Jude bellingham x Fem!Reader
sy: after england's world cup dream ends against argentina, all jude needs is someone to stay.
a/n: after seeing that interview where he had his hat pulled down trying to hide his eyes from crying so much... and then seeing how red they were... yeah, i had to write this 😭 every single clip i found was just him crying. omg someone pls take care of him fr. this is pretty short and simple, but i rlly hope u guys like it. pls pls tell me what u think
He fell asleep before you did.
Not peacefully — it was the kind of sleep that arrives after crying for a long time, less rest and more the body surrendering because it has no energy left for anything else. His breathing took a while to become regular, and you lay awake listening to it settle, your hand open on his back making slow movements that weren't meant to wake him, only to let him feel he wasn't alone while he slept.
You stayed like that almost all night.
Sometimes his breathing changed slightly and you paused your hand, waited, and when it settled again you continued. It was a small thing, doing that — it solved nothing, changed nothing, didn't return the game or erase those images you knew were in his head and would stay there for a long time. But it was what there was to do, so you did it.
The elimination had been cruel in the way World Cup eliminations are cruel — not in the way of teams that play badly, but in the way of a match that could have been something else, of moments, choices, and strategies that might have made the slightest difference. You had watched the game with your heart tight and then stayed with him afterward, and he had cried in the way only people who lived it from the inside out can cry — not contained, not managed, but the kind that comes when you have nothing left to protect because what you were protecting is already over.
You didn't say anything. You stayed.
Early in the morning, before he woke, you went to the bathroom and turned on the cold tap. You filled a bowl with water and the ice you had asked for the night before anticipating that morning, and folded a small cloth into quarters before going back to the room.
He was on his side, his face turned toward you.
You stood still for a second looking at him — at the closed eyes that even so gave away the night, at the swollen eyelids with that specific colour that comes from crying a great deal for a long time. There was something in it that was hard to look at, not in an unbearable way, but in the way it's hard to see someone you love having been through something large.
You sat on the edge of the bed slowly so as not to wake him.
You dipped the cloth in the ice water, wrung out the excess, and carefully placed it over his eyes. He shifted slightly — a reflex, the cold arriving in his sleep — but didn't wake. You held your hand over the cloth for a second, making sure it stayed in place, and then let it settle.
The ice water dripped sometimes. You moved your thumb along his temple to catch it before it reached his neck, a small gesture, repeated, that became rhythm without you noticing.
At some point he woke — it was gradual, his breathing changing first, and then his eyes trying to open and finding the cold cloth, and a half-second of confusion before processing where he was and what was happening. You saw the moment he understood.
"Hi," he said, his voice thick with sleep.
"Hi," you said, quietly.
He stayed still for a moment, with the cold cloth over his eyes and you sitting beside him, and there was in that silence someone arriving back from somewhere — not fully, not all at once, but gradually, the way eyes adjust to light after darkness.
"You were awake all night," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I slept a little," you said, which was partially true.
He lifted the cloth from his eyes with his hand and looked at you. His eyes were still swollen, the redness still there, but there was something else in them now — that specific expression that appeared when he was really seeing you, when there was no energy left to be anything other than what he was.
"You didn't have to," he said.
"I know," you said. "I wanted to."
You dipped the cloth back into the ice water, wrung it out, and placed it back carefully. This time his hand found your wrist while you did it — not holding, just resting, the light weight of someone holding onto something without quite knowing what.
The ice water ran down the side of his face.
You wiped it away with your fingers.
They were small things. All of them were small things, and they were all there was to do, and you did each one with the same care you would have given to large things. The room was quiet. The morning was arriving slowly through the gap in the curtain with that grey early light that doesn't impose, that lets things exist.
You stayed until the swelling in his eyes went down.
Not completely — it would take all day, probably, and there were things ice compresses don't resolve. But the redness gradually eased, and the eyelids settled, and at some point you noticed he was looking at you differently, with that quiet attention of someone paying attention from the inside out.
"Thank you," he said, with a voice that was more than the word.
You didn't say he didn't need to thank you. Sometimes people need to be able to give thanks for the things that mattered.
"Sleep a little more," you said, instead.
He closed his eyes. His hand was still on your wrist, his thumb moving slightly, that absent gesture of someone holding onto consciousness before letting it go.
You stayed where you were.
With the bowl of water on the bedside table and the folded cloth in your hand and the grey morning light arriving slowly, you stayed where you were.
