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He doesn’t know whether it’s cringeworthy levels of cheesy or downright psychopathic that he knows Jude is the one opening the door simply based on the number of seconds it takes to unlock. Their Dortmund teammates always seemed to struggle to categorize the way Erling operates around Jude too. But Erling prefers a different version. To him, it’s like discovering a subject in school and falling completely in love with its complexities; you start to learn it until it’s like the back of your hand. You become the type of student who can answer every single question on the topic confidently, even if you’re shaken awake at three in the morning.
He knows Jude the way he knows his favourite subject. The way he knows exactly how to score goals on the pitch. And by extension, he learns the patterns of everything that matters to the younger boy. His family.
Jobe never answers the door unless he absolutely has to—youngest of the family privileges. Their dad always takes his time, usually because he’s checking the front window first. Their mother is quicker, but there’s always the tell-tale sound of her heels clicking or a polite call from the hallway beforehand.
But Jude? Jude always answers in less than twenty seconds. It’s as if he’s constantly restless, always moving, pulling the door open with a sudden impatient yank like he’s expecting the world to be delivering something massive directly to his stoop.
And today, it takes exactly fourteen seconds.
The wood of the front door clicks out of its latch, and in confirmation, Jude swings it open without thinking, eyes darting wildly before bumping into the massive wall occupying his family’s front porch. Erling can tell from the way Jude widens his eyes that he didn’t bother checking who was at the door through the peephole. Typical.
From where he’s standing, he feels his breath immediately rush past his lips like it always does at the sight of the other boy. Beholding. Because Jude is like a view that you never grow used to—familiar enough to appreciate but too breathtaking to ever fully rationalize. He just looks at him, letting the silence stretch stubbornly until it’s like an enlarging balloon pressing them into a corner, making it hard to breathe or think of anything else.
He wonders if Jude can feel it too, this new awkwardness they’ve adopted in place of a puppy—something permanent and alive to tie them together, like a baby made out of love. A bond so heavy it would always bind them together. Erling wonders if that’s the reason behind Jude’s frantic stare, like a fish bubbling for survival outside of its comfort zone. That’s part of it.
But Erling also knows Jude well enough to recognize the exact moment he is torn between the instinct to slam the door in his face—maybe to protect the walls he’s built around himself for weeks, maybe to run away from the guilt that’s wrecking him, maybe from the anger that Erling’s outside his door.
As if Erling would want to be anywhere else. As if.
Jude came all the way to England, running away from Germany without a single word, just so Erling would find out from mutual contacts. It stings. In the past, Jude would text him the second his plane touched down, usually to send a dramatic, paragraphs-long complaint about how the tap water at home tastes entirely different from the bottled stuff in Dortmund, or how his mother is already nagging him to clean his room. A mundane, domestic friction they used to share like breathing.
Instead, Jude has been giving him nothing but suffocating silence—close enough that he still trades casual texts with Astor and Gabrielle, but distant enough to ensure Erling can’t reach him. It drives him crazy that he had to find out through his sister that the boy who normally couldn’t survive a single day without whining in his ear was suddenly back on English soil. It drives him because Jude is operating right on the periphery of his world, talking to the people who share his blood while treating Erling himself like a stranger. Like someone who no longer has access to him, barred from knowing something as basic, yet intimately important, as where he lays his head at night.
He should be angry. And he is.
Somewhere between the embarrassment and the confusion is a volatile rage—an emotion he usually reserves for the rest of the world, for anyone but Jude. He has spent so long protecting the boy in front of him from that temperament that he doesn’t actually know what to do with it now that it’s bleeding through.
And Jude, with his pretty face and soft brown eyes, is looking at him like he’s equally lost. Jude looks beautiful. Truly, completely beautiful, like a prince hidden away in the boring, muted backdrop of English suburbia. If Erling weren’t so desperately weak to the sight of him—if his eyes hadn’t immediately dropped to the worn, oversized black t-shirt Jude is wearing and recognizing it instantly as one of the shirts he’d left tangled in the sheets of Jude’s bed back in Germany—he might actually find the energy to be angry. He might have more aggressive, biting words for Jude.
But Erling is utterly spent. The past two weeks have been a blur of flashing cameras, Manchester boardrooms, contracts, and the suffocating pressure of being paraded around as Manchester City’s shiny new empire-builder. He is sick of the media, sick of the noise, and completely drained.
So, all he can do is look at the boy wearing his clothes, before letting out a quiet, rough breath.
