She Never Had To Ask
Alexia Putellas (Barcelona Era) x Female Footballer Reader!
Wc: 5k
For four years, the routine had been as steady and unyielding as the tides along the Barceloneta coast.
Whenever Alexia Putellas walked off the training pitch at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper—whether her legs felt like lead after a grueling Champions League semi-final or she was riding the euphoric high of another domestic masterclass, she never had to guess where her comfort lived. It lived in a pair of expressive, warm eyes, a soft, reassuring smile, and a girl who treated her like she hung the stars in the Catalan sky.
You were that girl.
As a fellow midfielder in the FC Barcelona Femení squad, you knew the exact physical toll the sport took on a body. You knew how Alexia’s right knee throbbed when the weather dropped, how she took her coffee with a very specific splash of oat milk and half a packet of raw sugar, and how her posture shifted from commanding captain to vulnerable, tired girl the second the heavy oak door of her home closed behind her.
You had loved her for so long that loving her felt less like a conscious choice and more like a vital biological function.
You spoiled her. There was no other word for it. If Alexia mentioned in passing that she loved a particular bakery in Gràcia, a fresh box of pastries appeared on her locker shelf the next morning before she even arrived. If she was too exhausted to untie her boots after a draining session in the rain, you knelt on the damp grass and unlaced them for her, your fingers brushing against her ankles with a reverence that made some of the younger academy call-ups whisper in the locker room.
You answered her texts within seconds. You cleared your weekends to accommodate her unpredictable media appearances, sponsor events, and family dinners. You gave her the world wrapped in quiet, undemanding devotion, never asking for a formal title, content simply to orbit the sun that was Alexia Putellas.
Or, at least, you had tried to be content.
The fracture line in your chest had begun as a hairline crack months ago. It was the subtle way Alexia’s eyes started drifting toward her phone during dinner. The dismissive little huffs of air when you rearranged your entire schedule to pick up her dry cleaning, as if your time had no intrinsic value of its own. The casual way she accepted every sacrifice you made, swallowing your devotion whole without ever offering a crumb of reciprocity.
And then came the Tuesday afternoon that broke the glass completely.
You were standing in the players' lounge, carefully peeling an orange for her because you knew she hated getting the bitter white pith under her fingernails. You handed her a segment, your thumb gently brushing the back of her hand.
Alexia didn’t take it. She didn't even look up from her iPad, where she was flicking through tactical footage. Her shoulders were bunched up near her ears, tight with post-training irritability.
"Y/N, stop” she snapped, her voice cutting through the hum of the lounge like a jagged knife. "Just... stop doing that."
Your hand froze mid-air. "Doing what?"
"All of this” she muttered, finally looking at you, her dark eyes flashing with an irritated, suffocating impatience. "The hovering. The bringing me fruit, the constantly making sure I'm comfortable, fixing my kit, rearranging your life. It’s too much."
A cold weight settled in the pit of your stomach. "I was just trying to help you, Ale. You said you were tired."
"I am tired” Alexia shot back, closing the iPad with a sharp, echoing thwack. "I’m tired of feeling like I have my mom following me around the club. Why do you even do it? Why do you keep trying so hard?"
You stared at her, the orange segments slipping from your fingers back onto the paper napkin. The question hung in the air, heavy and cruel, demanding an answer you suddenly didn't have the emotional energy to fabricate.
"Because I care about you” you whispered, your throat tightening.
Alexia let out a cynical, dry puff of air, crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, don't. Save it. We're friends, Y/N. Just teammates. You act like you're my girlfriend, but you're not ever. So stop treating me like I'm special, because it's exhausting."
Just teammates.
The words echoed in your skull, tearing away the last four years of masonry you had built around your heart. The illusion shattered into fine, microscopic dust. She didn't want your care. She didn't want your devotion. She looked at everything you gave her and saw a burden.
You didn't cry. You didn't yell. A strange, numbing calm washed over you—the self-preservation mechanism of a soul that had endured too much abandonment in its lifetime.
