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The first time is an accident.
It’s not Dom’s fault. He’s so recently moved into his new house that he has no idea where half of his clothes are. He spends all day, every day speaking in his weakest language. He knows, like, six people in this entire country, and he’s run what feels like 4000 kilometers this week alone. He’s tired, he’s lonely, and when he happens to be both of those things at the same time he also tends to be…friendly.
So when his hot new teammate invites him to dinner, and they turn out to actually have a lot in common, and they chat for hours while having a few final drinks before the preseason gets fully underway, what is he supposed to do? Be a mature adult about it?
“I don’t think I should drive,” he tells Trent as they leave the restaurant.
“Shit, me neither,” Trent says. “Didn’t mean to drink that much.”
“We could split a taxi,” Dom suggests.
“Aren’t we going to different places?”
“That,” Dom says, winking, “is up to you.”
Honestly, he hadn’t expected that to work.
–--
The second time is less of an accident, but is still not Dom’s fault.
He fully blames whoever decided to schedule their preseason in Singapore. And whoever provided them with exclusively sleeveless training tops. Because really, how could anyone be expected to maintain self-control in such conditions?
“You busy tonight?” Dom asks Trent as they both guzzle water, desperately trying to hydrate. He runs a finger over the curve of Trent’s sweaty bicep, because it’s right there and he’s only human.
Trent raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t move away from the touch. “I thought we agreed to leave it as a one time thing,” he says, quiet enough that no one else can hear.
“Did we? I don’t remember that.”
“You should, since you were there.”
“Hmm,” Dom says. He really doesn’t put much stock into the whole “mature adult” thing. “My English isn’t the best, you know. Maybe I mistranslated something.”
“You are such a little shit,” Trent tells him, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. He seems like maybe he enjoys Dom being a little shit.
“So, just to make sure I understand,” Dom says, leaning in closer. “If I were to come to your hotel room tonight. Would you let me in? Or no?”
Trent looks at him for a moment, face unreadable. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Why don’t you swing by and find out?”
Dom does just that.
–--
The third time? That one is definitely Dom’s fault.
He’s a tactile person by nature. There’s no denying this. He has a shockingly small number of physical boundaries, and happens to work in a profession where that’s kind of encouraged. Which is good, because when he frequently does the same thing to everybody else, no one in training notices how much he’s blatantly feeling up Trent.
Except Trent, that is.
“The fuck is up with you today?” Trent asks, after Dom’s hands once again sneak under the hem of his shirt.
“What?” Dom asks, innocently. “I’m always like this.”
“Nah, don’t give me that.” Trent turns to face him, looking him up and down. “Is this going to be a thing?”
Dom feels a sudden pang of guilt. He’s assumed, from how Trent responds to him, that he likes the attention. But if he’s wrong about that, then he’s essentially been sexually harassing his coworker. His coworker that he happens to really enjoy having as a friend, no less.
“Not if you don’t want it to be,” he says.
Trent stares at him for a solid, uncomfortable minute. Dom just stares right back. What else can he do?
“It can be a thing,” Trent says at last. “Just…tone it down a bit in public, alright? You wanna touch me so badly, you can come over after training.”
Thus, the third time.
–--
Dom stops counting, after that.
–--
What Dom has learned, from years of sleeping with pretty much any teammate who’s up for it, is that there are only two possible outcomes.
The first is that it’s absolutely not a big deal. You fuck, maybe even regularly, but you always know exactly where you stand. And where you stand is usually as a friend with benefits, that may drop or be dropped at any moment. And when things reach their inevitable conclusion, you move on. No fanfare, no hurt feelings. This is his favorite outcome.
The second is that someone freaks the fuck out. There are several ways that this can happen, but they all share the same basic energy. Maybe the teammate has a gay crisis, and doesn’t want to look at you for a few weeks. Maybe you accidentally sleep with several teammates, and end up in a weird, horny triangle that throws off all the vibes. (And to be fair, that’s only happened once). Maybe the teammate starts acting like this is something more, and it’s nice, and you get excited, and then they realize that they really just want a girlfriend after all. (That one has happened more than once.)
Dom expects Trent to fall solidly into Column A. He’s smart, funny, and easy to be around. They understand each other, Dom thinks. Whatever the conclusion of this will be, it feels far enough away that Dom doesn’t worry about it. He can’t picture the friendship they’ve built imploding whenever it’s reached.
What he realizes, later, is that there is a third outcome.
–--
Trent fucks up his hamstring right before international break, and Dom doesn’t want to leave him. That’s his first clue.
He doesn’t want to leave him on the pitch, as the physios evaluate him. So he doesn’t. Then, when he offers to drive Trent home later, and Trent accepts without arguing (for once), he invites himself in. Because he doesn’t want to leave him here either.
“It’s not that bad,” Trent mutters, as Dom hands him a plate of dinner he’d scrounged up from Trent’s fridge. “I can do all this myself, you know.”
“I like to be helpful,” Dom says, which makes Trent actually snort with laughter.
Dom has to fly out the next morning. He has to get back to his house and finish packing, finish getting ready to return to his country and captain his national team. He can’t wait to be there. And yet he finds himself trying to calculate how many hours of sleep he really needs, how long he can justify curling up next to Trent before he’ll be putting his flight at risk. He knows how tricky hamstring injuries are, after all.
“Dom,” Trent says finally, when Dom tries to climb into bed after him. “You gotta get the fuck out of my house, man.”
Dom just frowns. “Why?”
“Because you have a flight in the morning, and I need to get some actual sleep.”
“I won’t miss my flight,” Dom says, even though he absolutely will.
Trent rolls his eyes, pulling Dom into a quick kiss. “I’m fine. I’m disappointed, but I’m fine. I just need to rest. We can talk tomorrow, alright?”