“Hi.”
“What are you—” Jude sputters, sounding every bit as breathless as Erling feels. “Hi, mate.”
“Can I come in?”
Once upon a time, Jude would’ve rolled his eyes at him as if the question itself were an insult. Back then, this house felt like a second home to Erling—a place he could probably map out in his dreams.
“Crap, yeah,” Jude answers, swinging the door open wider.
Erling still catches the hesitated breath that hitches in Jude’s throat. He watches the way Jude still blocks the entryway, almost absently, barricading the space so that it’s impossible for Erling’s imposing frame not to brush flush against him on his way inside.
Then he feels Jude’s body lock from the touch—magnetism doesn’t care about the awkwardness between them. It simply demands a collision. For a breathless second, Jude doesn’t move, before he remembers himself and closes the door.
“Mamma is on a date?” Erling asks, looking around the house for nothing in particular. “I’m sure it must’ve been hard getting your father to colour-coordinate with her.”
Jude smiles, because of course. Of course all Erling had to do was inhale the lingering scent of his mother’s perfume to know exactly what was going on. He knows them like the neighbour’s kid who visits so often you start confusing them for an extra family member.
For a split second, Jude’s guard drops completely, a soft, familiar amusement flashing through the tension. “Don’t even get her started,” he mutters, shaking his head. “She almost called the whole thing off because Dad’s shirt was navy and her dress was midnight blue. I literally stood there squinting at them under the hallway light like an idiot. They looked exactly the same.”
A genuine huff of laughter breaks from Erling’s chest—the first real, relaxed sound he’s made in weeks. He looks down at Jude, an instinctive spark in his eyes. “They are completely different, Jude,” he rumbles softly, a teasing smirk tugging at his mouth. “Midnight has a black undertone. Navy is warmer. I cannot believe you cannot see it.”
“Oh, sod off!”
Erling continues laughing, and the sound is real enough to influence Jude, luring him right back into a familiar bubble only the two of them could ever access—private, unknown to anyone else but them. Completely theirs.
“Jobe?” Erling asks when the laughter fades into something solemn, desperately holding onto the last light notes of the moment before they can morph back into the cold distance between them.
Jude shrugs, looking away. “Out.”
Erling clears his throat, watching the warmth bleed out of the room as Jude retracts the final, fragile pieces of his trust. The easy atmosphere evaporates, swallowed up by a bitter, defensive chill. Feeling the connection snapping between his fingers, Erling reaches blindly for the only safe topic he can think of.
“The, uh… the unveiling today,” he says, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. But this is Jude, and speaking with Jude has always brought an automatic calm. He never has to raise his voice. “It was a lot. Too many cameras. I thought my face was going to freeze from the smiling.”
Jude looks down at his socks, his shoulders coiling. “Yeah. I saw it on the news,” he says quietly. “Congratulations, Erling. Seriously. It’s… it’s what you wanted.”
It’s the exact same tone Jude has used for months, ever since they first knew Manchester was happening. The same rehearsed, polite congratulations he’d offered while pretending he was perfectly fine with it, pretending he understood because this is football, and football comes first. It’s hollow, and it sickens Erling to hear it now.
Unable to stomach the polite act for another second, Erling crowds Jude’s space with a sudden, angry step forward.
Jude reacts on pure instinct, stepping back so quickly it’s practically a defensive jerk.
The Bellingham house has always felt warm, packed with life and noise, but right now, the empty hallway feels cavernous. Intolerably spacious. Cold.
“Can we go up to your room?” Erling asks suddenly.
Jude blinks up at him, a defensive flicker of tension crossing his features. Erling doesn’t mean it for sex—at least, he hadn’t when he came all this way—but he needs a boundary. He needs four walls. He wants to drag Jude into a space so small and confined that they both feel entirely trapped by it. He wants to crush them into a corner so small that the agonizing pressure leaves them no choice but to drop their guards, exhale the poison, and lay bare everything they’ve been holding back.
“To talk, Jude,” he adds softly, desperate to stop the silence from free-falling into an irritating awkwardness he can’t stand. “Please.”
Jude actually stops to think about it. Three months ago, he would have already been pulling Erling by the wrist up the stairs, desperate for a closed door. Now, he hovers as if physical contact might burn him, struck by some overnight epiphany that Erling is someone to be avoided at all costs. The sting of it is agonizing. Erling hasn’t changed; he’s spent weeks throwing lines out to Jude, trying to grasp the connection that used to be their default state of being. But Jude’s pride is a stubborn, irrational beast.