"Okay” you said softly.
Alexia blinked, clearly taken aback by the lack of a fight, the absence of your usual tearful defense. "What?"
"Okay” you repeated, your voice entirely level, stripping every ounce of warmth, every shade of intimacy out of the syllable. "Got it."
The transformation was immediate, stark, and terrifyingly efficient.
If Alexia wanted friends, you would treat her like a friend. Not an enemy, you weren't malicious, and you didn't have a cruel bone in your body but the luxury car of your affection was suddenly downgraded to a local bus, running strictly on schedule and devoid of any extra amenities.
The next morning in the locker room, Alexia walked in carrying her heavy training gear and tossed her wet shinpads onto the bench. Out of pure, ingrained muscle memory, your hand reached toward them to move them out of her way so they wouldn't soak her spare socks.
Halfway there, your fingers stopped. You withdrew your hand as if the plastic had burned you, picked up your own kit, and walked right past her to tape your ankles.
"Morning” you offered, your tone light, breezy, and utterly transactional, the exact tone you used with third-string substitutes you barely knew.
Alexia paused; her boots half-zipped. She looked up at you, waiting for the usual sequence: the smile, the offer to fill her water bottle, the quiet check-in on how her sleep had been.
You just sat there, listening to music through your headphones, staring straight ahead.
During the tactical session on pitch three, the true shockwaves hit. In the past, whenever Alexia dropped deep to receive the ball under pressure, you were always the safety valve, running yourself into the ground to provide a passing lane, anticipating her movements before she even made them.
Today, when she called for a square ball under a heavy double-press from Mapi and Patri, you didn't force the pass. You calmly recycled possession to the opposite flank, choosing the safer, lower-risk option.
Alexia threw her arms up in the air, glaring at you across the grass. When the whistle blew for a water break, she marched straight over, her face flushed with heat and a strange, bubbling agitation.
"What was that?" she demanded, standing right in your personal space. "You had a clean passing lane to my feet. I called for it."
You took a slow sip from your water bottle, wiping your mouth with the back of your wrist. You looked at her with polite, detached curiosity, the way a customer service representative looks at a slightly confused client. "Option B was safer. The statistical success rate on the switch was higher. Pere wants us to minimize midfield turnovers."
"Since when do you care about statistical success rates over instinct?" Alexia snapped, her voice rising. "You always look for me."
"Well, I'm adapting my playstyle" you replied smoothly, offering a completely harmless, hollow smile. "We're just teammates, right? No need to overcomplicate the build-up. I'll see you on the next drill."
You turned on your heel and jogged away, leaving Alexia standing alone on the turf, her mouth slightly open, a deep, burning confusion warring with an unidentifiable anger in her chest.
Over the next week, the absence of you became a physical weight in Alexia’s daily life.
There were no more fancy coffees waiting in her locker. There were no more midnight texts checking if she had taken her magnesium for muscle recovery. When she dropped her water bottle during a shooting drill, you didn't scramble to pick it up; you simply stepped around it with a polite, "Careful there" and kept running.
You were polite. You were professional. You were a teammate.
And Alexia found herself slowly losing her absolute mind.
The privilege of being adored had become so woven into the fabric of her routine that its sudden removal felt like oxygen being slowly sucked out of an airtight room. She caught herself waiting for you to crack, waiting for the heavy sigh, the fond eye-roll, the inevitable softening where you would cave and bring her a towel.
You never caved. You were terrifyingly, consistently fine.
Football clubs are breeding grounds for chaos, gossip, and opportunistic flirtation, especially when a new transfer window brings fresh talent into the orbit of a powerhouse like Barcelona.
Her name was Louise. She was a twenty-six o-year-old French winger signed from Lyon, fast, flashy, entirely unapologetic, and possessed of a radiant, chaotic energy that could light up a room. She also had zero filter and an immediate, laser-focused fixation on you.
It started innocently enough during a recovery session in the gym. Louise, stretching her hamstrings near the resistance machines, struck up a conversation about tactical positioning, her English laced with a thick, charming accent. You laughed at one of her dry observations, leaning against the rack.
