space even as he closed the distance between you.

‘Please don’t do that’ he said gently. ‘Don’t talk yourself down before I even get the chance to say anything’

‘I was terrified you’d see me and think…’ you shook your head. ‘That I wasn’t who you thought I was’

‘I see you’ he whispered, taking another step towards you as he smiled warmly. ‘And you’re exactly who I thought you were’

Your breath caught in your throat instantly, the smile on his face making the butterflies in your tummy erupt even more than they already had been and you couldn't help but smile back at him.

‘I’ve been walking around all night trying not to imagine this moment’ he continued, voice low. ‘Trying not to build it up too much in my head just in case reality couldn’t compete but as it turns out, I was wrong’ he laughed softly, shaking his head as his kind eyes bore into yours. 

‘You’re not disappointed?’ You asked, confusion in your tone but he seemed stunned by your question as he took another cautious step towards you.

‘Disappointed?’ he repeated quietly. ‘y/n, I’m trying very hard to keep it together right now. You’re so beautiful’ he told you quietly, almost as if he didn't mean for the words to come out but you could tell he was being earnest and unguarded. feeling your shoulders sag a little as the tension eased in your body. 

‘I’m really bad at this’ you admitted, your hands coming up to cover your face as you giggled out of awkwardness. ‘I was so sure I’d mess it up’

‘You haven’t at all yeah? I promise’ Mason said immediately. ‘Look we don’t have to rush anything, we can just stand here for a minute if you want until you’re comfortable. I’m not going anywhere’ he told you but from the corner of your eye you could see him extend his hand towards you.

For a moment you just looked at it, It felt like an impossibly intimate gesture but one you couldn't pass by. Your fingers trembling slightly as you placed your hand in his and the contact sent a quiet jolt through your body. His hand was warm and strong as his thumb brushed lightly over your knuckles as if he was checking you were real.

‘Okay?’ he asked softly but all you could do was nod. Unable to trust your voice with his skin on yours but you noticed he didn't pull you towards him. He just stood there with you, hands joined in the middle of the noise and lights but you noticed how quickly the room faded when you focused on him and the gentleness in his grip.

‘Come sit with me?’ he said after a moment. ‘Before someone steals you away again’

You smiled, nodding again before you felt him pull you towards the mostly empty tables. Sitting down at one tucked slightly away from the dance floor but still close enough to hear the music and far enough that it felt like their own pocket of space. 

At first the conversation was careful, familiar topics like tonight and the chaos of organising and running it. The endless scheduling that all seemed to go up in the air as you told him about the last-minute seating changes and the panic when the florist delivered the wrong centrepieces. 

‘I wish I could have seen your face when I called you’ he said smiling. ‘I could hear you trying not to lose your mind’

‘I absolutely was losing my mind’ you admitted. ‘I just didn’t want you to think I couldn't cope’

‘I always knew you could cope’

As the night stretched on, the nerves eased. Your shoulders brushed and ended up staying that way. Mason eventually angling his chair slightly toward yours without realising as his knee knocked gently against yours beneath the table but neither of you moved away.

You laughed more freely now, head tipping toward him when you spoke and he found himself watching the way your eyes lit up when you teased him and also the way you tucked your hair behind her ear when you got shy again.

‘So’ you said casually ‘I didn't expect you in such a nice suit, thought you might get that brown monstrosity out again’

Mason blinked as he looked at you in shock before he laughed, the sound warm and surprised as he leaned into you further.

‘Oh okay’ he laughed, nudging your shoulder playfully. ‘There she is’

‘Who?’

‘That version of you that sends me messages at midnight and pretends she’s confident’ he teased. ‘I was wondering when she’d make an appearance’

‘I am not confident, especially when it comes to you’

‘You once told me to ‘cope’ because I forgot my headphones’

‘That was practical advice’

‘That was sass’ he corrected, smiling. ‘Text-y/n has opinions’

‘Text-y/n doesn’t have to look you in the eye’ you laughed, ducking your head as your cheeks warmed but you could feel him leaning in with his lips dangerously close to your ear.

‘I like both versions’

‘Even the cheeky one?’

‘Especially the cheeky one’ he said. ‘She’s the reason I stayed up way too late talking to a stranger I wasn’t supposed to know’ he winked. ‘You know’ he said quietly a few moments after ‘I kept thinking I’d recognise you straight away’

‘Did you?’

‘No, but the second Ken said your name… everything clicked’

‘Yeah?’ you asked, your heart skipping a beat as he smiled at you sweetly. 

‘Yeah’ he nodded. ‘It was like my brain finally caught up with everything else’ Mason told you as he rested his forearm on the table, close enough that his little finger brushed yours and when you didn’t pull back, he let it stay.

By the time the room dimmed and someone announced the last dance, you realised you were leaning into him fully now, shoulder against his arm and your voices lower and more private.

‘I can’t believe we’re finally here’ you murmured.

‘It’s been killing me, you know’ he laughed as he turned toward you with his face still close. ‘Knowing you were right there around the corner and I couldn’t see you’

‘Yeah, me too’ you admitted as his thumb brushed the back of your hand, slow and careful. Your heart in your throat as he was treating you so carefully and gently.

‘But’ he smiled ‘I think I’d wait through all of it again if it meant we got to meet like this. I know we weren't meant to but I think I needed to see you tonight. And at least this way you can say you didn’t get dressed up for nothing now’ he chuckled. ‘You look beautiful, y/n. I knew you would’ 

‘How did you know?’

‘You look like you did in my head’ he told you seriously and you knew at that moment you were glad you’d finally seen him tonight.

‘The last dance is coming up,’ you said casually, trying to change the subject a little and make out like your heart wasn’t thudding.