“I didn’t think you were capable of being afraid of me,” Erling rumbles, crowding the silence.
Jude glares, letting out an annoyed, breathless laugh at the cheap psychological trick. But the resistance breaks, if only a fraction, and he finally nods. “Fine.”
The bedroom is exactly as Erling remembers it, clinging to the lingering traces of a childhood not yet fully outgrown. Underneath it all is Jude’s addictive, signature scent Erling knows by heart. He smells like a persistent sweetness that never truly leaves him, surviving even the heaviest, gruelling hours of football practice. It’s a scent that used to instantly still Erling’s frantic brain when he missed his own family—back when even hearing their voices over the phone hadn’t been enough to lessen the physical ache of homesickness. But underneath that comfort, Jude smells like something dangerous, too. Something forbidden, with the terrifying ability to ruin him completely.
“So…” Jude spins around to face him, offering an insulting imitation of a smile that doesn’t come anywhere near his eyes. His hands twitch uselessly at his sides before he instinctively fumbles for phantom pockets under the oversized shirt he’s wearing—forgetting he’s just in his cycling tights, as short as he always prefers them.
“I get the feeling you’ve been dishonest to me,” Erling begins deliberately, dragging a thumb over his lower lip while keeping his heavy gaze fixed on the younger boy. “I find it disappointing.” His accent starts to slip through the cracks of his rising frustration. “I didn’t realize it was hard for us to even talk now. That you’d find it easier to be speaking with other people about me, and not to me.”
“Gab—”
“And now you behave so insulting toward me, like I did something to purposefully hurt you—called you a bad player, or—”
Jude snorts, bitter.
“—something really bad, like fuck other people—”
“It’s not like we’re together. I’d understand,” Jude cuts him off.
No. Fuck that.
Erling doesn’t want to understand a single thing about them being involved with other people, or letting outsiders mess with whatever this is. It feels like a knife pressing deeper into an open stab wound that Jude would even suggest it, as if it’s something he’s actively sat around and thought about.
“So that’s what you want?” Erling asks, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “To fuck other people?”
“I don’t want to fuck other people!” Jude snaps.
Me, too, Erling thinks. Because he really doesn’t. Not since the two of them began this and it immediately felt as natural as breathing. Normal. There was nothing extraordinary about it, nothing cinematic they could tell their future nieces and nephews about down the line… but that was exactly what Erling had always found so beautiful. It had been a completely normal day when he first kissed Jude. There was no grand backdrop he could rely on to help him remember, yet he remembers the exact date, right down to the precise seconds, and how utterly silent it had been in his bedroom. And Jude had kissed back because… because it just made sense. Like all the nonsense philosophers spout about rationality. The two of them made sense. They didn’t need to rely on some fake, manufactured depth to justify why they began—it had always been inevitable.
“Then why—” he starts to ask, the words stumbling over themselves. “Spending time with the others, my family. Ignoring my calls. Not telling me you’re home. Is that what you call growing up?”
“I don’t recall saying I wanted to grow up, mate,” Jude counters, defensive.
“You’re just—” Erling steps closer. If it were anyone else, maybe a fist might have been tempting. But this is Jude. Jude, who looks entirely broken but won’t lay his cards on the table because Erling is also skating around the real issue, stubbornly waiting for him to say it first.
I’m hurt you’re leaving because I… because I…
He grabs Jude’s face before he can even think to protest. Jude really does look like a prince, like someone created solely for the purpose of worship—he is gold and he is beauty. He is everything the world associates with perfection, but he is also danger, and he is absolute heartbreak.
The kiss could be harsher for all the visceral frustration that’s built up in the long weeks leading to this, but Jude tastes like a deceptive trap—an intoxicating sweetness that pulls Erling under before he even realizes he’s drowning. And then Jude just surrenders, a sudden, breathless melting against him, as if he simply can’t be bothered to fight a gravity that both of them feel down to their bones.
“Take off your clothes,” Erling whispers against his lips, the command desperate.
This is their real language. Other people might call it just fucking, just a physical release, but Erling has always been too sentimental to see it that way. Blame his Cancer side, but Jude is only ever fully transparent when they’re like this. The guards come down in the heat of it, confessions spilling out carelessly when nothing else in the world matters but what their bodies are whispering.
He watches Jude remove his shirt without thinking twice, like this is normal. Like this is exactly what is supposed to happen. Because it is them. And this only happens because it is them.