Across the gym floor, Alexia was doing core work on a stability ball. Her eyes were supposed to be fixed on her trainer, but her gaze kept darting magnetically toward your corner.
She saw Louise lean in close to your shoulder, whispering something that made you throw your head back and laugh—a genuine, melodic laugh that Alexia hadn't heard directed at her in months. She saw Lou’s hand lightly, lingeringly brush against your forearm.
And she saw you smile back. Not politely. Warmly.
A cold, vicious spike of jealousy ripped through Alexia’s ribs, so sharp and violent that she lost her balance on the stability ball, tumbling backward onto the rubber mat with an undignified thump.
"Everything alright, captain?" Pere asked, rushing over.
"I'm fine” Alexia hissed, shoving herself up off the floor, her dark eyes burning with an incandescent rage as she glared across the gym.
You weren't stupid. You knew Louise was laying it on thick, and you knew exactly what effect it was having on the woman standing forty feet away. You didn't feel any real romantic interest in Louise, your heart was still a bruised, stubborn landscape but after weeks of being treated like an annoyance, watching Alexia unravel from afar offered a dark, intoxicating validation.
So, when Louise leaned over the lunch table two days later and asked if you wanted to grab coffee in El Born after the afternoon tactical meeting, you didn't hesitate.
"I’d love to, Lou” you said clearly, making sure your voice carried just far enough across the canteen. "I'm completely free."
Lou flashed a brilliant, triumphant smile, reaching across the table to tap her fingers against your knuckles.
At the captain's table, the sound of Alexia’s fork snapping cleanly against her ceramic plate echoed in the sudden silence of the dining hall.
From that afternoon onward, Alexia stopped trying to pretend she was unaffected. The veneer of captainly composure melted away, replaced by a bitter, prickly hostility. She became short-tempered with the coaching staff, hyper-critical of the ball movement during drills, and outright mean whenever she had to interact with you.
"Can you actually run this time, or are you too distracted by your little French lady?" Alexia muttered loud enough for you to hear as you jogged back into position during a tactical walkthrough.
You didn't blink. You didn't offer a meek apology. You simply turned your head, looked her dead in the eyes with a chilling, utter blankness, and said, "Mind your spacing, captain. You're out of position and let me play."
Alexia looked like she wanted to physically lunge across the grass and throttle you.
The tipping point arrived on a rainy Thursday morning in late spring. A completely fabricated, absurd gossip item began circulating through the lower-tier Spanish sports blogs and filtered into the squad's group chats: FC Barcelona Femení star forward spotted holding hands with new signing in the Mercadona; rumored relationship blossoming.
It was entirely false. You had gone to that supermarket (the nearest from your house) to buy coffee beans and some oat milk, and Louise had merely bumped into you on the pavement and walked three blocks with you under an umbrella because it was raining.
But by the time it reached the locker room, it had mutated into a full-scale romance.
Alexia walked into the room ten minutes before team meeting, her face pale, her jaw clenched so tight the muscles flickered. She dropped her kit bag onto her bench with a force that rattled the metal lockers.
"Is it true?" she blurted out before she could stop herself, her voice shaking with an ugly mix of grief, humiliation, and furious possessiveness.
You were sitting on your bench, calmly pulling your boots on. You looked up slowly. "Is what true?"
"Don't play games with me" Alexia snarled, taking a step toward your bench, her chest heaving. "The whole club is talking. You and Louise. Are you actually dating her?"
The sheer hypocrisy of it hung in the air like tear gas. Alexia, who had spent months pushing you away, treating your devotion like a disease, and reminding you at every turn that you were just teammates was standing here looking like a betrayed lover.
You let out a quiet, humorless scoff. "What I do outside of training hours is none of your business, Alexia. We’re just teammates, remember? You made that crystal clear."
"That's different!" Alexia shouted, the word tearing out of her throat, drawing the startled eyes of every player in the room. "You can't just... you can't just be with someone else!"