‘Is that so?’ He tilted his head playfully. 

‘I might’ve promised someone I’d save it for them’ you told him cheekily and his eyebrows lifted amused.

‘Oh? And who’s the lucky person?’

‘You’

‘Well lucky for you, I will absolutely hold you to that’ he chuckled as the lights dimmed slightly and the chatter softened. A familiar, slow song began to play, the kind everyone recognised within the first few notes and Mason held out his hand immediately.

‘Come on, you promised’ he told you, letting you slip your hand into his, fingers fitting like they already knew where to go and the sight made you grin. 

You moved onto the floor together, not in the centre, but close enough to feel part of it as he placed one hand at your waist, the other still holding yours as he pulled you close. 

‘Is this okay?’ he asked quietly but all you could do was nod. Your words failing you as you were now so close to him and his scent filled your senses. ‘I should warn you,’ he murmured after a few seconds ‘I’m not great at slow dances. Probably not great at quick ones either’

‘That makes two of us’ you laughed, your nerves easing ever so slightly but they were soon ramping up again as he rested his head on top of yours with his lips by your ear. 

‘I can’t believe this is how we met’ he murmured. ‘After all that build-up, now we’re here’

‘You promise you're not disappointed?’ You asked, tilting your head up to look at him but he shook his head, smiling softly.

‘Not even a little’

‘I was really scared tonight’ you admitted. ‘I thought I’d ruined it’

‘I promise you didn’t, I really would have waited’

‘You would have been okay with that?’

‘Yeah’ he said without hesitation. ‘Because I’d rather wait than push you into something that scared you’ he told you and your chest ached at the sincerity in his voice.

‘I don’t understand how you can be like this’ you whispered. ‘How you can… feel this way about me’ you questioned, causing him to stop swaying for a second and force you to meet his eyes.

‘You really don’t get how I feel about you, do you?’

‘I don’t’ you gulped as Mason exhaled, something vulnerable passing across his face but his voice was low when he replied.

‘I wake up thinking about you’ he said quietly. ‘I read your messages like they’re something I’ve been missing my whole life. You make me calm and wired at the same time and I don’t even know how that’s possible’ he laughed, his words making your eyes fill with unshed tears instantly. ‘I didn’t care who you were’ he continued. ‘What you looked like or how you might fit into my world. I just cared that it was you’

The music swelled around the pair of you, the room dissolving until it felt like you were standing in a quiet pocket of your own as you held each other's eye contact before his flashed to your lips. 

‘Can I-’ he began, then stopped himself. ‘Is it okay if I-’

You didn’t let him finish, rising in your heels just a touch so you could place your lips on his before you talked yourself out of it. 

It was soft and tentative at first, like you were both afraid to break the moment. Mason froze for half a heartbeat, not expecting you to make the first move but then he was kissing you back just as gently. His hand sliding from your waist to your back to steady you and when you eventually pulled apart your foreheads touched as you struggled to get your breath back. 

‘Hi’ he murmured, a giant cheesy grin on his face and you couldn’t help but laugh along with him. 

‘Hi’

The pair of you stayed like that until the song ended, neither of you quite ready to let go but eventually the lights brightened and the room stirred back to life. Your eyes catching onto someone else’s across the room and it was almost as if they were more happy than you were at this moment. 

‘Why is Bruno looking at us like that?’

‘Long story’ Mason laughed, pulling you back to your table where you still sat as close as possible. Knees touching and fingers occasionally brushing as if by accident as you talked about everything and nothing. Childhood stories, Mason's dog Ace, the worst jobs you’d ever had. Mason listened like he always had, only now he could see your expressions and the way you eyes crinkled when you smiled.

When the night finally began to wind down and people drifted toward the exits, Mason stayed close almost as if he was afraid that the moment might slip away if he didn’t. He walked you toward the doors, fingers brushing your wrist now and then until you stepped outside and the cool night air kissed your flushed skin.

‘I don’t want this to end’ you told him as you stepped out, another pout playfully attached to your lips but he just smiled at you widely as you carried on walking into the carpark. 

‘It doesn’t have to end here’ he said gently. ‘I can drop you home if you want?’

‘It’s okay, I can walk it’s not that far’

Something in his expression softened even more, fond and a little protective and without saying anything else, he took your hand and guided you toward his car anyway and stopped beside the passenger door. He didn’t open it. Instead he stepped closer, close enough that you could feel the warmth of him in the cool air and your tummy flipped at how close he was again.

‘This’ he murmured, brushing his thumb along your cheek softly ‘still doesn’t have to be the end’

Before you could reply, his hand slid to your waist and he gently but firmly guided you back until you felt the solid metal of the passenger door behind you. He leaned in, one arm braced beside you whilst the other pulled you close. Nothing felt rushed or urgent, it felt just like he wanted to hold you there and make sure you were real.

The kiss came slower this time, Mason kissing you like he meant it, like he’d been waiting far too long and didn’t want to let go now that he finally could. You melted into him, fingers curling into his jacket and heart pounding with the certainty that this was exactly where you were meant to be.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, his breath warm against your skin.

'I didn’t think you would want to kiss me tonight' you admitted quietly, almost shy now as the words slipped out before you could stop them.

He frowned just slightly, not confused but more thoughtful but then he smiled that gentle, knowing smile that always made your chest ache and lifted your hand over his heart.

'I already know you in here' he said simply. 'So to me this doesn’t feel new, It just feels normal. We might’ve only just met but I’ve known you for a long time. This was always going to happen' he added softly, thumb brushing your jaw. ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, love' he murmured against your lips and this time it felt like it meant something deeper now.

'Happy Valentine’s Day Mase'