“You’re never out of these cycling shorts, are you?” Erling teases softly.
The black spandex is so short it made it look like Jude was only wearing Erling’s oversized tee.
“Zip it, Haaland,” Jude fires back, a small smirk tugging at his mouth.
Erling closes the distance again, unable to keep away. The moment his hands find Jude, the younger goes completely still under his touch. Erling’s fingers map his golden-brown skin, tracing a mole here, another one there, before a thumb brushes a dark nipple and catches Jude’s breath in his throat. His hands glide down over firming abs—skin that is rapidly outgrowing the softness of youth—and trail around to Jude’s back. He traces invisible Norwegian words against his spine, secrets he’d never translate into English even if Jude asked. He brings his hands down to cup Jude’s ass, pulling him flush.
“You are out of this world beautiful, Bellingham,” he admits honestly.
Jude bites down on a proud smile. “Yeah. I know.”
Of course he knows. It’s plastered all over TikTok and Twitter—the entire world obsessing over how gorgeous Jude Bellingham is, talking about what they’d like to do to him. Erling has to mentally talk himself down every time he sees it, forcing himself to accept that people are allowed to admire the view, even if it makes his blood boil.
For a second, Erling completely loses himself in Jude’s eyes, until he feels the younger’s hands tugging blindly at his shirt. He moves quickly to help him pull it over his head. After that, the rest of their clothes fall away in a frantic rush, discarded in between heated, breathless kisses and desperate murmurs of “hurry.” Jude fumbles blindly at Erling’s pants, his fingers trembling slightly before he grips Erling’s arm as they tumble onto the mattress together.
Suddenly, Jude is under him—exactly where he was always meant to be. He isn’t small by any means, carrying the lean but powerful frame of an elite athlete, but under Erling’s heavy weight, he still feels that way. Like he is small enough for Erling to completely consume, his larger body shielding Jude from the rest of the world until nothing else exists but the two of them.
He shifts above him with an effortless familiarity, navigating Jude’s space as if it belongs to him just as much as it does to Jude. There is no hesitation in the way he moves, no politeness; it’s the domestic confidence of two people who share a life, an unwritten understanding that whatever is Jude’s is inherently his. He reaches blindly for the bedside drawer, sliding it open to retrieve the lube without even having to look.
When Erling leans down to capture his mouth again, his large, heavy hand slides down between their bodies, wrapping around Jude’s dick. Jude is already slick and wet, his body completely betrayed by how intensely he desires this, and Erling begins to stroke him with a slow, agonizingly possessive rhythm that makes Jude arch into his palm.
“Good boy,” Erling hums softly against his skin, feeling the subtle shift as Jude relaxes for him. “Keep being good for me.”
He trails slow, burning kisses down Jude’s body, over his chest, down and down. He presses his lips to his sensitive length, and Jude’s hands instantly tangle in his hair, holding him there. Erling kisses the wet skin, feeling it pulse like a frantic heartbeat against his lips while Jude arches with a breathless, “God.”
Erling takes him into his mouth, sucking firmly while his fingers continue to gently work Jude’s hole, only pulling away when Jude’s moans get louder. Jude’s body writhes against the sheets, his thighs instinctively trying to lock Erling in place, as if he can’t bear the thought of him letting go.
“Erling, please—” he moans breathlessly.
Erling slips his thumb into his mouth, drenching it wet with his desire, before pulling it out to trace slow, slick circles around Jude’s opening. Jude moans, shifting his weight to push up onto his hands and knees, hiding his face in the pillows like the intimacy of looking at him is too much to take right now. But it will end with him looking up at Erling, like it always does. Like it’s always meant to. This is them.
Erling lines up against Jude’s opening, one hand holding him firmly by the waist while the other grips his own length. Pressing against an entrance that looks so tight and small in comparison, Erling always has a fleeting worry that he might not fit. But Jude just stretches under him, his fingers gripping the pillow tighter as a low groan rips from his throat.
“Slowly,” Erling murmurs, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble as he pushes inside, taking his time to let Jude stretch around the massive girth of him. “You’re taking it so well, Jude. Look at you.”
Jude lets out a choked, desperate sob, his teeth burying into the fabric of the pillow as his body strains to accommodate the brutal thickness of Erling’s dick. His fingers tremble violently into the pillowcase, hanging on for dear life.
“Min kjære,” Erling whispers against the shell of Jude’s ear, the Norwegian endearment slipping out completely unbidden, too heavy to be said in English. My darling. “Du er så god. You do so well for me, yeah? Just breathe.”