"Excuse me?" you said softly, standing up to your full height, your brown eyes locked onto hers, steady and unyielding. "You don't get to dictate who I care about anymore. You gave up that privilege a long time ago."
Alexia’s face drained of what little color it had left. She looked shattered, her lower lip trembling slightly before her defensive walls slammed back down with brutal force. "Fine. Do whatever you want. Sleep with whoever you want. I don't care."
She spun on her heel and stormed out of the locker room, slamming the door so hard the glass pane rattled in its frame.
The training session that followed was a disaster of epic, catastrophic proportions.
Karma, or the football gods, or simply the dizzying weight of human misery, decided to collect its debts from Alexia Putellas that afternoon. From the very first whistle, nothing went right for her. Her first touch deserted her; her trademark diagonal passes sailed harmlessly out of bounds; her defensive timing was half a second too slow.
Every mistake compounded her frustration, turning her into a live wire of raw, jagged nerves.
And you didn't look at her. Not once. When she blew a simple possession in the central channel, you didn't cover for her; you let Mapi win the ball cleanly, forcing Alexia to chase leather.
During a high-intensity small-sided game thirty minutes into the session, the inevitable occurred. Alexia charged out to close down a loose ball, her studs catching awkwardly in a damp patch of turf just as she pivoted.
A sickening, muffled pop echoed across the grass, followed instantly by a sharp, agonizing scream that made the entire pitch freeze dead in its tracks.
"Stop! Stop training!" the coach bellowed, blowing his whistle frantically.
Players converged on the spot instantly. Alexia was down on her right side, clutching her right ankle, her face buried in the damp grass, her shoulders shaking with stifled, white-hot pain.
You stood ten yards away, your heart doing a terrifying, violent freefall into your stomach. Every instinct, four years of muscle memory, of unconditional devotion, of loving her above all else screamed at you to run to her, to drop to your knees, to cradle her head.
You forced your feet to stay planted in the mud. You swallowed the lump in your throat, folded your arms across your chest, and forced your expression into a neutral, detached mask.
She's just a teammate, you told yourself, a hollow lie tasting like ash on your tongue. Let the medical staff handle it.
-
They get her up eventually, one arm slung over a physio's shoulders, ankle already swelling visibly above her sock, and half-carry her off toward the medical room while training limps on around the gap she's left in it. You go back to the drill. Your finishing, again, is vicious and precise, and this time you know exactly why.
It's forty minutes later, showered and changed, gear bag over your shoulder, that you overhear it two of the physio staff, talking near the equipment room, not bothering to lower their voices because they don't think anyone's listening.
"…can't drive herself home like that, obviously, someone'll have to take her "
"Isn't her sister meant to be picking her up? Or Vicky?"
"Vicky's already gone, she had that appearance thing. And apparently, she doesn't want to call her sister, doesn't want to worry her " a small, exasperated laugh. "She's being very Alexia about the whole thing. Says she'll get a taxi. On a sprained ankle. In this weather."
You stand very still in the corridor, gear bag digging into your shoulder, and you think: everyone's gone. It's just me left in the building. She's going to end up alone in a taxi with a swollen ankle rather than ask.
And underneath that thought, quieter, truer: of course she won't ask me. Not after everything.
You know, with the particular clarity of someone who has spent two years learning a person's every stubborn edge, exactly what's happening in that medical room right now. Alexia, jaw set, insisting she's fine, insisting a taxi will be fine, because the alternative turning to you, the person she pushed away, the person she's spent three weeks being cold and sharp with is apparently a worse prospect to her than travelling home in agony with strangers.
You think about walking away. You think about it seriously, for about four seconds, standing there with your keys already half out of your pocket. Three weeks of hard-won distance, and here's the exact moment it would be easiest to protect, to let her sit in a taxi and be stubborn and prove some point to herself about not needing you.