“Alright,” Dom agrees, reluctantly.
He goes home, and finishes packing, and doesn’t miss his flight. But he feels like he’s in the wrong place the entire time.
–--
Dom has a wonderful time with this national team. And he has a wonderful time coming back.
He stays at Trent’s house for a few nights after he returns. Because hamstring injuries can be tricky. And since Trent isn’t in regular training yet, and is on a less intense schedule, he stays at Dom’s house for a few nights after that. It’s the best Dom’s slept in weeks.
In hindsight, also a clue.
Then the Carabao Cup kicks off. Dom doesn’t start, which he fucking hates, but he can’t maintain his disappointment when he scores an absolute worldie off the bench. The crowd goes insane, jumping up and down in the stands and screaming his name. Dom thinks that he could play at Anfield for the next 30 years and never get tired of it, never feel any less happy than he does right now.
When they find each other after the game, Trent’s over the moon. He’s the handsy one for once, burying his face in Dom’s neck and dragging his knuckles up and down Dom’s back. He whispers, repeatedly, about how amazing the goal was, how good Dom is. Dom can feel himself grinning like an idiot and makes no attempt to stop.
And when they all head home, Trent comes home with Dom. They spend the night with Trent still whispering into Dom’s skin, telling and showing him, over and over, just how good he is.
–--
“It’s two weeks,” Trent says, voice muffled by Dom’s lips. “Less than that, even.”
“Sounds like a long time to me,” Dom tells him, moving away just long enough to pull Trent’s top over his head.
“So needy,” Trent says. Then he gets Dom’s bottom lip between his teeth, and Dom can’t even argue the point.
Trent has Dom on the bed in seconds, flat on his back. He crawls over him, straddling Dom’s hips while he leans down to capture his mouth again.
“Next time we see each other,” Trent mumbles, as he starts kissing across Dom’s collarbone, “we’ll both be qualified for the Euros.”
“Mmm, I love it when you talk dirty.”
“I bet you’ll get a pen,” Trent continues. “Where d’you think you’ll bury it? Upper right corner? Thundercunt down the middle? Surely not a panenka.”
“Never,” Dom says, with feeling.
“Good.” Trent pulls back, looking Dom straight in the eyes and smirking. “Because I don’t fuck people who take shit pens.”
It’s at that exact moment that it hits Dom, with the force of a freight train; there is a third outcome, to hooking up like this, and he’s smack dab in the middle of it.
–--
When they return from the break, only Trent is qualified for the Euros. He doesn’t gloat about it like Dom expects him to. Well, okay, he gloats a little, but way less than he usually would.
“Did you miss me?” Dom asks as he lays across Trent’s chest, face pressed against throat. He really hopes that he sounds like he’s teasing.
“Eh,” Trent says, and Dom pinches him. “Ow! Alright, fine. I missed you a little. Jude’s blowjobs aren’t quite as good as yours.”
Dom pops up so fast that he nearly breaks his neck, and Trent bursts into laughter.
“Christ, mate, your face!” he says, gasping for breath. “Oh my days!”
“You are evil,” Dom says, climbing fully on top of Trent, pinning him down. “You are a sick, sick man.”
“Part of my charm, innit?” Trent smirks, and Dom kisses him just to avoid agreeing.
–--
It’s agonizing, this third outcome.
Because Dom has swung rapidly from “it’d probably be fun to hook up with my hot teammate” to “oh shit I am so fucking gone.” And that hasn’t happened before. He doesn’t know how to navigate this scenario. More specifically, he doesn’t know how to figure out if Trent feels even half as strongly without scaring him away. He'd hate to stop what they're doing, but if he lost Trent’s friendship too? He’s fairly certain that his heart would shatter on the spot.
So he doesn’t ask about the two of them. Instead, he asks about everything else. He asks Trent to tell him what derbies are like at Anfield. He asks what he should expect once they get to the winter fixture congestion, how he should prepare his body for the grind. He asks about Trent’s favorite movies, and when they can watch them together. He asks, and he listens, harder than he ever has in his life. Because he thinks, maybe, there’s a chance that Trent understands what he really wants to know. And he doesn’t want to miss it, if the answer comes mixed in with everything else.
English is his weakest language. But he’ll get as good at it as he needs to, if it means having this.
–--
He asks for the last time at Bournemouth, looking like an absolute drowned rat.
They play their Carabao Cup game in what feels like a fucking monsoon, though for all he knows this could just be a typical English drizzle. They win, and it’s fantastic, but by the end Dom is soaked to the bone and freezing even in his coat. Will he ever be dry again, living in this country?
Trent finds him like that, stripping off his drenched clothes and shivering.
“Jesus, Dom,” he says, pulling Dom into a secluded corner. “You’re ice cold.”
“Do you English people just not feel rain?” Dom asks, through chattering teeth. Trent’s equally soaked, but appears completely unaffected by it.
“What, you don’t have weather in Hungary?” Trent asks, taking Dom’s hands in his own. When he feels how icy they are, he frowns. He brings them both up to his mouth, blowing his warm breath all over them.
Dom’s own breath catches in his chest. Trent looks up at him, his smile crooked. “What? Am I not allowed to take care of you too?”
“Is that,” Dom starts, and then has to clear his throat before he can continue. “Is that something you want to do?”
Trent looks at him with soft, fond eyes. Then he pulls Dom in, pressing their bodies together, sharing the warmth he still somehow possesses. “You really are thick, you know that?” he says.
Dom huffs out a shaky laugh. “That’s what you keep telling me.”
“Yeah,” Trent says, pulling Dom’s head down until their lips are nearly touching. “I guess I’ll just have to keep telling you, then. Until you get some fucking sense.”
When they kiss, Dom is certain that he’ll never be cold again.