Jude moans under him, a helpless, broken sound that is easily Erling’s favourite thing in the world. He loves that he knows Jude so deeply—how it never takes long for the his stubborn pride to completely melt away into these needy whimpers, until the only thing Jude can do is take the uncompromising size of him and babble about how good it feels. And it does feel good. Jude is the only male experience Erling has ever had, but he knows with absolute certainty that it will never feel like this with anyone else, man or woman. It’s an intensity that goes far beyond how tight Jude is or how beautiful he looks in the golden light, his rich brown muscles stretching and contracting with every deep, salacious movement, his full, round ass framing Erling’s dick as it slides slowly in him.
“You want this,” Erling groans, shifting from a slow stretch to hard, heavy pumps.
“I want this,” Jude gasps against the mattress, his voice entirely broken.
Erling gives him exactly what he asks for, his thrusts turning strong and unrelenting. The wooden headboard begins to groan against the wall, competing with the erotic heat of skin meeting skin, drowned out only by Erling’s deep rumbles and Jude’s breathy whimpers—sobbing soft little gasps like he simply cannot comprehend the mind-numbing pleasure of it. The chemistry between them is a physical, living thing. Erling feels it shift to something even deeper as Jude releases his dark-knuckled grip on the pillow, reaching back blindly to entwine his fingers with Erling’s, right where his large hand is gripping his hip tight enough to leave bruises.
Erling leans down, pressing a warm, lingering kiss right between Jude’s shoulder blades. He wraps one powerful arm securely around Jude’s waist, lifting him slightly to pull him perfectly flush against his chest, his large hand sliding up possessively around the curve of his throat. He keeps a hard, bruising pace, completely dominating his space.
Leaning close until his lips brush the shell of Jude’s ear, Erling lets out a dark, breathless murmur. “Do you remember, Jude? Do you remember how we taught each other this?” He drives in deep, holding Jude still against him. “How I taught you to take my dick exactly like this… it will never feel this good again. Not even women. Nobody touches you like this.”
Jude arches violently into the hold, his fingers tightening in Erling’s hand as a shattered gasp tears from his throat. “God, Erling—it feels amazing… it feels so good—”
“Do you remember?” Erling presses, his voice a possessive, low growl against his skin, demanding the truth while his thumb strokes the side of Jude’s neck. “Tell me you remember.”
Jude writhes beneath him, before he finally breaks. “Yes,” he gasps out, his head rolling back against Erling’s shoulder. “Yes, I remember.”
“Then why do you want to sabotage us?” Erling asks heavily.
Doesn’t he get it? They could never go back to being strangers. Not after stripping down to their very souls, knowing with absolute certainty that they must have been past lovers at some point, or partners in some alternate universe out there. They were woven together.
“I don’t,” Jude moans, the word caught in his throat. He’s trembling like a fragile leaf in a storm, completely exposed under Erling’s heavy frame. He swallows hard, his eyes glassy and unfocused as he looks back at him. “I don’t want to sabotage anything, Erling… you have—all of me,” his voice cracks.
And they are so close that Erling tightens his grip around Jude’s throat, claiming him with possessive kisses. Lips touch desperately, tongues sliding and reaching deep in ravenous hunger. Jude is intoxicating.
“You’re mine?” Erling demands against his mouth.
“I am yours,” Jude moans unfocusedly. “I don’t want this with anyone else but you.”
“I want everything with just you,” Erling admits against the younger’s lips.
He begins pounding faster, growing urgent as Jude meets every single thrust. Jude bounces his round ass so hard the heavy meat jiggles against Erling’s pelvis, the loud, wet sound of skin slapping against skin echoing through the room to rival how hard Erling is fucking him.
“I think about you a lot, Jude,” Erling rumbles, completely honest. “Sometimes it’s as if your name is the only word I know.”
That confession breaks Jude completely. In one quick movement, Erling flips him onto his back and drives deep inside him again. The new position leaves Jude blabbering stupidly about how beautiful Erling is—no, not just beautiful, but handsome like some ancient Norse god—while Erling braces his fists against the wall, driving relentlessly into him. The angle makes it terrifyingly easy to hit Jude’s prostate over and over. Jude sputters, make soft helpless noises and hooks his long legs tightly around Erling’s waist, pulling him even deeper, desperately reaching up to pull Erling down into another messy kiss.
“So deep,” Jude gasps, clinging to the bulky body driving into him. “It’s starting to hurt real good… probably gonna be limping tomorrow.”