But love doesn't leave just because you've asked it to behave for three weeks. You know this now in a way you only half-knew it before. It's still there, underneath all the careful coldness, patient and stupid and entirely undiminished, and it doesn't care what she said to you in the corridor five weeks ago. It just wants her to get home safely.
You go and find the team doctor first, not Alexia, you're not ready to face her yet, not without a plan.
"How's Alexia doing?" you ask, keeping your voice carefully casual, the tone of someone asking after any teammate.
He glances up from his clipboard. "Grade two sprain, could've been worse. She'll be in a boot for a couple of weeks. She's a bit sore and a lot stubborn, honestly, insisting on getting herself home, which is a terrible idea, but you know how she is." A small, tired smile. "She's through in the changing room now, getting dressed. Everyone else has already left, unfortunately."
"Right” you say. "Thanks."
You don't ask permission for what you do next. You go to the bench where Alexia's things always sit you know the spot without thinking, three weeks of distance hasn't erased two years of habit and you pick up her gear bag, and then, because you spot them sitting on top with her wallet, you pick up her car keys too.
You find her in the changing room, alone, sitting on the bench in her training kit with one boot off and the other leg propped up, her ankle already strapped and swollen, wincing every time she shifts her weight even slightly. Her hair's come loose from its bun. She looks, for the first time since you've known her, genuinely fragile, and something in your chest twists so hard it's almost painful.
She sees you in the doorway with her bag over your shoulder and her keys in your hand, and her whole face does something complicated surprise, then a flare of something defensive, then, underneath both, the faintest, most reluctant flicker of relief that she immediately tries to smother.
"I don't need you to do this” she says, before you've even said anything. Straight into it, the way she always does when she's trying to protect herself from something. "I've already called a taxi."
"You haven't” you say, calmly. "You've been sitting here for ten minutes arguing with the doctor about whether you need one."
"That's not…" she stops, flustered, because apparently that's exactly what happened. "It doesn't matter. I don't need you driving me home, Y/N. I'm perfectly capable of …"
"Of what? Hopping in a taxi with a sprained ankle in the rain?" You keep your voice even, not unkind, just factual. "I've got your bag. I've got your keys. I'm parked next to you, same as always. It's not a favour, Alexia, it's just getting you home. That's all it is."
"I don't want your help” she says, and her voice wavers slightly on want, betraying something underneath the stubbornness not dislike, you realise, but fear, the fear of needing something from someone she pushed away, the fear of what accepting might mean about everything she said five weeks ago.
"I know you don't want to need it” you say, gently. "But you do. So, let's not make this a whole thing. Come on."
She opens her mouth, you can see the argument forming, can see her gathering herself for one more round of insisting she's fine, that she doesn't need you, that she'd rather sit in pain than accept help from the person she hurt and you know, with sudden, weary certainty, that if you let her finish that sentence you're going to be standing in this changing room for another twenty minutes while she talks herself into a taxi purely out of pride.
So you don't let her finish it.
You cross the room, set her bag down, and before she's got more than half a syllable out, you lean down and kiss her.
It's quick barely two seconds, soft and sure and entirely without permission but it's enough to short-circuit whatever speech she'd been building, enough that when you pull back, she's just sitting there, boot half-on, mouth slightly open, staring up at you with an expression of such total, blank astonishment that you'd laugh if you weren't half-terrified of what you've just done.
You don't say anything. You'd meant to have something ready some explanation, some sorry, I shouldn't have, ignore that but looking at her face, dazed and open in a way you've genuinely never seen it, the words dissolve before you can use them. So instead, you just crouch down, sling her good arm over your shoulders, and say, "Right. Up you get. Careful of the ankle” as though you haven't just detonated something enormous between you.
She lets you help her up. That's the tell, really Alexia Putellas, who has spent weeks bristling at every offer of help you haven't made, who fought you on this exact thing forty seconds ago, goes utterly compliant, letting you take most of her weight, hopping awkwardly toward the door with an expression still fixed somewhere between shell-shock and something dazzled underneath it.