Erling smirks down at him. “This is how people make babies by mistake.”
Jude’s eyes open, wide and dark with desire. “Yeah? Give me yours then.”
There is a sudden falter in the rhythm. Erling stops dead for a fraction of a second, staring down at Jude. “Fuck, Jude.”
“You want to,” Jude whispers.
He does. Erling knows it’s weird, maybe even controversial to think about, but sometimes he really wishes they could. He wishes they could make a life together, that he could breed Jude and have a physical, living proof that they could create something beautiful out of pure love. Shaking the overwhelming thought away, he adjusts his weight, pressing his lips firmly against Jude’s while his free hand slides down to stroke the younger boy’s dick in perfect, agonizing time with his deep thrusts.
Distantly, the faint thud of loud music vibrates through the house. It sounds like Jobe just came home and immediately turned it up, knowing exactly what was happening upstairs. But Jude doesn’t care. He’s too far gone, moaning and sobbing loudly into the quiet of the bedroom, completely insulated from the outside world. Nothing can bring him down from this heaven.
He is truly a sight to marvel at. Erling wants to say it out loud. He wants Jude to say it, too—for both of them to finally admit that just because they never put a label onto this, it doesn’t mean it didn’t have a name. It has always had a name, even when they were convincing themselves they were just horny kids avoiding women because they were supposed to be focused on football.
It only takes four more persistent, heavy twists of Erling’s hips before Jude is shouting Erling’s name. His eyes widen for a brief, shattering second before his pupils roll back, sending him straight to a euphoric place where only Erling can take him. Jude’s skin flushes a deep, beautiful crimson, his chest heaving as his body completely gives out. Erling chases him right over the edge, desperate to feel exactly what Jude feels, his own vision going dark as he bursts, shooting his thick heat deep inside Jude’s tight, pulsing hole.
It’s Jude who comes back to reality first. Jude who folds his arms tight around him and breathes him in. He reaches up to mess with Erling’s hair, and Erling just lets him—because it’s Jude, and only Jude gets to touch his hair like that. Jude brushes the stray strands away from his face, gazing up at him with a look so bare it feels like an admission that they are both completely in love. It’s Jude who lifts his head to bridge the remaining distance and kiss him.
“Missed you,” Jude whispers, like he’s hurting.
“Missed you worse,” Erling admits, his voice thick.
It’s Jude who strokes his cheek, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth while Erling leans down to deepen it. Their skin is damp with sweat, Jude’s ruined orgasm still smeared warm between their bellies. Erling knows he should pull out, but he doesn’t want to move yet. He stays buried deep inside, wanting to stretch the moment out just a little longer while Jude starts grumbling about the music thudding through the door, suddenly anxious that Jobe definitely heard them.
All Erling can do is laugh.
He knows Jobe almost as much as he knows Jude. It doesn’t surprise him to find that Jobe has a few friends over in the lounge, which is precisely why Erling stepped out of Jude’s room looking fully presentable—a pair of old sweatpants he’d left behind on a previous visit and the exact t-shirt Jude had been wearing earlier. He’s just downstairs to fetch some water, fully intending to stay the night if only to see Jude’s parents when they get back.
The whole group looks over their shoulders as Erling passes by the kitchen. It amuses him that they aren’t starstruck by him the way they used to be; by now, he’s just a regular fixture in the house.
“Oi, pass the Wotsits from the pantry won’t you?” Jobe calls out over the music.
Erling raises an eyebrow, leaning against the counter. “I am a guest here.”
“Really?” Jobe shoots back, completely deadpan. “I didn’t notice, what with all the ‘practice’ you were doing with my brother earlier.”
His voice barely carries over the pounding bass, and Erling is already in the kitchen. He finds the water bottles and grabs the crisps Jobe had demanded, tossing them right onto his lap on his way back toward the stairs.
“Your brother’s a prick,” Erling grumbles as he shuts the bedroom door behind him.
Jude laughs softly. He’s standing by the window now, wearing only his cycling shorts. Erling hides a smile at how comfortable they are around each other. There was a time when looking at each other in the aftermath would have felt as awkward as it did intoxicating. He hands Jude his water and leans up against the wall, watching as Jude sits comfortably onto the window sill, staring out into the dark night at nothing and everything all at once.
“Why do you think I asked you to go down and get the water?” Jude teases, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
Erling just shrugs, downing half his bottle before letting out a content sigh. He studies Jude carefully, taking in the slump of his shoulders. Jude looks back, blinking slowly.