She doesn't say a word the whole way to the car park. Doesn't argue, doesn't insist, doesn't do any of the things Alexia Putellas usually does. She just leans into you, quiet, and every few seconds you catch her glancing sideways at your mouth like she's trying to work out whether the last two minutes actually happened.
You can't help it, the sight of her, the most stubborn woman you have ever met in your life, absolutely stunned into silence by one two-second kiss (well really was a litte peck) was too much, and a laugh escapes you before you can stop it, low and delighted.
"What” Alexia says, immediately defensive, though there's no real heat in it, just a kind of flustered scramble to reclaim some dignity. "What's funny."
"Nothing” you say, still smiling, guiding her toward the passenger side of her own car. "You've just got a very specific face on right now, so pouty."
"I do not have a face and I’m not pouty right now."
"You've absolutely got that face." You open the door for her, help her ease down into the seat, careful of her ankle, and she's still watching you with that same stunned, unmoored expression, cheeks gone pink, and you have to look away before you laugh again, because if you start properly laughing you might not stop, might end up crying instead, from relief or nerves or the enormous, terrifying hope suddenly unspooling in your chest.
You get her home. It's a quiet drive she doesn't say much, keeps stealing glances at you at red lights, and you keep your eyes very determinedly on the road, driving her own car with a peculiar, tender care, like the vehicle itself is something precious now simply by association.
Her flat is warm and a little too tidy, the way places get when someone spends more time on the training ground than at home. You get her settled on the sofa, prop her ankle up on a cushion the way the physio instructed, fetch her an ice pack from the freezer without needing to be told where it is old habits, you think, a little wryly, they don't actually go anywhere, they were just waiting.
By the time you've got her sorted, some of the shock has worn off her, replaced by something more like her usual self, though softer round the edges, less armoured. She watches you move around her kitchen with an expression you can't quite read.
"You kissed me” she says, eventually, like she's still confirming it happened, still testing the words in her own mouth.
"I did” you say, not turning around, focused very hard on filling a glass of water for her.
"Why?"
"Because you were about to spend twenty minutes arguing yourself into a car for pure stubbornness, and I didn't have the patience for it." You bring the water over, hand it to her, and finally let yourself meet her eyes. "Also, because I've wanted to for about two years and I'm tired."
Something in her face crumples, just slightly, at that’s not sadness exactly, something more complicated, guilt and hope tangled together.
"I'm hungry” she says instead, abruptly, which startles a small laugh out of you, because of course, of course this is how Alexia Putellas processes an enormous emotional confrontation by changing the subject to food, the same as she always has, the same stubborn, deflecting, utterly familiar version of her you've loved for two years.
"Alright” you say, easily, letting her have the deflection because you know her well enough to know she needs a minute. "What do you want?"
"I don't know. Something easy." She shifts on the sofa, wincing slightly at her ankle, and then looks up at you from underneath her lashes with an expression so deliberately pathetic, so exaggeratedly wounded, that you nearly laugh again the full puppy-dog routine, bottom lip very faintly out, eyes huge, the look she gives referees when she wants a foul given.
"What” you say, amused, "is that face for?"
"Nothing” she says, entirely unconvincingly. "I just my ankle hurts. And I'm cold. And you're just standing there so huggable."
"You want a hug."
"I didn't say that."
"You absolutely did say that, with your face and “huggable”" But you're already crossing the room, already lowering yourself onto the sofa beside her, careful of the propped ankle, and she doesn't hesitate at all just leans straight into you, tucks herself against your side like she's been doing it for years instead of never once before tonight, her head finding your shoulder with an ease that undoes something in your chest completely.
You wrap an arm around her carefully, mindful of her, and for a moment neither of you says anything. The flat is quiet. Somewhere outside, the rain that's been threatening all evening finally starts, soft against the windows.
"I'm sorry” Alexia says, into your shoulder, so quietly you nearly miss it. "For what I said. In the corridor. I didn't mean it the way it, I panicked. You were so… you were always doing so much for me, and I didn't know what to do with it, and I said the cruellest thing I could think of because it felt safer than admitting I liked it."
"I know” you say, softly, and you find you mean it the anger of the last five weeks has drained out of you somewhere between the medical room and this sofa, leaving only the old, patient love underneath, still there, exactly where you left it.
"And then you stopped” she goes on, voice small. "Doing all of it. The coffee, and everything. And I hated it. I hated it so much, Y/N, I didn't understand why it felt like losing something when I was the one who said I only wanted a friend."
"Because you didn't actually want a friend” you say, gently. "You wanted someone to love you the way I do, without having to call it that. And I couldn't keep doing it once you said what you said. It would've broken something in me."
She's quiet for a moment, and when she lifts her head to look at you, her eyes are shining, overbright, and there's none of the armour left in her face at all.
"I don't want to just be friends” she says, low, almost frightened by her own honesty. "I never wanted that. I don't know why I said it."
"I know why” you say. "You've said it yourself. Panic."
"Can I " She stops, swallows, tries again. "Can I kiss you properly? You only gave me about two seconds earlier and I've been thinking about it for the last forty minutes and I want to actually"
You don't let her finish that sentence either. You lean in and she meets you halfway, and this time there's nothing quick about it, this time it's slow, and soft, and certain, her hand coming up to rest against your jaw like she's making sure you're really there, and you feel something in your chest that's been clenched tight for five weeks finally, finally let go.
When you break apart she's smiling, properly smiling, the kind you haven't seen from her in weeks, unguarded and a little disbelieving, like she still can't quite work out how she got here.
"So” she says, a little breathless, "friends don't do that."
"No” you agree, smiling back at her, brushing a strand of hair off her face with a tenderness you've been rationing for five weeks and are no longer interested in rationing. "They really don't."
"Good” Alexia says, decisively, settling back against your shoulder with the satisfied air of someone who has just won an argument she started against herself. "Because I'm done with just being friends. I want the coffee. And the water bottles. And you carrying my bag through airports even though I do, in fact, have arms."
"You'll have to ask nicely maybe bribe me with a kiss or two."
"I'll ask however I like” she says, but she's laughing now, soft and warm against your shoulder, and outside the rain keeps falling, gentle against the windows, and inside, finally, everything that's been circling for two years settles quietly into place, the way the truest things always do not with fireworks, but with an ordinary evening, an ice pack, a bad joke about arms, and a girl who has finally stopped pretending she didn't want to be loved exactly the way you'd always loved her.
You order food eventually, something easy, like she asked for, pasta from the place two streets over that she likes and you eat it curled together on the sofa with her ankle propped on a pillow between you, and she keeps stealing glances at you between bites like she's checking you're still there, and every time you catch her doing it she goes faintly pink and pretends to be very interested in her food instead.
"I'm going to be insufferable now” she warns you, later, when the food's gone and the rain's settled into something steady and comfortable outside. "I'm going to want the coffee every single morning and your hugs and kisses and everything."
"I know, I want some kisses and hugs too. It´s what I expect when I’m dating someone."
"And I'm going to expect you to still jump in front of footballs for me."
"You always did expect that. You just weren't going to admit you liked it."
She goes quiet at that, thoughtful, tracing an absent pattern against your knuckles where your hand rests over hers. "I liked all of it” she admits, finally, so quietly it's almost lost under the rain. "I liked it so much I didn't know what to do with myself. It felt like too much. Like I didn't deserve someone loving me so carefully, so I pushed it away before I could ruin it myself."
"You didn't ruin it” you say. "You're here. I'm here. The ankle's the only casualty."
That gets a proper laugh out of her, surprised and bright, and she tips her head back against your shoulder, eyes closing, entirely at ease in a way you've genuinely never seen her before, not on the pitch, not in the dressing room, not anywhere. Just soft, and certain, and yours, finally, the way you'd quietly hoped she might be for two long years of coffee and stray footballs and a love you never once needed her to notice, because you knew, somewhere underneath all the patience, that eventually one way or another, whether by injury or stubborn