“Are we okay?” Erling asks.
“Yes,” Jude says simply.
It would be easy to just accept that answer, but Erling knows only half the war is won. Sex, as deep and soul-baring as it always is between them, doesn’t magically undo the last few weeks. It doesn’t erase how Jude has been pretending everything is fine while slowly, systematically pulling away—as if he had already decided that Erling’s departure meant they were finished.
“Then why are you pulling away from me?”
Jude lets out a dry, humourless laugh, looking back out the window. “Pull away? How does that even work when I thought I was attached to your hip?”
“Not as much as I am to you,” Erling counters, his voice dropping. “If it’s this easy for you to come all the way back here to England without telling me a thing. It makes me wonder what else you’re going to keep from me.”
“Like what?” Jude snaps softly, finally turning his head to face him fully.
“I don’t know, Jude,” Erling says, frustration finally leaking into his voice. He tosses his empty water bottle onto the bed and shakes his head. “I just feel you slipping. You treat me like I’m already gone, like leaving Germany means the end of us.”
Us? How do they even define us? Erling can tell Jude’s asking himself the same question by the way he looks at him, his dark eyes searching Erling’s face for an answer neither of them has ever put into words.
Then Jude runs a hand tiredly over his face, his foot starting a nervous tap, tap, tapping anxiously against the window sill. “It’s just—isn’t it all happening so fast? It feels like yesterday when I was just a seventeen-year-old kid arriving in Germany, hungry to prove I was worth the price tag. Back when I first met you in that dressing room, and you were still growing your stupid—”
“Behave,” Erling interrupts with a small smirk, though the words hold no heat.
“It’s all starting to become a little too real,” Jude continues, his voice cracking slightly. He looks up at Erling for a split second, then immediately looks away, staring back out into the dark yard. “I know it’s a natural progression. That the big clubs come calling, and everyone expects you to just pack up for them like it’s nothing. One day we’re just two idiots playing football and messing around, and the next, life is forcing us into different corners of the world.”
“That changes nothing about you and I,” Erling says carefully, because sometimes he’s not as good at leading this as he pretends to be. If he’s pushing right now, it’s not to force Jude into something he no longer wants, but because he desperately needs the validation too. “Does it?”
“We will grow apart,” Jude says flatly.
Erling shakes his head, rejecting the words immediately. “That’s impossible.”
He can’t even envision a world where they aren’t close—unless, of course, it’s exactly what Jude wants. It hits him that maybe that’s why Jude started pulling away in the first place, sabotaging them before Erling could even start complaining about life in England.
“Unless that’s what you want?” Erling asks, his voice careful again. His features shift, hardening into a blank, unreadable mask because the sudden fear that Jude has been protecting himself while Erling left his own heart completely exposed is terrifying. His Norwegian accent grows noticeably thicker, the words dropping thicker the more uncomfortable he becomes. “Maybe you want to try stuff with other people? Explore with girls, maybe? You know... things you didn’t experience before?”
“Really?” Jude asks, his voice dangerously low. He glares at Erling, his eyes beautifully defiant. “Did I mention a single thing about hooking up with other people?”
“I’m just trying to rationalize—”
“That things will change!” the younger snaps, and his control slips almost instantly. He drops his knees and leans forward, the words rushing out of him like a dam breaking, like he’s already thought long and hard about every single nightmare scenario.
“They will. Don’t act like they won’t, Erling. You’re going to Manchester, I’m eventually going to be heading somewhere else, and our schedules are going to be absolute hell. We won’t be able to just hang out after a bad match anymore. You’ll get busy with your new squad, you’ll find new teammates to link up with on the pitch, and suddenly a text takes three days to answer. Then it’s just birthdays, then it’s just liking each other’s Instagram posts like we’re strangers. It’s going to change, Erling. Everything is going to be completely different and we’re going to fade out because that’s just what happens.”
Jude is rambling now, pacing the length of the bedroom floor like he’s a football coach explaining a complex tactical breakdown on a whiteboard, laying out every single point of failure before the match has even kicked off. He’s gesturing roughly with his hands, mapping out their inevitable doom.
Erling doesn’t move, standing by the wall, watching him until Jude finally runs out of breath and stops, staring at the floor.
“Are you finished?” Erling asks quietly.
Jude’s chest heaves. He looks up, deflating all at once, the defensive coach persona vanishing to leave him looking completely vulnerable again. “I’m just being realistic.”
“No,” Erling says, taking a step forward and closing the distance between them. He reaches out, wrapping his large hands firmly around Jude’s waist to keep him in place. “You are too negative. I don’t like it.”
“What else do you want me to say?” Jude blows out a breath, looking up at Erling. “Eventually you’ll pull away from my family, and I’ll pull away from yours. And it will be like—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head as he lets out another frustrated breath. He looks right into Erling’s eyes. “It’s completely useless. Even if we tried... it’s not like anything practical can actually come of this. Why am I trying to make this real when we both know it can’t be?”
The word practical is heavy. Erling detests it.
When he thinks about it, what they share is a career-killing reality, something that dictates everything they can and cannot do. To be two of the biggest young stars in the world, moving to the absolute pinnacle of global clubs, and to be this? It’s impossible.
He feels a knot in his stomach as he admits to himself that Jude might be right. He is right. What even are they? Straight but lonely friends who occasionally help each other out? Gay? Bisexual?
Erling tries to look back at his own life to make sense of it. He’s had his fair share of girlfriends back home in Norway, but since moving to Germany, there’s been no one. He asks himself honestly… do I still like women? The terrifying answer is that he doesn’t even know. He’s been so completely, utterly obsessed with Jude for the past two years that he hasn’t given himself a single second to consider anyone else. Jude has filled up his entire horizon.
He looks down at Jude now, studying him. Jude’s situation isn’t much clearer; his only real public history with girls had never gone beyond casual, teenage kissing. Erling wonders if Jude’s interest in women had just naturally faded over the time they’d been doing this, or if Jude, much like himself, had just been so intensely focused on whatever the hell this was that he hadn’t even taken a breath to figure out who he was actually supposed to be attracted to.
And then, a laugh slips out of him—unintentional, but necessary. Part of it is just a defence mechanism against the burden of it all, but another part is the realization of how unfair it is. They’re barely even adults, but they’re navigating emotions so massive it’s completely breaking them down. Jude looks like he’s right on the edge of crying. Erling usually loves seeing Jude’s tears when they look like bright, joyful diamonds, but right now, the sadness in them is unbearable.
“Hey, hey.” Erling says, his voice dropping into a delicate, grounding register that usually works on Jude when a match is getting out of hand. “Look at me.”
Jude hesitates, then finally meets his eyes.
“You are thinking too much,” Erling says softly. “We don’t have to figure out the rest of our lives tonight. We don’t need the answers to everything.”
Jude sighs while Erling loosens his grip on his waist but not letting go. Instead, his hands slide up to cup the back of Jude’s neck, his thumbs smoothing over the tense line of his jaw.
“You need to stop overthinking and pushing me away before I can even prove myself to you,” Erling states softly, his lips pressing a reassuring kiss against the corner of Jude’s mouth. “Do you know you almost drove me insane? You made me think you don’t want this like I do, that you wanted to move on, maybe. Explore with others.”
“I don’t know where you got such a crazy idea from,” Jude says.
“It’s hard to read your mind sometimes, Jude,” Erling murmurs, looking down at him.
“You still know me more than anyone else,” Jude replies quietly.
“Like how you look at me like you might... like me, too.” Erling tests the waters, his eyes searching Jude’s. “You know... since I like you and all. Worship you and all. Hear you in every new song that catches my ear until I grow completely obsessed with it. And all that cheesy stuff.”
Jude lets out a breath that sounds half like a sigh and half like a laugh, the rigid tension in his shoulders finally melting. He leans his forehead against Erling’s chest, just for a second, letting himself be held.
“I like you more than I’d admit to a lot of people, Erling—including myself.”
Erling could explore Jude’s words more, dig enough to pry a confession out of him but this is enough for now. He can’t ask for what he’s also not ready to share. When he kisses Jude, it’s on the agreement that they like each other and that means something.
Jude’s heartbeat is against his, merging as if they were destined for such a routine—because it’s them. Erling tastes the sunshine on the younger boy’s lips, digging deeper to swipe away the lingering cloudiness from before. He heals it with firm hands on Jude’s face, his tongue deep inside the other’s.
Nothing’s solved—they still have to talk. But Jude likes him back, and his admission is enough to want to fight to keep this. To fight for it the way you would fight for anything else that is worth it. Jude’s arms slowly wrap around Erling’s waist, pulling him closer. He makes those sounds again—like he might never have anything like this with anyone else. It’s enough, Erling thinks. For now, it’s all they both need.